Video Game / Final Fantasy: The 4 Heroes of Light

Yes, the 4 heroes of light. They are heroes. They are of light. There are even 4 of them!

To thee I grant this gift of Light,
upon thy head a crown of might.

Final Fantasy: The 4 Heroes of Light is a Gaiden Game or "spinoff" from the ball-throbbingly popular Final Fantasy series. It was released for the Nintendo DS console in Japan and was released in North America on October 5, 2010. The game is the second to be released with the Final Fantasy Gaiden subtitle in Japan, after Seiken Densetsu: Final Fantasy Gaiden, though the two games have no relation to each other besides being Final Fantasy spinoffs. Character design was done by Akihiko Yoshida, and Matrix Software, developers of various titles such as Alundra and the DS remakes of Final Fantasy III and IV has returned to develop this title.

The story of the game begins on Brandt's fourteenth birthday, when he comes of age and is immediately handed a task to Save the Princess. He picks up three more companions (including said princess) who are not exactly hero material and are nevertheless told by the Crystal that they are the Heroes who must save the world from darkness. They return to a cursed kingdom, where they immediately split up because they're teenagers with poor judgment. In their misadventures, it becomes clear that the world has needed help for a long time now and darkness clearly has the upper hand.

Like several titles of old, this game uses a Class and Level System, here called the Crown System, but its unique variation lies in the fact that every character is essentially an Onion Knight in that they can equip anything; the jobs instead affect their usable skillset. Powering up the crowns involves a unique form of leveling via the application of disposable gems.

It spawned a spiritual successor in Bravely Default, which has significantly more bells and whistles, but the same monster designs and same-but-not-quite job classes to the main Final Fantasy games.

Songs from The 4 Heroes of Light will appear in the 2023 Theatrhythm Final Fantasy game Theatrhythm Final Bar Line, which will be the first time it has been referenced in another Final Fantasy game.

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This game provides examples of:

• All Swords Are the Same: Long swords and short swords are governed by different proficiency ratings.
• Ability Required to Proceed: Abused frequently once you get the transform staff.
• All in a Row: Rubber band variant. Party members follow the leader in a sort of disorganized clump.
• Always Check Behind the Chair: Each town has eight items hidden in random places with no visual hints, although animals will sometimes let slip the location of one.
• Anachronic Order: The party splits up and joins up in different pairs at times, with each separate group's adventures happening simultaneously, with the Book Ends of some chapters making more sense when you see what the other party was doing. (e.g. Brandt leaving Yunita to team up with a cat of all things... who has a map... because she's actually Aire.)
• And Now for Someone Completely Different: Everyone joins the party before the first boss fight. Then, when they return to find Horne under a petrification curse, they proceed to split into pairs and, as a result of further misadventures, each of the four Heroes has to run around solo for a while, then partner with the person they weren't with last time. Eventually, they all meet back up in Spelvia, having matured a little along the way.
• Animal Talk: You can talk to any animal in animal form. They often provide hints as to where to find items or what challenge is coming next.
• Animorphism: Once you get the Transform Staff, go wild turning party members to and from animals.
• Artistic License – Economics: Abused heavily in the Urbeth shopkeeping minigame. Jusqua can literally go to a store down the street, buy some items, and sell it at his own counter for double the price.
• "Arabian Nights" Days: The desert city of Guera.
• Artificial Stupidity:
  • Targets are selected automatically (physical attacks target the first enemy on the left, magic on the right), instead of being chosen by the player. This can result in, for example, your Black Mage using a Quake spell, ignoring the enemy who's vulnerable to earth-based damage, and instead aiming at the flying enemy that's immune to the attack.
  • It can also result in your White Mage using Esuna to heal the other characters of any status ailment under the sun that still allows them to fight and gain experience, but ignoring the one who's been petrified.
• Awesome, but Impractical: A lot of the level 3 crown skills. For example, the Elementalist's Elemental casts a series of spells of every element. This sounds pretty cool, except (1) the bosses that really matter are going to be resistant to every element but one, maybe two, and (2) given the previous, the only seemingly practical use of the skill would be exposing those few elemental weaknesses, but who needs that when you can just look up a guide?
• Bag of Sharing: While the characters' personal inventories are, well, personal, certain key items are carried between characters when the perspective shifts, and the storage building is universal.
• Bigger on the Inside: The towers all start getting wider floors as you go up.
• Bladder of Steel: No quicksaving or saving on the world map. You're going to have to wait for the fedora guy just like everybody else. Thankfully, it's a portable title, and a DS one at that, so the game can be put into sleep mode if it needs to be put down at any time.
• Bonus Dungeon: The towers, which are all randomized and contain Optional Bosses.
• Boss Rush: In the Very Definitely Final Dungeon.
• Broken Bridge: All over the place in the first half of the game. They either only clear when you activate a certain event or prevent you from going back.
• Cast from Hit Points: The Dark Fencer's skillset centers around this.
• Central Theme: Learning from your mistakes. Also, evil triumphs from within your heart.
• Character Development: By the end of the game, Aire is no longer a selfish brat, Jusqua actually cares about people other than himself, Yunita has stopped being a Failure Knight, and Brandt... Well, Brandt's still an Idiot Hero, but at least he's not abusing the "I must be stronger than everyone else!" cliché quite so hard anymore.
• Character Select Forcing: Unless you are really good at this game, you will need an Elementalist, at the very least to help you take down bosses. Party-wide element resistance buffs are nice like that.
• Chekhov's Gun: Remember that sign explaining how to handle sheep?
• Chekhov's Gunman: Ankhel, Brandt's parrot.
• The Chosen Many: The Crystal chooses the four as Heroes of Light at the beginning of the game. They proceed to bicker, ditch each other, not focus on their quest, and generally not have their act together until halfway through the game.
• Class and Level System: The Crowns, gained after completing parts of the storyline.
• Clothes Make the Superman: Good clothing — not just armor, but also the stuff made of actual cloth — gives higher base defense bonuses than the best shields. Heck, "Steel Armour" (which you get early in the game) has lower defense than most tunics.
• Cool Helmet: The Paladin and Dark Fencer crowns come with impressive headwear.
• Cool Mask: The Bandit, Shaman, Beastmaster, Storyteller, and Ninja crowns.
• Copy Protection: If you pirate the game, the enemies have infinite HP.
• Crapsack World: Even if you discount the fact that demons are apparently running everything behind the scenes, and instead just take everything at face value, most of the places you visit aren't very inviting places to live. Horne doesn't seem so bad until everyone is turned to stone, and Liberte's pretty nice (except for the pirate kidnappings), but every other city? Hoo boy.
  • Guera: The residents are trapped by a vicious sand demon and no one has entered or left the city in years. Also, an entire race of people was wiped out save for a Sole Survivor.
  • Arbor: The fairies dislike and distrust humans so much that any human who approaches Arbor, even if they mean no harm, is transformed into a plant. No, the fairies won't help you. You get to stay like that.
  • Urbeth: A town obsessed with money, where the poor are barely dressed in rags, are barely able to eat, and are treated like second-class citizens.
  • Invidia: It's constantly freezing, everyone is miserable, and it's ruled by a bitter man who is waiting on his son to finally come home to rule the world.
  • Spelvia: Run by a misanthropic man who has been living with nothing but his hatred for hundreds of years. All of his robots are programmed to kill humans. Also, when the group finally manages to get him to let go of his hate, it turns out to be powerful enough to poison the rest of the world.
• Dangerous Forbidden Technique: The Crystal prefaces granting you the Dark Fencer crown with the rather ominous "To thee I grant this gift of might, upon thy head a crown of... forbidden might." Shortly afterward, King Horne presents you with the spell Desolator with similar gravitas.
• Death Is a Slap on the Wrist: Possibly. Dying strips you of half of any one category of gems — which is devastating if the game randomly selects your Diamonds; not so much if it chooses the Rubies, or another lesser gem you have in low number.^note You can prevent this by shutting off the DS when you die. This trope is in full force if someone has equipped the Freelancer crown, which negates any penalty beyond being warped back to the last Adventurer.
• Degraded Boss:
  • Trollud, the Liberte boss, is a normal monster in the ice caves before Invidia. Later, Behugemoth is added to the same caves, except the trope is inverted and he's much harder than before.
  • In the second half of the game, a palette-swapped Minotaur can be found in the Quicksand Castle.
• Developer's Room: A limited and very obscure version: if you manage to make it to the northern part of Liberte early in the game during nighttime when it's normally blocked by a sand whirlpool (either by dying in battle during nighttime before you save your game for the first time or using a Dragon Wing), the NPCs' dialogue changes to various messages from programmers.
• Doomed Hometown: Everyone in Horne turns to stone after defeating the Witch of the North.
• Dual Boss: Geri and Freki.
• Dynamic Difficulty: After opening the Very Definitely Final Dungeon, NPCs will inform you that monsters are now leveling up alongside the party, so don't think level-grinding is going to solve any problems.
• Elemental Powers: Light, Dark, Fire, Water, Wind, Earth. In this game, ice is included with water and thunder with light.
• Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors: How well you do in boss battles later on largely depends on how well you play their vulnerabilities and resistances.
• Emergency Transformation: Of a sort. Brandt is transformed from a plant to a puppy, with the logic being that it's much easier to transform someone back to a human if they're already a conscious being.
• Ensemble Cast: Although Brandt is billed as the protagonist, the story shifts from character to character several times in the first half of the game, with each of them having a section where they are the main character (or even the only playable character).
• Every Monster Has Its Price: The Merchant's Ransom ability allows a character to give up the gil equivalent to the damage s/he would have taken. With a full bank account^note Have fun abusing that Urbeth minigame, a Merchant with the Ransom ability, and the Shield of Light equipped, you could theoretically defeat the final boss without taking a single scratch.
• Everyone Is Bi: Female monsters with "Entice" have no trouble affecting Aire or Yunita.
• Evil Knockoff: The Dopplegangers, which first appear in Rolan's soul, later in the second run of the Witch's Manor and the final dungeon. They're the protagonists in their original clothing, but with shadow-black faces and Dark element attacks.
• Evolving Title Screen: As you progress through the game, icons for the towns you visit appear on the opening. In the second half, the portraits of major characters whose lives you fix are added.
• Expy: Krinjh serves a similar purpose to Minwu, in that he serves as a Crutch Character early on, and also is a Spell Fencer (i.e. Mystic Knight). The costumes for male Mystic Knights in FF5 were based on Minwu.
• Fire, Ice, Lightning: Rather differently from the Final Fantasy norm, however; Thunder is Light-elemental and Blizzard is of the Water element.
• Fisher King: Rolan, almost literally. Helping him regain his confidence inadvertently released the darkness from his heart, putting the world in a time loop.
• Floating Continent: Spelvia, though it's more of an island. It's described by the golems alternately as a fortress to protect the world, or a fortress to conquer it. It's also the site of the Climax Boss, which divides the first half of the story from the second.
• Forced Transformation: Aire becomes a cat and Brandt becomes a plant. In the second half you find out that Torte was a human turned into a mouse as punishment—and Ankel the parrot is the real King of Horne.
• Sliding Scale of Gameplay and Story Integration: During the ending sequence, the party gives back the artifacts of Light to the nations they borrowed them from, and they vanish from their person accordingly. (This means you should probably bring a change of outfit for whoever had the Armor of Light, otherwise they're going to go through the rest of the sequence in in their underclothes.)
• Gendered Outfit: Most of the job classes use dresses or have more subtle alterations between the male and female versions.
• Genre Throwback: To the 8-bit era of RPGs and their Nintendo Hardness. You can't save anywhere you want, inventory space is limited, and don't expect help if you ask "Now, Where Was I Going Again??"
• Global Airship: A dragon hatched from the egg in Invidia.
• Good Morning Brandt: Nearly verbatim.
• Grim Up North: Invidia, a snowy town embittered by its harsh environment and isolation. They keep polar bears as pets.
• Guest-Star Party Member: Krinjh the Spell Fencer in Guera, Torte the Sage in Arbor, Rekoteh the Dancer in Invidia, and Rolan the Hero in Spelvia. Note that these are all Crowns that you won't have yet when they're in your party.
• Guide Dang It!: So much. Let's put it this way, you won't know a lot of things about the game without a guide.
• Hat of Power: The characters' powers derive from special hats, which are called "crowns" regardless of appearance, that they are given over the course of their journey.
• Hello, [Insert Name Here]: All four heroes are nameable.
• Heroic Sacrifice: In the first half, Lillibelle sacrifices her life to bring Aire back from being killed by the Ogre Bear. This gives Aire a real kick in the Character Development.
• High-Class Glass: Comes pre-packaged with the Salve-Maker crown.
• Hopeless Boss Fight: Cat Aire vs Ogre Bear. (In fact, the Ogre Bear is in the same place after the Time Crash. If you go back in after freeing Lilibelle, it will still be there to kill you.)
• Humans Are Flawed: When Chaos revives himself the second time, all of the Guest Star Party Members and their friends appear to help the Heroes. They freely acknowledge tat humans can do ugly and vile things, but that they have a great enough capacity for love and hope to overcome the darkness.
• Idiot Ball: Brandt dumping Yunita in an inn. Aire getting turned into a cat by blatantly cursed treasure. Everything Jusqua does between that and dumping Yunita in a different inn.
• Inconsistent Spelling: Data on the Japanese ROM give different spellings for almost all the towns' names: Horn vs. Horne, Gula vs. Guera, Elva vs. Arbor, Vulpes vs. Urbeth, and Superbia vs. Spelvia. The Japanese website also calls Krinjh 'Kirinjyu'.
• Inventory Management Puzzle:
  • Each character can only hold 15 items (and items do not stack), including equipment and spells, though key items are separate. The storage can hold up to 99 of any item, of course.
  • Additionally, there are only six slots for spells and Crown abilities.
• Item Caddy: The Salve-maker crown allows item reuse and item splitting. This allows you to use items that would be normally Too Awesome to Use indefinitely.
• It's All About Me: The biggest flaw of the entire party is their inability to work together either due to being selfish or having major ego problems. Even though they're repeatedly warned by the crystal that they need to work together in order to stop the world from falling to darkness, they still refuse to cooperate in most instances they do end up together. Predictably, the world ends up falling to darkness because they refused to work together to stop it. Thankfully, it serves as the much-needed wakeup call they needed to finally get their act together.
• Jack of All Stats: Jusqua, whose Strength, Intellect, and Spirit stats all max out at 65.
• Journey to the Center of the Mind: Rolan's heart has been festering in resentment and self-hatred for hundreds of years; in order for him to help the party, they must enter his heart and cleanse him of his demons.
• Karl Marx Hates Your Guts: Averted in Urbeth's shopkeeping minigame, where the wealthy locals will pay several times the going rate for something you bought in the next street, or even the same shop. Unlimited profits, here we come.
• Lethal Joke Character: The game seems to revel in kicking the shit out of the concept of Useless Useful Spells, since most of the crowns are extremely purpose-built but manage to be absolute game breakers, such as the seamstress, salve-maker, and merchant. The typical "I like swords" classes from the mainline Final Fantasy series, on the other hand, are average at best.
• Light Is Not Good: Lucifer has light based attacks and is vulnerable to dark damage. Curiously, Satan (who is an entirely different being in this game's universe) is the opposite (uses dark attacks and vulnerable to light)
• Linear Warriors, Quadratic Wizards: While it's possible to kill just about every enemy you come across with physical attacks, you will need to rely on magic spells and Crown abilities, especially in the second half of the game where the enemy's levels scale to match yours.
• Long Song, Short Scene: The dragon riding tune is much longer than necessary, considering how small the game world is, and how quick it takes to ride from one place to another.
• Low-Level Advantage: Halfway through the game every monster will be adjusted to the players level if they are higher than the monster's level.
• Luckily, My Shield Will Protect Me: While the defense boosts on these aren't as large as those you get from clothing, it's the elemental resistances that will really come in handy.
• Magical Native American: The Elementalist crown looks like a Plains Indians war bonnet, and the associated armor is also supposed to look like Native American garb.
• Magic Knight: Spell Fencers can charge their physical attacks with spells.
• Magikarp Power: Remember that King's Shortsword Aire was carrying at the start of the game? Don't sell it. It's the strongest weapon in the game if you upgrade it, as it grows in effectiveness twice as much as regular equipment - including the Light set of equipment.
• Martial Arts Headband: A red-and-yellow striped one for Fighters.
• Meaningful Name
  • Horne is known for its wind. It's also known for its agriculture, making the name a probable horn of plenty reference. Also a visual pun - the 'r' and 'n' in 'Horne' together look like an 'm', thus making the name of the village 'Home.' As in, literally, your 'Home Town.' Which is then doomed.
  • Liberte is Latin for "freedman". The local pirates go on about freedom a lot.
  • Vulpes (Urbeth in English) may refer to the fox-like cunning necessary to make it in a city full of hard-playing merchants.
  • Arbor is housed in the Great Tree. Its Japanese name, "Elva", is obvious. Arbor is also Latin for Tree.
  • Invidia is Latin for "envy", and the locals are rightfully envious of the fact that other people get the occasional sunny day and they don't.
  • Superbia (Spelvia in English) is Latin for "pride"—befitting of a floating city meant to enslave the world below and ruled by a hero who regards himself as above humanity.
• Meanwhile, in the Future…: Jusqua and Aire's adventure in Liberte are supposed to happen concurrently with Brandt and Yunita's adventure in Guera. But since you play Brandt and Yunita's adventure first, Jusqua and Aire get access to Black Mage and White Mage hats immediately, despite not being unlocked until the "future."
• Mini-Game: Two - a shopping mini-game in Urbeth which is used to grind for so much money, and a maths game in Invidia. Both can get you a bonus job class if you score high enough.
• Money Spider: Averted, enemies drop gems rather than straight-up gil, which you need for character and item leveling, and are impossible to get outside of combat.
• Mythology Gag:
  • The plot of the game initially concerns saving a princess at the beginning, and later on breaking a Stable Time Loop.
  • To add to the FF1 References, the Final Boss is named Chaos. In addition, one of his attacks is called Big Bang and he borrows from Zemus' As Long as There Is Evil speech.
  • Krinjh is based on Minwu, up to and including dying to save his country from an evil ruler. Unlike Minwu however, he survived in the changed timeline.
  • There is a Final Fantasy XII potion sitting on the counter of the weapons store in Urbeth.
  • The Global Airship is a dragon.
  • Your Cool Boat in Part 2 is almost literally Syldra with Balamb Garden sitting on top of her head.
  • The latter part of the game has the party sneaking into a Crystal Spires and Togas Utopia through the backdoor, being forced to fight its misanthropic ruler, and then having to deal with the world's time periods being thrown into singularity.
  • The Ninja and Sage crowns are in the Bonus Dungeon Towers, similar to Final Fantasy III where they were sealed in Eureka.
  • The Storyteller is Gogo the Mime. Both are optional, performance artists, wear concealing clothing, and can use every skill and ability mastered.
  • Just before facing Chaos's final form, all the characters that the party helped over the course of the game appear in pairs to heal them and give them a speech encouraging them not to give up, in a very similar fashion to Final Fantasy IV.
• Necromancer: The Monk crown allows the wearer to reanimate dead allies and increases power the more times the wearer has been revived from death.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Heroes: By saving Rolan from the darkness in his heart, the heroes manage to unleash that same darkness across the entire world. Bravo. Somewhat subverted by the fact that this sets them on the road to turning a previously Crapsack World into a much nicer place by destroying many great forces of evil, but still.
• The Night That Never Ends: After darkness spreads across the world, the world looks like it's in the middle of one of these.
• No Cure for Evil: Averted in a few cases. The Aire Doppelganger can use Cure and Cura, for instance, even though the Dopplegangers are dark-element enemies.
• Nostalgia Level: This whole game, really. The title music really hits hard for anyone who grew up on 8 and 16-bit RPGs.
• Not Completely Useless: Many of the Crown Abilities fall into these.
• Now, Where Was I Going Again?: Averted with gusto until you get the Transform Staff, after which you can ask the Adventurer's fox for direction.
• Optional Boss: Along with the bosses in the towers, there is the Ogre Bear. Hope you brought an Energy Screen.
• Permanently Missable Content: Lots of items. Talk to everyone before and after certain plot flags, such as Kuore after being entrusted with the mission to go to the Witch's Mansion to rescue Aire.
• Plot Device: The key items, with the exception of the key that gets you into the bonus towers (as they have no bearing on the plot).
• Rain of Arrows: The Ranger's "Covering Fire" ability does this.
• Really 700 Years Old: The Dragoniers of Invidia have much longer lifespans than normal humans. Rolan, for example, looks the same age as the heroes despite being three centuries old.
• Retraux: Nearly everything. This game could have easily been done in 8 bit or 16 bit, and it would have fit in perfectly. The soundtrack itself is 8-bit.
• Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory: At the end of the game, while various issues from the first half were prevented from happening, there isn't indication that the people they affected forgot what happened. For example, Thauzand's daughter survived the plague but he is still dressed as a merchant rather than a priest in the denouement.
• Rule of Symbolism: So, Urbeth has an uncompleted tower that was intended to reach into Heaven? Interesting... although not quite the same as Babel. Its state of incompletion isn't from divine disapproval, but because the citizenry lost their faith and abandoned the project themselves.
• Save Point: In the form of the Adventurer, who appears in every town and in front of every boss room. No saving on the world map like usual, though.
• Scenery Porn: The art style's more notable points are its Wind Waker-esque vivid colors and lack of outlines, resulting in very pretty visuals more or less everywhere. Arbor is a strong example of out-and-out scenery porn.
• Scratch Damage: Averted in the second half, where the enemy's levels scale to match yours.
• Screw the Rules, I Have Money!: With Ransom and Money Talks, the Merchant crown is made of this trope.
• Set Right What Once Went Wrong: The entire point of the game's second half.
  • Horne: Defeat the fake King Horne and save Queen Horne (Aire and Carino's mother)'s life.
  • Guera: Save Krinjh and Ariadne and depose the demon that replaced King Guera.
  • Invidia: Restore the Sun Temple lift the winter that's turned everyone into a Jerkass.
  • Spelvia: Find the source of Rolan's darkness, Lucifer, and defeat him.
  • Urbeth: Stop the charlatan who caused the plague from convincing the high priests that faith is worthless next to money.
• Set Right What Once Went Wrong: The second half of the game launches the party an unspecified amount of time into the past. This allows them to avert a number of tragedies whose effects caused the troubles in the first part.
• Seven Deadly Sins: Each town represents one of the sins. But it gets weird, since some towns and their demons don't match the sins they were given.
• Shout-Out:
  • The Claustrum staff rather resembles a Keyblade.
  • The Metal Flan is reminiscent of the Metal Slime — it's not immune to magic, but gives amazing XP and is highly resistant to everything. And it has bigger, angrier brothers.
  • Urbeth is the name of a city in Forgotten Realms.
  • Louhi is named after the main antagonist of The Kalevala, the Finnish national epic, who is also a shapeshifting witch from the Grim Up North.
• Sliding Scale of Gameplay and Story Integration: Unless you turn your lead party member into an animal, the golems in Spelvia attack when you try to talk to them—but you can also get around it by making Rolan your lead party member, since he's their master.
• Socialization Bonus: Playing the game in Multiplayer Mode increases the number of Battle Points which can be spent on equipment that can be upgraded to Infinity +1 Sword.
• So Long, and Thanks for All the Gear: NPCs come with unique equipment, and when they leave, they take everything with them. Your party also does not have a universal inventory, although the storage and money system is universal — so make sure to drop off some gear in the storage unit between bosses. (You can also invert this by taking their unique gear, letting you get better weapons and armor than you might have had.)
• Something about a Rose: The Dancer crown isn't a hat. Instead, characters clench a rose between their teeth.
• Songs in the Key of Panic: The music gains a bell/siren and changes tempo when you are at critical HP. Interestingly, one is used when bosses are at critical health, as well.
• Support Party Member: Bard, Salve-Maker, Dancer, Party Host, and Scholar are geared around buffs / debuffs and have poor offensive power.
• Taken for Granite:
  • Whatever contract King Horne had with Louhi, he broke it, and everyone in Horne is turned to stone as a result.
  • Also the result of being petrified, which is considered by game mechanics to be an almost identical condition to death. Just as curable, though.
• Take Your Time:
  • Look out! Belphegor is going to make Mount Gulg erupt, destroying Arbor and the source of all the world's magic! Unless you decide to do one of the other towns first. (Of course, this is happening during a Time Crash, so it's not so egregious as other instances.)
  • When the final dungeon collapses, you can stop in the save room and chat with the other party members, in spite of all the screen shaking and flashing.
• This Cannot Be!: Satan, Beelzebub, Chaos, and Mammon upon death.
• Time Crash: One is caused by the unleashing of Rolan's evil. Fortunately, this allows the heroes to reach timeframes where they can do the most good.
• Turns Red: The very first boss (Minotaur) when in critical health.
• Unusually Uninteresting Sight: Brandt doesn't question that a domestic cat is carrying a detailed world map.
• Useless Useful Spell: Averted with Status Spells and the Shaman.
• Very Definitely Final Dungeon: A world of darkness rising up out of the ocean, which will eventually encroach upon the real world if not stopped.
• Video Game Stealing: The Bandit crown does this.
• Voluntary Shapeshifting: Eventually, once you get the Transform Staff. Oddly, neither Jusqua nor Yunita are at all alarmed to find themselves suddenly turned into animals with no real explanation, although talking to other party members in animal form will result in comments on it.
• Where It All Began: Horne is the last town to be liberated from its demon in the second half.
• Wide-Open Sandbox: The second half of the game thanks to the dragon.
• With This Herring: For someone so desperate to have his daughter rescued, the King of Horne is a rather insidious penny pincher. Despite having an entire armory stocked with weapons and armor, he sends Brandt on his merry way with little more than a Steel Sword and a firm pat on the shoulder. Makes sense, considering who it really is.
• Womb Level: The whirlpool at Liberte, with its squishy pink walls and acidic pools of green fluid.
• World Tree: The Great Tree of Arbor, from which all magic originates.

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