History YMMV / Malicious

* GameBreaker: Figuring out how to game the Aura system can lead to bosses going down pathetically easy, especially when using the Lance, which can get you up to 9999 aura depending on the map simply charging through hordes of enemies and getting massive chains. This allows you to spam Aura Break level 3 easily, taking off huge chunks off a bosses health at a time. It's telling how effective this was, as ''Rebirth'' has much fewer ways to get aura than in ''Slayer''.

*** The Mad Queen is fast, hits hard and teleports across her huge (and tall) arena with lightning speed. Due to being a LightningBruiser incarnate, she's hard enough to deal with on her own, but she's flanked at all sides by legions of {{Mooks}} that can make dealing with her a pain. They can even combo off of one another for extra pain. Luckily, her weakness ([[spoiler: the Lance]]) can make her a lot easier, but figuring out she's weak to it in the first place takes a lot of TrialAndErrorGameplay.
*** The Shield Golem is the exact opposite- it's a gigantic stone fortress that floats in the middle of the stage. Mooks absolutely ''pour'' in from every opening in the stage, leaving you to be flanked at basically all times, to say nothing of the golem's utterly ''staggering'' health pool (to whit, the RapidFireFisticuffs combo of the improved Fists barely hurt the thing) and highly damaging attacks. Having the improved fists, the wings, and the lance can make this fight easier... until the second phase, where it charges a shield that pushes you off of it every few seconds and takes a while to beat down. Luckily, both the turrets pouring out most of the enemies and parts of the Golem itself can be destroyed, and the latter will deal a great deal of damage to the Golem when they break.
*** The FinalBoss, the titular Malicious, is a ''nasty'' PuzzleBoss. The fight has three phases: the first requires you to fly around and Aura Attack (aka L1+Square, Triangle, or L3) several floating platforms. The only time the game tells you to do this is vaguely, '''once''', during a speech by the sages after beating the previous bosses. The second is destroying rapidly-healing sores on its body to force its mouth open, leading to the final phase were you beat it down. After a while it goes back to phase two, but thankfully it keeps all damage taken. This all has to be done while dodging a veritable arsenal of cheap, highly damaging attacks including hard to block tracking explosives, claw swipes and massive swarms of minions.

** The Reborn Malicious is much the same as the version in ''Slayer'' in that it is one cheap bastard. While the first phase is somewhat easy, the second is cheap in a way that can't be compared too. It relentlessly spams tracking explosive spells and launches 16 of them at a time, meaning if one hits you, you're gonna get comboed (and lose a limb) if you don't immediately dodge. He also has a barrier that has an ''absurd'' amount of health behind it, and if you've already expended both the Counter Actions, you have to break it the old-fashioned way. He does have an AchillesHeel in his weakness to aura attacks like his previous counter part, and his arena is positively filled with mini-Malicious to acquire aura from, but this makes his boss fight no less challenging.
** [[spoiler: Spirit Vessel Ashlelei]] takes the SNKBoss features of the Mad Queen and applies a heavy dose of FakeDifficulty to create the most frustrating boss in the episode. While being a [[spoiler: DuelBoss]] sounds like a great idea on paper, because of this premise you will soon realize that there are few ways to generate aura properly in the fight itself, meaning you can get easily screwed over if you haven't mastered just blocking. The boss has a lot of devastating moves, including a fast-moving grab that can come out fast and be spammed multiple times in a row. You're intended to go into Malice mode to rip the boss apart, but this is easier said than done due to your low aura count. God help you if the boss spawns [[spoiler: four Spirit Vessel clones]], because it won't end well.

* SugarWiki/AwesomeMusic: The soundtrack may be quite small, but gosh is it wonderful!

* EarWorm: The main hub theme is ''really'' catchy.

* CrowningMusicOfAwesome: The soundtrack may be quite small, but gosh is it wonderful!

* VisualEffectsOfAwesome: The game simply looks amazing no matter what version you play, but ''Fallen'' runs at 1080p, 60FPS, leading to a breathtakingly beautiful experience- especially when getting into the content exclusive to this version, which is simply jaw-dropping at times.

*** ''Fallen'' also removes the feature of being able to lock onto specific targets aside from the boss, making some encounters a real pain.
** The hitstun that happens when your character is knocked onto their backs lasts for '''4 seconds''' everytime they're blown over, which makes fights drag on for long periods of time. Escaping the stun is done by jumping right as the character hits the ground, but good luck doing that reliably in the original and Vita versions.

*** The Shield Golem is the exact opposite- it's a gigantic stone fortress that floats in the middle of the stage. Mooks absolutely ''pour'' in from every opening in the stage, leaving you to be flanked at basically all times, to say nothing of the golem's utterly ''staggering'' health pool (to whit, the RapidFireFisticuffs combo of the improved Fists barely hurt the thing) and highly damaging attacks. Having the improved fists, the wings, and the lance can make this fight easier... until the second phase, where it charges a shield that pushes you off of it every few seconds and takes a while to beat down. Luckily, both the turrets pouring out most of the enemies and parts of the Golem itself are destroyable, and the latter will deal a great deal of damage to the Golem when they break.
*** The FinalBoss, the titular Malicious, is a ''nasty'' PuzzleBoss. The fight has three phases: the first requires you to fly around and Aura Attack (aka L1+Square, Triangle, or L3) several floating platforms. The only time the game tells you to do this is vaguely, '''once''', during a speech by the sages after beating the previous bosses. The second is destroying rapidly-healing sores on it's body to force it's mouth open, leading to the final phase were you beat it down. After a while it goes back to phase two, but thankfully it keeps all damage taken. This all has to be done while dodging a veritable arsenal of cheap, highly damaging attacks including hard to block tracking explosives, claw swipes and massive swarms of minions.

*** The Undead King is perhaps the hardest non-Malicious boss in the game. He's a StoneWall with a catch- his stage has ''one way'' to accrue aura outside of Just Guards, which is by killing small floating enemies that congregate in the high sections of the stage. The trick of this stage is managing your aura versus his slow moving but hard-hitting attacks and huge health. The second half of the fight involves heavy FakeDifficulty however, as he gets a spell that drains your aura and a shield that rapidly heals him to up to half of his total health in less than a few seconds. You have to [[spoiler: break his shield when he puts it up by hitting it multiple times]], but the average player may not realize this until they run out of time. Much like the Mad Queen in ''Slayer' he should be attempted last, only after getting the rest of the abilities.
** The Reborn Malicious is much the same as the version in ''Slayer'' in that it is one cheap bastard. While the first phase is somewhat easy, the second is cheap in a way that can't be compared too. It relentlessly spams tracking explosive spells and launches 16 of them at a time, meaning if one hits you, you're gonna get comboed (and lose a limb) if you don't immediately dodge. He does have an AchillesHeel in his weakness to aura attacks like his previous counter part, and his arena is postively filled with mini-Malicious to aquire aura from, but this makes his boss fight no less challenging.

** ''Demise'' however throws all pretenses of limiting aura generation out the window in many stages, especially during the fight against the Aura Apparatus.
* ScrappyMechanic: The camera is horrendous- it's zoomed really close in most of the time, is controlled wonkily, often obscures the action, fails to keep the target center in the camera and generally just sucks. ''Fallen'' improves it somewhat, but it still has it's issues.

** The hitstun that happens when your character is knocked onto their backs lasts for '''4 seconds''' everytime they're blown over, which makes fights drag on for long periods of time.

*** The Shield Golem is the exact opposite- it's a gigantic stone fortress that floats in the middle of the stage. Mooks absolutely ''pour'' in from every opening in the stage, leaving you to be flanked at basically all times, to say nothing of the golem's utterly ''staggering'' health pool (to whit, the RapidFireFisticuffs combo of the improved Fists barely hurt the thing) and highly damaging attacks. Having the improved fists, the wings, and the lance can make this fight easier... until the second phase, where it charges a shield that pushes you off of it every few seconds and takes a while to beat down. The trick is to [[spoiler: get up to the Aura count max, and then kill it as fast as possible in Aura Break 3]], but the battle is still long and arduous.
*** The FinalBoss, the titular Malicious, is a ''nasty'' PuzzleBoss. The fight has three phases: the first requires you to fly around and Aura Attack (aka L1+Square or Triangle) several floating platforms. The only time the game tells you to do this is vaguely, '''once''', during a speech by the sages after beating the previous bosses. The second is destroying rapidly-healing sores on it's body to force it's mouth open, leading to the final phase were you beat it down. After a while it goes back to phase two, but thankfully it keeps all damage taken. This all has to be done while dodging a veritable arsenal of cheap, highly damaging attacks including hard to block tracking explosives, claw swipes and massive swarms of mini-Malicious.

*** The Undead King is perhaps the hardest non-Malicious boss in the game. He's a StoneWall with a catch- his stage has ''one way'' to accrue aura, which is by killing small floating enemies that congregate in the high sections of the stage. The trick of this stage is managing your aura versus his slow moving but hard-hitting attacks and huge health. The second half of the fight involves heavy FakeDifficulty however, as he gets a spell that drains your aura and a shield that rapidly heals him to up to half of his total health in less than a few seconds. You have to [[spoiler: break his shield when he puts it up by hitting it multiple times]], but the average player may not realize this until they run out of time. Much like the Mad Queen in ''Slayer' he should be attempted last, only after getting the rest of the abilities.

** [[spoiler: Spirit Vessel Ashlelei]] takes the SNKBoss features of the Mad Queen and applies a heavy dose of FakeDifficulty to create the most frustrating boss in the episode. While being a [[spoiler: DuelBoss]] sounds like a great idea on paper, because of this premise you will soon realize that there are [[spoiler: extremely few ways to generate aura during the fight. There are three methods: blocking, killing her grunts (even letting them spawn can spell disaster) and
the passive rise of your aura which is painfully slow]], leaving you at a clear disadvantage unless you brought certain costumes. Which is impossible to do on your first attempt [[spoiler: as the game launches into the fight immediately after defeating the Malicious Reborn]]. Even with this disadvantage, the boss still hits like a truck and relentlessly spams it's most powerful moves, especially it's grab attack that comes out extremely fast and let's it instantly [[OneHitKill kill you if you're missing even ''one limb'']]. There's a reason the game gives you Malice Mode right before this fight.

** [[spoiler: Spirit Vessel Ashlelei]] takes the SNKBoss features of the Mad Queen and applies a heavy dose of FakeDifficulty to create the most frustrating boss in the episode. While being a [[spoiler: DuelBoss]] sounds like a great idea on paper, because of this premise you will soon realize that there are [[spoiler: extremely few ways to generate aura during the fight. There are three methods: blocking (which is not recommended), killing her grunts (even letting them spawn can spell disaster) and
the passive rise of your aura which is ''painfully'' slow]], leaving you at a clear disadvantage unless you brought certain costumes. Which is impossible to do on your first attempt [[spoiler: as the game launches into the fight immediately after defeating the Malicious Reborn]]. Even with this disadvantage, the boss still hits like a truck and relentlessly spams it's most powerful moves, especially it's grab attack that comes out extremely fast and let's it instantly [[OneHitKill kill you if you're missing even ''one limb'']]. There's a reason the game gives you Malice Mode right before this fight.

* GameBreaker: Figuring out how to game the Aura system can lead to bosses going down pathetically easy, especially when using the Lance's square aura attack, which can get you up to 9999 aura depending on the map simply charging through hordes of enemies and getting massive chains. This allows you to spam Aura Break level 3 easily, taking off huge chunks off a bosses health at a time. It's telling how effective this was, as ''Rebirth'' has much fewer ways to get aura than in ''Slayer''.

* ThatOneBoss: It would be easy to say "all of them", but one or two bosses stick out across the four episodes.

** [[spoiler: Spirit Vessel Ashlelei]] takes the SNKBoss features of the Mad Queen and applies a heavy dose of FakeDifficulty to create one of the most frustrating bosses in the game. While being a [[spoiler: DuelBoss]] sounds like a great idea on paper, because of this premise you will soon realize that there are [[spoiler: no ways to generate aura during the fight aside from blocking (which is not recommended]], leaving you at a clear disadvantage unless you brought certain costumes. Which is impossible to do on your first attempt [[spoiler: as the game launches into the fight immediately after defeating the Malicious Reborn]]. Even with this disadvantage, the boss still hits like a truck and relentlessly spams it's most powerful moves, especially it's grab attack that comes out extremely fast and let's it instantly [[OneHitKill kill you if you're missing even ''one limb'']].
* VisualEffectsOfAwesome: The game simply looks amazing no matter what version you play, but ''Fallen'' runs at 1080p, 60FPS, leading to a breathtakingly beautiful experience- especially when getting into the content exclusive to this version.

** [[spoiler: Sprit Vessel Ashleilei]] takes the SNKBoss features of the Mad Queen and applies a heavy dose of FakeDifficulty to create one of the most frustrating bosses in the game. While being a [[spoiler: DuelBoss]] sounds like a great idea on paper, because of this premise you will soon realize that there are [[spoiler: no ways to generate aura during the fight aside from blocking (which is not recommended]], leaving you at a clear disadvantage unless you brought certain costumes. Which is impossible to do on your first attempt [[spoiler: as the game launches into the fight immediately after defeating the Malicious Reborn]]. Even with this disadvantage, the boss still hits like a truck and relentlessly spams it's most powerful moves, especially it's grab attack that comes out extremely fast and let's it instantly [[OneHitKill kill you if you're missing even ''one limb'']].

* ScrappyMechanic: The camera is horrendous- it's zoomed really close in most of the time, wonky, and generally just sucks. ''Fallen'' improves it somewhat, but it still has it's issues.

*** The Accursed King is perhaps the hardest non-Malicious boss in the game. He's a StoneWall with a catch- his stage has ''one way'' to accrue aura, which is by killing small floating enemies that congregate in the high sections of the stage. The trick of this stage is managing your aura versus his slow moving but hard-hitting attacks and huge health. The second half of the fight involves heavy FakeDifficulty however, as he gets a spell that drains your aura and a shield that rapidly heals him to up to half of his total health in less than a few seconds. You have to [[spoiler: heavy attack lance through his shield]], but the average player may not realize this until they run out of time. Much like the Mad Queen in ''Slayer' he should be attempted last, only after getting the rest of the abilities.

* GameBreaker: Figuring out how to game the Aura system can lead to bosses going down pathetically easy, especially when using the Lance's square aura attack, which can get you up to 9999 aura depending on the map. It's telling how effective this was, as ''Rebirth'' has much fewer ways to get aura than in ''Slayer''.

*** The Accursed King is perhaps the hardest non-Malicious boss in the game. He's a StoneWall with a catch- his stage has ''one way'' to accrue aura, which is by killing small floating enemies that congregate in the high sections of the stage. The trick of this stage is managing your aura versus his slow moving but hard-hitting attacks and huge health. The second half of the fight involves heavy FakeDifficulty however, as he gets a spell that drains your aura and a shield that rapidly heals him to up to half of his total health in less than a few seconds. You have to [[spoiler: heavy attack lance through his shield]], but the average player may not realize this until they run out of time. Much like the Mad Queen in ''Slayer' he should be attempted last, only after getting the rest of the abilities.

* CrowningMusicOfAwesome: The soundtrack may be quite small, but gosh is it wonderful!