YMMV / A Very Long Rope to the Top of the Sky

• Alternate Character Interpretation: Is Ivy a good, caring sister who just wants to save an ill girl, or is she an abusive, authoritarian Yandere who would rather chain Mint to a hospital bed than allow her to live out the rest of her life in happiness?
• Awesome Music: The music is all custom, and most of it is quite nice.
  • "The Monster with Obsidian Eyes", the regular boss theme, is spectacular in its own right. It is both slow and fast paced, and rather chaotic. Special shout out to the chorus, where the flute comes in.
  • "The Path to God is Covered in Thorns" and "Inside the Water God's Mouth", used for temple-themed dungeons, are very grand and detailed. "The Path to God", in particular, has nice variation between active and subdued portions.
  • "System Corruption", the music for the Flying Mountain, is strikingly unlike the music before it (as it has a technical, electronic theme) and conveys a strong sense of tension and mystery, which is perfect for the Wham Episode that occurs in the dungeon.
  • "Cyborg Babes From the Hotrod Nebula", the music for the (sort of) final dungeon. The developer could easily have gotten away with reusing "System Corruption", but made an extremely fast-paced, exciting, and invigorating piece for the final stretch instead.
  • "Blood Therapy", the Climax Boss Battle Theme Music. It's a lot slower and subdued than the regular boss music, which creates an interesting effect.
  • "The Person in the Calamity", the Final Boss music, is very reminiscent of SNES-era RPG music. The score changes tone multiple times to highlight both the intensity of the battle and its sadness.
  • "Rancid Wind", which plays during the scene leading up to the Final Boss. It combines the cold eeriness of the teleporter theme with discordant interjections from the sad Mood Motif. The mixture of cold artificiality and poignant emotion is an excellent backdrop for the scene, and it being ever-so-slightly out of tune conveys a sense of tension and wrongness that suits Raccoon's character well. For bonus points, it's used as Sad Battle Music for the first stage of the Final Boss.
  • "Royal Metal" is also amazing, playing in many climatic dungeons.
• Good Bad Bugs: "I'll erase you from existence" inflicts a guaranteed 9999 damage, intended as an unavoidable One-Hit Kill. However, it's still affected by the Defend Command, which can halve it to a survivable (though still harsh) 4999 damage.
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • Random Encounters prior to the major update that made them optional. Areas were far too large and the encounter rate was far too high. It was easy to get confused and turned around a lot because of them. You could eventually turn them off, but only in New Game Plus.
  • Critical Hits, as the game uses the default RPG Maker VX engine, which is very unforgiving about them: In addition to the standard double multiplier, they ignore defense on top of that. This often turns physical-based bosses (of which there are fortunately few) into Luck Based Missions.
  • Item Crafting. Drop rates are random, it can be difficult to track down a specific material, and you often have to sacrifice a unique item that might be needed in another recipe you don't have yet. This all adds up to it being extremely tedious and unnecessarily punishing. Fortunately, crafting is rarely necessary for the main game, but you're going to want some crafted equipment if you want to take on the Superbosses. And even more fortunately, the Too Awesome to Use aspect is removed in the Major Update, and the drop rates are boosted as an added Anti-Frustration Feature.
• That One Attack:
  • Instant death attacks, which can make some battles a Luck-Based Mission. You don't get protection against them until about halfway through the game... at which point bosses will switch to extremely powerful single-target attacks that you can't possibly survive. The worst one is "I'll erase you from existence," used by the Final Boss and some Superbosses — it inflicts a guaranteed 9999 damage, making it an unavoidable One-Hit Kill. You're given no warning for when the enemy will use it, and they can spam it.
  • Full party status effect spells, especially Eerie Whistle. Either you're protected against the status effect and will be fine, or you'll have to drop everything and scramble to heal everyone, by which point the boss will probably cast it again. Bonus points for attacks that inflict significant damage in addition to the status effect, like EMP Generator.
  • "Oh, aren't you a cutie!" One of your party members has just been inflicted with a version of confusion that can only be cured by time. (You can block it, but only with a unique endgame item that prevents you from using buffs.) Enjoy putting your strategy on hold so you can wait it out — that is, if the afflicted hero doesn't score a string of criticals and murder everyone else.
• That One Boss:
  • The goddamn shapeshifters. They don't just have the infamous Eerie Whistle, they have an instant kill move...that affects two party members. If Gainer goes down, kiss your ass goodbye because you lost the one way to group-heal status effects, and chances are the shapeshifters have Eerie Whistle at the ready. Even better? Because they have both Eerie Whistle and an instant kill move, you can't cover your ass for this fight; either you spend a boatload of money for instant death protection and get hounded by horrible status effects, or you get some items that, while cheap, don't protect you from EVERY status effect, and you have to still deal with the instant kill move. Have fun.
    • Oh, and it gets better. This isn't just a one-off boss. You fight the shapeshifters four times in the single dungeon they appear in, all at the end of hallways filled with enemies, and each shapeshifter has the same abilities and stats. This is an utter slog no matter how you cut it, especially because each shapeshifter has HP comparable to other, full bosses fought around that point in the game.
  • The dragon hatchlings can be pretty nasty. Because there are so many of them they can easily swarm a single party member, and they have a powerful full-party attack plus a full-party confusion spell on top of that. You can buy confusion protection for everyone, but there's no way to protect against their physicals or fire attacks.
  • The Crystal Beast actually isn't too bad if you know that Oliver can equip staves, thus allowing him to outheal the attacks. Otherwise you're going to be frantically healing every turn and probably still lose.
    • But if you tried to change his weapon, you'd know he can equip staves...
  • A look through the RMN comments will demonstrate that a lot of people seem to have trouble with Rutger in all three of his fights. The first time he throws multiple status effects at you (which are also powerful attacks), at a point where only one party member can be immune to all of them. He also has some pretty tough flunkies, and buffs himself to devastating effect if you kill them. The second time he's a Duel Boss fought by a party member with no healing and limited offensive capabilities (though this one can be a lot easier if you know he doesn't have Contractual Boss Immunity to status effects). The third time he's a Marathon Boss with Gradual Regeneration who loves to spam One-Hit Kill attacks.
  • Oliver is also pretty tough, as he has a very strong full-party attack that also inflicts paralysis. Hope you like marching all the way back to the entrance to buy some status protection! He also seems to be balanced on the assumption that you've done most of the sidequests at that point — but he's past a Point of No Return, so if you didn't and saved over your previous file, you're stuck with a severely gimped party.
  • Though technically optional, Ruby is quite tough. She can buff and heal at the same time (and you can't do anything but wait out the buffs). She also has the aforementioned Charm Person spell, and her offensive spells can be quite deadly even without the buff. You can wait and come back to her later, but Yvette will be handicapped for a while if you do, as the spell she teaches is pretty important.
  • The Troubled Spirits are in the same boat as Ruby: technically optional, but you'll be fighting with a handicap if you don't get their skill. There are four of them, they cast powerful full-party spells, they can negate your buffs, and they get an offense boost after each one dies. You'll be going through a lot of VIP free death passes.

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