After paying respects at her sister's grave, Rubellum is nearly killed by a Wraith, a monster that cannot be killed by ordinary means. A white bird tells her to turn her hate, fear, and despair into power. Rubellum manages to force the Wraith to retreat using her new powers as an Umbra, but soon learns that there is a price to pay for accepting this power.
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This game provides examples of:
- Abusive Parents:
- Rubellum states that Lilac's mother was a Moon Dust addict who abused Lilac. It's not specified what her mother did, but it was so bad that Lilac is in denial that their relationship was toxic.
- Amalia's mother denigrates her whenever she tries to pursue her passions in singing. This is because her mother is reminded of how her own career in singing flopped due to anti-Umbra discrimination.
- Apple's parents were Amalthean nobles who emotionally abused her because she was born a girl, which means they can't pass on the family name. If the player visits Apple's house in the endgame, Rubellum will call them out on being pathetic excuses of parents.
- Accidental Murder: The first Despair Shift results in an controllable explosion, which can range from small to devastating. Rubellum goes through her first despair shift when King Callister tries to hang the party, wiping out nearly everyone in Kingsridge.
- Big Bad: Arisu is the source of all Umbra and seeks to use the Calypso to wipe out humanity and Umbra, and then rebuild the world from scratch. To that end, he removes specific memories of the Umbra to ensure that the Calypso shards and a vessel suitable for the Calypso falls into his hands. Later, it turns out his real plan is for Rubellum to be the host of the Calypso and that his vision for the world is actually similar to Rubellum's, but his plans still end up with quite a lot of collateral damage.
- Breaking the Fourth Wall: In the Blue Diamond DLC scenario, Arisu will address the player by their computer user name and ask them what they think of humanity.
- Contractual Boss Immunity: Averted. Bosses have their own unique immunities and vulnerabilities to ailments. Some bosses can be immune to status effects as mundane as Break while others are vulnerable to powerful ailments like instant death.
- Cooldown: Some skills, like Rubellum's Assassinate, has a cooldown of a certain amount of turns. This also applies to some enemy skills, like Wraith Nihilo's Girane Andhera. Almost all of Amalia's skills have cooldown because of how powerful they are as party-wide buffs.
- Cooldown Manipulation: Amalia has two skills, Aura: Deftones and Two to Tango, that reduce the cooldown of all her other skills. This is to balance how almost all of her skills have long cooldowns.
- Deal with the Devil: All Umbra agree to give up a party of their memories to Arisu in exchange for power, but Snow's deal seems to be different. The story doesn't make it clear, but it's implied that Snow secretly struck a deal with Arisu to keep her memories in order to still get a chance to kill Rubellum, since she prioritizes killing Rubellum over Arisu in the last stretch of the game. This works out for Arisu, who knows that Rubellum will eventually oppose him once she learns the truth about Eternia.
- Despair Gambit: Rowan and Dawn manipulate the party into confronting King Callister, who wants to enact genocide on the Umbra. When the party arrives, Dawn outs them in front of Callister so that he'll execute them, resulting in Rubellum accidentally wiping out Kingsridge in her first Despair Shift. This makes Rubellum lose hope in her ideals and give up the Calypso Fragment to Dawn.
- Dynamic Difficulty: Downplayed. The enemies of Machina Wastes scale to the player's story progress rather than levels. However, the main boss of the area, Wraith Saturn, doesn't scale and is balanced for a level 45 party.
- Faking Amnesia: Arisu doesn't actually take Snow's memory of her sister because he wants Snow to still have a motivation to kill Rubellum, who he knows will become a thorn in his side. Snow only pretends to forget about her sister in order to lull the party into a false sense of security.
- Fantastic Drug: Moon Dust is a substance that can be used to make magic water for restoring MP. Unfortunately, it is also highly addictive and drives people insane, which is why most countries banned its use for purposes other than magic water. One sidequest involves stopping a group of Moon Dust smugglers.
- Fantastic Racism: Most ordinary humans hate the Umbra out of jealousy and fear of their power. The Kingdom of Excella in particular wants to start a world war in order to kill every last Umbra on the planet along with anyone associated with them.
- Final Boss: Rubellum's sister, Eternia, ends up becoming the final boss because she's the vessel of the Calypso, an artifact that will destroy the world.
- Graceful Loser: In the ending, Arisu allows Rubellum to become the Calypso's host despite that being detrimental to his original plans, since this would be better than letting the Calypso slowly destroy reality without a host. When Rubellum manages to create a better world, Arisu concedes that she did a good job. The DLC implies this is a subverted example, since it's revealed that Arisu planned for Rubellum to be the next host all along.
- Guide Dangit: The quest for recruiting Lilac doesn't give many hints for her location other than that she's in Adalia. This is slightly misleading, since the Adalia in the quest description actually refers to the region rather than the city. She is actually in the cubbyhole in the road between Adalia and Lenne.
- Hard Mode Perks: Higher difficulties increase the amount of EXP gained from fights, though the EXP difference isn't significant even between the lowest and highest difficulties.
- Hate Sink:
- Unlike most Wraiths who are characterized, Micah doesn't have any sympathetic or tragic qualities. He pretends to be a kindhearted rest stop manager, but actually uses hallucinogenic flowers to drug unsuspecting women and locks them in a basement, where he rapes and kills them in order to "teach them their place".
- King Callister of Excella is nasty even by the standards of anti-Umbra characters, since he is so at peace with his sadism towards them that he doesn't feel any guilt or negative emotions despite wanting to start a war of genocide against the Umbra. When he discovers that King Richard is an Umbra, he declares his intent to wipe Adalia off the map, non-Umbra citizens included, and tries to have the party publically executed. His cruel nature is exploited by Rowan and Dawn to break Rubellum's ideals of coexistence and discourage her from opposing them.
- Hypocrite Has a Point: King Richard publically preaches equality between humans and Umbra, but forces the Umbra to live underground and out of sight of humans, though he doesn't seem to mind if they use a secret tunnel to go to the surface. Considering that the Despair Shift phenomenon could cause an Umbra to turn into a Wraith, he probably doesn't want humans to have hostile interactions with the Umbra and cause the Umbra to prematurely lose control of their powers.
- Idiosyncratic Difficulty Levels: The highest difficulty setting is named "Umbra."
- Invisible to Normals: Soul Towers are dungeons filled with Wraiths, but they cannot be seen by ordinary humans.
- Jerkass Has a Point: Wolf is a bitter Umbra who believes peace between humans and Umbra is impossible, but considering that many humans would rather choose death by Wraiths than accepting the Umbra's help, it can be easy to see where his cynicism comes from.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Despite being a hypocrite in his stance towards the Umbra and basing most of his actions around PR, Richard is willing to risk his life and humanity to protect the party in Palva Shrine, showing that his actions aren't entirely selfish.
- Killer Rabbit: Arisu looks like a small bird monster, but he is actually the source of the Umbra's powers and is the main villain of the game, seeking to destroy and reset the world with the Calypso. He is also the penultimate boss of the main story.
- Lazy Backup: Downplayed. The player can swap in party members, but if the front line is defeated, the player gets a game over.
- Leaked Experience: All reserve party members get full EXP from battle, which makes sense because characters can be swapped in mid-combat.
- Made of Evil: Zigzagged. Arisu, the bird that turns humans to Umbra, claims to be born from humanity's negative emotions. However, Rubellum suspects he may have once been an Umbra.
- Mighty Glacier: Wolf has average attack, low speed, and high defenses. His first aura skill increases his aggro and defense at the same time.
- Not-So-Well-Intentioned Extremist: King Callister claims that the Umbra are a threat to humanity and that they must be exterminated, but Rubellum notices that he has no negative emotions when persecuting the Umbra. She realizes his true motive is to find a "socially acceptable" outlet for his sadism rather than humanity's safety. He also wants to destroy Adalia for daring to have an Umbra as a king, despite that nation being mostly made up of non-Umbra.
- Numerical Hard: This game has Easy, Normal, Hard, and Umbra modes, which set enemy stats to 75%, 100%, 125%, and 150% respectively.
- One-Winged Angel: All random encounters can turn into Wraiths if the player kills 19 monsters of a single type, after which the counter resets. While Wraith versions of monsters are stronger, they can also drop Wraith Souls for crafting. Humans and Umbra can also turn into Wraiths, though Umbra have to go through three Despair Shifts first.
- Optional Party Member: Lilac is not recruited through the main story. Instead, she's recruited through the "When Petals Fall" sidequest.
- Power at a Price: While the Umbra are the only ones who can kill Wraiths, they also risk going through Despair Shifts. The first one results in a burst of magical power that can range from a small explosion to a city-leveling nuke. The second turns their wings black. The third causes them to transform into Wraiths. Later, it's revealed that just the act of becoming an Umbra causes one to lose their memories of Arisu's choosing.
- Pre-existing Encounters: All enemy counters are symbol encounters. Furthermore, each symbol encounter will always have the same enemy lineup, which allows players to farm specific enemies.
- Prequel: The Blue Diamond DLC takes place before the main game. Its only chapter is numbered zero and Arisu states his intention to find Rubellum and turn her into his pawn, leading to the beginning of the main story.
- Pure Is Not Good: King Callister is so at peace with his sadism towards the Umbra that Rubellum cannot sense any malevolence from him.
- Reincarnation Romance: After Rubellum dies using the Calypso, she's reborn in a modern era and runs into Apple on the way to school, with the implication that their reincarnated selves will start their relationship anew.
- Revenge Before Reason: The party kills a rampaging Wraith in Tharelta, who turns out to be Snow's sister, Carla. As a result, Snow wants to kill them despite how they really had no choice. Even after Snow becomes an Umbra and loses her memory of her sister, she still wants to kill them, though it's later revealed that she secretly kept her memory of Carla. She makes one last attempt on Rubellum's life despite the world-ending threat of Arisu and Eternia.
- Self-Fulfilling Prophecy: Most humans beileve the Umbra will turn on them, which causes a rift between humans and Umbra, which makes the Umbra more likely to succumb to despair and transform into Wraiths.
- Squishy Wizard: Apple and Lilac are both magic-focused characters with low defense.
- Support Party Member: Amalia has the least offensive options out of all party members, but has many party-wide buffs.
- Too Dumb to Live: Most of the human armies seen in the game are in denial that only the Umbra can damage Wraiths and would rather throw soldier after soldier into hopeless battles against invincible opponents rather than accept the Umbra's help.
- Ungrateful Bastard: Bigotry against the Umbra runs so deep that the Umbra can save people from Wraiths and still get condemned. Many humans go as far as stating they would rather be killed by Wraiths than saved by the Umbra.
- Vengeance Feels Empty: When Snow deals a grievous wound to Rubellum, she enjoys her revenge at first, until Rubellum turns the other cheeck and begs Snow to save Eternia. This causes Snow to realize that she has become no different from her sister Carla in becoming consumed by hatred and finding people to lash out at. While she doesn't forgive Rubellum, she decides to refrain from revenge from now on.
- Was Once a Man: The Blue Diamond DLC has the white bird, Arisu, state that they used to be Ordana Kellis, the Umbra from the notes in the Umbra Cave.
- The Watson: Rubellum seems to be ignorant on the propaganda and discrimination against Umbra at the start of the story and has to be introduced to this ugly reality through explanations from other characters and from experiencing discrimination herself.
- Well-Intentioned Extremist:
- While Wolf genuinely does want the Umbra to protect the world from Wraiths, he believes the best way to do so is to have the Umbra take over the world and force humanity to accept them. He states that he's not the only Umbra with this belief. Though he never gets an opportunity to act on these beliefs.
- Wolf states that another faction of Umbra wants to magically erase all feelings of hatred, despite this being an affront to free will. Rowan and Dawn share that position and seek to create another Shallow both out of self-service and genuine belief that they can save the Umbra from being persecuted by humanity. This is more true for Rowan, since Dawn is mainly concerned with obtaining peace for herself and Rowan.
- The DLC reveals Arisu planned for Rubellum to be the next host of the Calypso because she has the potential to bring peace between humans and Umbra. However, he manipulates many Umbras' memories in order to complete the Calypso and has the Calypso bound to Eternia so that Rubellum will have no choice but to become the next host. This plan also resulted in a lot of collateral damage, such as Rubellum's Despair Shift in Kingsridge and Rowan and Dawn turning into Wraiths.
