Anticlimax Boss: Unlike previous games, this one does not use Unlimited Characters at any point through the story. As a result, a lot of the final fights near the end of the story end up becoming this if you know how to play Ragna even at a novice level; namely Nine, Izanami, Hazama, and Susanoo. What's even more jarring is that the first two already have Unlimited forms programmed into the game.
Terumi as usual, but with the revelation that he's a god and him taking back his original body, the Susanoo unit, he takes it up to eleven. He takes Hakumen's arrogance and combines it with his normal brutality and megalomania to make one hell of an impression.
Terumi: Let me show you, Little Raggy, THE POWER OF A GOD!
Captain Obvious Reveal: Due to how unsubtle the Foreshadowing throughout Chronophantasma surrounding it was, practically nobody was surprised when Tager was confirmed to be Bullet's former captain that Azrael had attacked.
Catharsis Factor: Finally finding a way around Terumi's Joker Immunity and giving him the death he so richly deserves but has avoided for years? Delicious.
Central Fiction tying in several elements of the Japan-only Bloodedge Experience novels, including Naoto and Raquel playing major roles in other characters' arcade modes and Izanami's resemblance to Saya Terumi, are going to be completely missed by the rest of the fanbase and is reminiscent of of Celica's story importance, despite her major roles all being the Phase Shift light novels.
Es being introduced as a playable character causes the game to have a direct connection to XBlaze that will require significant knowledge of those games. Thankfully, XBlaze at least averts No Export for You.
Downplayed with Mai Natsume. The Remix Heart and Variable Heart manga series have not been officially released in the West, but scanlations exist for all of Remix Heart and part of Variable Heart. From an official standpoint, the Remix Heart Gaiden section in Chronophantasma Extend did a good job of introducing Mai and explaining her backstory and relationship with the existing cast.
As befits the Goddess of Death, Izanami is this trope in spades and rivals Arakune in this regard. Her playstyle is filled with brutal, terrifying attacks that involve darkness and necromancy. Her Exceed Accel and Astral Heat in particular are the stuff of true nightmares.
Two words: Dark Susano'o. Terumi in the Susano'o Unit is a playable character unlocked after completing story mode, and he is terrifying. Between his demonic appearance, disturbing musical theme, and his brutal, savage fighting style that will make even hardened players wince, Susano'o may rival Izanami and Arakune as one of the scariest characters in the series.
Evil Is Cool: Some people who dislike Terumi for being obnoxious and overplayed admit he is an absolute badass as Susanoo. Mostly because he spends less time cackling and more time kicking ass. Even his boasts are more grandiose and less childish.
BlazBlue: The Phantom Pain - The game itself, due to all the crazy twists and turns the story has taken, particularly Relius previously being One of the Ten Sages, Lao Jiu carrying a piece of Roy's soul, and the appearance of Es in Naoto's Act 2 ending. In addition, the general storyline being about many of the characters having lost something important to them and trying to take back their pasts, while also giving new insight to their motivations which tie in to the aforementioned plot twists.
Rock - A derogatory term for her Kunzite spell which, as the nickname implies, is a magical falling rock that functions as a built-in, advantageous mixup and pressure tool. This makes it the most useful out of all her moves, especially since the move isn't a special move - it's one of her many Drive spells, so not only is it a nigh-unreactable mixup, it's a nigh-unreactable mixup that you can use at the touch of a button.
Naturally, as Izanami has two Time Stands Still super moves, they were nicknamed "Za Warudo" and "Za Warudo Grab".
Ribcage - Her barrier special looks like giant ribcages that surround her.
The Allspark - Hihiirokane, the material that Terumi obtains in his Act 3 ending after robbing the grave of Clavis Alucard, Rachel's father.
The Ragna Requiem - Ragna's plan, as detailed in his Act 3 ending, is a Zero-Approval Gambit which involves him devouring the wishes of all the Entitled, and then Amaterasu itself, all so that the world can finally change, because it's essentially the exact same plan as Lelouch's.
The End of BlazBlue - One of the stages, Judgment Day, is heavily implied to take place outside of the Embryo, and it's a hellscape thanks to Izanami; and Izanami is the manifestation of the Drive of the girl in the Amaterasu Unit, who happens to be Noel. Noel wants to live a normal life because her life sucks horribly. Factor all of these in, and this would mean that Izanami is enforcing Noel's will, albeit extremely by destroying the existing world to have it start anew. This eerily parallels The End of Evangelion, where Shinji's desire is to live a normal life because of how much his life sucks, and this is shown through his rejection of Instrumentality, and the Earth is reduced to a hellscape following that. The truth, however, is more complicated.
Terumen - Terumi's true form, Takehaya Susanoo-no-Mikoto, is the result of Terumi fusing back with the Susanoo unit, currently known as Hakumen. It was only natural that fans would put two and two together. Previously, it was used to call Terumi's imitation of Dark Susanoo in his Astral Heat, or the fanmade (now official, although not officially named) version of Pakumen with Dark Susanoo's features.
Grand Viper - One of his specials resemble Sol's, well, Grand Viper.
Tsubakimen/Tsubakumen - White Justice, the then-unknown character who has inherited Ookami and speculated at the time of the console version's release to be another Tsubaki Yayoi within the Susanoo Unit. Came from a portmanteau of the names Tsubaki and Hakumen.
The Gate of Truth - The new Forbidden Gate stage, which is a completely white, mist-covered room with a gigantic doorway in the background. Comparisons with the Final Boss arena of The King of Fighters XIII are also pretty possible.
Game-Breaker: Nine has a lot of really useful moves, such as 2 wakeup setup moves (one of which is hard to block due to ambiguously hitting mid or low), teleporting as a normal move, long-ranged attacks that instantly reaches the length of the screen, those that covers a lot of the screen, a special that tracks the opponent anywhere, a potent laser beam DD and, yup, a "touch of death" combo (involving chaining 2 of her DDs together in Overdrive, but still).
Everything about Hibiki and Kagura after it's revealed that Hibiki is an insane assassin who secretly desires to kill Kagura. You'll never be able to watch Hibiki's scenes in Chronophantasma the same way again.
Ragna repeatedly swears that he's gonna make Rachel cry for messing with him. In the end of the game, he succeeds... with a twist. Because he's not there anymore (i.e gone from everyone's existence) and Rachel's missing him even if she can't remember him.
The fandom often joked how Ragna was the world's Cosmic Plaything, turns out that's not too far from the truth, and that the world will constantly remain in a state of disarray as long as Ragna existed. So he does the logical thing and erases himself from existence and everyone's memory of him.
For Carl, he got a significant buff in that Ada recovers much faster than before, though she overheats faster as well, meaning that even if you manage to take her out she won't be gone for long. Two of his moves were reworked into new ones: A short hop overhead command normal and a Berserker Barrage-styled Rhapsody of Memories for Ada. The former lets him get a hit confirm at distances where he'd normally be too spaced out to do anything and the latter forces the opponent to block after a knockdown, which just allows Carl to keep up his offensive. What makes it even worse is that Carl can use the aforementioned normal at the same time Ada uses a meaty low to have a new unblockable. If the opponent tries to do something/block high on wakeup or roll out, they'll be hit by Ada before they're able to do anything and be led into a combo; if they try to block low, Carl hits them and leads into a combo.
Nine's entire playstyle revolves around using several elemental moves that take up a significant portion of the screen. If she hits you with them, even on block, she will get a spell stock and combining those elemental moves gives a variety of twenty spells, most of which she'll never need because the main one you'll be seeing is the Kunzite. Her range, setups, and damage put her squarely at the top of the newcomer rankings.
In Chrono Phantasma, Izayoi was a low-to-mid tier character with strong offensive potential hampered by a less-than-stellar neutral game; her normals have the potential of not hitting properly despite what their animations show. This weakness has been turned on its head by Central Fiction thanks to the hitboxes being improved, but that pales in comparison to what is perhaps the most notable improvement: The D version of her Sonic Saber has been changed from a mere larger, multi-hitting projectile to a three-projectile volley (five in Overdrive). This makes her already deadly mix-up game even deadlier, and she can expend another Zero Weave stock to teleport to where her opponent is to turn her mix-up game into Russian Roulette. It doesn't change the fact that she's dependent on her stock, but it hardly matters when she can easily gain stock with regular Sonic Sabers.
After four games (technically 3 updates and 1 game) of being dethroned from his top tier reign of terror, Arakune has come back with a vengeance. His damage and ability to curse the opponent have been increased dramatically, combined with his curse bar no longer nearly emptying itself in a single weak combo, which allows him to actually use the two tools given to him in Chronophantasma Extend. Firstly, his Overdrive instantly curses the opponent upon activation, so at a moment's notice he can immediately force the opponent on the defensive. Secondly, his C bug now breaks guard, so he has access to a terrifying fusion of a meterless Crush Trigger and mixup that forces the opponent to either Barrier Block, take the hit, or attempt to use character-specific mobility tools to escape.
Hilarious in Hindsight: One of the alternate colors for some of the female fighters (the 13th one, reserved for references) were done to make them resemble the main heroines of the web series RWBYSpecific characters Es is Ruby, Izayoi is Weiss, Taokaka is Blake and Bullet is Yang. The very next BlazBlue game, BlazBlue: Cross Tag Battle, suddenly reveals that Ruby Rose herself will be dropping in to fight!
A new addition to the roster is Naoto Kurogane ("Kuro" being Japanese for "black".) Eventually the series would cross over with Persona 4 in BlazBlue: Cross Tag Battle, whose roster includes Naoto Shirogane ("Shiro" being Japanese for "white.")
I Knew It!: Practically nobody was surprised at Mai's inclusion as a playable character given that Remix Heart had just gotten a follow up manga two months prior to her anouncement, and Chronophantasma Extend having a recap of the series.
Jerkass Woobie: Nine in spades. She was once hailed as one of the legendary Six Heroes who helped slay the Black Beast - and a hot-tempered Smug Super - only to be betrayed and killed by one of her comrades. Her time in the Boundary has driven her insane, turning her into a vengeful revenant fixated on creating a paradise where only she and Celica can be happy, no matter what Celica has to say on the matter... even if it means destroying the world and everyone in it, including her daughter.
Narm Charm: Everything about Susanoo. He somehow manages to be even more pretentious and over the top than he ever was as Terumi, but having one of the most brutal-looking fighting styles in the series in addition to being a Physical God completely overshadow any ridiculousness about him.
Likewise is his theme, MUST DIE, which is anything but subtle. Its vocals switch between Japanese and Gratuitous EnglishMetal Screaming which periodically chants things like, "WHEN YOU DIE, WHERE'S YOUR GOD...". The result is hilarious, awesome, and terrifying all at once.
Not Badass Enough for Fans: Even if Noel sports her CP costume, her actions in the story seems to regress back into being a Living MacGuffin and is somewhat a Damsel in Distress in the climax of the story. On this, some fans who were pleased with her growing a spine and becoming more confident in CP ended up baffled and turning their back against her once again. This is despite her actually being the one beating Izanami 2/3 to the story.
Overshadowed by Controversy: Even to this day, a considerable chunk of discussions relating to the game revolve around the game's lack of an English dub.
Porting Disaster: When the PC/Steam version was rather botched at release, all other PC versions of BlazBlue run perfectly fine, CF however...well, that varies on the user and their PC specs. Due to mixed reviews over on the PC/Steam release concerning its questionable performance of the many issues the PC version was getting previously now that updates/patches has since fixed lately. Even after the 2.0 update to the PC/Steam version, there are issues here and there, but nothing too serious that updates/patches can't fix.
Replacement Scrappy: How some fans feel about Naoto towards Ragna. Notably, this view is shared in-universe with many characters noting the similarities between the two and the fact that Naoto's existence can potentially overwrite Ragna's and attacking Naoto because of it.
Izanami got a lot of flak for being a boring bland villain and displacing the more popular villains, Terumi and Relius. After she finally gets her hands dirty however, she shows exactly why she's the "Goddess of Death". Having an extremely brutal and truly disturbing fighting style, some of her creepier aspects shown through Act 2, having her motives fleshed out, and having some truly disturbing musical themes have made many fans reconsider their opinion of her.
While Terumi was never an outright scrappy, he was the center of scrutiny in the surroundings times of CP. Many fans found him overexposed and obnoxiously evil with no answers to why he did this or was behind that other than just because, for the sake of the plot, or For the Evulz. At worst, he's considered a flat villain compared to Relius, who touches all bases despite being a fellow Complete Monster. The Story Mode of CF finally delves into his origins and fleshes him out, giving him the context his naysayers have been wanting. Namely that he's a God whose existence is meant to contrast the Master Unit's and destroy everything it creates. Additionally, he takes back his old body, the Susano'o Unit, by backstabbing Hakumen and becoming a new playable character and the Final Boss.
Celica in Chronophantasma attracted A LOT of vitriol for being overly positive and hogging a majority of spotlight despite being just newly introduced to the main storyline. In this game, her role is reduced in a respectful manner that people warmed up to her and she no longer attracted vitriol as big as before.
Naoto Kurogane's reception was mixed, more so in the West, due to being another novel-exclusive character in the vein of Celica. Celica's haters are already dreading the possibilities of the story's handling of Naoto, especially since the PR is giving him top billing alongside Ragna, displacing Jin who's usually the one who gets that honour. Adding to this is the announcement that Es from XBlaze will be featured at the console story mode, which not only brings fears of Continuity Lock-Out, given that some considered XBlaze a flop, but that she and Naoto would have a competition over which newcomer will get the bigger share of the spotlight. In the end, Naoto gets more, but both are arguably not played that much in the first place.
People are also very annoyed at the early story descriptions which confirms this game, or at least the first part of Act 1, will be a retread of Calamity Trigger, having grown tired of all of the time travel/alternate timeline shenanigans and believing that it undoes all the character development of the first three games. This was proven untrue as some of those changes were drastic, like the NOL already being run by Homura, characters who shouldn't be around in the CT timeline (e.g: Tsubaki, Mu, Azrael) are, and the implications of everything being a 'dream world' within the Embryo, plus Nine pretty much unraveling everyone's greatest desires and deconstructing them means that the characterizations might not be undone after all. Sure enough, in the end of Act 2, everyone gets their memories back because of Amaterasu.
The lack of an English dub. After Patrick Seitz complained he was not called for the game's dub, Arc System Works revealed they were not gonna dub the game at all, arguing that it would take six more months for the game to be released if it was to be dubbed, though they didn't rule out the idea of releasing the dub as DLC. Fans were split on how much they cared for this explanation, with those who would have been willing to wait the extra few months being particularly enraged. The controversy would return both when BlazBlue: Cross Tag Battle released with an English voice track two years later (with all regions getting the game within weeks of each other), and when Central Fiction was re-released for the Nintendo Switch, with a subset of fans still continuing to ask that they go back and dub this installment.
Nine's Kunzite of Prison Break spell, a huge crystalline boulder made by combining two fire spells and a water spell, and one of the reasons why she's a consistently high-tier character. It's an overhead attack that pops the opponent up for a combo and comes out faster than any overhead has any right to, turning the fight into a deadly guessing game that is costly when lost, and is also very dangerous on block due to inflicting a long blockstun, allowing Nine to maintain her offense. Another is her Navy Pressure special move, which is similar to Kunzite but can track the opponent's position, though it does have a longer activation delay.
Izanami's Shield of Dreams, also known as the Ribcage, is one of the main reasons she is a top tier character. It blocks all attacks except for throws and unblockables while still being able to move around and attack freely, at the cost of her Barrier Gauge, but she can deactivate it anytime.
They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: The removal of SMP, which prevents the same move being spammed in a combo, has caused a lot of strife. Most notably, Hakumen is capable of going corner to corner and dealing upward of 9k with just Mugen, Overdrive, and two moves, and Arakune was designed to be balanced by it, with his curse-inducing moves and bugs preventing him from getting the effortless curse and damage he now has.
Hibiki's tidbits in Arcade mode, revealing him as a psychotic assassin, go completely unused in Story Mode, where he's still the completely loyal adjutant of Kagura. He makes no attempts to act on his desires to assassinate his boss and his psychosis is largely unaddressed. Likewise not all of the Arcade stories appear in the Story mode, although many of them are simply side-stories that are implied to happen alongside the main story, unlike Hibiki's, which gives out some implications.
Es and Mai don't make much impact on the story and their backstories aren't much elaborated on in Centralfiction, though Mai's backstory was introduced in the Remix Heart Gaiden story section of Chronophantasma Extend. Naoto is only slightly better-off: While some elements and plot points of Bloodedge Experience help on understanding this game's plot, his appearance is partly explained and reveals the existence of multiple universes, and he does something of note in the climax by stopping Ragna from going completely berserk against Hazama, he's also rather underplayed and the plot of his novel is never explored, unlike Celica's case in Chronophantasma. The game also never explains how he has a life-link with Rachel or how his existence threatens Ragna's.
The game has the theme for Es vs Nine/Celica (End Gazer) and Hakumen vs Susanoo (GOD OF WAR). In the story, they never fight each other. Although that second one makes quiet a bit of sense considering that the two use the same body and therefore can't exist at the same time.
Most of XBlaze: Lost Memories was focused on Es becoming friends with Nine and Celica and the ending implies they will meet again. Despite this, Es doesn't so much as speak to either of them in the entire game.
In Act 2 of arcade mode Amane revives Takamagahara but they never do anything in Story mode and aren't even mentioned aside from one throwaway line by Amane in the ending.
In arcade mode there are several hints as to Relius having his own evil plans, specifically his intent to make Ignis into a replacement Master Unit. However, Relius barely does anything in story mode and just walks away into the Boundary to continue his research, getting away scot free.
They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: Act 3 of arcade mode revolves around the cast struggling with the decision of whether or not to kill Noel so they can fulfill their desires and various characters choosing either to kill or protect her. This sets up situations like Tsubaki choosing to fight against Jin and Hakumen for Noel's sake and Noel having a breakdown from so many people trying to kill her. In story mode Kokonoe and Kagura find Noel almost immediately and hide her away so no one can fight over her and she doesn't suffer any trauma because of it.
In the same Act, Tsubaki learns that Hakumen is Jin and it's implied that her gaining that knowledge will make something bad happen to her. In story mode she is not seen learning this information and if she did offscreen (since it's implied that many arcade stories did actually happen even if they're not seen) there are no repercussions.
Lambda's arcade mode shows her starting to act on her own instantly simply following Kokonoe's orders. No such thing is done with her in the main story mode.
Naoto. After Celica, fans didn't expect anymore novel characters to appear, let alone from Bloodedge Experience, a series that has very loose ties to the main series.
Es. Considering XBlaze is generally pretty separate from the main series, mostly only being referenced in a few Continuity Nods, having her show up is more surprising than Celica and Naoto, who were at least from sources under the BlazBlue name. Played with for western fans in that she averts Marth Debuted in "Smash Bros." unlike Celica or Naoto.
Susanoo. Arcsys were very good at keeping him a Secret Character, which only made it that much more surprising when he was revealed. Any time a new character is added to the roster, they're given a short preview video to advertise their presence for the release. Susanoo is the only character to not get this treatment in the entire history of the series. In short, he was such an unexpected addition, nobody even knew of his existence until the release of the console version.
Jubei, less so because of the character choice and more so because it actually happened. Fans had been wanting to play him for a long time, especially since every other member of the Six Heroes was already playable, so once Central Fiction was released and there was still no sign of a playable Jubei, fans started to give up hope. Then, at least half a year after Central Fiction's release, the bombshell that was Jubei's reveal trailer dropped at EVO, signaling that not only were the fans' wildest dreams coming true, Blazblue was still raring and ready to go for another round.
On Litchi's side, she is put through hell and torment throughout the whole game, her quest rendered All for Nothing, though she's able to move on. The game seems like to want to portray her as a tragic figure. However, since she ends up running out of Moral Luck, her detractors felt more justified in pointing out how her bad decisions make her look worse and unsympathetic, helping Relius for the sake of one friend (referred as a 'murder blob') and abandoning and possibly backstabbing her other friends, even if there was no meaningful casualties from it, is considered as a Moral Event Horizon and the fact that she managed to move on and get an actually happy ending is considered not having to pay for the crime of helping Relius (losing Roy is considered too light for a punishment) instead of finally getting a break after three/four games of misery.
Arakune/Roy in the last moments refused to be helped by Litchi and prefers staying at the Boundary to fulfill his own research on his own will. While it does good to make Litchi finally move on (if he begged like a helpless person like in CS, it wouldn't work so he had to be Cruel to Be Kind), it didn't translate well to some people that consider Roy's actions are very insensitive on Litchi who sacrificed everything for his sake, so to some, this act of mercy ends up considered an Ungrateful Bastard moment.
◊, her win pose has her stomping on the opponent's head, and her defeated pose, like Rachel, Slayer, and Elizabeth before her, is simply her casually laying down
