Video Game / Fairy Fencer F

Fairy Fencer F is a game developed by Compile Heart for the Playstation 3 and was released on October 10, 2013 in Japan. It was released from September 16, 2014 to September 25, 2014 in the West by NIS America. A PC release from Idea Factory International was released on 4th August 2015.

Long ago, the good Goddess and the evil Vile God fought each other using Magitek weapons called "Furies", a battle that would end in a stalemate when the two sealed each other away.

Hundreds of years later, a lazy bum called Fang pulls a dormant Fury from a stone after believing (incorrectly) that it will grant him any wish he desires. This act awakens Eryn, the fairy who dwells within the Fury, who immediately ropes Fang into her personal quest of freeing the Goddess from bondage. With the aid of a mysterious girl named Tiara, the pair must collect the Furies scattered around the world until they have enough to undo the seals trapping the Goddess in slumber. Unfortunately, they must compete against rival group the Dorfa Corporation and its leader President Hanagata, who aims to use the Furies to unseal the Vile God first.

An Updated Re-release called Fairy Fencer F: Advent Dark Force was released in Japan for the Playstation 4 on October 5, 2015, and later for the Nintendo Switch in the Fall of 2018. This update increases the number of battle party members from three to six, features new story scenarios, allows you to recruit two additional characters, improves the battle mechanic and graphics, and provides various other helpful updates. The updated release was also released on the PC shortly after it was released on the PlayStation 4, although the original PC release is still left on sale as well strangely enough. If you're buying the game for the PC for the first time, it is highly recommended that you skip over the original for the updated release.

Another game in the series, Fair Fencer F: Refrain Chord, was announced for the Playstation 5, Playstation 4, and Nintendo Switch. It was released on September 15, 2022. An English-language localization (subtitles/text only) for all of the above platforms has been announced for release on April 25, 2023 with a Steam release on May 23, 2023. Gameplay trailer here.

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This game provides examples of:

• Absurdly High Level Cap: The level cap is 99, in a game that can be beaten comfortably sometime in the mid-50s during the first playthrough. The player can also purchase some DLC that increases the level cap all the way to 999, complete with three separate Bonus Level of Hell stages and 40 new arena matches that drastically increase in level quickly just to give them something to conceivably reach this new cap with. Though with the new Hell difficulty in Advent Dark Force, you might actually need the high levels for more than just the bonus stuff.
• Aerith and Bob: There are characters with normal names (Harley, Sherman, Emily, Marianna), but there are names from different cultures (Hanagata), and then there are the names that are just plain unusual (Fang, Apollonius, Pippin). A notable case is Apollonius and Emily, who are siblings.
• Alliterative Title: Fairy Fencer F.
• Age Lift: A handful of characters had their ages increased by two years for Advent Dark Force, only to go back to their original ages for Refrain Chord.
• Apocalypse Maiden: Tiara, who is a descendant of the Vile God and whose blood is a ritual component for his resurrection. Also Bernard who is also a descendant of the Vile God and ends up being the sacrifice to revive Vile God, instead of Tiara.
• Attack Reflector: "Wall" is a defensive magic spell that reflects magical attacks.
• Awesome, but Impractical: The ultimate skills, usable only in Fairize mode. They certainly look impressive, but get quickly outclassed in damage by a character's normal special moves and magic. They also take forty percent of a character's maximum health to cast, in addition to having a high SP cost. Since Fairize also boosts a character's damage across the board, it's almost always safer to just stick to using normal special moves after Fairizing. Advent Dark Force made these attacks do more damage than normal special attacks and magic for the entire game and only cost thirty percent health, but they still fall under this trope since the high HP and SP costs mean they're still impractical for anything other than a Finishing Move.
  • Fang's second ultimate skill, Force Impact, is especially arguable to be this. Despite the universal shrinking of ultimate skill HP costs to 30%, Force Impact still costs 40% HP and more SP than Burning Strike. As such, despite its higher damage and the sheer awesome factor of bringing a sword of light so massive it can be seen from space right down onto the enemy's cranium, it's usually more practical to just use Burning Strike instead.
• Bait-and-Switch Credits: In the opening for the PS3 original, Ethel is shown fighting Tiara, implying she'll have a strong antagonistic presence on the group or be a rival to Tiara. She is also shown wielding a scythe as if it is her primary weapon. However, in actual gameplay, not only does she have little to do with the overall plot, but a bow is her primary Fury form rather than a scythe. (However, it is her Fury's primary melee form, as shown with her using it for her Assassinate ability.)
• Baths Are Fun: In the Vile God timeline in Advent Dark Force, your party visits the Dasuhiro Plains, which has a hot springs. When Sherman makes note of this, Eryn eagerly suggests that they should stop by on their way back. Fang mocks her for "getting all excited at the idea of taking a bath" like a little kid, but Sherman says everyone needs to relax once in a while. Ethel comments that she likes baths, but Fang still wants nothing to do with it, until Bahus mentions that he found some eggs which he could make into hot spring eggs, at which point Fang is totally on-board.
  Fang: Are you serious!? Woohoooo! Hot spring eggs are the best!
  Eryn: Now who's the little kid...?
• The Battle Didn't Count: Several boss battles feature initial "rounds" before the party is allowed to actually defeat them. The game never tells you which ones, though you can usually figure it out if your attacks are doing little to no damage and/or the opponent's attacks are far more devastating than they should be. In Advent Dark Force, given that game-breaking armors are available via DLC, the game also has a mechanic that helpfully cuts you out after several rounds if you have said armor equipped as an Anti-Frustration Feature.
• Big Bad: President Hanagata, the 52-year old leader of Dorfa who plans to resurrect the Vile God to conquer the world and bring peace. Depending on the route however, he’s usurped by a different character. In the Goddess Route, he is killed; Sherman Shallancer becomes the new leader once he offs Hanagata and goes off the deep end, deciding to fuse with the Vile God himself to bring peace. In the Vile God route Hanagata isn't even the real president, it’s Fang, who himself is just a figurehead for Marianna, one of the Four Heavenly Czars. In the Evil Goddess route, Dorfa isn’t even a threat anymore as it’s been disbanded, and there is a new organization, the Septerion Club, ruled by Jeane/Junown, who wants to revive the titular Evil Goddess.
• Bittersweet Ending: All three of the endings have the same deal with the party going their separate ways, but depending on which of them you pick alters it slightly.
  • The normal ending has Eryn becoming one with the Goddess and Tiara and Fang parting ways.
  • Tiara's ending is a slight alteration, with Eryn still becoming one with the Goddess, but Fang staying with Tiara in an all but said romantic relationship.
  • Eryn's ending has Eryn staying with Fang instead of returning to the Goddess, but with the implication that everyone else believes that he is dead due to him disappearing after giving the final blow. Alternatively, you could also interpret it to be the extension of the normal ending, after Fang sees off Tiara.
  • No matter which route the player chooses, Fang won't be able to save and redeem all the playable characters, despite his determination to prevent needless death.
• Boy Meets Girl: Boy just wanted food, he draws out the sword and wishes for food, and meets girl who tells him that he's chosen to save the world. Hilarity Ensues.
• Breaking the Fourth Wall: In Advent Dark Force, Tiara has a dream that Fang and Eryn do this and just stop caring altogether about their quest to entertain the player... by singing. Thankfully, she wakes up before they start to sing.
• Broad Strokes: Refrain Chord starts in a timeline roughly similar to the initial timeline of Advent Dark Force, notably Ethel has her unique yandere trait from that timeline and Marianna legitimately cares about children, though Fang and Tiara's ages are confirmed to be in line with the original game's starting timeline. The game picks up a point where Harley, Sherman, and Galdo have all joined up with Fang and Tiara, Sherman in particular either joined early or missed his encounter with Zenke due to the latter still being alive, but have yet to meet Pippin, and Ethel, Apollonius, and Marianna are all still antagonistic. Fang's Fury Form designs are also the ones from ''Advent Dark Force''.
• By the Power of Grayskull!: "Fairize!" Complete with Transformation Sequence.
• Can't Live Without You: When a Fencer dies the Fairy they're linked to also dies. The party actively exploits this whenever a Fairy and their Fencer get separated, since the fact that the Fairy is still alive is proof that the Fencer is too. Refrain Chord confirms that this is true even in reverse. Eryn repeatedly reminds Fang he can't use her as bait, because if she dies he does too. Evefleet attempts to kill Marianna indirectly by feeding Khalara to Sui, and Lenne assures Rinne she'll survive his death because Dorfa didn't incorporate this trait into their artificial Fairies.
• Caught Monologuing: Towards the end of the game, or the Goddess path in the Advent Dark Force remake, the party lets Dorfa lackey Paiga lead them into a trap, then pull an excellent one of these on him.
  Paiga: Hmhmhm, nobody make a move, or I'll press this button again. Now, you guys just stay where you are while I move to a safer position.
  Tiara: I don't think so! Cui...!
  Cui: Cui, cui! (whooshing sound, flash of light)
  Paiga: Whoa, what the—!? O-Oh no, the button...! Wh-When did that creature get behind me!?
  Tiara: While you were monologuing, I had my fairy sneak behind your back. Your luck ends here!
• Clothing Damage: Each time you remove a seal from the Goddess, a piece of her armor breaks away with it. She's pretty much naked once you remove all the seals.
• Chekhov's Gun: In the first timeline of the Goddess story, Emily asks Fang to hold onto her Memento Macguffin which has some medicine, unaware that Fang is the one that killed her brother. In the second timeline, if Fang is Level 40, Apollonius will get poisoned and Fang remembers the medicine and uses that to heal his poison. In the other two timelines in Advent Dark Force, Vile God and Evil Goddess, Apollonius always joins. However, in the Evil Goddess timeline, the medicine is a key ingredient in a formulation that must be made to cure of alcoholism before he joins the party, though he never drinks it and doesn't join. In the Vile God timeline, it just ends up as a dropped plot thread.
• Corrupt Church: In the Evil Goddess timeline, there is the Septerion Club. The Septerion Club is headed by Sherman, who having returned to the new timeline with his memories intact after the party defeated the Vile God, is hoping to bring to the world his idea of a perfect brand of justice in a world in which the Vile God no longer holds sway. Unfortunately, his idea of a perfect brand of justice is prosecuting everyone who was formally a member of Dorfa, now exposed as having supported the revival of the Vile God. Those that they don't persecute, they force to buy their special brand of wine at a ridiculous cost and indenture into servitude those who can't pay it. Fang is disgusted by this and vows to unravel the group's ambitions and begins trying to recruit former Dorfa members as an Enemy Mine. The Septerion Club is also supported in battle matters by a group called the Justice Society.
• Darker and Edgier:
  • The Vile God route shows what a world under Dorfa's rule would be like. This time, they don't even bother with maintaining good PR, as shown by how they outright take people prisoner and torture them to death in order to sustain the Vile God. Additionally, the normally kind Galdo is changed by the alterations to the timeline to become a sadistic and ambitious Dorfa enforcer, and is killed off before Fang can try to remind him of his past self.
  • The Evil Goddess route also has work camps, but with the addition of the Septerion Club forcing people into debt and making them drink addictive and harmful wine. Fang is also unable to save Sherman and Apollonius, and Galdo is horribly maimed by Junown.
• Developer's Foresight: If the player checks on any of their Fairies; even those they would normally get much later in the game, they always have something new to say for every single event that occurs or is completed throughout the game. In a New Game+, Fairies from later in the game still have something to say about events from all the way at the start of the game!
• Did You Get a New Haircut?: In a minor subevent called "...Notice Me", Ethel asks Fang if he notices anything different about her. Fang says she cut her bangs, but she replies that her skin is silky smooth now because Tiara taught her how to take care of it and comments that Fang is "bad at noticing changes."
• Elective Unintelligible:
  • Ethel's not actually limited to just "kill", as she works in other words occasionally and speaks properly when dying in the first timeline, while in the timelines where she's already moved past this reminding her of it causes her to lapse back to it in anger.
  • Drulger is one of the many beast type fairies that just speaks in growls, except for when giving you gifts at 50 and 200 battles completed with him equipped. At 50 he starts meowing like a cat, and at 200 he outright starts talking, says he always could, and asks if you were wondering what was up with the meowing.
• Enemy Mine: In the Evil Goddess timeline, the Septerion Club is imprisoning or executing former Dorfa employees. Fang feels the new order that Sherman has created is twisted and evil and immediately travels to the Hellhole Prison that is the Justice Society Camp to liberate imprison Dorfa members and try to invoke this. It fails with Hanagata and Paiga, but works with Marianna.
• Eviler than Thou: Sherman murders Hanagata in the second timeline to usurp control of Dorfa and their plan to revive the Vile God.
• Exploiting the Fourth Wall: Fang can talk with an NPC labeled by the game as a "bandit." When he calls him out as a bandit, he asks how he knew, thinking maybe he has some sort of inside information. Fang says that he read it on the screen.
• Expressive Ears: At one point, Lola offers the party Dorfa brand bunny ears, which you can wiggle using your brainwaves. As it turns out, Ethel already owns a pair.
• Expy:
  • Ethel is one for the Black★Rock Shooter character: her quiet but deadly personality, her colour scheme, her outfit (bra and midriff), her Eyepatch of Power (over the same eye!), and her weapons of choice (bow as primary, scythe as secondary).
  • She can also be considered one for Nu-13 . Both characters are females with a troubled past who were raised/created to be weapons, both have blue hair, red eyes and an eye patch covering one of their eyes, have a fascination with killing, and take a liking to their respective game protagonist. Both also were considered nothing but an enemy or obstacle in the eyes of the protagonists at first, but on subsequent meetings wished to save them from their fates as human weapons and help them live an ordinary life.
  • A Big Eater who pulls out an (unknowingly) Empathic Weapon and is soon thrust with the task of saving the world. Oh, hey Stahn.
  • Fang's appearance more or less resembling Wataru Kurenai.
  • Fang can also be compared both in appearance and personality to Zelos, though less agressive Fang similarly initially wanted nothing to do with anyone or anything that he was dragged into. As with Zelos and Adelle, Fang had essentially, and on more than one occasion, told bandits they could have Tiara... If they're even capable of taking her.
  • Pippin likes to tell long stories and is anciently old like a certain Excalibur likes to. Albeit, unlike Excalibur; he is not as rude.
• Fanservice: Of course this wouldn't be a Compile Heart game if it didn't have any. However said for a Compile Heart game its rather tame compared to its predecessor games.
• Forced Tutorial: In true Compile Heart style, the tutorial is impossible to skip. Though in Advent Dark Force, you can skip whatever you want to.
• For Great Justice: When Pippin rejoins the party after Fang/Eryn's time travel back to the past, he states that "For great justice, the full extent of my power is at your disposal!"
• Game-Breaking Bug: At one point, for some inexplicable reason, the PC port of Advent Dark Force immediately crashes if your PC is set to any date after July 1. Setting the clock and date back will fix the problem after the game starts. Thankfully, this was quickly patched.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation:
  • "Godly Revival" allows you to grant bonus abilities to the Fairies you have accumulated... but from a story perspective, this involves undoing the seals on either the Goddess or the Vile God (who each offer different abilities). The game makes it clear that although you have the option to unseal the Vile God, it would be an incredibly dumb idea to do so. As it turns out? Godly Revival does not affect the story, events or ending of the game in any way. You gain nothing from completely unsealing the Goddess. The only consequence to unsealing the Vile God is triggering an Optional Boss fight, and that is only if you remove every single seal. The game excuses this afterwards by stating that a complex ritual is required in addition to Godly Revival to truly unseal either being after the fact, as well as multiple times during the story.
    • Subverted in Advent Dark Force, where Godly Revival does affect which route you enter. Yet still played somewhat straight in that the only thing the determines this is how many swords you pull out of the Vile God prior to the route determination. Swords pulled out of the Goddess either before or after this and swords pulled out of the Vile God afterwards still have bupkus effect on the plot. In the Evil Goddess route in Advent Dark Force, you actually defeat the Vile God before being thrown into the past and the game explains things this way...
      Fang: Hey, so we defeated the Vile God before we came here, right? So what about that thing in the sealing spot?
      Eryn: It's not the real thing. It's his astral body. As long as he's in that space, he hasn't fully revived. ...I think.
      Fang: His astral...what?
      Eryn: Astral body. It's not his physical form, but it can affect his physical form. Like a kind of spiritual body.
      Fang: Still don't get it...
      Eryn: Hrmm... What if I just said it was like...his soul?
  • About halfway through the game Fang and Eryn and thrown into the past and encounter the party members from before again, however these characters are at the same level there were from the previous timeline despite the fact they are from an earlier time so their levels shouldn't be that high. Pretty much an Acceptable Breaks from Reality though as it'd be really annoying to have to train them up again. The game does try Hand Wave it as being an "effect of the singularity," though.
  • A few storyline boss battles will get interrupted to show a cutscene where your party is struggling, regardless of how well you're doing. One second, you'll be effortlessly whittling away the boss's health, only to watch your characters struggle to stay conscious the next. It wouldn't be so bad except that the game never tells you which battles it's going to do this with, and you don't get a chance to heal between these "phases" of the fight. This can get especially bad on New Game Plus, where it's not only possible to win the Hopeless Boss Fight, but do so in a single turn... and yet, the game still acts as if you're losing. Advent Dark Force generally makes it better - generally you know you're in this situation if you encounter a boss that either takes almost no damage from your attacks or deals attacks far more devastating to your party than would normally be possible or both. And it remains true in New Game Plus as well, where even if you're on level 999, the enemy will generally will have so much HP and defense, that there's no chance, except possibly maybe if you're playing on Amateur mode.
  • In Advent Dark Force, you can in New Game Plus add any character to your active battle party from your previous playthrough(s) the second you gain access to the menu. Which means it's perfectly possible to have characters fighting and defeating themselves, since you have to fight many of the characters that later join your party at various points in the game.
  • After Tiara is captured in Kidnar and you control her for the dungeon, you are perfectly free to leave the dungeon and have her wander around back to the town that is your base of operations, or into any dungeon you've unlocked. Not played entirely straight though in that all of the usual "talk" options in town will be missing.
  • If at any time you pull out all the Goddess's swords, you will get a scene in which Fang and the others discover the Goddess still isn't reviving and Fang wonders why. They say it's because you don't have the Faith Drop, however, in Advent Dark Force, depending on what timeline you're playing, you may have already had the Faith Drop for ages, yet the game still plays the scene exactly the same.
• Gatling Good: The best skill for the Launcher series weapons is a 20 shot attack with high accuracy and effective on all enemies. Gatling VERY Good.
• Guide Dang It!: Wouldn't be a Compile Heart game without it. The game never tells you how you can acquire certain rare items: for example, to advance to Quest Rank C you need to hunt down hidden treasure crystals using the Item Sonar skill, and there is only a chance a hidden treasure crystal will contain the item you need. Some of this is at least made easier in Advent Dark Force.
  • Recruiting Lola is particularly bad, since if you miss it the first time, it gets easier to botch on New Game Plus. One of her sidequests opens up after clearing the desert, but the game puts you in the Sanctuary. If you don't Take Your Time you'd never know it's there, which only gets less likely when this midgame dungeon is trivial the second time.
• Heads I Win, Tails You Lose: No matter how much you stomp any boss in the game, the cutscene will treat it as if the party is having a hard time with the boss fight. Generally averted, however, in Advent Dark Force, in which any such boss intended in this will both possess massive HP, impossibly high defense and will also sometimes deal massive damage.
• Hellhole Prison:
  • The Human Ranch in the Vile God timeline. Assuming what Apollonius says is true, they work the prisoners 22 hours a day and give them only meals of water and moldy bread. That would kill someone within days at most.
  • In the Evil Goddess timeline, the Justice Society Camp serves the same purpose.
• Heroes Prefer Swords: How Fang starts out with. In fact, The Sword is the default form for the Fury Eryn inhabits.
• Honest Axe: A sidequest in Refrain Chord starts with Lola telling Tiara about a rumor so unbelievable it might as well be free information; A woman in a lake inside the lava caves will show up if you drop an iron sword in and ask if what was dropped as a Fury. Lola doesn't know the correct answer to the alleged woman's question, though the group feels it should be obvious enough, so they simply head in and tries it. When the woman turns out to be real and asks the question Fang immediately says it was the Fury and demands it be given to him, causing her to transform into a giant monster forcing them to fight for the Fury.
• Hot Springs Episode: Fang, Sherman, Eryn and Tiara get to visit a hot springs together after Lola comps the party some tickets. There were only four, and this group got them as the winner of Rock–Paper–Scissors. There's another one in the Vile God timeline in Advent Dark Force.
• Hypocritical Humor: In the Evil Goddess timeline, there's a subevent called "You Really Can't Talk" in which Eryn and Fang discuss what they've just learned about some Dorfa executives being imprisoned.
  Fang: Man, what kind of idiot gets himself caught and tossed into some creepy camp? Couple of dumbasses...
  Eryn: I happen to know a certain someone who got himself caught and tossed into jail for stealing bread.
  Fang: Wow, there's all kinds of morons out there, I guess. I'd love to see what a doofus like that looks like.
  Eryn: Let's see, I think I had a mirror around here somewhere...
• Interface Spoiler:
  • Possibly the biggest hook of Advent Dark Force is that you get to play two new gameplay routes with new stories. These are the Vile God Story and Evil Goddess Story and the fact that there even exists an Evil Goddess is intended as a pretty major plot revelation in the Evil Goddess Story as there is nothing in the other two stories that even hints at this. However, the trophies/achievements for these are named "Vile God Story Cleared" and "Evil Goddess Story Cleared" and trophy guides for Advent Dark Force don't generally go to any effort to hide the names of these story modes.
  • More of a "Voice-Acting Spoiler": Out of the game's playable characters, Fang is the only one who gets a second Limit Break: Force Impact, which you has to actively unlock (Burning Strike, his main Limit Break, is unlocked from the word "go" like all others). This may seem like a special ability that you have to actively seek out to get... but there's one problem with that. In the English dub, when a character with a properly voice-acted fairy uses a special attack, the fairy proclaims "executing" before saying the attack's name. If that attack is their Limit Break, they say "unleashing" instead. Despite Burning Strike being a Limit Break, Eryn still merely says "executing" when using it, meaning that all you need in order to figure out that Fang's got something stronger is some good ears.
• Klingon Promotion: Sherman takes over the Dorfa corporation by killing its previous head.
• Knight of Cerebus: Zenke. Up until him you've been fighting low-level hoodlums and monsters. Then you face a monstrous outlaw who takes pleasure in forcing people to kill each other and is the first competent threat the party faces.
• Knight Templar: Sherman has a thing for justice. His special ability is even called "Justice". He needlessly murders Tiara in the first timeline (because her blood could be used to revive the Vile God), an event that sends him so far past the Moral Event Horizon that he's still over it when the timeline resets, causing him to be insane right from the start. And in the Evil Goddess timeline in Advent Dark Force, he is the head of a Corrupt Church dedicated to persecuting former Dorfa members.
• Laser-Guided Amnesia: Eryn has holes in her memory when she meets Fang. Which she mostly recovers by the half-way point of the story.
• Late Character Syndrome: Due to the Challenge system, characters who join late tend to be weaker than earlier ones, even at the same level.
• Lightning Bruiser: Fang himself is this. Deals good damage, can tank pretty well, almost always comes up first in battles, and that's not even going into his upgraded Super Mode where he's attacking up to five times while the rest of the party only gets four attacks, and the fact that he's going to be the first one who can acquire the Launcher upgrade.
• Limit Break:
  • Every character has a skill that can only be used while in Fairize. Unfortunately these skills take 40% of the characters total health and are quickly outclassed by normal skills. At least they look cool.
  • In Advent Dark Force, these special attacks now take away 30% of the characters maximum health and yields far more better results. Fang also gets an additional one that still costs 40%, but get even better results.
• MegaCorp: The Dorfa Corporation has its hand in most industries and is the only brand mentioned at all in the story. It also uses charities and other philanthropic endeavors to become villains with good publicity.
• Men Are the Expendable Gender: After Fang goes to the past and decides to spare all of the people he had killed the first time around he will save all of the women who died. On the other hand, he outright fails to save a couple of the men, one will still die unless certain obscure triggers are met, and some who survived the first time around die.
• Modesty Towel: Modesty Towels are costumes for the Hot Springs Set DLC. A Collab with Famitsu had red bath towels with the Famitsu logo as costumes.
• More Dakka: The "Launcher" weapon class, which is the best weapon type in the game. Almost every single enemy is weak to Launcher damage, and Launcher techniques rack up so many hits that your Tension meter will skyrocket.
• Morph Weapon: Any Fury can change their form depending on what you let the playable characters learn.
• Multiple Endings:
  • Dependent on whether you trigger all of the Inn sub-events for Eryn, all of the Inn sub-events for Tiara, or neither.
  • With the new routes in Advent Dark Force, you get new endings for Ethel, Harley, Lola, and Marianna.
  • Refrain Chord has two routes, based entirely on how you answer Lola's question in Chapter 15. Each ending also has epilogues for most characters, depending on who you choose to talk with just before the Final Boss.
• Mutually Exclusive Party Members: None of the routes will allow you to have all playable characters unless you use New Game Plus bonuses.
• Nature Tinkling: At one point when entering an area, Fang and Galdo do this and even discussing "crossing streams." Eryn chastises Fang for not washing his hands afterwards.
• Newspaper Dating: In at least two of the three alternate timelines, the party discovers that they've traveled in time thanks to this. Humorously, in the Goddess timeline, Fang has no idea what Eryn is trying to convey when she shows him the newspaper at first, thinking she just dredged up an old copy of the newspaper from somewhere.
• Nobody Poops: Averted. Discussion of use the restroom is actually fairly frequent. It is, in fact, something of a Running Gag in the game that Sherman actually doesn't poop, though this is only explained in the Vile God timeline in Advent Dark Force in which we learn that his robotic fairy partner, Ryushin, is somehow absorbing his bodily functions.
• "No Peeking!" Request: When the party pulls off Tiara out from the Vile God's body, she's Naked on Arrival (with Shoulders-Up Nudity and Godiva Hair). Harley immediately demands the boys turn around, with Eryn poking Fang in the eye when he is slow on the uptake. Turns into Hypocritical Humor later when Harley reveals to Tiara she took photos of her body for "study".
• Older Than They Look: With how young Fang looks, no one could tell that he's 20 years old. Although Pipin does call him "seinen" instead of "shonen".
  • Emily even more so. With how small and fragile she looks, you'd never guess that she was 18.
• Once Done, Never Forgotten: Fang and Eryn have a fun time getting on Tiara's case about how she first acted in the Vile God Route. To the point where she accidentally slips back into her delinquent personality while telling them off.
• Only the Chosen May Wield: How Furies operate. Fang even finds Eryn in "sword in the stone" fashion.
• One-Time Dungeon: In Advent Dark Force, you start the game in a prison, once you leave said prison, you can never enter there again on that playthrough.
• Optional Boss: If you completely unseal the Vile God within Godly Revival, then you immediately trigger a boss fight with a facsimile of the Vile God himself.
• Peninsula Of Powerleveling: Thanks to the furies granting obscene amounts of bonuses, players can set up whether they want to increase EXP gains, Weapon Point gains, money, or treasure, and add a damage x2 multiplier plus increasing the damage for physical attacks. Then have Tiara learn her A-rank pistol attack skill which covers the entire battlefield. Just give her a fury card that regenerates her SP pool after every battle, have everyone learn the "Learning" skill ^note Allies on standby will receive the same amount of EXP and WP as front line characters, and nuke the entire battlefield. She's unavailable for the last dungeon though.
  • Kravisse Cave in Advent Dark Force is a more straight forward example. The Change Enemies Shaping Effect causes Dark Shark, Anklet Warg, and Mute Riser to show up in the area, making it one of the only areas in the first timeline with enemies that give more than a single WP. With the +50% WP Shaping Effect, it's easy enough to get around a couple hundred WP a run of the place. Being the second area of the game, you're going to be spending a lot of time here as each new character joins to get through Hard or Hell difficulties.
• Quirky Miniboss Squad: The "Four Heavenly Czars".
• Revive Kills Zombie: Cure All and its variants, a group healing magic heals everything (even enemies) with a fixed percentage within its range, but deals damage to undead enemies.
• Rock–Paper–Scissors: Sherman gets to join Fang in a hot springs after winning a game of Rock Paper Scissors. In another case, Fang has to go out grocery shopping after losing at this.
• Saying Sound Effects Out Loud: When Fang first meets the villainous Zenke, he declares himself a hero and says "fwoosh." Zenke asks just what this is supposed to mean and Fang says it's the sound of the wind, causing Zenke's fairy, Della, to comment on this being stupid.
• Screw Destiny: This is practically Fang's outlook on life. and his mission in the second timeline.
• Schmuck Bait: Furies are used to revive the Goddess. They can ALSO be used to revive the Vile God. The game makes it abundantly clear that doing so is schmuck bait. Funnily enough, there is no negative consequence to unsealing the Vile God within Godly Revival, save for triggering the Optional Boss.
  • Subverted in Advent Dark Force, where it does affect which route you enter.
• Secret Character: There are two. You can recruit Apollonius if you fight him during the second timeline with Fang being at least level 40. Lola will join if you complete all of the Fairy Hunt quests.
• Sequel Hook: While the first two routes have pretty open and shut endings, the Evil Goddess route reveals that the Goddess, Vile God, and Evil Goddess are from a different dimension, and that more of them are possibly coming.
• Set Right What Once Went Wrong: After Fang and Eryn travel back to the past to where they first meet Tiara.
• Shout-Out:
  • One of Ethel's skills she can learn is Rom and Ram's Ice Coffin.
  • At one point in the game Tiara says "Friendship is Magic"
  • While eating ramen with Emily, Fang expresses his distaste for a certain type of fish cake, at the end referencing one of its namesakes with a "Believe it!"
  • One of the DLC packs gives each character a Neptunia based weapon or two (Tiara having two variants of Vert's weapons). Advent Dark Force gives everyone the option to equip the Nepgeardam headpiece accessory.
• Shown Their Work: The Evil Goddess Route in Advent Dark Force uses as a plot point and includes a detailed explanation in dialogue in a sub-event of a psychological tactic known as the door-in-the-face technique. Specifically, the Septerion Club uses a powerful "wine" as an addictive drug and tries to get people to take out a massive loan to buy it at an insanely high price. However, those that can't afford it / won't go for it are lured to a much cheaper version of the wine available in supermarkets that is nevertheless more expensive than would be if not for the psychological warfare.
• Skewed Priorities:
  • Zenke captures Tiara, thinking that she's "lovers" with Fang and says that if Fang loses against his minions, then he'll have to kill Tiara as punishment. Tiara seems most concerned about the fact that Zenke thinks they're lovers.
  • If you manage to pull out all the Goddess's swords, then Fang shouts "Goddess! Awaken! The time for your revival is...now!", but nothing happens. He asks Eryn what he's supposed to do, if there's some sort of magic spell he needs to cast or something, but Eryn admits she has no idea.
    Fang: Then what do I do!? That was a really cool line I just shouted, and it was all for nothing!
    Eryn: Is *that* what you're worried about!?
• Spiritual Successor: To the Neptunia series, gameplay-wise.
• Super Mode: Fury Form is reminiscent of the goddess forms in Hyperdimension Neptunia... somewhat. It doesn't physically transform the user, merely equipping their standard form with additional armor and gear, effectively isolating the processor parts of HDD from the physical and personality changes.
• Team Dad: Bahas is this to the team. He also cooks for them while wearing a pink apron.
• Theme Music Power-Up: Fairy Form comes with a song that takes over the current BGM. Even the Final Boss music gets overridden, though the crisis music for low HP does not.
• This Is Gonna Suck: Said word-for-word by Fang upon realizing the party is going to have to deal with Zenke given how things went the first time before he and Eryn traveled back in time.
• Timey-Wimey Ball: Fang and Eryn's jaunt through time causes a "singularity" that somehow changes the events that subsequently occur: they find different Furies in the same places, certain characters have changed clothes, and the monsters and party have become stronger. Meanwhile, Sherman is implied to have a limited form of Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory that causes him to retain the mental instability he gained during the first timeline. In Advent Dark Force, who gets the Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory goes differently depending on what timeline you're in. In fact, the fact that Lola still remembers the party in the Evil Goddess timeline is the first clue that something is off about her. The only others who recall the original timeline are those were present for the battle with the Vile God, save Tiara, who died, and Lola wasn't there. She claims it's because she's a special type of fairy, but in actuality the Septerion Club caught up with her and forced her to spy on the party. She actually remembers doodum and was briefed on the party by Sherman. However, if you took the goddess route, she will also claim that she's a special type of fairy, but she remembers bupkis nonetheless.
• Trap Is the Only Option: Towards the end of the game, Paiga leads the party into a trap, claiming that where they're going has something that the party can use to bring down the big bad company Dorfa. There's nothing there, but Fang doesn't care much anyway. He knew there was a good chance it was probably a trap and so he's made sure the party is ready. In the Evil Goddess timeline, after the party encounters a trap, Fang later decides that they're just going to have to plunge ahead despite this possibility in the future and deal with it as it comes.
• Updated Re-release: A version for the PS4 called Advent Dark Force, with updated graphics, new story routes, characters, and an increase of the party size from three to six along with different difficulty settings to compensate for the larger party.
• Voice Grunting: Your characters will often voice grunt once they've reached enough tension to fairize, though they'll just as often as not simply say something.
• What the Hell, Hero?:
  • Your party members really let you have it if you use one of the Furies to undo one of the seals on the Vile God. This only happens when you pull out the first Fury, and there is no consequence afterwards. Unless you pull them all out. In which case, they chew out Fang again after your battle with the Vile God, though it still doesn't matter because you need the Faith Drop to revive the Vile God, just like with the Goddess.
  • Played straight in Advent Dark Force. Where it actually does have consequences.
  • Everyone reacts this way when Fang tries to recruit Zenke to the party after defeating him. Everyone is generally on board with Fang's idea to try to recruit those he defeats instead of killing them, but trying to recruit this nutter is just a bad idea because unlike the other characters which actually end up in your party who are either misguided or have legitimate reasons for fighting, this guy is genuine psychopath who murders entire towns including women and children and sees trying to make relatives face off with each other to determine who lives as sport.
• Wham Episode: Tiara's death in the Disc-One Final Dungeon is one.
• You Can Talk?: This is Eryn's reaction in the Vile God timeline when Ethel asks her and Sherman for help because Dorfa is after her because in the original timeline, she would only speak using "Kill, kill, kill" and variants of it.
• Your Approval Fills Me with Shame: Fang says this directly to a boy at the Plaza in Zelwinds City who tells him that he doesn't work to get a job at Dorfa like his parents want him to when he gets older. He wants to be like Fang; to do nothing and be lazy like him.
  Boy: You're my role model!
  Fang: ...Your approval fills me with shame for some reason.
• You Talk Too Much!: In a sub-event in the Evil Goddess timeline called "Hee-hee, So Fun," shortly after you gain Marianna as a party member, her fairy, Khalara talks about how he likes going to different places and Fang says that it's too bad her master is a constant bad mood. Khalara replies that Marianna clamps up when she doesn't have business to take care of, causing Marianna to appear and comment "Khalara—you talk too much."

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