YMMV / Forum Fantasy

• Ass Pull:
  • The Reveal that Camelslayer is the one who brainwashed the users and his plan to take over the Chaos Theatre can be seen as this, as neither of these were hinted at. While he did mention he had a castle was revealed after killing the Innkeeper, not every player will know this. The closest thing that could serve as a hint to him manipulating your party is his appearance. Though in the Updated Re-release there is at least proper Foreshadowing that he is an evil demon lord, as two of his mooks captured a metroid that startled him.
  • Psychotic Nekomata having a Superpowered Evil Side known as Felix Falora comes off as this for those who are not familiar with the Real Life forum's history. In the update that introduced Felix Falora, there was no hint on who the character could be or how the "Lord of Nightmares" quest could be triggered without a walkthrough. Kraken Edition did give said character proper foreshadowing in the Castle Camelslayer Library, however.
• Crosses the Line Twice: Sending the Village Idiot to blow up the Deranged Village.
• Demonic Spiders:
  • Fanboy Fanatics are much stronger versions of the Fanboys you encountered back in Kashyyyk who are not only faster than you at this point of the game, but they also have strong attacks that remove a large chunk of your HP. They are also always encountered in pairs and you will see them a lot in Dyslexia Igloo.
  • Telos, who can be encountered in Psychotic's Tower and the Arschloch, can be a pain to deal with. His signature move, "Crimson Nova", can inflict a ton of damage to your entire party thanks in part to his high magic attack stat and the move being already strong enough as it is. Not only that, but he also has "Flame War" to ensure that you won't be able to heal. On the plus side, his physical attack isn't very powerful and is also weak to several elements as well as "Crimson Nova" also targeting the enemy party.
  • Strykershot is able to heal the entire enemy party and can deal devastating damage to the whole party with "Fanboy Insanity". He also has his Secret Art, "Maderis Donum", which not only heals a member of the enemy party but can also remove ailments as well.
  • In the same area as Strykershot (and even sometimes the same enemy formation) is The Shadowy Conman, who is able to steal over 1000 health from a target, has more HP than any of the user enemies you have encountered by the time you enter Castle Krazier, and has "Darkness Spire", one of the game’s most versatile and spammable User Skills.
  • Malcolm Belmont has a powerful Physical User Skill, and can Blind the party. This would be irritating enough, but he always appears in crowds of enemies (large crowds, at that) that have the ability to Flame your entire party, making them only attack physically and always miss due to the Blindness.
  • Suki Yoko can instantly Ban users, and her User Skill, "Cataclysmic Storm", can deal immense damage to the entire party.
  • Every enemy in Botlantis is dangerous (especially in the lower levels that were sealed off by the Banhammer Jewel, since it's almost impossible to run away from them. MissingNo. has an attack that is able to deal either 1 or 9999 damage to a party member, resulting in fighting the enemy a Luck-Based Mission. Oh, and you could often encounter TWO Missingno at once. Phantoon has several strong attacks and has high HP, though he's the least of your worries here. Neo Exdeath lovingly brings Grand Gross, Almagest, and White Hole with him from his boss fight in his game, which can result in a Total Party Kill. Giygas has several variations of his "incomprehensible attack" which is guaranteed to inflict a status ailment, and there could be two of them at once. Legion has very high HP and highly-damaging attacks that can zambify the entire party. Lastly, Cthulhu has a massive pool of HP and has plenty of powerful attacks, though thankfully he is only encountered one at a time.
• Designated Hero: Prelich, and by extension the three other playable characters, are presented in the game as heroes but their actions and personalities are quirks that villains usually have. A few crimes the heroes can commit include convincing an NPC to blow up a nearby village, feeding a drunk cat to a Metroid, and having the Big Bad get consumed by said Metroid.
• Designated Love Interest: Tambot could be this to Prelich, but the game makes it clear that the former wants nothing to do with the latter. The Romance Sidequest in the Updated Re-release slightly alleviated this depending on the choices the player can make.
• Fridge Brilliance: While all the Admins have plenty of shout-outs in their attacks and forms, Krazier takes the cake, as nearly 90% of his fight is weaponized Shout-Outs. Even his incarnations are just characters from video games and anime ^*In the first fight, his incarnations consist of Geralt of Rivia, Dante, Zero, and a Vault Dweller. In the Duel Boss fight, he takes the form as Kiritsugu Emiya. Considering his status as the admin representing Sloth, isn't it to be expected that his fight has little to no originality to it? This would also explain why he's the only admin to not get a changed boss theme^*Prior to an update, Chewie and Rince kept their original boss themes in their respective rematches. after you divert the Powers of Hell to him.
• Game-Breaker:
  • Before a patch in which it was nerfed, Rabbid Thump could have been considered one. In earlier versions, it is not only one of the earliest User Abilities you can acquire, but it did a lot of damage depending on the strength of the user (especially if you gave it to Magnum and buffed his strength), had a low MP cost, and the User who drops the stone for the ability, rabbidluigi, is almost everywhere in the game. Also since it's listed as an ability, Noobrage won't throw off it's accuracy. This meant that you would still find it useful even when you're half-way through the game. The only thing that kept it from being too broken is that it had no chance of landing critical hits like Double Strike.
  • In the update, two moves were broken in the transition to VX Ace's format: Voidpulse and Power Stroke. Why? Because both had the potential to do SEXTUPLE digit damage, if not more. To put that in perspective, a few uses of Voidpulse or Power Stroke is enough to kill Chaotic Felora. You're not supposed to be able to do that. Voidpulse is arguably worse, as it's a multi-target attack. While the move was meant to hit enemies at random, that fact becomes irrelevant when one hit kills whatever it targets. Power Stroke got patched within days of the update's release.
• Genius Bonus:
  • The binary code in a book in Botlantis translates to “FUCK ME HARD”. No wonder Magnum seemed disturbed.
  • Likewise, the German Dungeon Porn may seem like typical pornographic text that is entirely in German, but translating it actually gives you a quick heads-up on what is going to happen shortly after and also describes the appearance of Culus.
• Goddamned Bats: Hardcore Flamers. They have a good deal of health for some of the first enemies in the game, they can flame the entire party, they appear in groups in Dyslexia Igloo… and they appear a LOT. Have fun having to watch as your party is forced to attack the enemy party aimlessly.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • The Bad Future sidequest, which revolves around what would happen if Prelich and his party doesn't stop Camelslayer, which leaves the Chaos Theatre in ruins, becomes this after the Chaos Theatre forums were shut down in early 2017.
  • The patch notes of Kraken Edition state that Charlie Daniels was banished from the game's BGM folder as the Guitar Hero III version of his song "The Devil Went Down to Georgia" was already present. While it seemed funny during the game's release, Daniels tragically passed away on July 6, 2020.
  • In the third area of the Caves of Madness, one of chests that can be opened has the text "You found the head of Bill Cosby!" Nearly two years later after the original release, Cosby would be slammed by sexual assault allegations from at least 55 women and would later be sentenced to three to ten years in prison in September 2018. The developer possibly didn't know about or paid attention to the news about the allegations towards Cosby, as the text still appears in Kraken Edition, which was released after the allegations came to light.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • The fact that Joshscorcher gets angry at being asked to "Brohoof" is hilarious when one considers that the Real Life Joshscorcher actually identifies as a brony these days (the game was made back when he was less enthused about the series).
  • Some time after the original game's release, one of the users of the Chaos Theatre forums made a Forum Fantasy dating simulator as a joke. Over a year later, and the Updated Re-release features a Romance Sidequest with Prelich and Tambot, and the two can even become an Official Couple if you play your cards right.
  • User enemy Devilnevercry123 takes the form of Vergil and drops a Buster Sword, which is the signature weapon of Cloud Strife. Several years later, DEATH BATTLE! would pit Vergil against Cloud's Arch-Enemy Sephiroth in the Season 4 Finale.
  • Turns out that this isn't the only RPG Maker game that takes place on the Internet, as BoxxyQuest: The Gathering Storm was released (albeit by a different author) several years later. Even more amusing, the entirety of the default RPG Maker XP soundtrack is in Forum Fantasy's game files and Boxxy Quest: The Gathering Storm was developed on RPG Maker XP.
  • One of the users in the User Village, AnimegamerJero, laments that he never got to play Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U after the village got ransacked. Don't worry, buddy, because nearly four years after Forum Fantasy's Updated Re-release, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate was released. Even funnier, everyone in the village turned into spirits, which turned out to be collectibles Ultimate.
  • The game's repeated jabs towards the Final Fantasy VII fanbase is quite ironic now that the remake was announced and released after Forum Fantasy's final version was released. One can wonder if the jabs can apply once again.
  • In Hellsylum, one of the prisoners is Gabe Newell, where he was imprisoned due to not making Half-Life 2: Episode 3. Come November 2019, Half-Life: Alyx, while it may an interquel rather than a proper sequel to Episode 2, was announced and was released in March 2020.
• Hype Backlash: Back when this game was announced and released, it was hyped up by the users of the Chaos Theatre Forums, due to being a game that featured many of the users and featured plenty of references to various media. In hindsight, it's a standard RPG with simplistic dungeons, a high random encounter rate akin to old-school RPGs, and upon closer inspection is actually not very balanced, even if the Updated Re-release mitigated previous balancing issues. Players who have not been on the previously existing forum the game was based on will likely not get the inside jokes and jokes originating from the forum itself.
• It Was His Sled: Camelslayer is evil.
• Just Here for Godzilla: Many of the players who were fans of The Autarch and Joshscorcher mostly played this game just to see their appearances in this game.
• Moment of Awesome:
  • Defeating a superboss can be satisfying, as these are the strongest bosses in the game.
  • The Golden Ending. Wanting to teach the Admins a lesson after it was discovered they were the ones who created the Goat of Chaos, Prelich gains Camelslayer's powers and proceeds to Curb-Stomp all five of them. The first four are fought together and they are usually defeated on one hit due to sharing the same stats as their initial boss fights. Krazier is fought one-on-one and while he is stronger than the others since he is using the stats from his rematch, he is also defeated in a few hits as well. This can also serve as an awesome moment for the Lolrus as well if you don't give him a bigger bukkit since not only does he one-shot Prelich with his bukkit laser, but he also punches Krazier and looks down on him. This means that no matter how high you are in the Internet forum hierarchy, you aren't safe from feeling the wrath of a Physical God.
• Most Wonderful Sound: Many players, especially those who have watched The Autarch's videos, enjoyed the "BEEEEER" sound effect due to the scenery chewing nature of the sound.
• Narm: After Psychotic Nekomata reverts back into Felix Falora, everyone is horrified due to the character's sheer power. However, Felix Falora has the same overworld sprite as Psychotic Nekomata, making it look as if the character is trying too hard to sound edgy, especially since their text is purple. It's even present during the Bad Future, as Felix Falora still has his Psychotic Nekomata overworld sprite.
• Obvious Judas: While the reveal of him being the Big Bad can be considered an Ass Pull, it doesn't take much to figure out that Camelslayer is villainous. His overworld sprite is the default demon lord sprite from the RPG Maker VX engine, which can be a dead giveaway that he is not someone you should trust. His attitude towards Prelich at the beginning of the game does not help matters. Two other giveaways include two demons, who the player assumes are his mooks, capturing a Metroid in his abode in Kashyyyk and him mentioning that he has a castle after killing the Innkeeper in an optional boss fight.
• Shallow Parody: The game is meant to be a parody of early Final Fantasy games and Internet forums and popular culture. However, most of the game is revolved around jokes around popular culture than a Final Fantasy parody and the Internet forum parody mostly makes fun of certain types of users.
• Silent Majority: The game had at least one-thousand downloads yet very few people talk about this game, which contributes to the game's obscurity. The game became obscure to the point that when Kraken Edition was released, people only discovered its existence through Alex Rochon, who promoted the game, providing a download link on Twitter back in late 2014.
• Special Effect Failure:
  • In the original RPG Maker VX version of the game, because of the battle system used, all of the playable characters would briefly turn into a different sprite for a split second after using a regular attack.
  • In the Updated Re-release, some of the text in the parts of menu would overlap with each other due to character lengths.
  • One NPC in the Village of Dyslexia appears as an old man who is looking for a helmet. When you come back to the Dyslexia Village to bring him the Black Knight's helmet during the Bukkit sidequest, he somehow de-aged and became a burly, bearded man, meaning that he changed sprites after you defeated the Black Knight.
  • In the Psychotic Guardhouse, there is a guardhouse key that is representing by a little shine on a bed. However, said shine is not moving. This is one of the cases of this trope that makes it difficult for the player, since it's hard to see where the key would be without looking at a guide, if there ever was one.
  • It may be difficult to see, but the gate that blocks the Dyslexia Igloo is actually moving, making the sprite jitter awkwardly.
  • Joshscorcher's "Banishment" has a brief pause in part of the animation while the other part keeps going. The same applies to the Laughing Autarch's "Final Strike" which uses a palette swap of that animation.
  • Krazier's Dante incarnation knows Devil Trigger, just like the actual character. However, it does not have an animation nor shows a transformation of the enemy into a different sprite. There is a proper animation in the game's database, but it went unused.
  • There is a Hydro Storm sound effect in the game's files. In the battle against Light Camelslayer, the "Hydro Storm" skill does not play the sound effect and instead uses a stock animation from the RPG Maker VX engine, yet the actual animation that plays the sound exists in the game's database, which makes it seem like the developer forgot to implement the animation.
  • Culus's Slime Bubbles does not play a sound effect in the animation.
  • It is quite obvious that Krakis and Chaotic Camelslayer's Krakensemen Kamehameha has the sound effect outlast the animation, at least in the Updated Re-release.
• Squick: Krakis's entire character and battle is based on tentacle hentai, so many of their attacks are sexual innuendos that are so unsubtle that it does not take much to know what the moves are based on. It certainly does not help that the attacks are colored similarly to human semen.
• Surprise Difficulty: Despite being a silly parody of JRPGs and Internet forums, the game can be quite challenging, especially early on. MP-restoring items are rather expensive and early on you are limited in actions, forcing you to use your regular attack. Many of the bosses are Damage Sponge Bosses and have attacks that take away a large chunk of your health. Later on, you will likely have to heal every single turn just to survive a battle as many of the bosses, especially the superbosses, can take away as much as over half of your maximum HP.
• That One Achievement: Getting all of the user stones, due to the items having a very low drop rate and while they can be stolen, stealing has a low chance of succeeding. Two user stones in particular, Psychotic Nekomata's and Isaac's, cannot be obtained if you sent the local idiot to blow up the Deranged Village before defeating Isaac. Getting all of the item drops from the users is even worse in this regard, as they have an even lower drop rate and cannot be stolen.
• That One Attack:
  • Spamfest is the first truly annoying attack you will have to deal with, with the enemies who can learn this skill as early as the second continent. This inflicts the Spam ailment, which seals your skills. And considering that it also prevents you from using healing magic, this is bound to get annoying fast, especially since you won't have access to Redemption, a skill that heals HP and removes ailments, until you are over halfway through the game.
  • Flame War, a skill that is first used by the Hardcore Flamers which can inflict the Flammed status on your entire party, forcing them to automatically attack. This gets worse if Vlarix gets hit with it, as you won't have a designated healer, especially early on in the game. And of course many enemies have this attack, so be prepared to see this a lot.
  • Be wary when you see "[X] is being a God-Mod and draining the enemy!" This attack drains at least 1,000 HP from you, which is a lot at the time you start seeing this attack. Luckily for you, it is strictly an enemy skill, so you won't be able to learn it.
  • Any attack that inflicts the ZAMBEH ailment is this, since it is a status effect that makes healing attacks damage you. Many bosses have attacks that inflict this ailment. Fun!
  • Rince's "Wrath of Tea" doesn't have any special effect, but when you first see this attack it inflicts a ton of damage, which basically forces you to have Vlarix to use a multi-target heal spell on your party. This is notable since it inflicts at least 500 damage to everyone when previous enemies inflicted just less than 300 damage max beforehand. On the plus side, it doesn't do a lot of damage in the rematch.
  • The Soul of Flame's "Aerial Storm" is a highly damaging attack that inflicts around 900 damage to your entire party. Pray that it doesn't hit Vlarix and Tambot.
  • MissingNo.'s "Water Gun" has a chance of inflicting either 1 or 9999 HP damage to a single party member. The skill is actually comprised of two different attacks, but it doesn't help that an encounter against MissingNo. is a Luck-Based Mission.
  • Neo Exdeath's "Grand Cross" is just as bad as it was in the source material, if not worse. It's a strong attack that can inflict several status ailments at once.
  • "Krakensemen Kamehameha", used by Krakis and Chaotic Camelslayer near the end of their respective battles. It deals a massive amount of damage and can inflict both the Spammed and Noobrage ailments.
  • Everything used by Felix Falora. He will begin with Heartless Angel, dropping everyone's HP to 1, immediately followed by a normal attack. Many of his attacks inflict a bunch of status ailments on you. Special mention goes to his Horrorterror summon, which inflicts every single status ailment on two random targets. Later on, he also has "Tranquil Fury", which has a high chance of instantly killing three random targets, and his final attack, "Hell", has a high chance of instantly killing your entire party. You also have to worry about Frozen Pikachu's "Destiny Bond" if you defeat Pinkamena first. God help you if you enter the fight without two party members equipped with a Bloody Rosary, which grants status ailment immunity.
• That One Boss:
  • Rince, the second Admin, is quite the difficulty spike compared to the previous bosses, especially considering that at this point you are still in Early Game Hell. This is the first fight you will have Tambot with you and she will likely be at a lower level than you. Tambot won't be able to deal much damage as she only has two skills: Thread Horror, which is an incredibly weak spell, and Passive Aggression, which is a defense-raising spell. The other playable characters aren't in a much better spot either, as Prelich and Magnum's low MP pool forces them to spam their normal attack, while Vlarix is regulated to being the designated healer, and the Mass Revoke spell, which restores everyone's HP, costs a large chunk of his MP this early on. Rince's attacks are clearly more powerful than yours, as a few of his attacks, especially "Wrath of Tea" can inflict 500 HP worth of damage, basically a huge chunk of anyone's HP. He also has a ton of HP at this point of the game, being 7,500, which is a lot compared to other enemies, and since the previous Admin had 4,500 HP and you will likely be a few levels higher compared to the last Admin fight, the fight against Rince can be a Marathon Boss. MP restoring items and equipment are also expensive this early on as well. To make matters worse, user enemies won't be encountered until you enter the next continent, so you must defeat him with a rather limited arsenal and moveset.
  • The Soul of Flame, the second part of the fight against the Autarch of Flame. He has incredibly high attack power and can spam "Aerial Storm", dealing close to 900 damage on your party, and you will have slightly around 2,000 HP by the time you face him. Later on, he'll gain access to "Searing Light", which inflicts a heavy amount of damage.
• That One Disadvantage: The low speed of your party compared to most of the enemies, especially against the bosses and the monsters encountered in Botlantis. This basically forces you to fight against most of the random encounters and will often wear you down. Worse still, the only way to recover HP and MP without consuming items or magic is from sleeping in beds, and those are only found in towns. There is also very few speed-enhancing equipment in the game and even then those won't help much against enemies who are faster than you. Unless you are crazy enough to grind for feathers, which cost 80,000 G, you will be at a heavy speed disadvantage for most of the game.
• That One Level:
  • Dyslexia Igloo. Not only will you encounter Hardcore Flamers in mobs, finding all four Tea Bags (No! Not that kind!) can be quite challenging. The first floor features a maze that makes it very likely for you to encounter plenty of mobs, while the other section is an annoying teleporter maze that can be difficult to figure out. The second floor is thankfully easier puzzle-wize, as the riddle quiz can simply be cheesed by canceling while the damage room has a solution on the screen. Worse still, there is a chance you may encounter a Noob Legion, which is a powerful enemy that has access to Noob Song, which is quite strong at this point of the game. Considering that you are still in Early Game Hell, good luck trying to eliminate all of the noobs. And you don't get Tambot until the end of the level when you fight Rince.
  • Psychotic's Tower is a rather noticeable Difficulty Spike compared to the previous dungeons. The dungeon features an encounter rate that seems to be higher than normal in a game where the encounter rate is already high thanks in part to the game using RPG Maker's default encounter rate. The layout can also be confusing because the developer used nearly every tile in the tileset in RPG Maker VX (thanks in part to VX having a very limited tileset compared to it's predecessor in XP), which was meant to represent Psychotic Nekomata's insanity. Special mention goes to the second floor which is a crowded maze. Oh, and you may have to make multiple trips just to go back and heal and grind for levels, which can take a while because you would have to make the trek from Deranged Village to Psychotic's Tower if you used the PM skill to warp back to the continent's entrance. And to make matters worse, there is no quick travel within the dungeons with the sole exception being the Brutal Bonus Level.
  • The Ignis Passages are rather annoying to go through. The biggest challenge in going through the caverns is dealing with many mobs who will love to inflict the Flammed ailment on you. Even worse, some of them can inflict the Noobrage ailment as well, forcing you to waste turns attacking aimlessly and missing. And the encounter rate seems to be higher here than any other area in the game, so you better have plenty of ailment-restoring items with you. And you won't get Redemption, a powerful healing spell that removes all ailments, until you have access to the Demon Temple afterwards.
  • The City of Demons in the Civatatem region of Hell is a huge, sprawling dungeon that requires you to hit two switches to open the gate. Because the switches are so far away from each other, you will have to encounter several dangerous mobs, and like the Ignis Passages, the encounter rate is quite high. It's more annoying than difficult due to the dungeon being spread out, but the random encounters will become annoying fast, even if you used the Appear Offline skill. It also happens to be the home of the "Demon City Zoo" sidequest, which is mentioned in That One Sidequest below.
• That One Puzzle: The puzzle in the seventh floor of Botlantis, which has you gathering six body parts of a child. The floor happens to be a maze and you have to deal with several mobs of Eldritch Abominations to complete the puzzle.
• That One Sidequest: The "Demon City Zoo" sidequest, which takes place in the City of Demons, already mentioned in That One Level above. The objective is to capture ten animals who escaped from the exhibit. This means that you must travel all over the City of Demons to capture all ten animals, and this quest cannot be fully completed until you've defeated magnetmaster765. When you encounter the animals in battle, you are not supposed to defeat them like a regular enemy, but you have to lower their HP enough where you can safely capture them, just like in Pokémon. If you defeat a single one, you can no longer encounter them. A few of them also have a limited amount of turns to defeat, so in those battles you cannot spend too much time battling them. And of course this quest will drag on longer than it should because of the random encounters. At least the reward, the Folding Chair, is a pretty strong weapon at this point in the game.
• Unintentional Period Piece: This game was released back in 2012 and it shows that it was dated to around the 2010-2012 time period. Several references were from The Autarch's videos from that time period years before his retirement from countdown making and even some of Joshscorcher's early works as well. In addition, some of the references originated on the forum it was based on as well before its eventual shutdown. Even in Kraken Edition two years later, there are references to works released around its time, such as a user spirit lamenting that he didn't get a chance to play Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U and another being excited for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2014). And just to make this game even more dated, there were a massive amount of memes made since the release of both the VX and VX Ace versions as well as the advent of Discord years later.
• Values Dissonance: Back when this game was released, it was simply targeted towards the users of the Real Life forum the game was based on. There are plenty of instances of the words "Retard" and "Faggot" used throughout the game and the game treated those words as harmless insults. Nowadays, both words are considered incredibly offensive to disabled and homosexual individuals. To make matters worse, the word "Faggot" was used in the Big Bad's Madness Mantra in a book you can read in the Very Definitely Final Dungeon. And while the behavior of many of the individuals in Psychosis Island are Played for Laughs, the issue of mental instability is considered to a serious issue. Even if this isn't considered to be a serious game, there are jokes that may make some people feel uncomfortable nowadays.
• What Do You Mean, It's for Kids?: The game was targeted towards the users of the Real Life Chaos Theatre forums, whose users were mostly comprised of teenagers at the time of the game's release. However, not everything in the game would be suitable for teenagers, as there are moments where sexual innuendo that is usually present in M-rated games are present, such as Richard the Demonic Chicken. It's even worse with the Updated Re-release as one of the newly introduced superbosses is a character who is entirely a reference to tentacle hentai and the German Dungeon Porn item having a purpose.

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