Astrake Hedin and Udir Estner are a pair of boys training to become knights at Cielcanto Castle, but one day, a mysterious girl, Silvana Aldinence, attacks them with powerful magic. When Astrake awakens, he finds himself in Silvana's body with no one to turn to except a Kvena, a ghost. The two somehow have to find Silvana in Astrake's body and find a way to switch them back.
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This game contains examples of:
- The Atoner: Silvana was manipulated into attacking her home, Arkeld Village, which causes her to have a Guilt Complex. In the epilogue, Silvana uses her position as a soldier to help repair Arkeld village and earn her fellow villagers' forgiveness.
- Attack Reflector:
- In the epilogue, the player characters can learn passive skills that increase their chances of reflecting physical and magic attacks.
- The minions of Ridgefern have permanent reflect statuses for one type of damage, forcing the player to be careful about which skills they use.
- Elliette can cast a physical reflect buff on herself at any time, making it risky to attack her with anything but magic.
- Bad Liar: Silvana cannot lie without giving herself away with her facial expression, body language, and verbal hesitation, causing Rasheed to realize that she and Astrake switched bodies.
- Big Bad: Kvena is revealed to be intentionally ruining Silvana's life by mind controlling her into attacking innocents with magic and is also the one who switched Astrake and Silvana's bodies. She wants to make the protagonists hate her and grant her the death she wishes for.
- Bitch in Sheep's Clothing:
- Kvena seems like a Friendly Ghost who wants to help Silvana and Astrake. She turns out to be the one who forced Silvana to attack Arkeld and she later reveals that she resents Silvana for reminding her of her past self and failing to exorcise her.
- Downplayed with Rasheed. A lot of his laid-back demeanor is an act and he can be ruthless if he suspects someone of being a criminal, but he's still a well-meaning soldier who wants to learn more about his country so he can do his duties as a prince.
- Brainwashed and Crazy: Kvena has the ability to brainwash people into acting violently, as shown when she brainwashes Silvana into attacking Arkeld village, Astrake, and Udir. Later, she tries to brainwash Astrake into attacking Silvana, and then sics a brainwashed Udir on them. This is distinct from her possession ability, since possessing someone doesn't override their will.
- Career-Ending Injury: In Episode 0, a soldier, later revealed to be Silvana's father Deak, gets his eye slashed out by a monster. As a result, he has retire from combat and take up a clerical position.
- Cassandra Truth:
- Discussed. Astrake notes that few would believe Silvana was brainwashed by the ghost Kvena into attacking Arkeld village, but nonetheless gives this explanation to both the soldiers and the Arkeld villagers, since he thinks it's better than not saying anything and looking guilty anyways.
- On the flip side, Kvena was ostracized by her peers because no one believed her research about essences, due to essences only being observable to those with strong magic. This causes her to commit suicide and set her on the path to becoming an evil ghost.
- Cognizant Limbs: The Tentacreature boss has two of its tentacles act as separate enemies.
- Combat Medic: Astrake and Reffian are both melee fighters who can use healing magic. Of the two, Astrake is more focused on combat due to having more stackable attack buffs while Reffian is better at healing due to her higher speed and magic stats.
- Combination Attack: If the player characters use specific skills in a round of combat, they will follow up with another skill that combines the effects of the original skills. Fortunately, the game allows the player to check on all chain skill combinations in and out of combat.
- Crutch Character: When Kvena is in the party, Astrake can continue fighting even at 0 HP. Kvena is also capable of dodging any physical attack and has decent magic defense, so she's unlikely to get knocked out. However, she permanently leaves the party after the second dungeon.
- Defeat Means Playable: In the post-epilogue, Rasheed and Reffian will permanently join the party after their Dual Boss fight, though they'll be weaker as playable characters than as bosses. Reffian's enemy glossary entry notes that she's stronger when she's fighting the player than when she's playable.
- Demonic Possession: Subverted. Due to the possession mechanic in combat, it looks like Kvena made Silvana attack Arkeld village by possessing the latter. However, the dev room reveals that Kvena actually mind controlled Silvana, since the act of possession doesn't allow her to control the target to the same degree as mind control. It's noted that possession is ineffective if the possessor and the possessed aren't on the same page.
- Difficulty Levels: There are easy, normal, and hard modes, which all affect the enemies' stat multipliers and the party's initial TP in combat. Easy mode increases combat rewards while hard mode prevents the use of healing checkpoints.
- Driven to Suicide: Kvena was ostracized by her peers and fell into despair when even her lover, Revethor, stopped seeing her. She jumps to her death, but is brought back as a ghost by Ridgefern. Revethor himself committed suicide out of guilt for abandoning her.
- Dual Boss:
- The boss of Chapter 4 is Kvena and a copy of Revethor that she created as a puppet.
- In the post-epilogue, the party must defeat Rasheed and Reffian in order to recruit them and unlock the cameo boss battles.
- Lienne and Feliestasha from the author's other game, Feliestasha, are considered the easiest of the cameo boss pairs.
- Nelly and Sue from mobcharacter57's game, Genomessi Saga, are considered the second easiest of the cameo boss pairs.
- Alvar and Rihanna from the author's other game, Blood of Justice, are considered the second hardest of the cameo boss pairs.
- Elliette and Ruveira from the author's other game, Elemental Field, are considered the hardest of the cameo boss pairs.
- Duel Boss:
- In the Space of Mystery, Astrake has to fight Silvana to prevent her from killing herself. Depending on the dialogue choice before the battle, the player will control either Astrake or Silvana.
- In the final phase of the main story Final Boss, Astrake and Silvana share the latter's body in order to defeat Kvena.
- Fallen Heroine: Kvena used to have a grand goal of finding a way to balance positive and negative essences, but years as a ghost wore away at her sanity and made her willing to do anything to get someone to exorcise her.
- Flunky Boss:
- The Sculptor summons rock clones of Astrake and Reffian.
- Ridgefern has a White Essence and a Black Essence as allies, who reflect physical and magic attacks respectively.
- "Freaky Friday" Flip: Astrake and Silvana have their bodies switched after the latter attacks the former. This ends up switching their entire moveset as well. This turns out to be Kvena's doing, who secretly wants to torment Silvana and goad her into exorcising the former.
- Freudian Excuse: Despite all the evils she committed and her cruel personality, Kvena turned out that way because she was ostracized by her peers and her lover for her essence research, got turned into a ghost by Ridgefern, lost her only friend Refita, and went insane when it looked like Silvana couldn't send her to the afterlife.
- Good All Along: Silvana is initially pegged as a dangerous mage who destroyed her home village of Arkeld. In reality, Kvena mind controlled her and forced her to attack the village.
- Greater-Scope Villain: Ridgefern is the one who brought Kvena back as a ghost to determine if humans would abuse the essences he created, making him indirectly responsible for the havoc she caused.
- Green-Eyed Monster: Kvena admits that she finds Astrake's optimism both admirable and enviable, since she's secretly a deeply pessimistic person. This causes her to resent Astrake almost as much as she resents Silvana for the opposite reason.
- Guest-Star Party Member: Kvena is playable for the first two dungeons, but stops participating in combat in the third because it would be hard to explain her presence to Reffian.
- Hot Springs Episode: In the epilogue, the party can return to the Cave of Silence and go to the deepest room to find a hot spring. This leads to a subevent where Silvana tries to inspect Astrake's body because of a wound she previously suffered while in his body, much to the latter's embarrassment.
- Hypocrisy Nod: Astrake inspires his friends with his optimism, but notes that he's harboring his own self-doubts and wonders if what he's saying is hollow. That said, others note that his encouragement does help to bring out their potential.
- I Hate Past Me: Kvena was isolated from others and developed a pessimistic outlook on life. She secretly hates Silvana for reminding her of her past shut-in self.
- Infodump: Kvena's explanations about essences are quite heavy and long, which the game compensates for by letting the player save between each explanation.
- Instant Expert: Astrake and Silvana are capable of using each other's combat movesets without any difficulty, despite the former being a swordsman with healing magic and the latter being an offensive mage. Subverted in the story, where other characters note that Silvana's swordplay is amateurish and Astrake cannot use custom spells that Silvana developed.
- Interrupted Suicide: Kvena uses positive essences to enhance Silvana's desire to die, but Astrake intentionally thinks negatively in order to generate negative essences, allowing him to cancel out the positive essences and stop Silvana from killing herself.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold:
- Astrake is a prickly man who nonetheless encourages his friends to stay positive and has a penchant of taking dangerous attacks in place of his allies.
- Rasheed usually gives his allies backhanded compliments, but is otherwise a reasonable soldier who gives Astrake and Silvana a chance to prove their innocence and helps Udir enlist faster despite the latter missing the soldier recruitment exam.
- King Incognito: Rasheed Glaudia is actually the prince of Cielcanto, but poses as an ordinary soldier.
- The Knights Who Say "Squee!": Astrake and Udir want to become Cielcanto soldiers out of admiration for the soldier who saved their life. They get a chance to talk to that soldier, Deak, who is proud of how far they've come. Downplayed with in that while Astrake successfully enlists, Udir missed his chance for the year due to being kidnapped, though Rasheed plans to help Udir join faster due to being impressed by the latter's skills.
- Magic Knight: Rasheed is a swordsman who can cast offensive magic. He doesn't have the more powerful Ein series of spells, but he can cast all the stat-lowering spells and has his own unique skill to lower the enemies' resistance to these spells.
- Magically Inept Fighter: Udir has no magic, but is considered a stronger swordsman than Astrake. Gameplay-wise, he has a higher base attack than all other playable characters.
- Mechanically Unusual Fighter: Udir doesn't have the more traditional self-buffs of other characters. Instead, he can copy his allies' buffs or reverse his debuffs.
- New Game Plus: After beating the main story, the player can start a new playthrough while carrying over accessories, equipment upgrades, skill tree progress, chain skill count, SP, and enemy glossary entries. The last part is important, since two enemies in the game are mutually exclusive in a single run.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero:
- Silvana refrained from finishing the spell to exorcise Kvena because she didn't want to lose the latter. This leads to Kvena going through Sanity Slippage from the tedium of being a ghost.
- Ridgefern later discovered that balance between positive and negative essences isn't sustainable, since people can absorb essences, but won't always emit the same kind. He decides to get rid of essences in the epilogue.
- Permanently Missable Content:
- Subevents are only available for a limited time and some subevents rely on previous ones, though the player can press the S key to get a hint about one of the currently available subevents.
- The Space of Mystery and the Space of Truth are the only dungeons that cannot be revisited in the post-epilogue, which means the player only has one chance to get all the treasure and enemy glossary information. This is because these realms are maintained by Ridgefern, who dies in the epilogue.
- Police Are Useless: The Cielcanto soldiers are understaffed and are struggling to contain monster threats. This is implied to be due to excessive negative essence lowering their confidence. Once essences are balanced and then removed in the epilogue, the soldiers become more confident in suppressing monsters.
- Pure Is Not Good: Pure positive or negative essence isn't good, since positive essences increase people's motivation to act and negative essences increase their doubts. There are times when having too much motivation is bad, such as when Kvena uses positive essences to exploit Silvana's desire to kill herself. Likewise, having too much doubt prevents one from taking initiative in their life. Ridgefern originally created positive essences to motivate the lethargic people of his era, but when their motivation ran out of control and caused them to hurt each other, he had to create negative essences to balance it out.
- Puzzle Boss: The boss of the epilogue, Ridgefern, has two minions, with one reflecting physical attacks and the other reflecting magic. This forces the player to pay attention to the types of moves they're using and avoid triggering any all-targeting chain skills, all while finding the best way to take out the minions one at a time.
- Took a Level in Badass: Reffian struggles with her career as a soldier because she's too afraid to fight any monster stronger than a slimey slime. After Astrake encourages her to believe in herself, she becomes a competent Combat Medic who can stand against boss monsters.
- Shrinking Violet: Silvana spent most of her life too shy to talk to anyone outside of her family and Kvena. Kvena notes that this makes it so that Silvana will cling more to the few people she's comfortable with, which why Silvana doesn't suspect Kvena's treachery until it's too late.
- Skill Scores and Perks: The playable characters have skill trees, which can be filled in by spending SP and "strong stones." These tree nodes include combat skills, passive skills, and stat increases.
- Symbiotic Possession: Kvena can possess Astrake to give him bonus stats, but he'll lose HP every turn because a body cannot handle having two spirits. At the end of the main story, Astrake, while in Silvana's body, absorbs Silvana's spirit so that she can possess him. The dev room states that the possessor and the host must share the same goal, since the possessor cannot override their host's will.
- Unskilled, but Strong:
- Astrake is stuck in Silvana's body, which has a lot of magic power. While he can learn all her offensive spells gameplay-wise, he can't use certain spells that she created in the story, such as the spell to exorcise Kvena.
- Story-wise, Silvana is stuck in Astrake's well-trained body, but doesn't have the experience to wield a sword properly. Gameplay-wise, she's still capable of using any sword skill from Astrake's skill tree.
- Unwitting Pawn: Ridgefern brought back Kvena as a ghost in order to observe whether or not she would misuse the power of the essences like he expected of people.
- Villain's Dying Grace: As Kvena is sent to the afterlife, she uses the last of her power to restore life to Astrake's mortally wounded body, which was caused by her.
- Weak, but Skilled: Rasheed and Reffian cannot stack their offensive buffs as high as the main trio, but they have other subtle advantages that make up for their lack of damage output. Rasheed can lower enemies' resistance to stat down effects and has access to the burst series of chain skills, which have higher chances of inflicting stat downs. Reffian has the highest base agility, which means she has an easier time casting her healing spells before enemies can move.
- Well-Intentioned Extremist: Ridgefern originally created positive and negative essences to help humanity balance out their motivation and doubts, but also feared that people would learn how to abuse the power of essences, so he created an illness that specifically targets those who know too much.
- What You Are in the Dark: In the appropriately named Space of Truth, Ridgefern sends the party into a space with no essences to influence their thoughts, meaning their judgements are entirely their own. This is to test how strong their wills are when confronted with some dark truths about essences and Kvena's past.
- Who Wants to Live Forever?: Kvena was initially fine with her situation as a ghost, but goes mad because there are very few people who can interact with her. She eventually starts antagonizing Silvana in order to goad the latter into exorcising her.
- Your Days Are Numbered: Anyone who learns too much about essences is slated to die in a few years through an illness created by Ridgefern, which explains how Refita died so young. This includes the protagonists, but after they defeat Ridgefern in the epilogue, he removes essences from the world and the illness that comes with it.
- Zero-Approval Gambit: Silvana was originally supposed to create a spell that could send Kvena's spirit to the afterlife, but secretly gave up on it because she didn't want to lose Kvena's company. Kvena then manipulates Silvana into attacking her village as part of a gambit to make the latter hate her, all to motivate Silvana to finish the spell in order to kill Kvena.
- Zero-Effort Boss:
- The first boss battle with the Forest Bear is unloseable because Kvena is immune to physical attacks. Even if Astrake is knocked out, Kvena can easily finish the battle by herself or by possessing Astrake.
- In an ironic twist, the final round against Kvena is unloseable for the same reason. Astrake, while in Silvana's body, absorbs the latter's spirit so that they can share a body. This allows them to effortlessly dodge all of Kvena's spells.
