History YMMV / WorldOfHorror

** Mimi is among the most popular playable characters, with the disturbing parts of her character often being PlayedForLaughs by the fanbase portraying her as a silly and quirky girl.

* ScrappyMechanic: Out of all the backstories the player can choose from, Medical History is widely considered to be the hardest to work around - it has a chance to inflict a random Major Injury on the player if they get attacked in combat, and these injuries almost always serve to either lower a stat or cause DamageOverTime. That would be annoying enough on its own, but what really pushes it into scrappy territory are two factors: Major Injuries can only be healed one at a time and need to be paid for unless you have a Medical Kit (as opposed to Minor Injuries, which can be healed all at once for free by the school nurse if you have her location enabled), and there's pretty much no character or build for whom getting a major injury isn't a massive disadvantage, unlike other similar back stories like Scars, Ill-fated or Curious Birthmark. You also don't really get anything in exchange for taking on such a major handicap (you start with a Medical Kit, but that's likely going to be burnt through quickly).

** Mysteries that focus on the Seaside can also be slogs since the seaside tends to contain a lot of DemonicSpiders and events that can mess the player character up. The only saving grace of the Seaside is one particular event at the city docks that allows you to get some guaranteed funds, reason recovery, or try to recruit a unique follower.

** [[spoiler:Shiro-san, the Garden]] in "Bizarre Bruit of the Bloodcurdling Botanist" is a brutal fight. It starts the fight by immediately damaging you for -3 Stamina and Reason, putting you at a disadvantage right from the start, and it ''continues'' to deal the same amount of damage throughout its attacks. It also gains an additional 12 HP to make it tougher to kill. Even worse, if you're going for Ending A, you have to spend a few turns chopping down the blockage and running to the minivan for the flamethrower, all while this thing continues to heavily damage you. If you started the fight with low Stamina and Reason to begin with... say goodbye.

** "Eerie Episode of Evolving Eels" is a relatively simple mystery with no mandatory combat encounters, with a sidequest completely unrelated to the mystery's endings and thus optional. You'll be accompanied by Kana, who is one of the best followers in the game since they can reduce the damage you take by 1. The best ending, at the cost of 3 reason, allows you to keep Kana as a permanent companion. The short length, easy completion, and great reward make it one of the best mysteries in the game to get.
** "Spine-chilling Story of School Scissors" can appear as a mystery in regular playthroughs. As it was made as a basic tutorial, it plays unlike other mysteries, having a fairly linear progression, mostly easy encounters, and a boss that can be defeated with little difficulty by paying attention to the clues.
** "Far-Out Fable of Fear Festival" is the only mystery where you do not have to investigate any location to proceed the story. In fact this mystery contains locations that allow you to regain your health quickly and buy helpful items for a lowered price. Although not doing any story actions costs you 2 Stamina, this is a paltry price to pay for getting yourself back from the brink of death. This has since been changed so that you get an increasing amount of Doom while resting, changing it from a full recovery to merely being a minor one, depending on how much the counter is filled. That said, it's still arguably the best case to get, with only Eerie Episode of Evolving Eels being as useful.
** "Rotten Report of a Rancid Ramen" is a straightforward Mystery with no mandatory combat encounters or end boss fight, and the side quest simply involves discarding 2 items, which can be done with junk items. "Sorrowful Saga of the Moonlight Sailors" is similar to Ramen, right down to the same sidequest. However in timeline B there is a particularly tough boss fight, but it can be skipped if you do the sidequest and sacrifice the fire-based weapon it provides to instantly win. But if you can beat it yourself then it's worth it, as many enemies in the game are weak to fire.
** Not a level, ''per se'', but one of the Town Events is "Cut Off From the Outside World", and the only effect it has is that you can't use the TV in your room between mysteries. Considering that the effects of the other Town Events are ''all bad'', this one is a very helpful breather. The one drawback is that certain events can only be triggered by seeing specific TV broadcasts, but getting one to trigger even if you ''do'' see the broadcast is a LuckBasedMission at best, so the overall impact is minimal.

** Eerie Episode of Evolving Eels is a relatively easy Mystery that doesn't require a sidequest, no skill checks outside of random events, no boss fight at the end, and an easy to gain ending that grants you Kana as an ally, all for the cost of 3 Reason. There's nothing preventing you from doing this first.

** The Old Gods, due to being nightmarish beings with unique designs and powers which run the gamut from simple and destructive to otherworldly and bizarre. Their cultists are also quite disturbing and interesting.

** The protagonists grow increasingly disturbing and badass at the same time, going from simple high-schoolers to warriors with fragile sanity. They can double down on this on certain paths, which can lead to them being [[ImAHumanitarian cannibalistic]] [[UnscrupulousHero ruthless]] [[DidYouJustPunchOutCthulhu monster slayers.]]
** "Your Friend" from "Worrying Write-Up of a Wordless Ward." Despite initially seeming innocuous, they slowly become more dread-inducing as time goes on, and punctuate it all by being ''eerily smart''. [[spoiler: Whatever the player does, they get what they want-- if the player kills them, it's discovered they essentially founded a cult of personality centered around mimicking them, revealing that every patient in their ward has taken up the face of the PlayerCharacter, and if the player doesn't kill them, they pull off the biggest win in the game by ''implicitly stealing the player's body''.]] Their uniqueness as a threat and utterly deranged behavior only amplifies how impressive their planning skills are and how disturbing their encounter is.
* DisappointingLastLevel: The Lighthouse. By the time you've reached it, you've survived encounters with eldritch gods, taken several hits in Doom penalties, braved many investigations, and have steeled yourself for some great final encounter. Unfortunately, that encounter never comes. At the start, you're granted an easy method to heal 2 Stamina per a fairly reasonable Doom price, making it easy to tank the 5 stat checks that await you. Each will cut a steady supply of health, but assuming you fail every last one, the healing available before this point is hardly a concern. There is only one enemy that can appear, and while he does Doom damage, his Stamina is pitiful at this point in your run, only does two points of Doom, and gives you a very high rate of hitting him. After that, there is nothing stopping you from entering the final room, disabling the artifact, and stopping your chosen god from appearing. No FinalBoss, no last test of skill, not even a suitably descriptive ending. Unless you enter the Lighthouse with more than 90 Doom to start with, odds are very good you've already won.

* LowTierLetdown: Before the addition of his Hard Knock ability, Haru was seen as the worst character in the game. The reason for this is his cigarette addiction, which requires him to always have cigarettes in his inventory, in exchange for a fairly small buff to his attack speed. While attack speed buffs are always a positive, most ways of getting them are permanent or easily maintained, while Haru needs to constantly spend money to maintain his, and gets a speed ''penalty'' if he runs out of cigarettes. This mechanic isn't unique to him, either; other characters can choose whether or not to take advantage of this at any time, while Haru is forced to do so right from the start. Aside from that, only one of his perks (Core Strength, which provides a straight +1 to his damage) is particularly good; the others are either fairly niche or just kinda useless. This meant Haru was reliant on constantly spending money and getting lucky with a single perk just to compete with other characters. Fortunately for the yakuza, the addition of Hard Knock straightened things out a bit; it provides a +1 to damage while he has cigarettes which now stacks with Core Strength, which no other character gets. While still reliant on specific perks and money-draining resource management, this damage buff puts him on much more even footing with the others, and even allows him to be reasonably effective without any weapons, a strategy most other characters usually struggle with.

* AccidentalAesop: Smoking is not only bad, but actively harmful to your health. It's also a money drain, with the need to constantly spend money on it or suffer withdrawal. Adding to this, the only natural smoker is borderline non-functional in combat without a nicotine high. It's even joked that the game is an anti-smoking PSA, rather than a cosmic horror game.

** "Eerie Episode of Evolving Eels" is a relatively simple mystery with no mandatory combat encounters and whose ending is completely unrelated to the completion of the sidequest thus making it completely optional. Throughout it you'll be accompanied by Kana, who is one of the best followers in the game who can reduce the damage you take by 1. The best ending, at the cost of 3 reason, allows you to keep Kana as a permanent companion. The short length, easy completion, and great reward make it one of the best mysteries in the game to get.
** "Spine-chilling Story of School Scissors" can appear as a mystery in regular playthroughs. Being made as a basic tutorial, it plays unlike other mysteries, having a fairly linear progression, mostly easy encounters, and a boss that can be defeated with little difficulty by paying attention to the clues.
** "Far-Out Fable of Fear Festival" is the only mystery where you do not have to investigate any location to proceed the story. In fact this mystery contains locations that allow you to regain your health quickly and buy helpful items for a lowered price. Although not doing any story actions costs you 2 Stamina, this is a paltry price to pay for getting yourself back from the brink of death. This has since been changed so that you get an increasing amount of Doom while resting, changing it from a full recovery to merely being a minor one, depending on how much the counter is filled. That said, it's still arguably the best case to get, with only Eerie Episode of Evolving Eels being as useful as it.
** "Rotten Report of a Rancid Ramen" is a straightforward Mystery with no mandatory combat encounters or end boss fight, and the side quest simply involves discarding 2 items, which can be done with junk items. "Sorrowful Saga of the Moonlight Sailors" is in the same vein of Ramen, right down to the same sidequest. However in timeline B there is a particularly tough boss fight, but it can be skipped if you do the sidequest and sacrifice the fire-based weapon it provides to instantly win. But if you can beat it yourself then it's worth it, as many enemies in the game are weak to fire.

** Want to maximize your odds of success in any given playthrough? Pick Ath-Yolazsth as the Old God. Its only effect is that spells increase Doom rather than costing reason, which can easily be mitigated by just not casting spells at all. It does have unique events and enemies that raise Doom, but unless you're trying to investigate everywhere or get ''really'' unlucky, Doom buildup is still fairly manageable once you have a handle on the mechanics.

** The Occult shop isn't affected by the shop closure event and contains the Holy Candle (which can reduce the doom gauge in three separate events), The Ritual Dagger (a great fast weapon that scales off knowledge for characters like Kirie and Yashiro and has a chance of recovering reason), and now the Tainted Violin (reduce how much time actions take like Aiko's starting perk), which makes it an easy pick for the second slot in the downtown area.

* MemeticLoser: Kouji has essentially become the fandom's whipping boy, with jokes commonly being made about [[OffModel his face]] and him having brain damage, as well as being described by Discord users as "already the chew toy of the people", a "Silly Camera Mortal" and "the fandom's punching bag".

** "Rotten Report of Rancid Ramen" proves to be this for the protagonist in-universe. In Ending B, the narration says they can no longer eat noodles without feeling ill; in Ending A, where the full truth about the titular ramen is revealed, the protagonist is said to throw up in the street altogether.

* TearJerker: Some of the character specific events really reinforce the fact that the player characters are just a single person standing up against the literal end of the world, with Kirie's Taking Its Toll giving you the choice to either cry or push through a horrible thought train, Aiko's Distance resulting in either her looking crazy if you fail the Charisma check or forcing her to lie about the horrors she has been facing, or Haru's Midnight Driver with him reflecting on the death of his comrades.

** The Ill-Fated background is arguably even ''[[HarderThanHard worse]]''. It causes you to automatically fail all event skill checks, meaning you're likely to lose Stamina or Reason almost ''every'' time you have to investigate somewhere. It also unlocks Card Pack C, so you'd be forgoing plenty of content if you don't complete a run with it. Its only saving grace is that Miku can get a perk that gives her +1 Reason after failing a skill check and and gets substantially stronger the higher Doom is, which will increase more often with failed skill checks. Even with the free 133 experience (basically equating to an instant level up) upon starting, Medical History is still easier.
** The Knight-Errant backstory deserves a mention here as well. Here's the positive part about this backstory: you start the game with a book that, once used, increases all damage dealt in combat by 2 for the duration of the current mystery. Handy for, say, ending boss encounters pretty quickly. Now here's the negative part: every single time you get an ending for a mystery that isn't the [[GoldenEnding Golden Ending]], the DOOM counter advances by 7. It's got a good chance of getting worse if you're in Timeline B: in that timeline, three of the mysteries possible ''will never get that golden ending.'' Furthermore, some golden endings require multiple mysteries to be done in the right order. For example: if you get the Botanist mystery ''but'' don't get the Mermaid mystery, you better prepare for that DOOM increase, because the former's golden ending requires obtaining the Fire Axe, which only comes from the latter's golden ending. However this can be somewhat mitigated now that you can reroll mysteries at the start of the game assuming you haven't completed any yet.
** Out of all the Old Gods you can pick, Ithotu the All-Devouring Flame is the harshest one since it comes with doubled Stamina penalties in comparison to other options that offer much more manageable effects. It has since been nerfed so the double damage goes both ways, which puts it on par with Old Gods that aren't Ath-Yolazsth and arguably even makes it fun, as it gives it a risk/reward factor.

** Mysteries that focus on the Seaside can also be slogs for players since the seaside tends to contain a lot of DemonicSpiders and events that can mess the player character up. The only saving grace of the Seaside is one particular event at the city docks, which allows you to get some guaranteed funds, reason recovery, or try to recruit a unique follower.

** [[spoiler:Shiro-san, the Garden]] in "Bizarre Bruit of the Bloodcurdling Botanist" is a brutal fight. It starts the fight by immediately damaging you for -3 Stamina and Reason, putting you at a disadvantage right from the start, and it ''continues'' to deal the same amount of damage throughout its attacks. It also gains an additional 12 HP to make it tougher to kill. If you started the fight with low Stamina and Reason to begin with... say goodbye.

** The Occult shop isn't affected by the shop closure event and contains the Holy Candle (which can reduce the doom gauge in three separate events), The Ritual Dagger (a great fast weapon that scales off knowledge for characters like Kirie and Yashiro and has a chance of recovering reason), and now the Tainted Violin (reduce how much time actions take like Aiko's starting perk), which makes it an easy pick for the second slot in the down area.

* ThatOneBoss: The [[spoiler:painting]] in "Perilous Parable of the Peculiar Painting". It's a DamageSpongeBoss, which is nothing new for this game, but its attack is what truly stands out - on normal difficulty, it deals ''4 Reason a turn''. Most characters have at best four turns to kill this thing before they go insane... and again, it has a ''lot'' of health.

** "Bizarre Bruit of the Blood-Curdling Botanist" is a massive pain. Like "Freaky Feature of Found Footage", you're reduced to tile-clicking at its finale, but unlike that mystery, you have no way to speed things up. The boss of the mystery is an EscortMission ([[SarcasmMode always good news]]) where the escortee is ridiculously fragile; you can cancel the escorting part if you took the optional steps, but [[spoiler:that turns your escortee into a brutally powerful replacement boss]]. Want Ending A? Better hope you rolled "Macabre Memoir of Morbid Mermaids" ''and'' got Ending A in it, because you can't get it without [[spoiler:the Fire Axe]]!

** There's a growing fanbase for Kana, due to their incredibly useful ability, being guaranteed to join if you get ending A on Eerie Episode of Evolving Eels.

* TierInducedScrappy: Before the addition of his Hard Knock ability, Haru was seen as the worst character in the game. The reason for this is his cigarette addiction, which requires him to always have cigarettes in his inventory, in exchange for a fairly small buff to his attack speed. While attack speed buffs are always a positive, most ways of getting them are permanent or easily maintained, while Haru needs to constantly spend money to maintain his, and gets a speed ''penalty'' if he runs out of cigarettes. This mechanic isn't unique to him, either; other characters can choose whether or not to take advantage of this at any time, while Haru is forced to do so right from the start. Aside from that, only one of his perks (Core Strength, which provides a straight +1 to his damage) is particularly good; the others are either fairly niche or just kinda useless. This meant Haru was reliant on constantly spending money and getting lucky with a single perk just to compete with other characters. Fortunately for the yakuza, the addition of Hard Knock straightened things out a bit; it provides a +1 to damage while he has cigarettes which now stacks with Core Strength, which no other character gets. While still reliant on specific perks and money-draining resource management, this damage buff puts him on much more even footing with the others, and even allows him to be reasonably effective without any weapons, a strategy most other characters usually struggle with.
** Mizuki is a both example. Her supporters consider her to be either on par with or stronger than Aiko, as while she requires some setting up, Fame is incredibly strong, to the point where she outperforms Aiko. Her detractors consider her to be on the lower end of the scale, as while Fame does make her incredibly strong, it requires much more setup than non-Haru characters, with her needing a specific perk, to use Doom hunting allies from the school (which can also give negative effects, forcing you to choose between a stat drop or more Doom) even with the best of luck, in addition to needing to use Doom getting a weapon like everyone but Mimi, Moriko, and Haru (who uses kicks). While needing a perk - and even having a preferred perk - to hit their stride is normal for a character, Mizuki's Fame is inflexible and forces her to run that build, unlike everyone but Haru, who can adapt.
** On the Old God end of the spectrum, there’s Ygothaeg, whose rule theoretically prevents you from going to any of three places each action. In theory, this would force you to leave multiple options available to minimize Doom costs, but in practice, it grants a pitiful 2% Doom for each time you disregard its rule, while still having a chance to grant 1% while potentially causing STA or REA damage alongside it while doing something else. Even ''worse'', sometimes you're told "Don't blink" - which means the Old God does ''absolutely nothing'' that turn. At best, you’ll not be affected by it at all, but you’ll very rarely find the 2% adding up to any meaningful amount. Even Ath-Yolazsth does more harm than it, despite functioning as an easy mode Old God.

* TierInducedScrappy: Before the addition of his Hard Knock ability, Haru was seen as the worst character in the game. The reason for this is his cigarette addiction, which requires him to always have cigarettes in his inventory, in exchange for a fairly small buff to his attack speed. While attack speed buffs are always a positive, most ways of getting them are permanent or easily maintained, while Haru needs to constantly spend money to maintain his, and gets a speed ''penalty'' if he runs out of cigarettes. This mechanic isn't unique to him, either; other characters can choose whether or not to take advantage of this at any time, while Haru is forced to do so right from the start. Aside from that, only one of his perks (Core Strength, which provides a straight +1 to his damage) is particularly good; the others are either fairly niche or just kinda useless. This meant Haru was reliant on costantly spending money and getting lucky with a single perk just to compete with other characters. Fortunately for the yakuza, the addition of Hard Knock straightened things out a bit; it provides a +1 to damage while he has cigarettes, which no other character gets. While still reliant on specific perks and money-draining resource management, this damage buff puts him on much more even footing with the others, and even allows him to be reasonably effective without any weapons, a strategy most other characters usually struggle with.