Memetic Loser / Dragalia Lost

• The Shadow element has been subject to some mockery due to how long it's gone without an event or a new 5-star Adventurer compared to the other elements. The game even had second events for Light and Water before Shadow got its first event. There are also jokes about the Adventurers themselves not liking the Shadow element, since four of the game's seasonal variants^note Althemia, Edward, Cleo, and Nefaria are of Shadow Adventurers on a different element. It wouldn't be until "New Year's Tidings: Fortune from Afar" that Dark finally got an event and a new 5-star Adventurer, although the shadow adventurers happen to be limited, leading to this joke again. Not helping was that Gala Cleo was released later on, where she made all Shadow Adventurers weak and useless. Then, even later, Shadow, along with Flame, was one of the elements who had some of its older Adventurers get access to the new Mana Spiral, which allows Junk Rare and Olympus Mons Adventurers alike to get all the way up to level 100 and can enhance their Skills and Abilities, finally putting Shadow's reputation as this on ice for good. As of the advent of such meta-defining forces as Gala Alex and Cat Sith, this reputation seems to be inverted, with Shadow being portrayed as a Memetic Badass instead.
• Luca has also gotten this treatment as well, seeing how many events either have him completely absent or only playing a very minor role in the story. It also doesn't help that his popularity is overshadowed by his younger sister, Sarisse (in both fan popularity and gameplay), and happens to be a Butt-Monkey lore-wise. Plus, he's the last of the main cast (not counting Euden) to get an alternate version, with the jokes flaring up whenever the other Adventurers got their second alt (Wedding Elisanne, Gala Cleo, and Summer Ranzal) before he got his first. Even when he finally got a Summer variant, Cleo did too as her third alt (and Summer Cleo was ranked higher, as a 5-Star unit while Summer Luca was 4-Star). Luca finally got a Gala version of himself, but it took exactly one year after the first Gala Dragalia release (his younger sister, Sarisse) to get a Gala version of himself. And his Gala banner was followed up with the Monster Hunter collaboration event, where Sarisse got a Monster Hunter variation of herself. This has died down in recent months, since he and Elisanne got their Kimono variants before any of the others, and Luca went on to be the biggest badass in Fortune's Fray.
• Flame Element bosses have been the butt of many jokes regarding them being at the mercy of a four Lily or Fjorm team and the ensuing onslaught of high-damage Freeze skills. Also applies to a lesser extent to Water bosses and four Maribelle teams. Let alone any of them with four Karinas...
  • And speaking of Lily, Lily herself is subjected to this trope in regards to two Void Bosses: Blazing Ghost and Void Agni. The Blazing Ghost has Ranged Resistance, and since Lily is a Wand user, her damage does next to nothing against the Ghost with no possibility of a workaround. Void Agni has Skill Damage Resistance and a Scorching Air aura where Adventurers take damage over time inside his aura, unless they are equipped with the Scorching Aura Resistance Void Effect. It got a bit better when a Flame Wand with Scorching Aura Resistance was dropped in July 2019, and then with the Version 2.0 update allowing Void Weapon Skills to be used with any Weapon of the same element and class, but both the Blazing Ghost and Void Agni inflict Stun while she has Burn Resistance, making her next to useless in both fights even with the Resistances.
  • And with Hunter Sarisse released, Lily ended up being demoted to the worst Water Adventurer in the game. To rub salt in the wound, a month later Pipple was introduced, who outdoes Lily in both the damage and utility department with just his normal attacks.
  • The entire Water element is considered to be this, so much so that players think it's better to take Shadow Adventurers for very hard Flame boss content than the actual Water Adventurers that are supposed to have the advantage. Even worse, none of the Water Adventurers were given Mana Spirals prior to the Ayaha and Otoha fight, barring three Adventurers. This was lessened after the Version 2.0 update buffed a lot of Water Adventurers.
• High Midgardsormr. Initially the single toughest enemy in the game, thanks to many changes in the game, such as dual Wyrmprints and introducing more viable Flame units, he is jokingly referred to as a non-threat. And the introduction to Marth from the "Fire Emblem: Lost Heroes" Event makes this fight highly trivial.
• Sabnock got hit with this when the "Resplendent Refrain" Raid returned. Since it was months since he last appeared, everyone who participated in the original event have gotten much stronger (combined with various quality of life improvements to the game such as double Wyrmprints, the introduction of Void Weapons, and the Adventurer AI improvements), to the point where even the EX version of Sabnock goes down pretty easily. It doesn't help that he came back right after the "Lost Heroes" Event, where everyone that participated could get Alfonse, a 5-Star Light Adventurer immune to Curse. This is probably one of the main reasons why the developers have introduced a "Nightmare" difficulty for Raid Events.
• Elias has gotten this treatment within the fandom. Of all the Event 4-Star units, he's considered to be the worst created, since he relies entirely on his Summon Showcase partners (Lucretia, Vixel, and Pia) to be even the slightest bit effective. When the "Resplendent Refrain" Event returned, many players had recently completed the "Fire Emblem: Lost Heroes" Event that came before rerun, netting them Alfonse, who's already a solid 5-Star Light Sword unit with Curse Resistance.
• Xuan Zang, a Flame Lance unit, was one of the Adventurers that had some hype surrounding her even before her event... which was immediately overshadowed by the reveal of May 2019's Gala unit being the long-awaited Mym, who was also a Flame Lance user. Cue many players dropping their excitement to flock to Mym, leaving Xuan Zang in the dust. Although those same players who failed to get Mym did welcome her with open arms (considering that Xuan Zang was able to differentiate herself from Mym for being a solid debuffer for a free 4-Star Adventurer, while Mym is designed more for raw damage with her own dragon shapeshifting).
• Void Poseidon is given this treatment, since of all the Void Dragon battles, he's the weakest of them, to the point that a four Maribelle team can destroy him in less than a minute. Came to a head in Chapter 12, where you have to beat all of the Void Dragons and Poseidon was designated last, with the cast freaking out about how tough the fight will be, while players themselves just laughed. Fittingly, he was the first Void Dragon to be redeemed as Chapter 16 ended with him being Reborn.
• Maribelle gets this for being a 5-Star Adventurer who's constantly overshadowed by lower rarity Adventurers. Her regular self is beaten by Noelle, a 4-Star Adventurer whose Strength buffs are far more useful than anything Maribelle can offer^note Although this is mainly because most of High Mercury's attacks (such as Water Shotgun and Homing Bubble) target the furthest character in the stage, which is generally a ranged Adventurer, and having a ranged damage dealer like Maribelle being targeted by a boss will serve as a detriment to the team; hence Noelle fits the role as a "baiter" perfectly in this fight., while her Student variant is beaten by post Mana Spiral Xania, a 3-Star Adventurer who can inflict Burn with ease, while dishing out far more damage.
• Valerio got this reputation when he was introduced. He was the main prize of his summon pool, yet was immediately overshadowed by Pipple as the main prize in his own summon pool, the latter of whom, may we remind you, is literally a vegetable.
• Gala Ranzal gets hit with this hard. While other Gala units are some form of Game-Breaker and/or introduces new mechanics, Gala Ranzal is largely a plain attacker and is considered to easily be the worst Gala unit, with people frequently wishing that he gets a Mana Spiral. Thankfully, Version 2.0 rectified it and now Gala Ranzal is actually effective.
• Kai Yan just can't catch a break. Whether it's from people joking that the Master difficulty will be a complete non-boss, the fact that his Standard and Expert versions are considered the easiest of the Agito bosses (thanks to a combination of his main gimmick backfiring against him and Shadow's plethora of Game Breakers), or that he's portrayed as a Racist Grandpa by the fandom, he's the go-to source for a lot of mockery in terms of bosses. Master Kai Yan shows he Took a Level in Badass and now requires well-equipped players to really know the fight, instead of cheesing the way through, reversing this status... Unless you're one of these guys who nuked him down with over 6.5 million damage to spare.
  • Legend Kai Yan has him take a bigger level in badass where even in parties with Gala Alex and the newly introduced Gala Chelle, it becomes more a battle of survival.
  • Come the end of the game, Kai Yan is back to this being the only member of Agito with nothing establishing a change after his defeat at the tree. Ayaha & Otoha's playability allowed them to form an Enemy Mine with the heroes, while the final chapter have Volk, Ciella, and Tartarus become allies to the Halidom and even become friends with their former enemies at the end. Kai Yan, however, is nowhere to be seen after the tree.
• Regular Elisanne became this for a while by virtue of Luca getting a Mana Spiral before her. Died down once she received her Spiral.
• Tartarus got the unfortunate luck of not only being given Kai Yan's loser status, but released around the same time Gala Thor came around, combined with a new Mana Spiral update for Lucretia and Luca, which made even his Expert form a joke to the point parties were clearing him in under a minute.
  • It's gotten even crazier after players figured out it was faster to kill him in under 60 seconds with zero Light Adventurers because he didn't have resistance to off-element damage.
  • And once again when his Master version got taken down in under 30 seconds!
  • Finally, when it comes to the story, he is the first agito to supposedly die.
• Within Wyrmprints, Blades are this. There are Wyrmprints dedicated to every other Weapon class, including Manacasters, which were only recently released, but two years later, there's yet to ever be a dedicated Blade Wyrmprint. Not even a 40% Skill Damage wyrmprint has been made for Blades, while even Staves got a Skill Damage wyrmprint first. Made even worse again when "The Children of Yggdrasil" gave Bow a THIRD! dedicated wyrmprint. It wasn't until August 2021 that blades FINALLY got a wyrmprint of their own in the form of "One-Winged Journey", and it wasn't until December 2021 when it went on sale in the general Wyrmprints shop.
• There are those in the fanbase who believe that out of Cygames' own releases, Dragalia Lost is The Un-Favourite in terms of advertising in Japan and the US, almost to the point like they're waiting for a moment to one day cancel the game, if not do Dragalia Lost: ReDive.
• Emile is this both in and out of universe. He loses his pactbound dragon Mercury to Euden, defeated by the same brother again and loses the right to make a pact with Jupiter, and when he gains control of androids, he loses control and nearly gets killed for it. Even after he manages to slip in as the Dyrenell Emperor, he's still given little to no respect by both his subjects and his soldiers. "Stranded Scions" even shows him being forgotten on the island after everything his siblings did to get off the island; this after Emile jumping down a pit after a Kanaloa made the audience ask "When did YOU get the balls?". While there are people in the fandom who do want him to someday have a Redemption Quest, others still believe his It's All About Me attitude will keep that from happening. Turns out the development stuck thanks to a little help from Audric; not only did Emile manage a successful total evacuation from Grams, but he even rallied the people into fighting back against the fiends that were overwhelming them and the frontline fighters. And give him credit: it takes a former memetic loser to make a speech about giving up and make it sound both badass and genuine.