Video Game / Arc Rise Fantasia

Clockwise from bottom: L'Arc Bright Lagoon, Ryfia, Niko Bennex, Serge, Leslie Ferrati, Rastan Oigen, Adele Nevanlinna, Alfonse Zena Meridia, and Cecille Garcia.

In the center of this chaos, the god Eesa created Real and Imaginal in his own image. By picking the laws they represent, the hymn of ruination was destroyed and the paradise of Noire was born. So went the beginning of this world.

Arc Rise Fantasia is an Eastern RPG on the Wii, developed by imageepoch and published by Marvelous Entertainment.

Fulheim is a world plagued by Feldragons, mysterious crystallization of the land, and tense relations between the countries that inhabit it, who are on the verge of war. The god Eesa has not been heard from for years, and so the world is losing its way, now headed on a path for destruction.

L'Arc Bright Lagoon is a legionnaire working for the Meridian Empire, whose simple life is turned upside down when, on a mission gone awry, he has a fateful encounter with Ryfia, a strange girl who calls herself the Imaginal Diva. It doesn't take long before L'Arc is discovered to be the Child of Eesa, the one destined to present a Law to Eesa and bring prosperity and guidance to the world.

Or so the idea is supposed to go, at least. Needless to say, the truth ends up being far, far more complicated than that.

The game was released in Japan on June 4, 2009, and in North America on July 20, 2010. Developed under the title Project Ray, it shares the same project title with another game by the same developers, Sands of Destruction. Arc Rise Fantasia, however, in essence, can be considered a title in spirit of the Luminous Arc series, because of a handful of similarities with it.

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Tropes presented by Arc Rise Fantasia:

• Aborted Arc:
  • We never see or hear of Clyde after he is last seen starting to combat Real in the Verct Skywalk.
  • In Lascarde Skywalk, when it is revealed that Divine Race members must stay awake for at least 5 years before returning to the Lullaby, Cecille comments that she wants to return to sleep with Dynos, but acknowledges that Ryfia wouldn't approve since she couldn't forgive Dynos and wanted to ask him why he killed Ryfia's mother. Considering the latter detail, it is somewhat ironic that Ryfia doesn't say a word during the cutscenes before and after the final fight against Dynos, leaving this conversation never to occur.
• Absurdly High Level Cap: The Final Boss is around Level 60, but even the post game Optional Bosses don't pass Level 90. Plus, with the game's Anti Grinding Features, it's virtually impossible to legitimately get to Level 99.
• Acquitted Too Late:
  • This almost happened when the Republic tried to execute Leslie's sister Angie.
  • Only after Alf delivers the fatal stab to his chest is it revealed to him that it is not Weiss, but rather Adele and Dynos, who attacked the Republic. Then again, Alf took no action against Adele/Dynos in response to this.
• Accidental Misnaming: An early Running Gag in the game was everyone calling Rastan 'Leon' because Zamuel said it as he arrived. Turns out to be a misunderstanding on his part, as it's really SERGE who is Leon, despite everyone believing, up to that point, that Rastan was really Leon.
  Rastan: For the millionth time, NO.
• Aerith and Bob: Mostly Aerith names like Ryfia and Rastan/Oigen, though there are "normal" ones like Alfonse and Leslie.
• Alchemic Elementals: All four takes the form of floating magic wands
• All Swords Are the Same: Believable with say, Ryfia and Adele's Magic Staves, but Serge had several weapons that look less like throwing daggers and more like hooks! On the other hand, Alf and Rastan can't use any of L'Arc's Greatswords.
• Amazing Technicolor Battlefield: The Rogress battles, as well as the final boss.
• Anti-Grinding: Whenever one of the characters' levels surpasses that of enemies', the XP income will steadily decrease by a tenth as the character gains more levels. Using Exalots is good, but they're better used in boss battles (not optional) as they are very rare.
• Apathetic Citizens: Averted. Walk around literally anywhere in the middle of the game when all the political drama hits and the NPCs will comment on it, especially after Alf becomes Emperor and innocent civilians begin to suffer.
• As Long as It Sounds Foreign: The various short songs sung by Ryfia and Adele, such as "Imaginal Song" and "Song of Ruin" are in a significant-sounding, pleasant, but gibberish and entirely fictional "language." The fact that this game is a JRPG would fool many into falsely believing them to be speaking Japanese.
• Badass Longcoat: Rastan/Oigen, natch.
• The Battle Didn't Count: This happens when the party fights Alf in the Verct skywalk. He is defeated, but apparently still has enough energy to take on the Real rock with Clyde (Who was also defeated by the party right before Alf, but at least had the dignity to look injured).
• Beehive Barrier: Hexagonal shields pop up when a character reduces or blocks damage in combat.
• Betty and Veronica: With Adele as Betty (being L'Arc's childhood friend and claiming that she loves him like a brother despite her obvious jealousy) and Ryfia as Veronica (the Mysterious Waif from an enemy country and so harshly sheltered you'd think she was from another planet).
• Big Bad Ensemble:
  • Ignacy and his Aion Unit, Hosea and Imaginal.
  • Alf and his gang with Real.
• Bittersweet Ending: The heroes manage to achieve victory, but for the final step of their plan to work, L'Arc must sacrifice himself and go to sleep for hundreds of years, meaning that he has to leave behind everything and everyone he knows. In the epilogue, he wakes up five hundred years later, at which point everyone else has died, with the exception of presumably Cecille—and Ryfia, who also chose to go to sleep and so reunites with him at the end. Another pre-epilogue bitter moment is how Adele, Niko, Weiss and Cecille's brother Dynos all died. On the sweet side of all this, L'Arc did manage to save both the Divine and Common race.
• "Blind Idiot" Translation: Not so much the translation as the execution. Ignition already got quite a bit of flack from pulling this during Lux-Pain, but the voice actors don't match up with the lines, the wording is awkward, quite a few lines are changed, and the quality of the dub is a whole other story. Luckily, simply turning off the voices clears up quite a bit of the chaos.
• Bloodless Carnage: Even when someone suffers an injury in a cutscene, there is still no blood.
• Bookends: At the start of the game, L'Arc catches Ryfia when she collapses due to exhaustion. In the epilogue, Ryfia does the same for L'Arc when he stumbles, unused to walking after being asleep for five hundred years.
• Boss in Mook Clothing/King Mook: That stationary enemy that looks like a palette-swapped regular enemy? That's actually a boss. And since Easy Levels, Hard Bosses is in effect, well, good luck if you accidentally run into it unprepared.
• Boss Remix: The theme "A Grand Existence," which plays while battling the Rogress, is a remix of the music that plays in the opening FMV, "Meridian 2nd Hikoutei Squad."
• The Butcher/The Magnificent/Red Baron: Weiss eventually gets known as the God of War within the empire. L'Arc has a less flattering nickname, being called "Lagoon the Cursed". In the original Japanese he starts getting called Shinigami Lagoon.
• Butt-Monkey: Niko.
• But Thou Must!: a variation of this is subversion. There are many points in the game were you can fail in the game but continue on.
• Cain and Abel: The Sibling Rivalry between Cecille and Dynos.
• Calling Your Attacks: "Cecille PUUUUNCH!" Besides this, each Magic move in the game has it's own incantation, and all the voice actors recorded a line for that incantation. Also, each character (even human bosses) has 2 different incantations for their Excel Acts (Excel Trinities excluded).
• Captured Super-Entity: Simmah, the Rogress held in Jada's Dragon Prison. It supplies Meridia's ray.
• Cassandra Truth: All of the characters automatically assume that Rastan/Oigen is Leon, despite the fact that he corrects this at every opportunity.
• Casual Danger Dialog: During battles, the party members involved will chat with one another while using items/skills, killing enemies, etc.
• Character Portrait: Used throughout the whole game.
• Checkpoint Starvation: A particularly bad example is the dungeon where you fight Gula. It's a fairly long dungeon with no save point and a really difficult boss at the end.
• Combination Attack: Trinity Acts, and Excel Trinities.
  • The twin Lolita girls, Paula and Luna, have one of their own called "Magical Gemini"^note Oddly, the attack name is written in Hiragana, which is usually for words of Japanese origin..
• Continuity Nod: Quite a lot of facts hint the game's possible connection to the Luminous Arc series.
  • The word "Arc" in the title.
  • The Kopins.
  • The currency used in Luminous Arc 1 & 2, "Rico".
  • Lucia, Vanessa and Saki, are Optional Bosses in the arena.
• Cute Bruiser: For being only 12, Cecille packs quite a punch. Niko learns the hard way.
• Cycle of Revenge: The reason why L'Arc refuses to kill Rastan is because he doesn't want Rastan's family to have a vengeance against him and starts this trope.
• Deflector Shields: A huge one protects Opalus from attack by Meridia. It's powered by Divas, first by Adele and then by Ryfia.
• Deity of Human Origin: Eesa was made into a god by the people of the world over a thousand years ago.
• Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: The party defeating Luze/Eesa. There is also Alf and Clyde destroying the Real rock by themselves, and after both of them had fought the party!
• Dogged Nice Guy: Alf puts up with a lot of abuse for Adele's sake. He even sticks with her after she orders him to kill L'Arc for her.
• The Dog Was the Mastermind: Luze seems to be a minor character at first, who the party meets several times throughout the game, but it turns out she is Eesa, the final boss.
• Door to Before: The final dungeon thankfully provides one so the party can leave just before the final fight to stock up on items and upgrade their orbs if need be.
• The Dragon: Ignacy to Hosea, and Ignacy also has his own Co-Dragons in Paula and Luna. Also, Adele is this to Alf (and in a sense, also vice-versa).
• Dual Boss: Paula and Luna.
• Dual Wielding: Ignacy and Rastan dual-wield swords, while Serge does it with throwing knives. Leslie likes her guns.
• Dungeon Town: Jada, temporarily.
• Easy Levels, Hard Bosses: Especially in the first half of the game, you need to level grind to beat the bosses, even if you do breeze through the areas beforehand.
• Elegant Gothic Lolita: Paula & Luna. Bonus points for being twins.
• Elemental Fusion: Characters gain magic by equipping special Gems. There are Gems only for the main four elements, but there are four more elements that can be accessed by putting two Gems of the same level and of non-opposing elements next to each other. They are: Light (Wind + Fire), Darkness (Earth + Fire), Ice (Eath + Water) and Lightning (Water + Wind).
• Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors: Some enemies and bosses (and even the player) can get (dis)advantageous modifications to the damage they take from a certain element. The game consists of 4 elements (Water, Wind, Earth and Fire) which each are repulsive with one element and are resonant with the other two. 2 resonant elements make a Complex Element listed below. Wind/Earth and Fire/Water repel one another (they decrease the value of Magic levels if connected in the same orb).
  • Wind + Fire = Light
  • Wind + Water = Thunder
  • Earth + Water = Ice
  • Earth + Fire = Dark
• The Empire: Meridia. They seem like a subversion at first, but then gradually develop the standard conquering empire mindset.
• Enemy Scan: You can reveal a hostile's max/current HP, elemental affinities and level by using the dirt-cheap Analyzer on them; in fact, the "Observation" Arm Force that allows you to do this at a cost of 3 AP is so worthless due to the low-cost of this 1-AP item. Expanding your scans will grant you the Monster Compendium, available after completing a side quest requiring you to defeat 30 different types of hostiles.
• Evil Costume Switch: Adele switches from a rather simple dress to a menacing-looking one.
• Evil Counterpart:
  • Alf becomes this to L'arc after realizing he's another Child of Eesa and choosing Adele's side.
  • Ryfia and Adele are Divas that represent different laws. One of them acts more sinister than the other.
• Evil Old Folks: Ignacy
• Face Death with Dignity: Luze/Eesa
• Face–Heel Turn: Alf, Clyde and Adele.
• Failed a Spot Check: While some guards in Diamant may warn you to leave when you go for Alf after he kills Weiss, no one else bats an eyelash that this random group of people can somehow walk around town, entering people's homes, when there's a Charter that'll kill you for not staying in your house.
• False Innocence Trick: There appears to be a human prisoner in the underground of Gula Church, but it turns out to be a Feldragon in disguise.
• Fangirl: Throughout the game you'll encounter Weiss fangirls and Alf fangirls. They discuss how pretty the brothers are.
• Flat-Earth Atheist: L'Arc. You'd think that after being able to summon a powerful deity when needed, he'd be more willing to accept the existence of gods. Guess not.
• Fission Mailed: There are several battles that you cannot win no matter what, and some in which you can lose and the story will continue to progress.
• Frictionless Ice: Appears in the Snowy Temple.
• Friendly Fire: Averted unless a character is Confused.
• Gameplay and Story Integration: Depending on the player's actions, some Rogress will end up with L'arc while others will end up in the hands of his foes. His foes will then have Rogress loadouts in their boss fights that are consistent with the story. This includes the optional Rogress, who follow Luze by default in her Hopeless Boss Fight, but she won't use them if L'arc already recruited them.
• Gentleman Thief: One of Serge's outfits invokes this trope.
• Global Airship: The party gets one midway through the game.
• Global Currency: Even though the three countries of the game aren't exactly on the friendliest of terms, people of all three countries use the same currency. Apparently there's no national differentiation either, seeing that you can use it in Olquina and Turemilia without question even though you're undercover/wanted by the government. It's even usable on the Lascarde Skywalk!
  • Could be justified if Rico has been a form of currency for millennia, and just somehow never changed over thousands of years.
  • Could also be justified for Lascarde because they reportedly go down to land to retrieve supplies, and may have adapted to the changes of the Common Race.
• Gotta Catch Them All: The Rogress. To be fair, three of them are optional.
• Green-Eyed Monster: Adele
• Guest-Star Party Member: Alf, during later parts of the game, including the final boss.
• Handicapped Badass: When you first meet Serge, you find him to be an ex-thief, a smooth talker, cleaver, charismatic, and one of the best magic users the game has to offer. Then you find out he was THE Legendary Leon, leader of the Lord Knights, which surprises the group greatly as he doesn't fit the criteria at all. Turns out that before Ignacy crippled his sword arm, he was a feisty sword fighter AND magic user and the best there was. All at the age of FOURTEEN!
• Heel–Face Door-Slam: Just when Adele seems to be going back to normal, she dies saving Alf.
• Heel–Face Revolving Door: Dear God Alf, make up your mind. One minute you help us, the next you try and kill us.
• Hero Complex: Cecille.
• Heroic Sacrifice: In order to prevent Lascarde Skywalk's White Spear from destroying Diamant, Niko takes a lightship and crashes it to the railgun cannon to stop its first fire.
• Hiding Behind Your Bangs: Weiss is a borderline example, as a lock of hair usually hides his left iris - and as a result, his heterochromia.
• Hopeless Boss Fight: The first fight against Ignacy, the fight with Alf, Adele, and Clyde in his castle (In which you just have to survive for a few minutes) and the first fight with Luze.
• Hot-Blooded: Cecille again.
  Cecille: I'm gonna show you the Fists of Justice!
• If I Can't Have You…: Good lord, Adele!
  • She does try to attack (and likely kill) L'Arc when they meet in Ebur Ruins, but afterwards she spends most of her time trying to get Alf to kill L'Arc instead.
• Informed Equipment: Just like most other JRPGs, you can never see any armor your characters put on, and they will all wield their first weapons in any cutscenes. The clothes you can buy for them also only show up on the status screen.
• Journey to the Center of the Mind: After Ryfia saves L'Arc from Ignacy's attempt at mind control, she falls unconscious and the party goes into her mind to try and bring her back. In there, they encounter some memories of Ryfia's, where it's revealed that not only were all Rogress once human, but Simmah is actually Ryfia's father.
• Kaizo Trap: When you kill Chimera, it will have one last attack before the battle ends. If all your characters are at very low health when you defeat it, well...
• Karma Houdini: Whilst mitigated by his return to heroism, the fact that he suffered virtually no punishment for becoming an extremely authoritarian prince and trying to set off Elgode Volcano killing thousands of people makes Alf a huge one in this regard. Also, the fate of Luna and Paula is never specified unless you do a sidequest involving them.
• Kid Detective: One of Cecille's outfits. She also likes to play at being one, especially since Serge has a Gentleman Thief outfit to go along with it.
• Killed Off for Real: Excluding the implied deaths in the 500-years-later epilogue: Weiss, Niko, Adele, Dynos and Ignacy are all killed in-game.
• Large Ham: Cecille. She never lets a chance miss to shout her heroic antics, Shonen-style.
  Cecille: The Hero of Justice, Cecille-sama, has arrived!
  Dynos: Those who sleeps, beYOND the maelstrom, come forth in the nAAAme of CHAOS!
• Laughing Mad: Adele
• Lazy Backup: Only three characters are deployable in a battle, four with an AI guest character, but if all of the three playable characters get knocked out, it's Game Over. Even worse when you factor in that the Guest Character can be alive and kicking, but it's still game over for you. On the other hand, it's a bit depressing if you, with a party of six, end up losing against a single boss character.
• Leaked Experience
• Limit Break: Excel Acts.
• Literal-Minded: Ryfia, due to how naive she is.
• Long-Lost Relative: L'Arc and Weiss were actually half-brothers from the same mother. That explains why Weiss has always watched over L'Arc and Elena, despite his grudge against the gods.
• Lovable Coward: Niko. While his cowardly antics gradually irritate other party members, they actually like him enough that his death (alongside Adele) lowers the party'ss morale for a while. L'arc himself begrudgingly admits that he misses the banter involving Niko when he briefly becomes a guest in Allwise.
• Love Makes You Crazy: Adele, who also leaps fully into Love Makes You Evil territory.
• Magic Music: Hymns.
• Mana Meter: SP. It works in percentages instead of units.
• Monster Compendium: You get one after completing a Guild Quest tasking you with defeating 30 types of enemies.
• Mook Debut Cutscene: How the Undead Meridian Soldiers are introduced.
• Ms. Fanservice: Oh, dear sweet Leslie!
• Murder the Hypotenuse: Adele wants to kill Ryfia for allegedly stealing L'Arc from her, but never gets anywhere beyond slapping her outside of battle.
• Mythology Gag: L'Arc, Alf, and Cecille's names, the existence of Kopin, and several costumes found throughout the game refer back to the Luminous Arc games, especially the first.
• Names to Run Away from Really Fast: The Deathchanter you meet at Jada is really Dynos.
  • The Lord Knights themselves: Zamuel the Crimson Mist, Witchblade Rex, and Lightning Leon.
    • The Rogress also get intimidating powers to go for their names: Simmah, the Logos of Deliverance; Girtab, the Logos of Domination; Absin, the Logos of Judgment, etc.
    • Then there's L'Arc, who thanks to the events at Antrax, is called 'Lagoon the Cursed' over at Turmelia, and at one point 'Deathbringer' thanks to Alf's rule
• Necromancer: Dynos is able to summon undeads in his battle.
• Nintendo Hard: The bosses. Almost all of them. Each and every boss hits ridiculously hard, and unless you spend a huge amount of time grinding, they can only be beaten if you come in with just the right characters and just the right equipment, spend between half and all of each turn healing, and have a little luck.
• No Cutscene Inventory Inertia: Despite the fact that almost all of the non-CGI cutscenes are rendered in real time (meeting Simmah in Dragon Prison, for example, is entirely pre-rendered), all the characters bear their default weapons.
• Not What It Looks Like
  • Ryfia hugs L'Arc to lend him comfort after Zamuel's death. Cecille walks in on them, and then asks if she's interrupting something. L'Arc protests, but Cecille leaves the two alone, complete with hearts at the end of all her sentences.
  • Cecille and Ryfia walk in on Niko and Serge in (what is hinted as) a somewhat compromising position when they fight over who gets the bed at an overcrowded inn.
• Obviously Evil: Ignacy. It really couldn't be any more obvious if he the sky darkened and lightning struck every time he entered a room. Although, to be entirely fair to him, it's not like he makes an effort to hide it. Also, Hosea for some people.
  • There's also Weiss, who looks a heck of a lot like Seto Kaiba and is frequently shown to be a Blood Knight who hates the gods and wants to aggressively expand The Empire. Oh, and did we also mention that he literally has a draconic wing and claw hidden away beneath his mantle? The guy is effectively every RPG villain trope glued together. Although he turns out to be a Red Herring. He was actually a Well-Intentioned Extremist.
• Older Than They Look: Rastan/Oigen, Ryfia, Cecille and Dynos.
  • The entire cast as well looks a little older than you'd expect from JRPG heroes. L'Arc, for instance, is only meant to be seventeen but given his attitude and occupation he seems like he could be about twenty.
  • Luze is meant to be 13. Granted, she is the Singing Stone, Eesa, but her voice sounds nothing like a 13 year old's either way.
• One True Sequence: Somehow the rival party will always manage to run into L'Arc's group on Rogress Hunts and other scenes.
• One-Winged Angel: Luze's second and final form.
• Optional Boss: A good chunk of areas have enemies that are significantly larger than the regular rank-and-file of their area; but they stand still (won't/can't chase you) and you will only beginning fighting them once you run into them intentionally. Distinguishable by how the "Unexpected Fight" (as opposed to the normal battle theme) plays upon fighting them, and unlike typical bosses, they can be fled from (and rematched later). These bosses won't reward you with any XP, but will give you awesome WP and Rico boosts.
• Opt Out: Late into the game Niko, feeling guilty over failing the group several times due to his cowardice, leaves the party. He later comes back, only to commit a Heroic Sacrifice soon after.
• Pimped-Out Dress: Quite a few, such as Adele, Luze, Paula and Luna.
• Plot Twist: Very early in the game, you're treated to a very MASSIVE twist: You learn that Adele turns out to be the Real Diva; the Diva that opposes Ryfia. While she's at first confused, it's not until a surprise attack from Weiss's army where everything goes to hell: Alf is overcome with anger when his brother attacks and starts to question L'Arc's loyalty, L'Arc accidentally uses his Rogress to protect Weiss from the one Adele brought by orders of Dynos, indirectly harming her in the process which is enough for her to go on a long Yandere tangent where her jealousy towards L'Arc and Ryfia reaches a huge boiling point. Alf then is revealed to be the other Child of Eesa and willingly accepts being Adele's guardian. Both Serge and Leslie switch teams with the two of them and they all leave using Adele's Rogress... And you're left with Niko.
• Powerful, but Inaccurate: Not so much the accuracy of the move as the accuracy of it actually getting pulled off. Adele has the super useful Status Buff Excel Act, Concentration, which boosts all the offensive and defensive stats of the characters around her. Good luck getting her to actually use it though; with how often the AI prefers to spam Energy Blasts, you might not know Adele even has more than one Excel Act.
• Pretty in Mink: Adele's outfit, the puff balls on Luna's Parasol of Pain.
  • The tailor in Opalus sells fur-covered winter wear.
• Professional Killer: Luna/Paula (presumably at least).
• Punched Across the Room: Niko, on several occasions.
• The Purge: Alf starts one of these after becoming Emperor to meet his deal with Real.
• The Quest
• Really 700 Years Old: Again, Rastan/Oigen, Cecille, Dynos, and possibly Ryfia, all due to being frozen by Imaginal centuries ago. Rastan/Oigen even calls himself a 'relic'.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: Dynos.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: Paula and Luna shows heavy shades of this. Paula an aggressively voiced fighter in red who uses mostly fire and wind spells(the offensive elements), while Luna is a soft voiced magic user in blue who uses water and earth spells(the defensive elements).
• The Republic: Turemillia. They're not all good, though.
• Respawning Enemies: All of the monsters in the over world, sometimes right before your eyes. Any monsters in a dungeon area will respawn every time you leave the room and come back.
• The Reveal: Two big ones right after Gula church, where Ignacy finally shows his face and Leon is revealed to be Serge, not Rastan/Oigen.
• The Rival: L'Arc to Alf.
• Rock Theme Naming: Cities are named after precious gemstones: Diamant - Diamond, Carbunculus - Carbuncle, Opalus - Opal.
• Say It with Hearts: Leslie and Cecille.
• "Shaggy Dog" Story: For Paula and Luna, the We Challenge You! sidequest involved running around all over the world searching for hidden clues, at the end of the search, the whole thing was revealed to be a prank left behind by Zamuel meant for anyone who happens upon his clues.
• Shipper on Deck: Cecille sort of acts as this towards L'Arc and Ryfia.
• Shout-Out: Cecille's Megaton Punch, when meeting Niko greatly resembles a Shoryuken.
• Socketed Equipment: An unusual version. Every single weapon in the game comes with a 4-by-4 grid, that houses two "Arm Forces" - gems, that come in several shapes. Each Arm Force provides a unique bonus, ranging from simple stat upgrade, to bonus damage to a certain enemy type, to automatic healing of debuffs. By using the weapon long enough, the player can unlock the grid, and remove one of these Arm Forces for use on any other weapon. The other gem is "native" and can't be removed. If the grid is filled completely, the weapon will unlock its Weapon Secret - a powerful Arm Force that doesn't take place on the grid, but can't be removed from the weapon. Infinity +1 Sword of every character lacks the Native gem, allowing for broader customisation.
• Sound of No Damage: Complete with the appearance of Beehive Barrier and a snarky comment from the protected.
• Squishy Wizard: Serge, his base HP is about the same as Ryfia's, and he is even called a "magic user" several times.
• Stealth Mentor: Arguably Weiss, and later Clyde, to L'Arc.
• Summon Magic: L'Arc's and Alf's ability to summon the Rogress.
• Super Move Portrait Attack: The first thing a Trinity Act does when activated is showing the three participants' pictures in Ass Kicking Poses. Same with the more-powerful Excel Trinity Acts.
• Status Buff: Pretty much all the playable characters and bosses.
• Take a Third Option: L'Arc makes up his own "Law" instead of choosing either Real or Imaginal's Law. His Law saves both the Common and Divine races.
• Timed Mission: Two of the Rogress hunts are these. It's most obvious with Papirusagu, where you have to race up the stairs against Alf's group's visible but slow moving elevator to meet the Rogress. In Ellegode Volcano, you have to walk (not run) along certain bridges, or else they'll collapse and drop you down to the lower level, requiring you to climb back up again to get to Urgula before Alf does.
• Total Party Kill: If you do not move out of the way, you will get OHKOed by that boss' Excel Act.
• Trauma Inn: One in every town, plus the Moon Inns scattered across the world. And yes, Inn Security also applies.
• True Companions: Subverted horribly with the Childhood Friends, aka L'Arc, Alf, Adele, and even Niko to an extent, considering Alf and Adele pull a Face–Heel Turn and Niko turns out to be The Mole. Played straight with the main party, albeit only towards the last half of the game. It's cinched with the messages they leave for L'Arc when he awakens from his sleep, showing how much they cared.
• Two Guys and a Girl: L'Arc, Alf, and Adele.
• Underground Monkey: A lot of the enemies are just slightly different versions of other enemies.
• Unlucky Childhood Friend: Adele.
• Used to Be a Sweet Kid: Dynos. The same is said for Alf after his Face–Heel Turn.
• The Very Definitely Final Dungeon: The Holy Land of Noire.
• Villain Shoes: You briefly take control of Alf's party while searching for Maria in Gula Ruins.
• Visual Initiative Queue: Has a downplayed form of this. Small icons on the bottom right of the screen to reflect action point decisions and give you an idea of how the battle will play out before you commit to the round, but you otherwise can't plan out the battle in other forms of this trope.
• Virtual Paper Doll: You can buy and find alternate clothing for all the playable characters. L'Arc in particular has quite a few. You'll even need a FAQ for some of them.
• Was Once a Man:
  • Heavily implied that most of the Feldragons are just Divine Race exposed to Hozone and humans experimented on by Ignacy
  • And even earlier, the Rogress used to be human, but volunteered to become Rogress in order to clear up the hozone.
• We Can Rule Together: Of a sort. Adele tells L'Arc she's gotten over the fact that he'll never love her back, and she and Alf offer to return to L'Arc's side if L'Arc chooses Alf's modified version of Real's Law. L'Arc refuses because he's investigating both Laws before making a decision.
• Welcome Back, Traitor: Serge and Leslie in the beginning, Alf in the ending.
• Welcome to Corneria: Averted, surprisingly. Every new event triggers a change in the dialogue of NPC characters.
• What Happened to the Mouse?:
  • There were two preachers, Ryo and Mickey, that you run into at the end of Nabra Jungle, killing two pilgrims and running away just before the boss battle. You never see or hear from them again.
  • Near the end of the game, Alf and Clyde attack Real on their own. Alf is seen later on, but we never learn if Clyde survived this.
• Wholesome Crossdresser: Some of the costumes you get later on... well... you'll have to see for yourself.
• Wide Eyes and Shrunken Irises: Any character who is Confused will have these, as does Adele several times after she becomes the Real Diva.
• Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds:
  • ... And when Luze finally wakes up, she learns that people are planning to kill her to "free themselves". This causes her to reject L'Arc's Law that will save both the Common Race and the Divine Race by neutralising the Hozone, as such a world would have no need of her. Even if she had lived, she'd have lived forever alone and unneeded by the people to perform the duty that they themselves gave her. Somebody give this girl a hug already!
  • After Adele's death, Alf and Dynos become this, feeling that letting the world be destroyed will be their revenge for their respective Trauma Conga Line.
• With a Friend and a Stranger: The game starts with L'Arc meeting Ryfia for the first time, and then meeting with his childhood friend Alf shortly after.
• You Can't Go Home Again: While technically, the party returns to Diamant a couple of times, L'Arc spends most of the game as a wanted criminal in the Empire, and so knows that he can't go back to his old life there. One NPC even comments on how when she grows up, she'll join the army and make it so that L'Arc's allowed back.

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