Selena and Shirley are a pair of sisters on a quest to journey to the fallen Kingdom of Ashkar, where they must stop the Darkness that spawns monsters and demons. While Selena is able to get the blessing of the Goddess of Light, Shirley instead relies on dark magic to complement Selena's physical skillset. Unfortunately, Shirley has the potential to corrupt her soul in exchange for more dark powers, which can change the outcome of the adventure for the worse.
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This game contains examples of:
- Assimilation Backfire: If Shirley is fully corrupted, the Avatar of Darkness will absorb her. If the player has the Holy Sword, Shirley will occasionally stun the Avatar at certain HP thresholds, though she ultimately dies alongside the Avatar. If the player doesn't have the sword, Shirley will break free after Selena guards enough times.
- Dark Is Not Evil: Shirley is a Necromancer who can raise dead spirits to either get info from them or have them act as guest characters in battle. Her dark powers also allow her to use healing magic. While she starts out uncorrupted, she can visit the Dark Sanctuary in her dreams and corrupt her soul in exchange for more power. However, it's possible to beat the game without corrupting Shirley's soul. Even if Shirley gets fully corrupted and absorbed by the Avatar of Darkness, she is still loyal to Selena and will fight the Avatar from the inside.
- Deal with the Devil: In the ancient times, King Valimur summoned the Avatar of Darkness to help him quell a rebellion and later learned dark magic in order to avenge his son. However, his soul was eventually fully corrupted and his kingdom was overrun by demons. In the end, he became little more than a mindless brute under the command of the Avatar.
- Duel Boss: If the Dark Sanctuary is expanded enough, Shirley can fight the Corrupted King Valimur by herself.
- Dual Boss: The Corrupted Knight and Corrupted Mage are fought as a pair. However, AOE skills are ineffective against them, since the knight resists physical attacks while the mage can absorb dark magic.
- Flunky Boss: The Avatar of Darkness can summon all the corrupted bosses as minions except the Corrupted Assassin and the Corrupted Wanderer. They all have their unique mechanics and abilities, though they go down easier than before. However, when the boss is near death, she will revive all KOed Corrupted, forcing the party to deal with all of them at once.
- Flat Character: The Darkness, or rather, the Avatar of Darkness, doesn't have well-defined motives or much of a personality. She was summoned by King Valimur to help him win a civil war, but she ended up corrupting him into her slave and destroyed his kingdom. However, her endgame isn't really stated and she seems to be connected to the concept of time itself.
- Golden Ending: The happiest ending has Selena and Shirley journey together, while all other endings result in them going their separate ways or Shirley dying. This ending not only requires the player to give up on soul corruption perks, they will also have to give up on the Holy Sword, making the Avatar of Darkness much harder to defeat.
- Herd-Hitting Attack:
- Selena can wield spears to use skills, Hurricane Thrust and Swift Thrust, that hit the entire enemy party.
- If the Holy Sword is obtained, Shirley can use Divine Punishment, a spell that hits all enemies with holy damage.
- Shirley can equip the Dark Flare tome to cast the titular spell, which hits all enemies while dealing somewhat more damage than Pain. If she's fully corrupted and views all the memory crystals in the Dark Sanctuary, she can learn Armageddon, which hits all enemies twice.
- Later on, summoned spirits can use Spiritual Burst, which is a weak dark magic AOE. Unfortunately, their AI cannot default to the original single target version of the skill, so they'll do nothing if at least one enemy can absorb their attack.
- Heroic Mime: While Selena and Shirley get dialogue choices and occasionally use the stock MV emoticons, they don't get fully spoken lines like the NPCs.
- It's Personal: If the Dark Sanctuary is expanded enough, Shirley can duel the corrupted King Valimur who killed her father and nearly killed Selena. The dialogue choices make it clear that she still holds a grudge against him.
- Karma Meter: Shirley can gain more MP and other magical power-ups in exchange for corrupting her soul. Her soul's total corruption can be measured by the number of nodes in the Dark Sanctuary, ranging from zero to seven nodes.
- Light Is Not Good: Chosen One Subject XIV is a boss monster who falsely believes themselves to be the true wielder of the Holy Sword and will fight to prevent Selena from claiming it. They can use imitations of the holy skills that Selena can learn if she obtains the sword. It's implied that they are a failed Ashkar experiment to control the sword.
- Magically Inept Fighter: By default, Selena is a physical fighter with no ability for magic, as shown by her MP being at 0. This puts her at a disadvantage against enemies that have immunity to physical attacks, such as spirit enemies.
- Multi-Melee Master: Selena can equip one-handed bladed weapons, axes, lances, bows, shields, and an offhand blade. Most of her skills require specific weapon types to be equipped, encouraging the player to swap weapons depending on the situation.
- Multiple Endings: The endings depend on Shirley's level of corruption.
- If Shirley has no corruption, the party beats the Avatar of the Darkness, ending the threat of the demons. The two of them board a boat to go on their next adventure.
- If Shirley has one or two levels of corruption, the party beats the Avatar of Darkness and ends the demons. However, only Selena boards the ship while Shirley stays behind to research the history of the Darkness.
- If Shirley has at least three levels of corruption, but isn't fully corrupted, the Avatar of Darkness tries and fails to absorb her. After the party defeats the Avatar, the ending plays out the same as the second ending, only Shirley is in her darker costume.
- If Shirley is fully corrupted and the Holy Sword isn't obtained, the Avatar of Darkness successfully absorbs her, but if Selena guards for enough turns, Shirley breaks free and rejoins the party. After the Avatar is defeated, Shirley leaves Keld while Selena is sleeping because she wants to research a way to undo her corruption. Selena eventually leaves on a boat in search of Shirley.
- If Shirley is fully corrupted and the Holy Sword is obtained, the Avatar of Darkness successfully absorbs her and Selena is forced to use the Holy Sword to defeat the Avatar by herself. Selena returns home and decides to stay behind to guard Keld instead of traveling.
- The Paladin: If the Holy Sword is obtained, Selena gains the Holy Warrior class, which gives her a bigger MP bar than Shirley and gives her several holy spells that cover offense, defense, and healing. These spells are meant to give her an advantage against Darkness-aligned enemies, and she'll need it, since this path will result in Selena fighting the Avatar of Darkness and her minions alone.
- Point of No Return:
- Once the party passes through the cave-in minigame in the Temple of Elendia, there's no way to return to that dungeon or the village of Keld.
- Once the party chooses to enter the Abyss and defeat Cerberus, they are stuck in the Abyss for the rest of the game.
- Revenge: King Valimur originally summoned the Avatar of Darkness to help him quell a rebellion, but after the rebels kill his son, he decides to learn the ultimate Dark offensive spell, Armageddon, in order to personally get revenge on the rebels.
- Sadistic Choice: The game states that the Holy Sword is needed to defeat the Darkness. Unfortunately, the boss guarding the Holy Sword can only be beaten if Shirley is in the party, but bringing her through the portals to the boss will fully corrupt her soul. This means the player has to choose between Shirley's soul and what is supposedly the only weapon that can defeat the Darkness. Fortunately, the Darkness can be beaten without the sword, albeit with much more effort.
- Sheathe Your Sword: In the full corruption route without the Holy Sword, Selena cannot defeat the Avatar of Darkness by herself, since the latter's barrier negates physical damage. However, if she guards enough times, Shirley will break free from the boss, making the boss beatable now that Shirley can break the Avatar's barrier with magic.
- Spell Book: Greater Restore, Dark Flare, and Blood Lust can only be used if Shirley equips the corresponding tomes. However, equipping these tomes keeps her from using a normal attack.
- Time Master: The lore states that the basic healing spell, Restore, rewinds time on injuries to heal the target. The beastman elder states that those who are corrupted have their time flow stopped, granting them immortality. The Darkness itself is connected to time and if Shirley is corrupted enough, she will get flashbacks where she is the Avatar of Darkness, implying that those who are corrupted by the Darkness can exist in multiple points in time.
- Token Evil Teammate: Most of the summoned spirits are friendly people, but one of the spirits, Ryuga, once invaded the Beastmen's Village despite their generosity towards him, and his ghost is unrepentant of his crimes. He can still be summoned as an ally though.
- Tragic Bigot: The elder of the Beastmen's Village distrusts humans because a human that the village saved, Ryuga, betrayed them and tried to conquer the village, killing many beastmen in the process. However, the party can gain his trust by completing quests for the villagers.
- Undying Loyalty: Even if the player chooses to have Shirley corrupt her own soul, she'll never turn on Selena. If she shows up to the Final Boss fight while fully corrupted, the Avatar of Darkness absorbs her, but she'll still make an effort to resist the Avatar for Selena's sake depending on the player's actions in battle.
