History YMMV / BlackSouls

*** All of the Favors the player gets for making Covenant with the Demonic Princesses are pretty strong, but Rapunzel's is ''ridiculous''. It not only gives the player a whopping 90% bonus to dodge rate but ''an extra action every single turn they take''. Combine with high Speed for more turns as quickly as possible to make mincemeat out of even powerful bosses... and to top things off, the Wind God's Ring not only boosts Speed but also increases dodge rate. Oh, and the cherry on top? Rapunzel's Covenant is easily the most painless to fulfil the conditions of (although navigating the Helsa Desert can be a pain), and Rapunzel is comparatively easy to rush to, especially if the player's been diligent about doing Dorothy's questline, since most of the enemies in her tower are deathly weak to magic and every boss fight can be circumvented relatively easily.

** If the player beats the Drake boss in ''I'' to start with (which is honestly pretty easy unless they pissed away all their MP in the Fort on the way and can't figure out the mechanics), they'll start out with the Drake Sword, one of the best weapons in the game, which also only needs half as many materials to upgrade as other weapons. While there are some comparable and effective weapons in ''Black Souls I'', at least one English guide recommends just selling every other weapon: the player doesn't need anything but the Drake Sword.

* GameBreaker:
** ''I''
*** The player can get a pair of rings to double the souls they get and item drop rates respectively before they get any other equipment outside the Fort, [[GuideDangIt if they know where to look]].

** Most recommend the player pick Thief as their starting class in ''I''. Although it seems weaker than the other two, getting one stat bonus to their two in exchange for a paltry 1000 Soul signing bonus and getting the weakest of all the starting weapons, it also gets a bonus to the most important stat, Speed, letting it act more often, and its starting weapon hits twice anyway. A Thief won't be much weaker than either of the other classes out of the gate, all the other starting equipment can be quickly acquired minutes after leaving the Fort, and once they start levelling up there won't be much that'll stop them.

** In ''I'', The Dusk Crown Rings double your magic at the cost of also doubling the mana costs for all spells. With a max level player, this allows them to barely reach the cap of 19998 Magic, enough to one-shot a lot of bosses with Heavy Soul Discharge. This of course, assumes you have all 4 rings equipped at once, but this also drives up the mana costs up a massive hike... ''Unless'' you equip a Sorcerer's Staff+10, which makes ''every'' spell free to cast, and you can [[StarterGearStayingPower potentially get a non-maxed Sorcerer's Staff if you pick the Sorcerer background]].

* FriendlyFandoms: With ''WebVideo/KoishiKomeijisHeartThrobbingAdventure'', surprisingly enough, due to both of them focusing on incredibly dark themes and insanity. It also helped that the creator of ''Black Souls'' [[WebVideo/TouhouIgyoukyoGrotesqueLandStory also did a fan work on Touhou as well]].

* CheeseStrategy: Any Guns that you equipped will turn your standard Break into Gun Break skill (think of Bloodborne's Visceral Attack), which is put on cooldown after use, but does ''not'' take a turn. With the Rabbit's Pocketwatch, a consumable you can get from Node that refreshes your cooldowns, considering the fact using most consumables does not end your turn means you can spam Pocketwatches and fire the skill continuously, with whatever you're fighting not even getting the ''chance'' to use their turn. Notably, since hunter class start with ''Silver Pistol'' equipped, this also mean that you can use this combo [[DiscOneNuke as soon as you gain access to Library Dream]], which is easy to do as you can use Black Ash to teleport you to Library Dream at no cost since you don't have any held souls for it to be consumes at the start of game anyway.

*** Any equipment that grants an [[ExtraTurn bonus action]]. The reason is that, by the endgame, using equipment that inflates your stats becomes less viable due to the enemy having multiple actions and/or being damage sponges, on top of the various gimmicks they have, so to mitigate this, after reaching the recommended stats for a certain area, having bonus actions to quickly get buffs and unleashing powerful attacks in a span of a single turn allows the player to defeat their enemies within the minimal amount of turns. Furthermore, thanks to a quirk with the RPG Maker VX engine, the stats for each bonus action are calculated ''separately'', meaning that having four Black Rabbit Rings means in practice you get four bonus actions, since Black Rabbit Rings guarantee a bonus action if they are equipped. Other equipment is the Andor Sword at +10, which is mostly equipped at the beginning of most fights due to it also granting a bonus action when maxed out, and Mystery of Night Sky [[note]]Which is basically the player wearing Mabel's panties. It MakesJustAsMuchSenseInContext.[[/note]] has a chance of granting an bonus action, and finally, two of the Covenants in the game have a chance of granting a bonus action, such as Duchess Margaret, which guarantees a bonus action at the expense of a 50% speed debuff, and Kuti, who grants a 50% chance of a bonus action in exchange for granting a extra hit, with the caveat that it will cost a lot of souls to max out the Covenant.

* CheeseStrategy: Any Guns that you equipped will turn your standard Break into Gun Break skill (think of Bloodborne's Visceral Attack), is put on cooldown after use, but does ''not'' take a turn. With the Rabbit's Pocketwatch, a consumable you can get from Node that refreshes your cooldowns, considering the fact using most consumables does not end your turn means you can spam Pocketwatches and fire the skill continuously, with whatever you're fighting not even getting the ''chance'' to use their turn. Notably, since hunter class start with ''Silver Pistol'' equipped, this also mean that you can use this combo [[DiscOneNuke as soon as you gain access to Library Dream]], which is easy to do as you can use Black Ash to teleport you to Library Dream at no cost since you don't have any held souls for it to be consumes at the start of game anyway.

* CheeseStrategy: Any Guns that you equipped will turn your standard Break skill into Gun Break skill (think of Bloodborne's Visceral Attack), is put on cooldown after use, but does ''not'' take a turn. With the Rabbit's Pocketwatch, a consumable you can get from Node that refreshes your cooldowns, considering the fact using most consumables does not end your turn means you can spam Pocketwatches and fire the skill continuously, with whatever you're fighting not even getting the ''chance'' to use their turn. Notably, since hunter class start with ''Silver Pistol'' equipped, this also mean that you can use this combo [[DiscOneNuke as soon as you gain access to Library Dream]], which is easy to do as you can use Black Ash to teleport you to Library Dream at no cost since you don't have any held souls for it to be consumes at the start of game anyway.

* CheeseStrategy: Any Guns that you equipped will turn your standard Break skill into Gun Break skill (think of Bloodborne's Visceral Attack), which is put on cooldown after use, but does ''not'' take a turn. With the Rabbit's Pocketwatch, a consumable you can get from Node that refreshes your cooldowns, considering the fact using most consumables does not end your turn means you can spam Pocketwatches and fire the skill continuously, with whatever you're fighting not even getting the ''chance'' to use their turn. Notably, since hunter class start with ''Silver Pistol'' equipped, this also mean that you can use this combo [[DiscOneNuke as soon as you gain access to Library Dream]], which is easy to do as you can use Black Ash to teleport you to Library Dream at no cost since you don't have any held souls for it to be consumes at the start of game anyway.

* CheeseStrategy: Any Guns that you equiped will turn your standard Break skill into Gun Break skill (think of Bloodborne's Visceral Attack), which is put on cooldown after use, but does ''not'' take a turn. With the Rabbit's Pocketwatch, a consumable you can get from Node that refreshes your cooldowns, considering the fact using most consumables does not end your turn means you can spam Pocketwatches and fire the skill continuously, with whatever you're fighting not even getting the ''chance'' to use their turn. Notably, since hunter class start with ''Silver Pistol'' equiped, this also mean that you can use this combo [[DiscOneNuke as soon as you gain access to Library Dream]], which is easy to do as you can use Black Ash to teleport you to Library Dream at no cost since you don't have any held souls for it to be consumes at the start of game anyway.

* CheeseStrategy: Any Guns that you equiped will turn your standard Break skill into Gun Break skill (think of Bloodborne's Visceral Attack), which is put on cooldown after use, but does ''not'' take a turn. With the Rabbit's Pocketwatch, a consumable you can get from Node that refreshes your cooldowns, considering the fact using most consumables does not end your turn means you can spam Pocketwatches and fire the skill continuously, with whatever you're fighting not even getting the ''chance'' to use their turn. Notably, since hunter class start with silver pistol equiped, this also mean that you can use this combo [[DiscOneNuke as soon as you gain access to Library Dream]], which is easy to do as you can use Black Ash to teleport you to Library Dream at no cost since you don't have any held souls for it to be consumes at the start of game anyway.

* CheeseStrategy: The Manslayer's Shotgun's Gun Break skill (think of Bloodborne's Visceral Attack) is put on cooldown after use, but does ''not'' take a turn. With the Rabbit's Pocketwatch, a consumable you can get from Node that refreshes your cooldowns, considering the fact using most consumables does not end your turn means you can spam Pocketwatches and fire the skill continuously, with whatever you're fighting not even getting the ''chance'' to use their turn.

* CheeseStrategy: The Manslayer's Shotgun's Gun Break skill (think of Bloodborne's Visceral Attack) is put on cooldown after use, but does ''not'' take a turn. With the Rabbit's Pocketwatch, a consumable you can get from Node that refreshes your cooldowns, considering the fact using most consumables does not end your turn means you can fire the skill continuously, with whatever you're fighting not even getting the ''chance'' to use their turn.
* ClicheStorm: In a good way! BLACK SOULS makes its identity and ultilizes a lot of narrative points and characters taken from widely explored fairy tales, and twists them and rips them apart, creating something new, but many of the things observed are still rooted in those good old, well-known tales that set the basis for more modern writing and literature.

*** Any equipment that grants an [[ExtraTurn bonus action]]. The reason is that, by the endgame, using equipment that inflates your stats becomes less viable due to the enemy having multiple actions and/or being damage sponges, on top of the various gimmicks they have, so to mitigate this, after reaching the recommended stats for a certain area, having bonus actions to quickly get buffs and unleashing powerful attacks in a span of a single turn allows the player to defeat their enemies within the minimal amount of turns. Furthermore, thanks to a quirk with the RPG Maker VX engine, the stats for each bonus action are calculated ''separately'', meaning that having four Black Rabbit Rings means in practice you get four bonus actions, since Black Rabbit Rings guarantee a bonus action if they are equipped. Other equipment is the Andor Sword at +10, which is mostly equipped at the beginning of most fights due to it also granting a bonus action when maxed out, and Mystery of Night Sky [[note]]Which is basically the player wearing Mabel's panties. It MakesJustAsMuchSenseInContext.[[/note]] has a chance of granting an bonus action, and finally, two of the Covenants in the game have a chance of granting a bonus action, such as Duchess Margaret, which grants a 50% chance of having a bonus action at the expense of a 50% speed debuff, and Kuti, which also grants a 50% chance of a bonus action, but instead grants a extra hit, making hers the best endgame Covenant, with the caveat that it will cost a lot of souls to max out the Covenant.

* CheeseStrategy: The Manslayer's Shotgun's Gun Break skill (think of Bloodborne's Visceral Attack) is put on cooldown after use, but does not take a turn. With the Rabbit's Pocketwatch, a consumable you can get from Node that refreshes your cooldowns, considering the fact using most consumables does not end your turn means you can fire the skill continuously, with whatever you're fighting not even getting the ''chance'' to use their turn.

* SugarWiki/AwesomeMusic: For a game made with bought assets and royalty-free tracks for music? Not only are the soundtracks perfectly handpicked to fit the grimmified fairy tale aesthetic, but they are genuine bangers all-around. Some of the most powerful and emotional scenes that have the community in tears are only as powerful as they are due to the emotional tracks accompanying them.

** Characters like [[spoiler: Mary Sue for example, era extremely meta in the sense she does represent exactly what a Mary Sue is, but that is done so purposefully it makes her one of the highlights of the series both through her actions and layered personality through her façade.]]

* IconicSequelOutfit: Red Hood's loss of her traditional dress design under her namesake hood that gets replaced with the ''arguably'' much more... '"'in-line"'' design for an HGame that just consists of her wearing nothing but a black bikini and thong with leather linings beneath the cape.

** Characters like [[spoiller: Mary Sue for example, era extremely meta in the sense she does represent exactly what a Mary Sue is, but that is done so purposefully it makes her one of the highlights of the series both through her actions and layered personality through her façade.]]

** Characters like Mary Sue for example, era extremely meta in the sense she does represent exactly what a Mary Sue is, but that is done so purposefully it makes her one of the highlights of the series both through her actions and layered personality through her façade.