The plot of the game follows an amnesiac man, who finds himself washed up on the shores of Crete. He soon finds out that he is immortal, and meets several nymphs, who identify him as none other than the great hero Heracles himself. He also meets another immortal, a woman pretending to be a man, named Leucos. Leucos, convinced that meeting another immortal was surely fated, offers the main character to search for the reason why both of them were granted immortality in the first place. However, soon the party finds out that the hero is not the only one man around who is said to be Heracles...
The game provides examples of:
- 11th-Hour Superpower: All characters in the party gain plot-related power-ups near the end of the game. Axios undergoes Fusion Dance with Arnos, and gains back some of Oceanus' power, Heracles joins the party in place of his brother's ghost, who you knew as Heracles previously, Eris regains her true form as one of The Old Gods, and the hero with Leucos gain powered-up Titan weapons in what's literally third-to-last screen of the game.
- Adaptational Villainy: The whole game actually turns out to be orchestrated by Prometheus, of all people! The Nice Guy of the Greek mythology, The Champion of humanity, here he wants to get revenge on Zeus for betraying Oceanus, the Titan who fought on his side in Titanomachy. Prometheus' gift to humanity (changed from fire to magic here) becomes a part of his plan to ressurect Typhon, Titans' living weapon, by feeding it Dark ether, a byproduct of elemental magic. He's mostly indifferent to deaths of humans it would entail, a far cry from his original motivation. He does appear to be somewhat hesitant by the time you reach him, but it doesn't really excuse his previous actions.
- Anti-True Sight: Taphus stone is the only thing able to block the godly sight. Thus, descending into a Taphus is a good way to hide from their attention.
- Been There, Shaped History: The game actually takes place in the closing days of the Trojan War. The party gets to ride the Trojan Horse which turns out to be a moving fortress manned by Undead soldiers. The party then fights ther way through Troy after General Heracles rams the Horse into Troy's gates, and then destroy the local Crasis, that also produces Undead soldiers. Achilles' death is also changed, as he is tackled and stabbed in the heel by Agon, rather than getting shot with an arrow by Paris.
- Behemoth Battle: In the climax of the game Axios and Arnos use a Crasis to place their souls, originally parts of Oceanus' soul, into Oceanus' body to fight Typhon on equal footing. They fail due to lacking the third person, Agon, who fed his soul to Typhon, but manage to damage Typhon's core and disable his regeneration. The battle itself mostly consists of both fighters exchanging magic bolts.
- Cast from Hit Points: If there's not enough ether on the battlefield, any spell will damage the user proportionally to the deficiency. If the user is affected with "Reflux Trap", then they won't be able to access ether, and will be damaged as if all required ether pools were completely empty.
- Character Portrait: There's a handful of dialogues that use cropped official art of party members to provide a portrait fir them. Oddly, this technique is used very sparingly, and there's only one NPC with a portrait, that being Piazza.
- Cognizant Limbs: The final boss, Typhon, has four arms that will cast support spells and use knockback attacks. They are all Undead, forcing you to abuse overkill if you want to get rid of them.
- Doomsday Device: Played with in regards to Taphoi. They are not harmful by themselves, but they collect Dark ether and direct it towards Typhon - a Living Weapon of the Titans. Once it has enough ether, it will ressurect and probably destroy the world.
- Dual Boss: There's two cores in Di-Taphus, and the party fights both at the same time. They are counted as Undead, meaning that you'll have to kill both in the same turn.
- Dungeon Town: Troy is full of random encounters, although shops and other facilities will still serve you.
- Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors: Light beats Dark, which in turn beats the four main elements. The main elements, meanwhile, go like this: Water > Fire > Earth > Wind > Water.
- Gender Flip: Patroclus is a man in all accounts of the Trojan war. Here, Patroclus is a woman instead.
- Girl in the Tower: Princess Piazza is introduced locked in the tower and guarded by Undead soldiers. When the party reaches her, she doesn't believe that you're here to help her, and Heracles punches her out to make her come with the party. "This might be the worst rescue ever", indeed.
- Good Morning, Crono: The game starts with the hero waking up on the beach, with his memories missing.
- Insistent Terminology: When the party first encounters the Undead soldiers, the living soldiers that serve alongside them tell that these are not Undead, but rather "Divine Warriors", as their commander insists on calling them such. In the end, however, everyone concludes that there is nothing divine about these abominations.
- Load-Bearing Boss: All Taphus' cores violently explode after you defeat them, taking the entire structure with them. Unusually, you don't escape the explosion - there's too little time to escape from the 4th underground floor of the building. Rather, your heroes, being immortal, simply take the explosion in the face, and get thrown into another region by the immence force of the blast.
- Mana Meter: Done twofold. Besides your normal MP, there's also five types of ether - four elemental and the Dark one. All ether is shared between all fighters - both the party and the enemies. Elemental spells consume corresponding ether and produce Dark ether, while Dark spells do this in reverse. If there's not enough ether on the battlefield, the spell can still be used, but it will damage the caster proportionally to the ether deficiency.
- Prophecy Twist: Cassandra (who else?) made a prophecy that she will change Achilles' destiny. It then turns out that Agon has tricked her into revealing Achilles' weakness, and uses it to kill him. In a sense, Cassandra did change Achilles' destiny, that's for sure.
- Shout-Out: Mostly to Nintendo games.
- When you name the hero, Leucos will suggest the name Pit.
- There's lines "A secret to everyone" and "Archanea? Never heard of it." appearing in the dialogue.
- One of Heracles' battle lines after you recruit the real one is "How about a TKO from Olympus?"
- Spoofed by Heracles' "I love the smell of a battlefield in the... What time is it? Midafternoon?".
- Surplus Damage Bonus: If you overkill an enemy, it will "turn into ether", replenishing MP of the party member who dealt the final blow. Oddly, overkills don't increase the actual ether on the battlefield.
- There Is No Kill Like Overkill: The only way to prevent Undead enemies from reviving is overkilling them. It means either striking them very hard, or beating up the corpse. Overkilled enemies literally dissolve into ether, leaving no body to rise again. Story-wise this technique is used to make sure that Typhon, the Final Boss, is really dead and is not coming back.
- The Undead: Multiple parties use Undead soldiers, corpses of fallen soldiers, reanimated by souls of monsters, locked in Crasei - an invention of Daedalus. They are almost unstoppable, being able to rise over and over after being defeated. In gameplay terms, any enemy marked as an Undead will revive at the start of each combat round, unless you destroy the corpse by overkill the enemy.
- Unknown Item Identification: Sometimes you'll fing rusted items, that technically can be used, but will only give +1 in the releveant stat. To actually make use of them, you'll need to find a polisher (who may not even be present in the next town) and clean it for a symbolic price.
