YMMV / Armory & Machine

• Anticlimax Boss:
  • The Final Boss of the game can be seen as this, mainly due to all but one of its abilities having long charge times which makes it very easy to interrupt and damage with stuns and Traps. The only things it has going for it are a rather generous HP pool, high shielding which does nothing to help against penetrating damage from Traps and Hunter Skills, and an annoyingly tricky Spam Attack that gets faster each cast in Target Laser. If you somehow managed to get Megaton Detonation, Atomic Disassembler or Centenary Gashes before taking it on, it'll go down in one hit from any of them.
  • Every Superboss including Fifi's Ghost is reduced to this if you have more than one Ultimate skill. Thanks to the ludicrous damage said skills output, they will all go down in two ultimate attacks despite their considerable amounts of health, with a few of them dying in one.
• Breather Level: The Laboratory is a late game level which turns into this if the player has Ballista, as all of the common encounters can be dispatched by a single use of it due to having exceptionally low HP but very high shields — that don't matter against Ballista's heavy shield-piercing damage, which is enough to One-Hit Kill them. Preceding it is the Cliffs, which is initially That One Level before health upgrades due to the Vacuous Bats and Ninja Frogs, and the other two levels in the area (Landfill and Forest) do not have an Easy Level Trick.
• Demonic Spiders:
  • The Vacuous Bats in the Cliffs, at least before you get any Health upgrades. They have a good amount of Health, and usually use "fly" which does nothing, but will every so often use Swift Bite to deal a massive 300 HP damage at a point where you have 600 max HP. Trouble is that they use Swift Bite randomly on an A.I. Roulette, meaning that if you're unlucky enough you'll be two-shotted before you are capable of killing it. You can Stun Swift Bite, but Stun has a long cooldown time of 20 seconds making it work only once. You don't get any way to increase HP, use Shields, or unlock the more powerful skills that can kill the bats faster until the Cliffs boss is beaten.
  • The Ninja Frogs in the Cliffs. Like the Vacuous Bats, they will spam moves that do nothing for most of the time, and their A.I. Roulette will every so often use "It's Coming" followed by Shuriken to deal 300 HP damage to your 600 HP. Unlike the Bats, they use Shuriken far more randomly and unpredictably, and Shuriken comes out far faster than the bats' Swift Bite making it much more difficult to Stun. The only silver lining is that the Ninja Frog will sometimes cast Honorable Healing instead of Shuriken after "It's Coming" to heal you 100 HP, but that only means you can take one more Shuriken before you bite it. Like with the Bats, you don't get ways to increase HP, use Shields, or unlock better skills to beat them faster until the Cliffs boss is beaten.
• Difficulty Spike: Several. The rats in the second area (Badlands) are already tougher than the first boss, and all of them have an extreme-damage attack that teaches the player the importance of interrupting them. The third area (Cliffs) contains enemies with shields, and enemies that can two-shot you with their attacks.
• Disappointing Last Level: Thanks to the player gaining lots of levels as well as materials for powerful skills as a side effect from obtaining the Lucky Key, Facility becomes too simple and boring for the final area of an otherwise fun game. The Ashen Inventor has high shields but a paltry 2000 HP, meaning that a Ballista and a few Kukri/Bayonet will end it, and its attacks that aren't Flame Thrower come out slowly. The Ashen Soldier and Ashen Hunter have high and very high HP respectively but both use very slow-charging skills that are easily interrupted with Clamp Trap, Reinforced Clamp, Stun Baton or Flash Grenade. Finally, the rarely-seen Soot Sprite has low health and relatively low shield. Even the Final Boss, The Original Machine mainly uses slow, interruptible skills with its only threatening move being Target Laser.
• Fridge Logic:
  • The Giant Hogweed enemy has an attack called Venom, which deals heavy damage to your units. Your units are mechanical in nature and should not be affected by such an attack.
    • Are they? They are described as being larger with every generation, soon growing too big for their standard armor, described as having 'organic' components, and occasionally described with pronouns like "She". Are they simply constructs, or are they combat reverse cyborgs, who slowly become more and more 'human' as time goes by?
• Fridge Brilliance:
  • The Probes were designed to seed planets for colonization by creating human-like workers and building a kind of civilization. The Original Machine went awry, and destroyed the original civilization that created it. By coming to Earth, the player rebuilds humanity by doing exactly what it was supposed to do.
• Game-Breaker:
  • The Hunter Class Skills are seen as the best of the three. While the Soldier Skills need to break past enemy shields in order to inflict proper health damage and Inventor Skills are great against Shields but far less useful against actual health, Hunter Skills bypass shields entirely to inflict HP damage. Even though they deal a good bit less damage than Soldier Skills, their shield-piercing is invaluable for late-game enemies with loads of shielding to survive both Inventor and Soldier Skills.
  • Ballista is one of the best skills from the Hunter Tree, as it allows you to break most of the Laboratory in half. When used, it instantly deals 1200 damage plus 800 penetrating damage, but has a whopping 30 seconds cooldown time. In an area where the common enemies have 500 HP but huge amounts of shields, you can One-Hit Kill them therefore ignoring any cooldown and gain loads of resources with extreme ease. Furthermore, in order to obtain Ballista, you also have to purchase Clamp Trap and Throwing Knives before it — and all three skills are useful against the rarely-seen Matter Randomizer and the Furnace Mech boss.
  • Flash Grenade and Shock Baton from the Soldier and Inventor Skill Trees both stand out as instant interrupts without a casting time unlike Clamp Trap/Reinforced Clamp, have 10 seconds cooldown as compared to Stun's 20, and deal great damage and shield damage respectively. Being instant interrupts makes them trivialize the Original Machine while greatly easing several of the All-Star Superboss fights.
  • Every Ultimate Skill will one-shot any enemy in the main game, up to and including the Final Boss. Megaton Detonation and Centenary Gashes in particular deal enough damage to One-Hit Kill several of the Superbosses, otherwise two-shotting them.
• Goddamned Bats: Generally, anything that uses fast-but-weak attacks to interrupt you or moves that force you to waste ammunition can count as one:
  • The Spiders in the Cliffs area. They have huge amounts of shielding but rather low HP, and they use a Life Drain attack that hits four times in succession for weak damage each, but will fill back 120 of its 400 HP in total. This attack will also easily interrupt any skills with casting time.
  • Pebble Swarms in the Landfill have an attack called "Chip Swarm" which hits several times in rapid succession, interrupting any skills with casting time. Furthermore, this attack can last for a very long period of time which will destroy your shield and HP quickly.
• Low-Tier Letdown: The Inventor Class is generally seen as the worst of the three by far. All its attacks are adept at destroying shields but don't do much at all to health. Furthermore, it's overshadowed by the Hunter Class Skills which outright penetrate the shields and have far more useful effects, while the Soldier skills can deal enough damage to bust down shields and health faster. The only Inventor Skill that's considered good is Shock Baton because it's an instant interrupt with a much shorter cooldown time compared to Stun.
• Nightmare Retardant: All the Body Horror monsters in the Bio Swamp are intended to be frightening with horrifying attacks such as self evisceration, sloughing their flesh off or writhing in agony. However, the lack of any images plus the frequency of the monsters using self harm moves and doing absolutely nothing with their other moves^note with one exception being the Vomiting Behemoth's Form Tank, which hits for an extremely laughable 10 damage — same as the Crater Wall's weakest attack Crumble takes away most of the horror and makes them seem like comically inept buffoons instead.
• Scrappy Mechanic: Obtaining the Lucky Key is generally seen as one of the worst design flaws in an otherwise good game. You need to get three of every key except the Salt Key to craft it. While the Rusty and Copper Keys aren't too hard to get, the Lead, Zinc and Steel Keys require going through the Landfill, Laboratory and Forest for three whole runs each. Each area requires 30 Fuel to enter once, which, depending on your fuel gain rate can take anywhere from 15-30 minutes, and one run consists of entering 11 times (10 + boss) for 330 Fuel in all. Assuming that you achieve victory against every enemy/boss, this equals nine runs, 2970 Fuel in all, and several hours. Furthermore, this in turn will grant the player loads of resources to buy a good number of powerful skills, making the end-game Facility way too easy for a final area.
• That One Attack: Invoked on a few occasions:
  • The various rats in the Badlands area have rather weak or slow basic attacks, but also have one attack that is slow-charging and deals a whopping 300 or 400 HP at a point where you have 600 HP. The trick here is to use Stun, which causes said attack to be interrupted and do nothing.
  • The Vacuous Bats in the Cliffs area will usually use a move called "Fly", which does nothing. However, their A.I. Roulette will randomly use Swift Bite, which deals 300 damage to your 600 HP when you first encounter them.
  • The Ninja Frogs are similar to the bats, using several fake-out moves that do nothing, but will also randomly use Shuriken to deal 300 damage, and unlike Swift Bite Shuriken has a far shorter casting time making it harder to anticipate and interrupt.
  • "Chip Swarm" by the Pebble Swarm enemies. It hits for very weak damage but extremely rapidly, rendering any attempts to use casting time abilities useless. Furthermore, this attack can last for a huge period of time, eating away at your shields and health. The Rock Golem boss also uses a similar move, but it doesn't last as long as the Pebble Swarm's.
  • Of all the Original Machine's attacks, it is not the powerful Inferno Blast or Heat Beam that is the most troublesome, since they aren't too fast and both can be entirely nullified by an interrupt like Clamp Trap, Flash Grenade or Stun Baton. That honor goes to Target Laser, since it deals only 250 damage but the boss uses it 7 times in a row followed by an 80 damage shot. This would have been very easy to chain-stun if not for the fact that Target Laser starts slow but each subsequent casting time is decreased regardless of success. This means that unlike its other moves, you will be hard-pressed to interrupt all of it and will take at least 1-3 hits from the whole thing plus another 80 damage at the end.