BLUE GUARDIAN: Margaret is an Action-Adventure Metroidvania for PC, created by underwater-themed Doujin Soft developer Fox Eye in 2016, who have also made fellow Metroidvanias Holdover and Sacrifice Girl. This is the first game made under the "R-15" (or 18+) Fox Eye ABYSS label.
In this game, you play as the titular Margaret, an easygoing, carefree girl with a lot of spirit, but no skills in martial arts nor magic, so she relies on two magic pistols, instead. She was ordered by the heavens to protect the "Tower of the Water Deity", but she's been slacking off from that for years and left the tower unguarded, causing a whole slew of monsters to invade the tower and pollute its water, threatening human civilization and angering the gods as a result.
Apollo, the son of the almighty god Zeus who runs communications between guardians and gods, orders Margaret to fix her mistake by traveling through the tower, eliminating the monsters and finding the source of all of the water pollution, all while taking care not to drown in the tower's flooded areas, or get murdered or even molested by the monsters that await her. Margaret will also have to protect the Holy Knights Survey Corp soldiers that decided to investigate the tower on their own in her absence, but Lancer, the leader of the soldiers, may have something else planned in mind...
Wielding the Fox Eye ABYSS label, BLUE GUARDIAN: Margaret is known to be much more adult-oriented compared to every previous game Fox Eye has ever made. Barbie Doll Anatomy is completely averted for Margaret's bared breasts after suffering Clothing Damage, and besides the developer's traditional Oxygen Meter, Margaret also has a twisted form of Level-Up at Intimacy 5 in her Excitement Meter, where it rises if certain monsters manage to catch and sexually assault her. It also goes up on its own the less clothes she wears. Achieving a critically high state of arousal turns Margaret into a Glass Cannon where she can deal more damage at the cost of taking more damage and losing her breath faster underwater.
In short, the game is Hotter and Sexier compared to past Fox Eye titles due to introducing some softcore Hentai elements into the game, and as a result, definitely Not Safe for Work (but still much more tame than a typical full-on H-Game).
Info on the game can be found on its website
. Both Japanese and English versions of the game can be purchased from the Mature/R18 section of DLsite.
BLUE GUARDIAN: Margaret contains examples of:
- 100% Completion: This is essentially accomplished by unlocking all of the artwork in the CG Viewer, which itself is unlocked after beating the game once. Part of getting all the artwork involves some usual Metroidvania goals, such as finding all of the upgrades that increases Margaret's health and missile ammunition, or beating the game
without picking any of those things up (aside from the important upgrades won from bosses, that is). A large portion of the artwork, however, is discovered simply by letting Margaret die in various ways, such as by drowning her, getting her turned to stone, and even letting certain creatures rape her. - Accidental Pervert: If Margaret talks to a Survey Corp soldier while only in her underwear or completely naked, they tend to react this way to her, either to her dismay or to her advantage.
- Action Girl: Margaret is the current successor of Fox Eye protagonists that emphasize this trope, following after Mana of Hades Vanquish, and Yuna of Sufferer. She is also currently the most proactive example of this trope in Fox Eye's entire roster, being a One-Woman Army against hordes of demons and other malicious creatures. Even Lancer, the strong leader of the Holy Knights Survey Corp soldiers, is forced to stand down against her after a formal 1v1 duel.
- Adjective Noun Fred: The first Fox Eye game to use this form of titling.
- Author Appeal: As a Fox Eye game, there's a high amount of underwater exploration to be had, and from there, a high risk of drowning, as well. Exaggerated in that there are several enemies in the game who can grab Margaret and force her to drown faster, and The Stinger of the game's trailer shows her drowning naked in a water torture tank, which can happen in the game itself if you fail to get through The Very Definitely Final Dungeon without being seen.
- Badass Adorable: Margaret is an adorable, attractive young lady. She is also the only force capable of killing all of the demons that infested the Water Deity's tower and contaminated its water.
- Barbie Doll Anatomy: Being a "Fox Eye ABYSS" title, this gets averted for the first time in a Fox Eye history, in that Margaret's nipples can be seen when she's not wearing a top. This trope still gets played straight with her crotch, however.
- Bestiality Is Depraved: An actual gameplay element for what can only be seen in a Fox Eye ABYSS game. If an enemy isn't going to outright attack Margaret, it will instead try to get intimate with her. Getting molested by giant rats, getting her breasts sucked by bats and leeches, getting kissed by gorgons, and even getting eaten by giant plant and bug monsters all raise her Excitement Meter, and can change her into a mighty Glass Cannon when her arousal is high enough. The rats in particular play this trope straight the most, because Margaret looks and sounds to actually enjoy what they do to her. This, and the other situations, even get their own Game Over images.
- Berserk Button: An easy way to get under Margaret's skin is by calling her a fool. This picks up more as General Blaine appears and keeps calling her just that.
- BFG: The Ancient Weapons are flying tanks shaped like a mixture of this and a dragon's face. General Blaine commandeers one of them to become the game's Final Boss. They can fire missiles towards Margaret and also use a Wave-Motion Gun that Margaret must carefully dodge with her Wall Jump and Double Jump. After Blaine is knocked out of the weapon, it goes haywire and Margaret must then dodge its black bomber rockets until they open holes in the floor, opening up an underwater path that leads to the True Final Boss.
- Big Bad: General Blaine. He's part of the reason for the tower's contamination, as he's searching for the Ancient Weapons to turn Margaret's nearby town into a destructive military site. Part of this involved drugging Lancer to put him to sleep, then disguising as him to set him up for the water tower's problems. He eventually finds and uses one of the weapons, but gets thwarted by Margaret after Lancer cuts opens a spot on the weapon, forcing Blaine to use it while his head's exposed but giving Margaret a clear shot at him. His final action near the very end of the game is to perform a failed suicidal explosion on Margaret as she escapes from the tower (which still nonetheless threatens her life by flooding the whole area).
- Big Good: Apollo, the messenger god, son of Zeus, and Margaret's Mission Control. While he is a young god (and physically looks slightly younger than even Margaret herself), he tries his hardest to guide Margaret through the corrupted tower as much as he can, and cares for her Guardian role and well-being even when he snarks at her for goofing around at times.
- Black Cloak: Wizards with such outfits appear everywhere in the laboratory. Margaret can't fight them as they will sound an alarm, releasing Deadly Gas that knocks her out and leads to a water torture cutscene.
- Blob Monster: Jelly-like beings can sometimes be found underwater. If Margaret gets too close to them, they will hold her in place, wasting her time and air in the process. The player can just curve Margaret around to shoot at the jelly to shatter them apart for a moment, allowing her to swim away from them.
- Blue Is Heroic: Look at the page image above and read the title, again. Also played straight by Lancer, the leader of the Survey Corp Soldiers who sports a blue cape that's also trying to fix the tower with his men. Subverted by General Blaine, who disguised as Lancer, including wearing his own blue cape, but is ultimately and definitely not a hero by any means.
- Breaking the Fourth Wall: When you reach the end of the trial version, which is right at a Save Point, Margaret laments that she can't go any further because the room she's in is so messy above her (which means in gameplay that she can't jump and grab the ledge to continue). Apollo appears and literally tells her that he'll have the room tidied up by the time she (as in you, the player) buys the full version of the game. He even tells Margaret that she (as in you, again) can use the trial's save file as an Old Save Bonus towards the full version to continue through the rest of the game right from that Save Point.
- Bullfight Boss: The first boss and third bosses cannot be harmed from the front, and periodically charges at you in a straight line. In the case of the third boss, you can use your missiles to force it to turn around to lock it in place for free shots.
- Callback: As far as the gameplay itself goes, BLUE GUARDIAN: Margaret combines several design aspects of 4 of Fox Eye's previous 2D games into one, such as Holdover, Sacrifice Girl, Sufferer: The Final Escape, and The Moon, the Mermaid, and the Underwater Adventure.
- The game's underwater gameplay is very reminiscent of Sacrifice Girl and The Final Escape's swimming controls.
- The game's on-land gameplay strongly takes after the platforming elements of Holdover and The Final Escape. The game's The Very Definitely Final Dungeon also puts more emphasis on sneaking around certain enemies, which is what the aforementioned two games mainly consisted of. Also, Faceless Eyes found here are the same ones from Sacrifice Girl, albeit with Deadly Gas instead of Frickin' Laser Beams.
- Margaret is the third side-scrolling Metroidvania from Fox Eye after Holdover and Sacrifice Girl. All three games have upgrades to build each of their girls' skills and progress through more of their games.
- This game also has moments of slower-paced puzzle-solving that takes cues from Mermaid.
- Clothing Damage is reflected in Margaret's dialogue portraits, just like in Holdover and Mermaid, except this time it can actually affect what the game's characters say.
- Margaret also gets a huge amount of Have a Nice Death artwork that calls back to Erica getting this same treatment in Mermaid.
- Lastly, the game also calls back to the Fox Eye game developed right before this one, Hades Vanquish. See Expy below.
- Character Development: Margaret starts taking her role more seriously after she reaches the tower's Courtyard and discovers its beautiful flowers:Margaret: What a wonderful place it is... I can't believe it is filled with monsters... I must defend and save the tower! Apollo, let's find those committing a crime in the tower and repel them!Apollo: ...Okay, Margaret. *thinking* At last she seems to realize her duty as the Guardian.
- Checkpoint: One is made every time Margaret goes into a different room or a crucial spot within the room. You will respawn at the check point every time you get a Game Over and continue, and can even do so beforehand by pausing the game, but quitting the game removes the check point and defaults to the last Save Point you made, instead. See below.
- Cleavage Window: Margaret's blue dress has this.
- Clothing Damage: Margaret will get her clothes shredded off as she takes damage until she's left completely naked. This makes her more vulnerable to damage and also slowly increases her Excitement Meter. Her state of dress (or lack thereof) gets reflected in her dialogue portraits (similar to Holdover), her Game Over images, how she appears in the title screen after saving, and even at the very end after successfully escaping the collapsing tower. This also affects Margaret's conversations with NPCs, namely the male Survey Corps soldiers who will scold Margaret if she talks to them while she's naked. Margaret will likewise cover herself and scold them back for looking at her naked body, or just tease them for so, instead. This is even referenced in the game's preview images:"If you are not a gentleman, events may change. Of course, she can be naked all the time.""All illustrations reflect the state of Margaret's clothes. Don't be too naughty, okay?"
- Collapsing Lair: In a Shout-Out to Metroid, after defeating the Soul of the Great Beast, the entirety of the Tower of the Water Deity becomes this, because one of the Survey Corps set off a bomb in a last-ditch effort to destroy the corrupted tower. Margaret then has 4 minutes to escape the massive tower before she gets crushed and caved in by its destruction. After she escapes, this trope gets subverted as the tower, being forged from the gods, cannot be destroyed by human means, and fixes itself following Margaret's purification of Oruboros' soul.
- Colonel Badass: Lancer, the leader and knight commander of the water tower's Survey Corps soldiers. After being accused of treachery by Margaret, she forces him to fight her as the game's 6th boss to prove that he's the genuine article, which turns out to be true afterwards. Later on, Lancer survives a barrage of missiles from an otherwise-invincible Ancient Weapon piloted by his imposter, General Blaine, and manages to get a strike at the weapon to force Blaine to stick his head out of it, allowing Margaret to finish him off.
- Combat Tentacles: There are freaky underwater monsters with these. They attempt to kill Margaret by grabbing her and strangling her until she drowns. Shooting them with bullets retracts their tentacles, and they can only be killed outright with missiles.
- Controllable Helplessness: If Margaret is captured once or twice in the Underground Laboratory, she will respectively be roped down to, and hung over a big water tank to be executed by drowning. The player can still move Margaret around during this time, but all this does is make her struggle and burn through her Oxygen Meter faster, leading her to drown sooner than usual.
- Damage Discrimination: General Blaine specifically points out to his wizard henchmen that the Deadly Gas that's installed in their secret laboratory won't affect them much, which is why they're willing to successfully use it on Margaret without any harm to themselves.
- Darker and Edgier: Subverted. While the overall game is not nearly as dark in its theme or setting as the likes of Holdover or Sacrifice Girl, failure can still be a very cruel mistress to Margaret compared to most of Fox Eye's other heroines as its Nightmare Fuel page can assess to. Also, the Game Over scene near the end of the game, where Margaret is captured, stripped, and drowned in a water torture tank, takes the developer's Signature Style and plays it up as graphically and mercilessly as it can be.
- Deadly Gas: The underground laboratory will trigger this if Margaret is spotted in it by the wizards or their Faceless Eye security machines. The gas chokes her and knocks her out, but it won't actually kill her as the trope implies. When this happens the first time she's in the lab, she's stripped of her clothes and weapons and gets drowned in a water torture tank, but then survives and gets thrown in a cell. If this happens again from when she escapes to reclaim her gear, she's drowned again and this time for good, making getting gassed an extended Game Over sequence with a unique illustration for it to match.
- Deadpan Snarker: Apollo tends to be this way towards Margaret when she doesn't take her Guardian job seriously, sometimes half-heartingly threatening her with a divine punishment from his superiors when Margaret annoys him.
- Dialogue Tree: Different conversations can happen between Margaret and everyone else depending on whether she's wearing a considerable layer of clothes or not. A lot of the ones when she's in her undies or in the nude tend to be hilarious. This stops very late into the game, namely when getting caught in the Underground Laboratory has her stripped butt naked and drowned in a water tank.
- Difficulty Levels: Three to choose from:
- Normal: Many health pickups are dropped from killing enemies, and Margaret can take a few hits before suffering from Clothing Damage.
- Hardcore: Less health pickups from enemy kills. Margaret takes more ordinary damage and Clothing Damage.
- Expert: No health pickups from enemies, meaning the only way to heal is to use the bed or the holy water in a Save Point, or get three pieces of an Ex-Life. Margaret takes heavy damage, and suffers Clothing Damage every time she gets hit. Beating the game on this difficulty wins you some bonus artwork.
- Double Jump: You get this after beating the man-eating centipede boss.
- Drowning Pit: The water torture tank sequence near the end of the game. It can be completely avoided by not letting any wizards or security machines spot Margret, but if Margaret is caught by the wizards, she loses her clothes and weapons and gets thrown into the tank, where she passes out from lack of air, and then thrown into a cell. If she's caught again before or after she gets all of her stuff back, she's thrown into the tank naked, again, this time being drowned for real.
- Expy:
Fox confirmed that Margaret is one to the protagonist of his previous game, Hades Vanquish's Mana. Both are young, energetic, Hair of Gold, Heart of Gold girls in cute dresses that use guns to fight off demons. The settings of both games are almost in complete contrast from each other within the afterlife locales of Greek Mythology (Hades Vanquish takes place in Hell, namely the titular Underworld of Hades, while Margaret takes place in a world that is heavily watched over by the Greek gods of Heaven, such as Apollo, the son of Zeus). - Fanservice: As the first Fox Eye ABYSS game, this trope gets turned up a couple of notches for this game.
- Clothing Damage and Stripperific are both accounted for in this game. A Save Point has a drawer in it that not only gives Margaret a fresh set a clothes, but she can also take them all off with the same drawer. If you don't mind having a lower defense, you can use this to play through the whole game in the buff without having to suffer through Clothing Damage first.
- By way of Female Gaze, among the things earned from beating the game with all 4 hidden cogwheel artifacts is a couple images of a naked Apollo, though his crotch is either conveniently censored, or he's simply drawn from the waist-up.
- Final Boss: General Blaine piloting one of the mass-produced Ancient Weapons.
- True Final Boss: Oruboros, the Soul of the Great Beast. It must be purified with Margaret's guns in order to restore the tower back to normal. Not before a bomb the Survey Corps soldiers installed beforehand causes the whole tower to collapse, though.
- Genki Girl: Margaret, herself. She's always full of energy and has a very plucky voice, which helps her with her swashbuckling against the monster-infested water tower.
- Glass Cannon: Margaret can turn into this if her Excitement Meter is raised high enough, as this makes her aroused, and it can be raised faster the less clothes she wears. Her shots do extra damage, but she will also take extra damage from attacks, and her Oxygen Meter will drop faster due to her increased heart rate requiring more oxygen. Calming her down will bring the meter down and remove this status.
- Gorgeous Gorgon: They're immune to Margaret's bullets and can only be killed by her missiles. If they're encountered underwater, they'll attempt to drown her by literally sucking the air out of her. This is a non-issue on land besides tearing up her clothes and raising her Excitement Meter.
- Gratuitous English: Margaret only speaks Japanese, even in the English version, but will occasionally shout a plucky "Okay!" when she picks up an item.
- Grimy Water: If the water is blood red, it will hurt Margaret even if it only touches her feet.
- Guns Akimbo: Margaret carries two pistols on her person at all times that let her shoot magic bullets at enemies. They can be upgraded to also shoot missiles, and both her bullets and her missiles can become more powerful the higher her Excitement Meter is. Beating Lancer, the 6th boss, gives Margaret the permanent Hyper Shot, which is even stronger and can pass through walls.
- Hair of Gold, Heart of Gold: Margaret contributes into a rather-lengthy line of cute, blonde-haired Fox Eye heroines, which includes the likes of Marie, Mana, and Natica. Margaret is also the strongest example of a heroine in Fox Eye's entire roster, being a spirited shooter who can hold her own pretty well in fights against monsters.
- Have a Nice Death: Similar to previous Fox Eye games The Moon, the Mermaid, and the Underwater Adventure and Hades Vanquish, every time Margaret dies, you're treated to a Game Over image showing how she died in greater detail. It ranges from drowning to being beaten to a bloody pulp to... passing out from a giant rat molesting her from behind, among other deaths. As a bonus, whatever condition her clothes were in at the point of her death also gets reflected when she's shown in the Game Over image. As there are 9 different states Margaret can be in (fully- to half-clothed to nothing on either the top or bottom half to completely naked), combine this with the large amount of ways Margaret can die, and you can have over 100 different Game Over illustrations. Exaggerated when Margaret gets caught and gassed in the laboratory (the second time), which leads to an entire cutscene of dialogue between her and General Blaine that ends with her drowned in a water torture tank. This cutscene automatically plays out by itself without the player's input as Margaret's Oxygen Meter drops during the talk, which leads straight to a unique Game Over screen after she drowns. It's also the only death in the game that doesn't have any clothing variations, as Margaret is always completely naked in it.
- Heart Container: Collecting 3 Pieces of Life creates one Ex-Life. There are four of them across 12 pieces and each give Margaret an extra Life Meter.
- Hotter and Sexier: Several past Fox Eye games are known for Fanservice and Ecchi tropes such as Stripperific and Clothing Damage, but this game, as a Fox Eye ABYSS title, takes it up a notch with more Ecchi elements and even softcore Hentai elements, and as such currently stands as the most erotic game to come from the circle. The game allows Margaret's bare breasts to be shown completely uncensored, nipples and all, and it also has an arousal mechanic that changes from how naked she is as well as, among other things, getting raped by big rats or groped by bats. Some of the Game Over artwork of these situations play up this trope even further. Despite all of this, however, nothing else in the game goes further than this, which is the main reason why the game is still considered more tame in sexual content than a typical H-Game would be.
- Item Get!: Getting certain items is accompanied by Margaret striking a Victory Pose. Getting special items and abilities from bosses also adds a triumphant fanfare that plays until you leave the room it started in.
- Jump Physics: You can gain the ability to Wall Jump after the 4th boss, and Double Jump after the 5th boss.
- Just Eat Her: The 4th and 5th bosses can do this to Margaret. The Game Over image for this shows that Margaret drowned due to her head being stuck in the monster's internal fluids.
- Kill It with Water: Literally. After getting the Double Jump ability, some of the water becomes blood red, which is so polluted that it hurts Margaret until she dies before she can drown in it like normal. There's also the water torture cutscene, with the second one after being caught in the laboratory being an extended Game Over sequence.
- Knight of Cerebus: Margaret's journey to fix the tower becomes more serious after General Blaine reveals himself and his evil goals, which occurs not too long after Margaret completely loses her ability to talk to Apollo for guidance.
- Level-Up at Intimacy 5: Some of the monsters, like bats to overgrown rats, will attack Margaret sexually rather than violently. This raises her arousal via her Excitement Meter and makes her shots stronger at the cost of making her more vulnerable to damage, and also makes her Oxygen Meter drop faster underwater. Under this condition, you can hold the "Check" button to make Margaret calm down and reset her Excitement Meter back down to a stable level.
- Lizard Folk: One of the types of monsters in the game. They can breathe fire and breathe underwater, taking advantage of the fact that Margaret can't do the latter by attempting to get her in a stranglehold. You fight an armored one as the second boss and gain his ability to shoot missiles after you beat him.
- Load-Bearing Boss: Indirectly. After defeating the True Final Boss, a bomb that the Survey Corp soldiers installed into the tower explodes in a last-ditch effort to kill the monsters that have invaded it, making the tower collapse. If Margaret doesn't make it out in 4 minutes, she gets buried alive from the rubble.
- Luminescent Blush: Margaret gets a heavy blush when her Excitement Meter is raised high enough.
- MacGuffin: The Ancient Weapons. General Blaine is searching for them so he can use their power to turn Margaret's town into a powerful military state.
- Metroidvania: Even with the Fox Eye-flavored design and Ancient Greece-based setting, this game seems to be the closest to playing like its grand inspiration compared to Fox Eye's previous Metroidvanias. You mainly use a gun to fight monsters and solve puzzles, and you can get powerups that give Margaret missiles and improve her gun and skills in order to reach areas she previously couldn't and uncover hidden items. There are also Save Points where she can recover her health, reload her missile ammo, and put on a new set of clothes if her previous set got damaged at all, or even take them off to purposely play the game in the buff, if you prefer. There's even an Escape Sequence at the end of the game where Margaret must backtrack to the very beginning of the game within a 4-minute time limit.
- Mission Control: Apollo, the messenger god. He's the one who sent Margaret on her quest through the water tower, and will talk to her from time to time to check on her progress, offer her advice, and point her to where she needs to go next. However, he can only talk to her outdoors as a magical magnetic field in the tainted tower is preventing him from communicating with Margaret while she's indoors. This gets worse later on in the game, when Apollo is unable to communicate with her at all and Margaret has to start figuring things out by herself. Then it's later revealed that the magnetic field was made by General Blaine's wizard henchmen. After Margaret beats Blaine in the Final Boss fight, the wizards flee the tower and Margaret finally regains her communication with Apollo, where he then instructs her on how the Soul of the Great Beast can be defeated.
- Naked People Are Funny:
- Besides the obvious Fanservice, a lot of conversations with NPCs change dramatically from the original intent of them if Margaret engages in them while she's in the nude. They usually result in Margaret either scolding them or teasing them, much to Apollo's dismay.
Apollo: Margaret, GET DRESSED.- It stops being funny if you fail to get through the laboratory without getting detected. Margaret is drowned (but survives) and loses both her clothes and her weapons, and she needs to find a Save Point to get them back lest she gets caught, stripped, and drowned, again (and this time for good).
- Apollo himself gets this treatment after the player beats the game with all 4 hidden artifacts, and based on the look on his face, he doesn't seem too thrilled about it...
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: The game's plot kicks off because Margaret spent years slacking off on her duty of being the Guardian of the Tower of the Water Deity, letting the tower become overridden with monsters in the process. So now she has to clean up her own mess and clear the tower of these demons after it was far too late for her to prevent it from happening to begin with.
- Nipple and Dimed: Completely averted for the first time in a Fox Eye game; past Fox Eye protagonists had Barbie Doll Anatomy. This is a byproduct of being under the Hotter and Sexier "Fox Eye ABYSS" label. The topless gorgons that Margaret encounters are another aversion.
- Non-Lethal K.O.: Not every death in the game actually involves Margaret dying, but they all still nonetheless give the player a Game Over. Most of these usually involve an enemy sexually abusing her until she passes out from the strain, instead (remember that this is a Fox Eye ABYSS game).
- Oxygen Meter: Fox Eye's Signature Style returns once again. This time, it is affected by Margaret's Excitement Meter, where it will go down faster the more she's aroused. This can make it impossible to reach certain areas in this game without drowning unless the player holds the "Check" button to calm Margaret down. Beating the third boss extends the time she can hold her breath, and there are a few underwater enemies that can force her to drown faster. Also, while the game locks the meter in place during dialogue, this doesn't apply to the avoidable water torture tank Game Over sequence late in the game, as it's meant to be a part of General Blaine's execution of Margaret and to gloat at her failure to stop him.
- Parrying Bullets: Lancer can do this to Margaret's bullets in his boss fight. If you're close enough, they'll hurt her back!
- Save Point: These are scattered throughout the labyrinth tower. Margaret can sleep in a bed to save her progress and heal, and reset her Excitement Meter, or dive in a pool of holy water to heal, as well. She can also reload her missile ammunition, change into a fresh new set of clothes, or just take off her current set and run around naked. This becomes very important during the laboratory raid near the end of the game, where Margaret is stripped of her clothes and guns and must find a Save Point in the lab to get them all back should the player fail to not get detected.
- Sexy Soaked Dress: Margaret's blue dress will stay soaked for a little while after swimming, making it translucent. You won't be able to sleep in a Save Point bed until either it dries off or you have her take it off and switch into a new dress (or you can just let her sleep naked).
- Sealed Evil in a Can: The Soul of the Great Beast was buried and flooded underground in the Water Tower's Courtyard, and then guarded by a large plant monster in order to prevent humans from reaching it and abusing its power for their own gains. Little did Margaret know at the time, she defeated the guard and drained its area's water, opening up the place and allowing the beast's soul to escape. General Blaine capitalizes on this and plans to use the soul to activate the tower's Ancient Weapons.
- Shameful Strip: In the Underground Laboratory, should Margaret be spotted by General Blaine's wizard henchmen, she will be captured and wake up naked and tied up inside a water tank. They all gloat and taunt her until she passes out from lack of air, then she'll wake up in a cell, still naked. She must then break out and continue sneaking through the base to recover her clothes and weapons in a Save Point. Even after she does, if she gets spotted again at this point, she'll automatically get caught and stripped of everything again, and the wizards will throw her in the water tank a second time until she drowns for real.
- Taken for Granite: There are long, invincible snakes that can unleash a ray from their eyes that petrifies Margaret when she's within its range, leading to an instant Game Over. You must move past them slowly without shooting at them to avoid that.
- Taking You with Me: Having lost everything he worked so hard for following his defeat at Margaret's hands, Blaine's final attack on her during her escape from the now-collapsing deity tower is to blow himself up. He dies, and his explosion fails to hurt Margaret, but it nonetheless causes the area Margaret's in to completely flood, putting her at a huge risk of drowning if she doesn't find an air pocket quickly during her escape.
- Talking Is a Free Action: Averted during the water torture tank sequence. The dialogue that goes on during that cutscene does not stop Margaret's Oxygen Meter from depleting while she's held underwater like it would anywhere else in the game. The cutscene is meant to be her (avoidable) execution via drowning.
- The Tease: Half of the time Margaret talks to a Survey Corps soldier while in her underwear or in the nude, she'll flirt with the soldier over her curvy body, much to Apollo's disapproval and annoyance. She even once attempts a honey trap!
- Trailers Always Spoil: The Stinger of the game's trailer shows Margaret naked in a water torture tank, trying not to drown. What truly makes that moment this trope is how an armored man with a blue cape is just standing there watching her drown, very likely being the one that put her in there to begin with. However, playing the full game itself will show that this caped man is not actually the same one you see at the game's beginning.
- Underwater Boss Battle: The first, third, and fifth bosses are fought underwater, as well as the True Final Boss.
- Underwater Kiss: The Gorgon enemies can do this to Margaret, but unlike this trope in Aqua Cube, this is a bad thing to happen, as they're just sucking the air right out of her until she drowns.
- Undressing the Unconscious: In the Underground Laboratory level, should Margaret be spotted by the patrolling enemies, she will be captured by them and wake up in a cell without any of her clothes. She must then break out and continue sneaking through the base to recover her clothes and weapons in a Save Point.
- The Very Definitely Final Dungeon: The Underground Laboratory Base. Among other things, it's the home base of Big Bad General Blaine and his wizard henchmen, all of whom are invincible and, upon spotting Margaret, will use their security system to gas her, and then execute her via water torture. This area ends up playing more like Holdover where you have to sneak around and avoid being detected by the more intelligent enemies until you reach the Final Boss.
- Wall Jump: You get this after beating the man-eating plant boss. Afterwards, Margaret will slide down walls to kick off of them. You can then use the pause menu to adjust how fast or slow she slides down a wall.
- Whatever Happened to the Mouse?: After escaping the collapsing tower at the very end, Apollo questions to Margaret if she knows what happened to Lancer, especially after Blaine bombarded him with missiles yet was still able to attack his BFG and seemingly escape. Margaret is more worried about eating, which in turn makes Apollo wonder on if she's actually learned anything from her role and adventure as a Guardian.
- What the Hell, Hero?: Margaret tends to get this reaction from the Survey Corps soldiers and Apollo if they see that she's naked. You might not even be able to get any important information out of them until you get dressed. Also, as mentioned above in Nice Job Breaking It, Hero, part of the reason of the tower's issues was simply because she slacked off in protecting it before the start of the game.
- Wingding Eyes: A Game Over illustration shows Margaret with these eyes if she "dies" from being molested by a giant rat, which leads to...
- You Dirty Rat!: Don't let them get you from behind!
