YMMV / Dissidia Final Fantasy: Opera Omnia

• Better Off Sold: Any bronze-level equipment. When the game began, the small number of character weapons and low power requirements meant that bronze could be usefully equipped if a banner failed to yield the gold or silver, but this period was very brief. Since only four-star and above equipment gives stat bonuses, the only thing that bronze equipment really does is take up inventory space, and there's an option to automatically sell any obtained bronze- and silver-level equipment gotten from draws.
• Broken Base:
  • Vincent should have been an easy favorite as the second 3rd Anniversary LD, however there was one glaring issue; his release was a well-hidden secret! Nothing had ever hinted that a second Global Exclusive LD would be released, and the only news fans got was a vague teaser on Twitter 24 hours before his release (a blurry image of Chaos, making fans wonder if they were getting Vincent LD, or early release of Garland's BT). While Vincent has a lot of fans, many players plan their resources carefully for future banners, something that has never been a problem prior to this surprise banner. Also, just like Balthier, Vincent didn't get a rework nor his LD Boards. This has been pretty much resolved once Vincent finally got his boards as well as his Burst Weapon.
  • Many fans were underwhelmed with Balthier as the game's second Global Exclusive LD, as while he's a FFXII Ensemble Dark Horse, he did not receive any form of rework nor did he get his LD Boards causing some contention since he didn't premier as a Game-Breaker like Vivi did on his initial release. Still, as many point out Balthier's party buffs granted by his LD may be essential in some of the upcoming Lufenia stages once enemy BRV Damage reduction kicks into high gear, and Balthier's kit is still on par with current meta if you know how to use him. Another issue is that his alternate costume is from Tactics... which is a sore spot for global players who are constantly begging for more Tactics characters.
  • The announcement of Llyud's debut sparked heated debate; on the one hand he is the first original character from Final Fantasy XII: Revenant Wings, opening up the opportunity for other characters like Kytes, Filo, and even Ba'Gamnan to join the game, plus his playstyle is both something new and useful in the current meta. However, there are vocal fans who are upset Llyud is yet another more obscure Final Fantasy character added before fan favorites, such as Rikku and Red XIII who have yet to be included three whole years since the game launched.
  • Level 90 ended up being quite controversial; some players are excited that the new level cap increase signifies the near end of the LD era as well as the Dissidia character Burst era, and what will be coming next. However, there are also those who are concerned the new level cap is turning every character into a numbers game, stripping away what made them unique in the first place with them now doing a ridiculous amount of Brave damage to the point the numbers can obscure their battle animations, and seeing this as a clear sign the game is suffering from Seasonal Rot.
  • With Sice's inclusion, Type-0's entire cast of cadets is complete^note except for Lean Joker and Tiz, the latter of which doesn't even have combat abilities. On the one hand, Sice has been anticipated as she is one of the few scythe specialists in the series, plus is a fan favorite from her home game. On the other hand, being from Type-0 there will of course be fans upset that a more cult classic Spin-Off would have their entire roster completed before IV, VI, VII, IX, or X, all beloved commercial favorites in their own rights.
  • Jessie Raspberry from FFVII, a character who doesn't even survive the first disc and never joins the party, let alone has ever shown any abilities in battle, is being added to the game; before Angeal, Genesis, or even Red XIII who is a main character. Granted, Jessie does have her fans, especially thanks to her slightly bigger role in Remake; but even there the only "battle" ability Jessie has ever shown was in the Fort Condor minigame. While there are most certainly people who are happy with about any Final Fantasy character being added to the roster, Jessie can certainly be a tipping point for some in the argument against focusing on obscure characters over those considered main characters.
  • The Global-exclusive Abyss content has had tumultuous reception, on the one hand having extra content and therefore extra resources that the JP side of the game did not receive is usually well accepted, however since the content is experimental there have been complaints due to how restrictive it could get (players could only use characters from one specific game like FFVII, or had to use units of specific gem color combinations while also using weapon types that may have very limited options coupled with those colors). To be fair, the development team appear to be very receptive to the player feedback, and Abyss is ever-evolving to make it more accessible while also still providing a challenge (and let's face it, still make the game money).
  • Dare to Defy; many players are happy to see Global-exclusive content and early access to much needed Force resources. However, due to the nature of the content there are fans who argue Dare to Defy is blatant manipulation to get players to invest more resources into early Force Weapon releases, when many recommendations from streamers with the foresight of the JP releases advised players to not go too crazy on early Force as much better weapons would be released in the future, and most early Shinryu can be handled with a handful of choice units. Dare to Defy puts a wrench into those plans, however, since it locks out units as you complete them, and while one can beat them without a Force Unit, it literally doubles the amount of time needed to beat it (compare 12-15 minutes vs. 25-30 minutes a fight). Dare to Defy 2 seems to be much better accepted, however, since by that time there's a rather decent cache of powerful Force units to choose from.
  • The Year Five Anniversary on Global revealed a new global first Force Weapon and Burst Weapon for none other than Penelo from Final Fantasy XII. Looking at her new weapons and updates, Penelo most certainly appears to be a very strong unit, being referred to as an offensively-focused Hope by comparison, but with strong boosts to her HP Attacks (including a new HP Attack available during her Burst buff) to improve her damage output. However, there was no way Penelo would not be a polarizing choice from the devs regardless of her stats, since there will always be people who complain about their personal preferences not being accounted for (more representation for XIV or Tactics, or, of course, people complaining that any Global First is not Rikku or Red XIII).
  • The end of service; of course, there will be many players who would wish the game would have continued, especially with rumors they were going to merge the Global and Japanese servers. Others, however, accept the game had run its course and could no longer provide reliably fun experience, and it was better to end it now before the game completely lost support.
• Complacent Gaming Syndrome:
  • When selecting a support character from other players, the selections tend to be a few key characters.
    • In the early Lv. 50 era, Vaan and Squall were common supporters due to being efficient DPS units.
    • For a long time, Quistis was a very popular support for Degenerator Whip, which (assuming she has all her passives) batteries the party depending on her max BRV and delays the target three turns, long enough for Quistis to get her next turn and do it again, delaying the target for a long time. With a party able to pull their weight in DPS, against many single-target bosses Quistis was able to ensure they'd never get a turn before they were destroyed. Power Creep has rendered this strategy less viable, but she still has use when grinding Summon Boards.
    • For a time when Realizations were added, Cloud was the go-to support for many fights due to his ability to Paralyze with Cross-Slash, ability to Launch with Finishing Touch, and his EX+ Meteorain recharged after just one turn, and all three of them were powerful BRV+HP attacks.
    • Setzer saw a major upshot in usage when his EX+ and rework came, turning Red Card into a three hit BRV+HP combo that hits three times and delay the enemy one turn, making him a ridiculous DPS unit. Beyond that though, his BRV Freeze is useful against many bosses to keep them from regaining BRV for two of their turns, and his EX is a powerful BRV+HP group hitting attack that batteries the party. He got another uptick in usage near the end of the Lufenia era when he got his LD, which grants the party a buff that gives them a chance to inflict "rainbow" BRV damage (hit the maximum possible damage cap) whenever they deal BRV damage, making him an obscenely useful offensive buffer.
    • Sherlotta also saw some usage as a support due to being a battery and a decent DPS. Her EX batteries the party and boosts the HP damage they inflict, and one of her abilities batteries the party and then deals three HP attacks each doing damage equal to a party member's BRV.
    • With the addition of Burst weapons, characters equipped with them are gaining in popularity. While you're not supposed to be able to use more than one Burst per battle, Loophole Abuse allows a Support Character to use their Finishing Move while your home character gets their full Burst. In many cases, this is enough to take out bosses.
  • For character in the player's home party:
    • Warrior of Light himself has been one of the most future-proof characters via the several gradual changes that have been made to him (Lv 60 awakening, rework, etc.); for he can shield, be a BRV battery, act as DPS/DPT, can aggro enemy units, and heal with his EX. With the latest release of his EX+ in Garland's event, he seems to be even more of a staple than before.
    • During the 35 CP era, Sephiroth and King were highly used due to being powerful DPS units who could buff themselves, and King's second ability refreshes his first ability and buffs it from a BRV attack to a BRV+HP attack.
  • Because she's just such a ridiculous Game-Breaker, Aranea Highwind is powerful both as a friend support and for home parties, because a fully built Aranea can basically do everything the above characters can — delay enemies several turns, deal ridiculous DPS with BRV+HP attacks (one of which is group-hitting and deals 50% HP damage to non-targets, boosted to 80% with Overclock status), and her Highwind attack inflicts the Vitalcrusher status that makes all attacks on the debuffed enemy critical hits and boosts the damage of critical hits, so even once her turns run out the party's damage outfit will benefit greatly from her brief presence. She's an extremely powerful character in pretty much any battle outside of Chaos-tier and things that resist her damage type (and she's still viable for many Chaos battles, just not every one), and all of the Summon Board bosses can be trivialized with an Aranea support.
  • Once Garnet got her Global-first Burst, she became a go-to unit both for party compositions and supports, because just like Aranea, Garnet with her BT+ is just that good, able to act as an all-in-one enchanter, buffer, battery, healer, DPT, and off-turn damage dealer, and she has a lot of longevity due to high charges on her skills and her EX and LD giving her free skill uses and recharging her skill uses. Unless the battle is one where her imperil debuffs are likely to be pushed off of enemies, Garnet was one of the best characters up to the dawn of the Force era.
  • This even applies to artifacts. Barring very few exceptions, the usual "best in slot" passives tend to often be Attack +108 and Max BRV +330 with a few specific others. When decking out a character with artifact passives, these are usually the most common ones to aim for with Eidogas and/or Eidojas. The one notable exception are passives that increase the potency of an invisible aura framed-buff, as it maximizes boosts without taking up very limited buff slots (such as Selphie, Barrett, or Agrias' auras).
• Complete Monster: Kefka Palazzo is an insane mage who causes destruction and chaos just because he can. Controlling the mind of Terra Branford and manipulating Vincent Valentine to fight the heroes for him, Kefka later aids in the defense of the Blackened Will, so that it may finish its goal of destroying the world the characters are fighting in. In Arc 2 Chapter 5, Kefka breaks away from Spiritus and makes his own play for power, seizing control of a number of Dark Manikins and killing another Planesgorger to absorb its ability to devour worlds. Infusing his own hatred and the Planesgorger's power into the Dark Manikins, Kefka cultivates dark energy in them that he uses to create another Blackened Will. So dangerous is Kefka's ploy that not even the other villains want any part in it, and the threat of another Blackened Will convinces Materia and Spiritus to work together to create a Torsion the heroes can use to pursue Kefka and destroy his creation. Possessing no empathy for anyone, having no goal but destruction for the sake of destruction, and expressing interest in unleashing in his Blackened Will on other worlds once he's done here, the Warriors of Light themselves consider Kefka the worst of Spiritus's warriors.
• Creator's Pet:
  • Some fans have noted Type-0 has a lot of characters in the game, in spite of it being more of a cult classic (and there being main characters from more commercially popular series who have yet to be implemented like Red XIII from VII and Rikku from X). However it should be noted a reason for this may have something to do with Type-0 having one of the largest casts of playable characters in the franchise, up there with Final Fantasy VI (Type-0 has 14 cadets from the class, not including any villains or guest characters, the same number as VI who have already implemented Kefka and General Leo). This persists to when Burst Weapons are officially opened up to everyone (no more limitations based on being a main character or a new release), with three of the earliest more minor characters to get Burst Weapons being Queen, Cater, and Deuce, all Type-0 characters within a rather short window.
  • With the Type-0 character releases slowing down now that we have every cadet, many fans have come to regard the franchise's poster child Final Fantasy VII as the new pet, with the most character releases and story chapters focused on them. There is always at least one new character from VII waiting to be released in Global, to the point where, like clockwork, every time one of them came to Global another got announced nine months ahead in Japan right after. Furthermore, as of the time of this writing, four out of eight of the Act 4 chapters focus on plots or characters from VII.
• Demonic Spiders:
  • Malboros are back and they've got their signature Bad Breath to cripple the party with status ailments. Unless you have Esuna or can rebuff the party to cycle the debuffs out, have fun watching your characters whiff their attacks while losing BRV to poison every turn.
  • Worm-type enemies can use Gravity Spin to set their BRV to an amount based on their target's HP, and then deal HP damage — higher-level Worms will use variants that not only grant more BRV, but hit the entire party. They will always do this on their first turn, which they often get before yours, but even if you move before them and inflict Break it doesn't matter, their BRV still recovers to the set amount when they use the attack anyway. This can severely weaken a party on arrival when they appear in a wave, and unless you have a White Mage it'll likely ruin any "take no more than X amount of HP damage" objectives you have.
  • Lamia Queens come in two other enemies to help them, and when they die, the Lamia Queen will use Raise and Arise to continuously revive them, and they can do this indefinitely, turning the battle into a game of Whack-An-Enemy, and that's assuming you have the means to keep up with the revivals anyway.
  • Gigantoad enemies on higher difficulties have a trick up their sleeve in the form of an attack called Toad, which inflicts a rare status effect called Frog which causes all BRV hits to only do 1 damage. Gigantoads have this attack on lesser difficulties as well, but since they are likely to die in a single attack, its unlikely to be seen unless they have an HP spike to survive for longer.
• Difficulty Spike: The game is in a constant cycle coinciding with the release of a new Harder Than Hard mode, usually along with a new power-up meant to compliment the new spike in difficulty. The issue is since it couples with the release of said buff, the first few missions in the new difficulty offers a very meager offering of characters actually strong enough to stand a chance without a lot of strategy and reliance on good luck:
  • EX difficulty coincided with the release of 35CP weapons, which upgraded characters Skill 2 into having new effects, or hitting a lot harder, as EX Stages got harder, EX Weapons were released, which gave players a third rechargeable skill to use.
  • When Cosmos difficulty was released, it was along with Level 60 Awakenings, giving some characters a ten level boost over others.
  • Chaos difficulty came at the same time as Realization, not only giving a character's EX Skill a much needed power boost, but also giving a boost to stats such as Attack and Max Brave which helped some characters keep up.
  • Lufenia difficulty, in which enemies have a timer leading up to a Total Party Kill attack, was released along with LD Weapons and Burst Weapons.
  • Boss Rush came about as the Level Cap was raised to 80.
  • Lufenia+ was introduced with the advent of Burst Weapon Realization into Burst+ Weapons.
  • Shinryu Difficulty was released alongside Force Weapons, and just a couple months after the level 90 cap.
• Fanfic Fuel: Like the other entries in Dissidia, this game provides an excellent way to write crossover adventures and pairings. It helps that pretty much every character seems to be on their way given enough time.
• Fan Nick Name:
  • Queen from Type-0 is usually referred to as the "Yandere Queen" due to her EX ... in spite of the fact she actually isn't Yandere by definition^note A Yandere is usually someone who goes Ax-Crazy because they are insanely and obsessively in love, while Queen goes into bloodlust when she's backed into a corner in battle and not over some romantic interest.
  • With the release of Snow's Burst Weapon comes a strategy that fans refer to as "Snowverflow". It's a devastating but rather finicky method of retaining mass amounts of Brave above a character's normal Max Brave limit that requires several prerequisites.^note In simplest terms, using Snow's BT Effect with another Burst Weapon user, although said character may need to unequip several passives that allow them to gain Brave over their normal limit (such as most Blue Armor passives) as well as possibly unequip their Ultimate Weapon should they be using one; this coupled with potent Max Brave/Brave Regen/Brave Retention effects from the party or using LD Calls (such as Lenna, Sherlotta, Cait Sith, or Iroha as an example) and it can lead to absolute brutal output in terms of millions of extra HP Damage.
  • Jegran is known as "Shrek" to the most of the fanbase, due to having green skin and an association with onions (Lilties are often derisively called "onions" in Crystal Bearers, and the "Ogres are like onions" meme).
  • With the release of her Burst Weapon, Cissnei has been compared to Greninja from Pokémon X and Y due to the fact both of them use Water Shuriken.
• Game-Breaker: Enough to have its own page
• God Damn Bats:
  • Ahriman-type enemies like to randomly counter attacks with Gaze to inflict Paralyze, which isn't much of a danger on its own but does serve to waste your time, especially if they use it on a summoned friend.
  • The Weretigers are easily among the most reviled bosses among the playerbase, not because they're difficult, but because their animations take for-fucking-ever. And they come in packs of three, so you're forced to sit there and watch in utter annoyance as these bosses take their sweet ass time to buff themselves.
  • In general during the CHAOS-level stages any wave that only includes basic enemies are considered this. These enemies are very unlikely to actually kill your party, but because they have so much extra health the player has to decide whether they want to waste precious resources they'd rather save for the final wave to take them out in 1-2 turns, or save their special moves but waste 4-6 turns taking them out (with most CHAOS stages having very strict turn counts). Fans have taken to calling these said enemies as "trash waves".
• Goddamned Boss: Shiva and Brothers from the World of Illusion dungeons get a lot of ire mainly because these two are the only Eidolons who have 2 phases which change when you deplete a certain threshold of their HP making it longer to grind their Training and Illusion points.
• Good Bad Bugs:
  • During Maria's Character Event there are a pair of particularly difficult bosses called the Spark Eyes, Ahriman-type enemies who resist Thunder and Water-elements (making DPS like or Lightning or Beatrix, or debuffers like Garnet or Faris completely useless) and cast a special Aura buff on themselves in three stages that can cause them to constantly spam high-powered Magic+HP AOE Attacks coupled with boosted stats. During the EX version of this fight they actually cast their first Aura buff turns 1+2 regardless of your character's speed. However, a glitch was discovered that if you use your Summon on the wave before so it carries over into the final wave, and then manage to wittle down the bosses' HP to around 80% before they get a turn, it bugs out their programming, since at 80% Health is about when they cast the second tier of their buff. As a result, the Spark Eyes end up in an endless loop of casting buff 1 and buff 2 every single turn, and never have a chance to do anything else. Surprisingly, this glitch while known about during Maria's initial release was not patched at first when her Lost Chapter was released, so it could still be exploited. A few weeks after, it was finally fixed.
  • Free-turn counters from Relm's Sketch debuff or Eald'narche's Warp debuff can be used to call an Assist Character, however since the turn is still considered free it doesn't count towards the normal 5-turn limit, allowing Assist characters to be used for 6 turns instead. This also works in reverse, Relm and Eald'narche called as an Assist Character will not have their free-turn counters count against them, potentially giving them a lot of extra turns beyond the normal 5-turn limit. No other free-turn effect in the game has the same effect on Assist Character turns.
  • Selphie's Call abilities will also grant the party her EX Aura Buff (assuming Selphie's EX+ is at least 1/3 leveled); which then therefore be extended permanently with characters such as Squall's EX+ or Aerith's LD follow-up which extends their buffs. This also works on Firion (as long as the Selphie Call is equipped on him), even though his EX+ is only supposed to extend self-granted buffs, because the call is equipped to him it counts as a self-granted buff.
  • The Divine Alexander fights have a mechanic where having all 3 party members at maximum BRV at the same will cause Alexander to instantly counter with Sacred Crime, an AoE BRV attack that resets the party's BRV to 0 without Breaking them: enter Gladio, whose LD ability allows him to counter all enemy BRV attacks with a BRV+HP attack of his own that batteries the party based on HP damage done. Thus, if you maximize Gladio's BRV and HP damage output with various buffs, debuffs and auras while simultaneously making sure the party has low enough maximum BRV by removing various passive abilities so that Gladio will always battery the party to maximum BRV with his counter, you'll enter an infinite counter loop where Alexander futilely tries to reduce the party's BRV to 0, triggering Gladio's counter in the process and taking a good chunk of HP damage off him while maxing the party's BRV, which then triggers another Sacred Crime, continuing until something interrupts the loop or either Alexander or Gladio is dead, and since Alexander's counters deal only BRV damage and Gladio is immune to BRV and HP damage while his LD buff is up unless an attack specifically bypasses that property, only the former option is possible. What's even better is that since no player or enemy actions are being taken during the counter loop, Alexander can't gain his normal HP threshold -based auras to potentially lower Gladio's BRV damage or battery enough to break the loop or activate his Lufenia orb, letting Gladio essentially solo Alexander completely unopposed. Galuf and Beatrix can also pull of a similar strategy with their counter attacks which also function in a similar manner.
    • The Lufenia fight against 2 Sanctuary Keepers in the first part of Chapter 3-4 has a similar bug with Cor and Eald'narche: once the enemy's HP drops below 80%, they inflict the party with a debuff that grants the enemy an extra turn whenever the character with the debuff acts, but Cor's followup attack that triggers prior to the enemy's turn both triggers this effect on its own and also counts added enemy turns as a new enemy turn. As a result, after you've been inflicted with the debuff, you can use Eald'narche's burst to stack a number of enemy turns without having the debuff run out, have Eald'narche himself gain an extra turn after the enemy takes their turn and then use that extra turn to use your summon, which allows Cor to start his infinite loop when he next triggers his followup.
  • Kadaj's EX Debuff Stigma causes any debuff inflicted by him to become gold framed, meaning they cannot be dispelled even by enemies who can cleanse their debuffs. Normally debuffs inflicted by Kadaj's calls are not able to be framed, however there is a workaround if Kadaj inflicts a debuff using an E-type sphere and then uses his call to inflict a stronger version of the same debuff (for instance, using a Laguna E-type sphere to inflict Max BRV Down, and then using a Serah Call to a more potent Max BRV Down to overwrite it). This only works if both the sphere and call are used by Kadaj, however.
  • Caius' overhead buff, Heart of Chaos, allows him stay alive at 1 HP upon taking enough damage that would normally kill him regardless of how much HP he has left before that, followed by him being healed back to maximum HP and losing the buff and its protection: however, if he's equiped with Ceodore's or Nine's sphere and the enemy that dealt the fatal blow has been inflicted with his Doom debuff, the Doom debuff breaks the enemy after its turn, triggering the sphere's effect and healing some of Caius' HP. Since Caius is no longer at 1 HP after the sphere's effect triggers, Heart of Chaos doesn't activate and isn't consumed, letting him essentially become immortal as long as the enemy attacking him has the Doom debuff.
  • All Burst Finishers have greatly increased maximum BRV damage and maximum BRV caps which lets them do 1m damage or more to their target(s) when fully realized, even though they generally only have a 2 HP dumps on average: however, the greatly increased maximum BRV cap stays in effect as long as the character's current BRV exceeds their normal BRV cap limits, even after using the Burst Finisher. Normally, the last HP dump of a Burst Finisher resets the character's BRV to 0 and thus resets the BRV cap limit to normal and any BRV refunds only trigger after this reset, but if the character has some kind of effect that lets them retain a portion of their BRV after an HP attack or an effect that refunds their BRV after every HP attack, they can abuse the temporarily increased BRV cap to let them deal much higher damage than normal until their current BRV drops low enough for it to be unable to keep the higher cap in effect: the characters who're able to make use of this oversight on their own include Jecht and Locke, and Snow's Burst buff applies the BRV refund effect to the entire party for its duration, greatly increasing the damage potential of anyone else in the party with access to a Burst of their own. Later Shinryu fights finally made this tactic useless by capping the amount of BRV any given source can grant to a character to 30% of their maximum HP damage cap, making it extremely hard if not outright impossible to use in practice.
  • Cor has an interesting bug with his 'Oath of Absolute Defense' buff; under normal circumstances said buff can only be applied to one ally at a time, if Cor places it on a different party member it is erased from the previous member. However, when Kain uses Double Jump or when Freya uses Descending Dragon they leave the battlefield and become immune to having their buffs altered, either gaining new buffs or losing old buffs. As a result, if one of these characters have the 'Oath' buff and then leaves the battlefield, they will retain the buff even if Cor places it on a different ally, effectively allowing Cor to have it on two allies at the same time (which means he will pre-counter for both allies, along with himself, during an enemy all-attack). This tactic can also be used if you place the buff on a party member and then switch then for a Friend Unit, if you give the buff to your other party member both will have the buff when your original unit returns, or if you buff one of the active characters in a 6 man fight and then switch them to one of the characters in the reserve when you buff the other active member. His Burst makes this into an actual feature, allowing him to buff both party members without dispelling it from the other character while his Burst buff is up.
  • Under specific circumstances, characters who can gain instant turns that don't count towards the turn count and either have free skill uses during those instant turns or are able to spam their HP+ attack for much the same effect can easily kill any boss without mechanics that specifically prevent it regardless of how much HP the boss has: Zell can spam his first base skill endlessly if the fight's mechanics prevent him from buffing himself, which is what changes his base skills to a different type that aren't free to use or instant, Yda can extend her buffs and deal damage endlessly with her HP+ if she can break the enemy every turn, which is easiest accomplished with Sephiroth's Burst buff, and Ultimecia can loop her EX ability endlessly if there's enough buffs in the party to increase her EX recharge rate to the degree that it'll be useable again by the time its instant turn effect wears off, which can be accomplished with the combination of Quina and either one of Selphie's calls. Naturally, since none of these setups can take advantage of Force Time, beating a Shinryu fight using any of these methods takes massive amounts of real time, although thankfully Auto+ can keep running then until the end of the battle if you don't mind not being able to use your device for a few hours.
  • While Iris' Burst buff is active, the enemy's maximum BRV is reduced to 0, both making them unable to deal any HP damage to the party via normal means as well as making them recover from Break every second turn which can be abused by characters like Dorgann. However, there's yet another, seemingly unintentional effect to the enemy having a maximum BRV of 0: since 0 is the only BRV amount the enemy can have, any attack or effect that reduces the enemy's BRV to 0 is now counted as granting the enemy extra BRV, essentially unbreaking them in the process. This is best utilitzed by Maria's LD trap, which triggers before the enemy turn to reduce their BRV to 0 followed by dealing BRV+HP damage to them, making it so that if there's more than 1 enemy present, their turns are one after another and one of them gets a turn, they keep getting broken and unbroken and their turns are delayed alternatingly until Maria's trap debuff finally expires: with Dorgann in the party and his Force Time active, the enemy will be mostly if not entirely dead from his repeated followups before that happens.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • With the reveal of Reks' FR Partner being Jack from FF0, some fans have pointed out the biggest thing they have in common is that Jack stabs himself to get a power-up during his EX, whereas Reks was stabbed to death during the tutorial of FFXII.
  • Jessie Raspberry's Lost Chapter includes a new cutscene where she's concerned Avalanche isn't actually doing anything to stop Shinra, and ultimately they might be doing more harm than good. The party members she talks to (all known as rebels in their own way) help to confirm she still believes in the case and assure her she should stick with it until the end. None of them, Jessie included, know that she's destined to die during the attack that destroys Sector 7, taking thousands of innocent lives with her when Shinra works to snuff out their small rebellion force.
• High-Tier Scrappy: Characters with high speed and a Consecutive Turn mechanic in Co-op, such as Aranea, Lightning, Vayne, Terra, and Tidus can be very annoying for players as they tend to steal a lot of turns. There is no doubt these characters are powerful exactly for this reason, but many would rather have a slightly harder time with the mission as opposed to having to wait several turns to make another move. This is especially annoying if players try bringing these types of characters in Co-op if they are not Synergy, as their inclusion while powerful can take away some of the completion rewards.
• Ho Yay:
  • Firion's earnest admiration for almost everyone he meets, male or female, can give the impression that he has a crush on much of the cast.
  • Paine is extremely invested in Yuna getting her memories back and her emotional well-being in general, and Yuna takes the role of Nostalgic Narrator about Paine joining the party the same way she did with Tidus in X-2. Paine's continued behavior towards Yuna, along with the audience seeing her inner monologue about Yuna more than once, can come off as Paine having unrequited feelings for her.
• Hype Backlash:
  • While Iroha can be a very useful unit, quite a few players suspected her hype prior to her release was linked more towards her beautiful attack animations over her actual utility, prioritizing style over substance.
  • Setzer's LD Release. Not so much for the weapon itself, fans were understandably and reasonably excited for it, however the devs seemed to take that information and changed the banner he would be on for his Global release. Originally Setzer's LD came with a final chance at Tidus's Burst Weapon (also highly sought after), but when released in Global, Tidus's Burst was removed and was replaced with Amidatelion's gear, who although a strong unit has not aged well in the current meta. Fans accused the devs of purposely screwing the player base over to make money, knowing fans would pull on Setzer no matter what, so much so even the next month's preview video addresses the fact they've heard the complaints and will try and do better in the future.
  • The Global December 2021 preview was met with an underwhelming response, due to the fact the previous month only featured three weeks worth of content, causing players to start making wild assumptions that some sort of surprise was coming, be it an event or a new character. Nothing that was not already expected to be released was shown, however, and the scheduling was most likely done to avoid having a stream during Thanksgiving weekend, causing fans to work themselves into excitement over nothing.
• It's Hard, So It Sucks!:
  • A regular complaint throughout the game's lifetime (to varying degrees) is that the highest-tier difficulty battles are too difficult. Naturally, the highest tier battles of character events tend to have bosses that are somehow designed to be countered by the spotlight characters, ergo you're expected to have that character fully built with all their Relics and abilities mastered, which means spending more gems on the item banner, making the game feel like its Pay To Win. But even if you do have that character fully built, you need two teammates for them of a similar power level that can pull their weight in the fight, and of course that is still no guarantee of victory. For a time in the COSMOS and CHAOS eras, this level of challenge ironically had the inverse effect from its intent — because each new event was so hard as to be unfeasible without a handful of specific party compositions, it meant that overall most characters weren't viable for a significant amount of content and players weren't going to chase their Relics if they felt they weren't going to get enough usage out of them. GL particularly has months of advance knowledge on upcoming events and character reworks, making it a simple decision to ignore a character and save your gems for someone better coming after them. Fortunately, the developers have listened to community feedback and loosened some of the difficulty during the time, and the LUFENIA era isn't as grueling as CHAOS was (at least when CHAOS began and was a big Difficulty Spike from COSMOS).
  • In the 35CP era, some community members compared the Global and Japanese versions of the game and found that GL bosses sometimes had higher stats than in the JP versions, making it seem like the developers were taking difficult battles and making them even harder for international players.
  • The Dimension's End missions. Early releases of this feature included difficulties ranging from EX to COSMOS to CHAOS, but then there's Entropy. Entropy is a series of CHAOS-level missions that you have to Perfect (complete all mission requirements such as low HP damage taken and low turn count, coupled with a strict overall score requirement), meaning once you've completed it the characters you've used are barred from being used in any future missions (unless you replay the mission with other characters). This means multiple parties of fully built characters are called for in order to complete them. At the least the rewards for doing so are very good and Dimension's End is a permanent fixture unlike the cycling character events, so players know they'll be Power Creeped sooner or later. On the other hand, in 2020 the developers started releasing the GL Entropy stages faster than JP got them, making it seem like players were expected to keep up with the incoming content and thus spend more money on the gacha
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • With the advent of both Eight from Type-0 being released via his event before the 7th story chapter of Arc 2 featuring Ignis of XV....many people who wanted Kingdom Hearts characters for Opera Omnia may fail and/or find it funny to realize that both Eight and Ignis have the same respective Japanese voice actors as main KH characters Sora and Riku; this likely could not have been a coincidence.
• Memetic Mutation: Most of these tend to spawn from the Discord community for the game:
  • Yuffie's Lethal Joke Character status in the GL version, due to her 35CP passive's rather niche-yet-useful applications (since Yuffie herself in GL wasn't awakened yet during the time her very-late 35CP was finally released during Krile's GL Lost Chapter). It's to the point where an emote of Megumin's face with Yuffie's features instead pops up from time to time. Also extending to Yuffie, many people give her the Fan Nickname "Yubbie". So far as of typing this, this may merely stick for the GL version as the JP version had already released her potent EX+ and gave her a solid rework.
  • Warrior of Light's Fan Nickname of SWoLE due to his amazing longevity despite him being an early-designed character thanks to his amazing rework during the first Lv. 70 batch in JP. Likewise, Golbez is also named as SWolbEz.
  • People wanting Kingdom Hearts characters to be added to the cast, despite the fact that it's been said that Square will not focus on collabs for this particular title unlike with games like Brave Exvius.
  • Cyan due to being a very badly-designed character for this game, and in regards to his neck during his in-battle stance being quite long.
  • Due to how the name of Vanille's EX ability is rendered (as "Death version XIII"), it is jokingly referred to as "Death 13" while also calling it Vanille's Stand.
  • What did Global players do when weapon reskins became an option? Swapped out every sword-user's weapon appearance with the generic axe weapon.
  • "SUCH DEVASTATION! THIS WAS NOT MY INTENTION!"^ExplanationRamza's Burst Weapon, Excalibur, has the skill Ultima. Longtime players of 14 who go through the Praetorium, a Marathon Level primarily because of the Unskippable Cutscenes, are treated to Lahabrea triggering the Ultima spell through the Ultima Weapon that Gaius van Baelsar is piloting at the time, utterly destroying the place. The quote above is known not just cause of how often people run it, but also cause Gaius is a Noble Demon while Lahabrea is a sociopathic monster.
  • ZA WARUDO!^ExplanationDuring Ultimecia's Burst Attack, Sorceress's Heart, she freezes time as she sets up a Flechette Storm not unlike DIO.
  • "Where is Rikku/Red XIII?" ^ExplanationAfter more than six years, the game has not implemented Rikku or Red XIII in spite of them being fan favorites, with the devs introducing much more obscure characters in their place like Jegran from Crystal Chronicles and Llyud from Revenant Wings. This was sadly taken to an utterly tragic conclusion with the announcement of the game's end of service on February 2024 for both the Global and Japanese servers, with neither Rikku nor Red XIII ever being made playable.
    • Every time someone asks for Rikku or Red XIII, they get delayed by another month. ^ExplanationA Running Gag among the community is that whenever someone tries to ask about Rikku or Red XIII, another person jokes that they got delayed by another month as punishment for asking about them too many times. Considering just how many people still continue to ask for them to this day...
    • Want Red XIII/Rikku? Have Cissnei/Braska! ^note Released very close to one another, people joke that the devs are trolling fans by specifically releasing obscure characters from VII and X purposely skipping Red XIII and Rikku.
  • TACTICS WHEN?! ^ExplanationEven in the Japanese version, Tactics still only has two characters, Ramza and Agrias, causing many saddened fans to practically beg the devs to add more Tactics reps already. It's even emphasized In-Universe where Ramza actually lost his Compass of Light in Act 3, explaining why he and Agrias have not made a single appearance throughout the whole story arc.
  • Mystic Quest / Benjamin when?^ExplanationA common response to the above, because Mystic Quest has been overlooked for inclusion in all but two spinoff games, and its fans would like inclusion in at least one other place.
  • Sice when? ^ExplanationWith the release of Queen, this left Sice as the only member of Class Zero to not be in the game, causing many fans to ask for Sice to be added to finally complete Class Zero. She was finally announced to become playable in the Japanese version's September 2021 stream.
  • Deep Moaning ^ExplanationWith the release of Iroha in the Global server also came the co-op token quests, titled Deep Moaning. Many players were very quick to notice the hilariously suggestive name chosen.
  • Garbage Time ^ExplanationThe term "Garbage Time" refers to a late point in a current era where characters have grown strong enough to the point where even the highest difficulty content is incredibly easy to clear, so there's no point pulling on new banners; they're not necessary for current content and will be Power Creeped in future content.
  • The Sadge pose ^ExplanationDue to the fairly limited animations during cutscenes, an extremely common animation for when a character is sad is to stare down at the ground. It's so common that players joke at how you could make a drinking game out of the sheer number of times the animation happens. (WARNING: Please do not actually make a drinking game out of this. You WILL suffer.)
  • MADOYO!^ExplanationTerra calls this when she uses Meltdown or Meteor, and since her playstyle is based on taking multiple turns to spam them, you'll hear it a lot when she's in the party. She's actually saying "madou yo", roughly meaning "o magic", but intentional or not the fanbase spells it as one word.
• Magnificent Bastard: Vayne Carudas Solidor loathes the idea of being enslaved to gods to fight on their behalf and believes the gods Materia and Spiritus must die. He repeatedly plots to kill the gods to free the other summoned warriors from their servitude, whether they want it or not. After briefly joining the heroes and then betraying them, Vayne freely admits he uses people until he has no more use for them. When he helps the heroes face Ardyn, Vayne recovers his memories of what became of Ivalice after his death and is happy to hear his brother Larsa took over his throne and negotiated peace. This galvanizes Vayne to protect the world so that Ivalice cannot be threatened by the machinations of the villains here, even if it means destroying the world itself. Always re-evaluating his goals based on the state of the world, seeking more information as things change around him, and willing to work with almost anyone to further his plans, Vayne's true loyalty is to his homeland and he'll do whatever he must to protect it.
• More Popular Spin-Off: Dissidia NT was released to a Broken Base of people who liked it on its own merits versus those turned off by it being an Actionized Sequel with a very weak story mode and a limited roster of characters. While this game began life as a tie-in to NT, it has gotten mass praise from the fanbase for being a solid RPG game with a good story mode and a large number of characters, and the fact they all have their memories allows players to have the type of inter-game interactions and plotlines they'd been wanting since the original Dissidia. While NT ceased support in early 2020, Opera Omnia kept going for another four years after the game it spun off of thanks to its active playerbase, and it was enjoyable enough that the devs promised to translate and archive the cutscenes on Youtube after announcing the game would end in 2024.
• Most Wonderful Sound:
  • Landing a BRV Break on your target.
  • Hearing the sound of your summon being ready, and likewise, the song of the summon you've activated which is usually an indicator of having a good number of turns to yourself to do some serious setup+damage to your target in question.
  • Hearing the sound of your EX Ability being ready.
• Narm:
  • The dramatic effect of seeing Leon's involvement in Act 2, Chapter 4 is kind of ruined by his Feet-First Introduction, since it's hard to ignore his frowny-face poleyns.
  • In story mode scenes, the character models have very limited range of movement, and they all use the exactly same animations. After a while it can be silly and distracting in cutscenes when the entire cast keeps making the same handful of simple gestures.
    • Related to this is the fact that the game almost never shows models for things that aren't characters or weapons, so when a character is supposed to be holding something like a phone, a crystal, a note, etc, their hands are clearly empty. Coupled with the limited range of movements that they'll use for picking up, holding out, and grabbing objects that they use everywhere else, it makes them even sillier.
  • The Emperor getting his power back in Act 3 Chapter 6 is a serious and intimidating moment, but looking at how he ended up getting it back from Eald'narche is basically like a Spoiled Brat throwing a temper tantrum at their parent until they give in just to shut them up.
• Narm Charm:
  • In Act 1, Mog's habit of occasionally recruiting villains was explained by his being possessed by a malevolent entity at the time—hence his accepting Kefka's dimensional coordinates over the arduous protests of Terra. With that no longer the case in Act II, the explanation for the party overruling Firion, Maria, and Leon on the equally-despised Emperor is "we have or the chocobos will eat it." The ensuing dialogue indicates that the writers are pretty well-aware of how silly a reason this is, and it comes back around into hilarity.
  • When Ardyn, Vayne, and Gabranth all decide to join the heroes full-time, their apparent choice of quarters aboard the airship is the storage compartments.
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • The Blackened Will is not a pretty sight to see. When it is confronted in Chapter 11, the place it resides in is incredibly creepy, being a massive mess of tentacles with creepy teeth on them, to say nothing of the Blackened Will itself. Its first form is a beating heart-like monster with a giant red eye in its center, and its second form is something vaguely humanoid with creepy long tentacle-like appendages. In Act 2, Chapter 5, Kefka is crazy enough to create another one of this abomination just for shits and giggles.
  • While Act 1 and Act 2 have a fairly notable BGM, Act 3's BGM is complete silence, with only the intense howling of the wind. It can be rather unnerving the first time, especially if you're used to the nice background music of the previous two acts.
  • The last boss fight of Act 3, Chapter 1 (Part 1) is the Medusa from Final Fantasy III, sporting the same horrible Nightmare Face from its home game, and this time, it makes very creepy sounds. The fact that its Lufenia difficulty fight is That One Boss doesn't help either.
• Player Punch: Some of the unlockable voice lines come from the most heartwrenching moments that particular character went through. In some cases this is the first time those pieces of dialogue have been voice-acted, making them even more emotional—for instance, Krile's desperate pleas for Galuf to not die.
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap:
  • Recently, those who were in the more negative side of Beatrix's fanbase no thanks to the localization of the original Final Fantasy 9 have at least noticed she was willing to try make more of a mention of atoning for the many people she's killed in battle, compared to her more flimsy Heel–Face Turn back in her home game. Thus, one can easily assume that she'll have much more interesting dialogue with the likes of Freya should the two of them share a cutscene with each other (via Beatrix's eventual Lost Chapter being released for more cutscenes and with Freya already being a story-chapter character by that time already).
  • Gameplay-wise:
    • Thancred was the first character to ever receive a post-Awakening rework in both the JP and Global versions, along with his EX hitting right at that time. He basically did too much damage while capping on his BRV very easily, along with barely any solid way to dump it into HP damage, making him horribly turn in-efficient on top of being overly reliant on his poison. His rework now at least adds a possible HP damage dump on his first skill, while also making him gain a new mechanic, Ninki, which can be expended to enhance his overall damage even further. That, along with him being able to guaranteed his own poison and with the release of his EX made him much better than before for a good while.
    • Warrior of Light was a prime example of being such a solid character that happened to be a tank: while his Lv. 60 awakening finally gave him some DPS, his turn efficiency was still lacking. His rework fixed this by giving him a party-wide Shining Shield that rose everyone's BRV while making him do an automatic HP attack to dump it efficiently, and his Throw Buckler hit 3 times with a chance of overflow instead of one. Another common theme of these reworks is to have a lot of the examples listed below to also have enhanced default BRV and HP attacks, allowing them to conserve abilities more effectively. To this day, he has great longevity in nearly every era possible of this game since his Lv. 70 Awakening.
    • Cloud initially was someone who had subpar passives on his crystal awakening levels 54 and 58, instead of the standardized invisible buffs everyone else normally gets (e.g. increased extra stats when either from a self-buff or an inflicted debuff on an enemy). His rather subpar Cross-Slash finally gets a better upgrade rather than a potency increase, along with his Finishing Touch finally dealing HP damage at the end, making him better than before for launcher-based team comps.
    • Squall while being an area-of-effect king, had issues of his bravery leaking and always needing to be below 250% of his current Initial BRV amount just to use his + abilities; most people often always spam his Renzokuken+ in order for guaranteed damage. Akin to Seifer's awakening, Squall now gives himself a unique buff (that removes the Initial BRV limitation for a set amount of turns) while also being able to deal 100% HP splash damage on his Renzokuken+, along with overflow on his Solid Barrel+ with a guaranteed HP damage dump (instead of it only triggering upon reaching 80% of his current Max BRV), along with buffing the non-plus versions. This overall allows both of Squall's abilities to have their own niche usages and not have Renzokuken and/or his EX ability to be his only DPS dumps in general.
    • Zidane only gave himself some more potent self-buffs than before while also lacking invisible buff passives from his awakening and only just hitting harder. His rework eventually gave him more HP damage dumps, some BRV damage here and there, along with a unique buff + debuff mechanic that played into his thief-theme more.
    • Tidus while already having an enhanced HP attack for ability-conserving DPS, still didn't do very much on his own. Comes his rework where his reworked Quick Hit Extend literally steals turns instead of just having a damage increase with extra uses (without HP damage though), along with his Slash Extend hitting 4 times instead of twice, giving him much more hard-hitting efficiency on top of having overflow on all of his DPT abilities. His EX+ having overflow also helped a lot.
    • Even when Ramza was first awakened, he was only off of people's benches for a decent while as he had no decent way to dump his BRV into HP damage. Then came his rework where his Shout buff could be stacked, and he would always unleash an HP Attack afterward, and having better BRV and HP attacks when enhanced like so. As a result, he became one of the best offensive supports all-around as soon as he was reworked post-Awakening.
    • Noctis when he was unveiled in either version was quite a bit power-crept as a rather standard DPT unit who had a fairly conditional launch skill, though when his Lost Chapter hit as the first Lv. 70 LC character, he eventually rocketed up to being a top tier DPT unit with a unique debuff that allowed him to DPT twice in a single turn. However, he was eventually power-crept once more when the CHAOS difficulty dropped in, especially if there are any powerful bosses immune to his unique debuff that triggers his reworked mechanics.
    • Alisaie was rather confusing in regards to her ability rotation for newcomers, and even then, she had fairly bad turn efficiency on her base abilities even when fully-awoken. Once her rework hit during her Lost Chapter with her EX weapon, she eventually had better turn efficiency by having all of her abilities do extra hits into HP damage, on top of some more effective self-buffs. Added in with her turn-stealing mechanics and her free ability casts, she eventually became a fairly good solo unit.
    • Terra was quickly overshadowed after her period of being awakened, but then when her rework hit, her new Magitek stacking mechanic at least allowed her to be viable in hitting higher numbers.
    • Ace was someone that required quite a bit of setup just to hit decently hard, with his EX ability giving random chance buffs, but once his rework rolled in, he gained a new unique-framed-buff stacking mechanic that did a bit extra while not changing his crystal awakening level 54 and 58 passives at all. While he gives himself too many extra buffs (thus other party-wide-buffers may shove his own buffs off), he becomes a lot rewarding with the stacking mechanics of his unique-buff (on top of having DPT on both skills instead of just on skill 2). Compared to Terra, Ace hit harder with better longevity on top of enhanced BRV and HP Attacks even.
    • A more recent example of this is Serah, whose LD ability and buff were considered to be subpar by most standards when initially released in Japan and unlike most other characters released around the same time, she didn't gain access to her LD board to further power it up either, meaning most Global players would've skipped over trying to get her LD without a second thought if her LD would've been released as it is. However, this was fixed in the Global version of the game with an early release of her LD board which massively increases her useability in Lufenia fights by making her into a support character based on battery and debuffs who now also gives the party BRV regen based on their maximum BRV and increases the BRV and HP damage they do when the enemy party has at least 6 debuffs in total.
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • Naturally, the gacha has this in spades due to the Random Number God often being very stingy.
    • The only way to guarantee a 5* or better weapon (read: the desirable ones that have new abilities for characters) is to spend 5,000 Gems on a 10+1 draw, but that only guarantees one 5* or better weapon. While this isn't an issue for new players, once all current content is cleared Gems become rather hard to come by, with most battles giving out 100-200 Gems for mastering them fully the first time (for context, weekly events typically have half a dozen battles or so, sometimes less), and occasionally a boost in Gems from a new character added and their Summon Boards rewarding a total of 3,000 Gems. This means you'll end up saving for weeks in order to do more than one pull on a banner. This is slightly mitigated by many banners now coming with a free 10+1 draw on release, but then comes the other issue:
    • Banners that spotlight new weapons for a character tend to have all previous weapons for them on it too. While not so bad in the EX era, this problem became more pronounced as characters got Limited abilities, and Burst and Force abilities are also rolling out, and the odds are severely slanted that pulls will give you older weapons you don't need instead of new ones, so it's possible to do multiple 10+1 draws and get a bunch of worthless dups. The addition of G Tokens were meant to mitigate this, as they allow you to trade in for a spotlighted new weapon on the banner after doing enough 5,000 Gem draws. However, each 10+1 draw gives 20 G Tokens, and it takes 300 to trade in for an EX or Limited weapon, which works out to 15 pulls totaling 75,000 Gems (more for Burst and Force weapons). While the amount of G Tokens needed for items was lowered in 2023, it still takes 200 (10 pulls) for an EX or Limited weapon; some would say that if you do 10 pulls on a banner and don't get a single EX or Limited weapon, that speaks to an inherent problem with the system itself, and G Tokens are a half-hearted solution that only works for players who can afford to buy Gems in such large quantities as to take advantage of it.
  • The camera will often position itself behind the party facing the enemy, making it difficult to see the enemy's HP bar past the party members and parts of the HUD, and also making it more difficult to tap-hold on the enemies to view their status instead of a party member.
  • Artifact passives are earned from maxing out Eidoja to learn a new passive ability for an associated character. The problem is that the passive abilities earned from Eidoja are completely random, and even with a Moogle Pass to guarantee "red" passives, there's no guarantee they'll be the passives you want because many characters have red passives that are not worth using. Artifact passives also come in groups of two, so you have to hope you get a pair of desirable ones together and worth keeping. In practice you'll often upgrade dozen, perhaps hundreds of Eidoja, to get the best Artifact passives for a character, and in the process spend lots of crafting materials and gil.
  • Use of Bursts and "turn hogs" who take multiple turns are controversial to use in co-op play, because it means a single player will be taking multiple turns while their allies sit and wait for them to finish, and the battle can't end in a Burst phase even if the enemy's HP hits zero, wasting time for everyone if a player uses their Burst on enemies that don't call for it. Conversely, launches are also controversial because they require the other players to attack during them when they may not have been paying attention since it wasn't their turn, and they have a short 5-second window to input their attack, which is not always feasible due to internet lag even if they were paying attention.
  • Group-hitting attacks that hit randomly, like Kuja's Ring Holy or Tidus' Energy Rain. The problem is that because they hit randomly, they will inflict Break on enemies in a random order; if three enemies are about to act and the first two are broken before the last one, then the enemy party overall won't be delayed in relation to the party's turns, whereas a normal group-hitting attack would have inflicted Break on all of them at once and delayed the entire enemy party together. In high-difficulty fights with turn sensitive mechanics, randomly hitting attacks can rearrange the turn order in ways you didn't intend and throw a monkey wrench into your plans.
  • The 6-character teams introduced in Japan's release of the Gilgamesh Token event was very poorly received; not helped by the fact Gilgamesh himself also had a notoriously low spawn rate (that could only be slightly increased by owning Layle's Burst Weapon). The mechanic was shelved in Japan to be overhauled, and when the same event was launched in Global the 6-character team gimmick was completely scrapped. It would later make a return in the Japanese servers as a beta, and it was considerably more well-received this time around.
  • Managing both the player and enemy Force Gauges can be extremely annoying without a charger character if you need to race the enemy to full Force before they either fill their own Force first or hit one of the lower Force thresholds that empowers them in some way: while the baseline Force gain for the enemy's gauge is consistent and stated ingame for each fight, taking a large number of player turns in a row or having the enemy hit one of their Force thresholds will usually result in a large sudden Force increase for the opposing party, respectively, something which is usually extremely difficult to plan around and will easily catch players by surprise as there's zero ingame indication when the former is going to happen, and the amount of extra player Force gained from the enemy hitting their thresholds is also highly unpredictable.
• Special Effects Failure:
  • Rydia's EX ability despite involving the Mist Dragon, shows no glimpse of it whatsoever; the mist breath is the only thing that pops up, and the camera angle just hides the dragon's absence. Reynn and Lann are an even bigger example of this: since all of their attacks involve summoning monsters from their game to attack the enemy, the most you'll see of them is maybe a single horn or a body part of the intended monster. Rydia's EX issue was actually resolved come the release of her Realized EX, which now features the Mist Dragon (Garnet's Realized EX also finally features Alexander after many people were split on if her EX was a reference to the Eidolon or not).
  • Thancred's left-handed dagger when he equips his EX weapon is missing one of its graphics when shown at a certain angle, making it look like a toothpick as people called it.
  • Gilgamesh's EX ability is called Hurricane and shows the fiend general spinning around at least a dozen times ... yet his attack only hits the enemy three times. Coupled with the fact the EX just isn't that impressive, it makes it look like Gilgamesh just can't land a hit. This is finally fixed in the level 90 cap with the massively increased EX ability hitcounts and HP dump numbers for all characters.
  • Lilisette has a unique facial expression as part of her Victory Pose in which she winks. However, it is painfully obvious Lilsette's winking face is a completely different texture to her normal face as the color of her skin tone isn't even the same, meaning when she winks her entire face is suddenly a slightly different shade of caucasian for a second. This was eventually patched and the animation has a smooth transition now.
  • Since Garnet's Burst was added to the Global version first, the developers weren't able to check its functionality against every upcoming event fight: as a result, the camera is often misaligned when it's meant to pan up to show Alexander, causing the animation to only show small parts of it or just a black screen prior to its attack being unleashed.
• "Stop Having Fun" Guys:
  • There are many players who will refuse to engage in co-op missions if you are not using the right characters with the right equipment, or if you try and use the "wrong" summon for a mission. They will either spam stickers until you relent and change your character/equipment/summon, or simply disband the party if they have even an inkling that you're trying to go against the norm.
  • Of course considering that co-op rewards are determined purely by score, the game actively encourages this. Mitigated nowadays in that there's an option between "Just for Fun" and "Wanted: Boosted Characters".
  • Also mitigated by what has been said about the JP player side, as they seem to be much more lax; granted, they already have access to a lot of powerful stuff, so they'll most likely be glad to help carry anyone else weaker than them.
• Surprisingly Improved Sequel:
  • While Dissidia Final Fantasy (2015), the game that this title is based off of, was met with middling reception by both fans and critics due to its lack of content and alterations to the battle formula, Opera Omnia has been received well amongst the Final Fantasy fanbase for being closer in concept to what a full-on crossover between the entire franchise would (theoretically) look like and staying true to the series' RPG roots while incorporating its own twists unique to the Dissidia series. There are still some concerns about the monetization and difficulty curve, but in general DFFOO is closer to what people wanted out of a Final Fantasy Crisis Crossover from the very start.
  • The fact that characters aren't near-complete blank slates with little to no memory of their previous lives like in the previous Dissidia games and can actually hold meaningful conversations about subjects that aren't directly related to the main plot and their goal of getting home also helps it make feel like a proper crossover.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • As with other entries of Dissidia, Yuna's "Gunner" costume. She isn't the only character who has a Significant Wardrobe Shift as a purchasable bonus costume (eg, Ramza's mercenary armor). Unlike theirs, however, Yuna's switch to Gunner is also a complete change in skillset in her original story. Unlike Cecil, whose transition from Dark Knight to Paladin is consistently treated as two separate job classes with different gameplay^note whether he swaps in between or simply has two separate versions of himself, Yuna's switch is once again treated as purely aesthetic. This is especially evident after the Act 2 chapter that focuses around restoring Yuna's memories of X-2 and her Character Development there, yet gives no option to switch to her second incarnation the way that the chapter around Cecil did. It's embarrassing that she even has "invisible guns" when she does her YRP pose during the cutscene before the fight against Act 2 Chapter 4's Planesgorger. Fans were much more accepting when Yuna received her Wedding Dress costume as her second alt.
  • Speaking of costumes, a few of the paid alternate costumes for characters are disliked by the general fans; in particular Zack Fair (who's costume options consist of the a uniform in navy blue with hair spikes to the same uniform but in purple with bangs) and Tidus (who's alternate is just a less distressed version of his normal costume). While Zack admittedly has very few alternate costume options from VII lore, some fans were annoyed Tidus was not given his "Warrior of Chaos" costume from Dissidia 012, which was at least had a more noticeable difference from his standard appearance. The complaints with Zack have been somewhat rectified when he was released with his beachwear costume as his second alt.
  • The game's reputation for ignoring Final Fantasy Tactics was intensified in Act 3, when an unlockable cutscene wrote Ramza and Agrias out of the plot by having him lose his compass, stranding both of them in the wilderness. Neither of them participate at all in the search for the Warrior of Light or the Flood of Light / Flood of Darkness crisis at the end of the chapter and they are only mentioned briefly by the rest of the cast. This has fueled speculation that there is some kind of behind-the-scenes dispute with the original Tactics writing team. An interview with one of the game's previous advisors on a French Final Fantasy fansite confirmed that any characters and attacks added into the game need to be run by the staff of the game they originally appeared in and the Tactics team has apparently been extremely busy with other project(s), which has prevented the OO team from asking their input on new Tactics content they'd plan to add into the game. Ramza and Agrias finally get back into the plot in Arc 4, Chapter 7, where they get transported into the new world by Materia and encounter Rufus.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • In Act 2 Chapter 7, Sephiroth makes multiple dark manikins that can read memories and take on the appearance of the person bearing those memories. This could have lead to a plotline in which the characters ruminate over whether destroying these manikins is the right thing to do, especially considering that the manikins seem to have some degree of self-awareness as <<Prompto>> indicates, but instead it’s just brushed aside in favor of an Ass Pull about Jenova’s “vessel” suddenly existing and Sephiroth spouting tired clichés about how he has no need for the party.
    • To be fair, the characters (especially Vivi) do struggle with the idea of killing Manikins and What Measure Is a Mook? comes up a lot otherwise.
  • Accepting the worst of the worst villain's' Dimension Coordinates usually comes with a Hand Wave that it allows the heroes to keep track of where their enemies are, which is nice in theory but never really ever comes into play in the story. The World of Respite is so corrupted that it is constantly being reshaped anyway, and it appears if the villains want to hide, they can just do so in Torisons. Even when figuring out who the Big Bad of any given story chapter is usually comes down with the villain revealing themselves, it matching their typical MO, or it simply taking place in a deformed area based on a location from their home game.
  • Over and over Golbez's biggest concern was that he could turn on the hero party one day, that he still had darkness inside of him and because of that he will always be susceptible to working for the side of evil. However in the entire course of the game until its End of Service this ... never happens. It seems likely Golbez was referring to the possibility that the crazed Lunarian Zemus/Zeromus could show up in the World of Respite to exercise control over his mind again (and possibly Kain's), or that someone else versed in mind control could do it, but at no point does Golbez actually turn on the heroes against his will, leaving this as an empty plot thread.
• Unexpected Character:
  • Did anyone expect Layle to appear at all?
    • Likewise, from another Crystal Chronicles game, no one expected Sherlotta either.
    • And for the hat-trick of Crystal Chronicles representation; Amidatelion, Layle's contemporary, has entered the ring as well. Keiss, who in The Crystal Bearers was merely a Badass Normal, similarly joined.
  • After Seymour had established himself as a villain, no one expected him to become a playable as well. This, however, was back when the game was new and there was no indication at that time villains would be made playable, with Seymour being the first.
  • At any point in the original Final Fantasy VII timeline, Zack is already quite long dead and gone. However, he is brought back as a playable character through a loophole that he is representing Crisis Core, the FFVII prequel game. Like Seymour above, this was before bringing long-dead characters was just accepted as the norm.
  • Many players were thrilled that Final Fantasy Tactics got even a single representative in Ramza, so it comes as a shock that it's getting a second in Agrias Oaks since the franchise just often tends to get passed over.
  • Paine from FFX-2 was a surprise for many people, especially since she launched before even Rikku did!
  • Beatrix from FFIX being the very first Global-first character to be revealed! There was some expectation that we might get certain characters much earlier than Japan did, particularly obvious NA/EU fan favorites like Agrias or Alphinaud, or that there might be some kind of simultaneous release (like a hoped-for Kingdom Hearts crossover) but nobody really thought that a character being revealed as existing in the Global version first, and GL getting them way before JP, would actually happen... until it did.
  • Lyse as a separate character from Yda. Cecil already comes as two separate units - Paladin and Dark Knight - so other candidates for two separate units but the same character were for for characters such as Summoner Yuna vs Gunner Yuna (Gunner Yuna already exists in the game as simply an alternate costume for Yuna). So Lyse was mostly just expected by fans as an alternate costume, not an entirely separate unit.
  • While Ignis from XV was eventually expected...what no one expected from him was being able to retain his "Quick Recipeh" skill (being able to cook in mid-battle to support the whole party).
  • Kadaj is the first character to not ever be featured in a video game, instead being the main villain (aside from Sephiroth) from Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children, a VII sequel movie.
  • Jegran as the first spin-off villain, from a Crystal Chronicles game, getting added before all of the main series villains (XIV still has no antagonist representative) or someone from Tactics and Type-0.
  • It's a wonder fans can still be caught off-guard by any character inclusion now, but immediately after Jegran launched Llyud from the XII spin-off Revenant Wings, a game while having its fans is a bit more obscure to the Final Fantasy mainstream.
  • No one expected Lunafreya to become a playable character, especially since she didn't really show any combat ability in her own game. Luckily, her appearance was quite well-received, with fans excited to see how her character would develop, ever since her planned DLC episode was cancelled.
  • The fans were blindsided again when Jessie representing the remake was added. Especially as Red XIII, a much more prominent character, still isn't in.
  • Reks, of all characters, being added from XII. More specifically, Reks is Vaan's older brother who dies during the prologue stage of the game. This also means basically his entire moveset will have to be made from scratch from the developers, since the only thing Reks could do in the prologue was cast Thunder, Cure, and use Potions.
  • When the game was announced as ending service, but the story would be given a proper conclusion, most assumed that the Final Boss would be one of the gods — either Spiritus and/or Materia, or perhaps even Chaos. It turns out to be Garland in his "Cloudsea Djinn" form, an appearance not seen since Dissidia 012 on the PSP, which is utilized here as a new One-Winged Angel form for him separate from Chaos.
• Underused Game Mechanic: During the rollout of Force Abilities, some bosses with Force Gauges had Force Weaknesses where certain actions would lower their gauge, giving players a way to strategize around their gauge beyond racing it to 100% and/or waiting for it to reach 100% and then cancelling it. This type of mechanic stopped appearing not long after and was pretty much forgotten by the Echo era, mostly because the amounts the enemy force gauge could be lowered by performing the specified action were far too low to make any meaningful overall difference to the overall battle progression.
• Viewer Gender Confusion: Reks from XII is, for lack of a better term, a very pretty man. Coupled with his midriff-barring armor and his slightly effeminate pose for his icon and maybe people may not realize Reks is actually a man (it doesn't help Reks is also relatively unknown since he only appears in the prologue of the game).