YMMV / Fossil Fighters

• Cargo Ship: McJunker loves mine carts a little too much.
• Damsel Scrappy: Rosie, to those who find her The Load and Damsel in Distress qualities unbearable. In-universe, it's even lampshaded when she points out how many times you've had to save her bacon, and asking if you hate her. Amusingly, if you say yes, she doesn't take it well.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Judging from the fandom alone, you would think the series is about a group of reptilian aliens and their struggles, and not dinosaur battling. It's probably fair to say some of the fans are just there for the dinaurians.
  • Among the Vivosaurs, Shanshan is surprisingly popular. It stands out for being extremely cute in contrast to most tyrannosaur-like Vivosaurs, and for being the only bright-pink dino in the game.
• Even Better Sequel: Champions, at least in terms of gameplay. The combat gains added depth due to the changes to field placement and attack ranges, and Vivosaurs can be somewhat customized in terms of color and stats thanks to Wondrous Fossils. Super Evolvers and the game's higher level cap also add more of a sense of progression, as one can't simply soar to the highest levels by cleaning every fossil you find early in the game.
• Fandom-Enraging Misconception: Saying that the games are Pokémon clones tends to get pegged as inaccurate; the series shares elements with the mons formula that Pokémon popularized, but the battle system and gameplay loop are very different, so most of the similarities are just on the surface.
• First Installment Wins: In terms of story, the first game's is generally considered the best, both for the halfway plot twist and the depth of the second half of the game.
• Fridge Logic: After you beat the game, the game makes you shell out $20,000 for an oasis seed, because there's an area called Parchment Desert where your radar won't work because of how hot it is. How come your radar worked just fine in Mt. Lavaflow?
• Game-Breaker:
  • Compso in the first game (Champions makes it harder to use by tying support effects to Vivosaur level). It can lower the opposing AZ dino's attack and defense by 90%, and it gives you a nice FP bonus thanks to FP Plus just by being in your SZ. You can get one and all of its fossils as soon as you unlock the donation points machine early in the game, though since each part costs 200 points it requires a lot of grinding.
  • Raja in Champions can be found in the first area, and can evolve into Giga Raja with a Gold Fossil, which can also be uncovered early with a little dedication. By combining its new, highly-powered attacks with its ability to Charge power, Giga Raja can deal more damage than the highest possible Life Points of any Vivosaur!
  • Heracles. It has absurdly high attack, especially for a Mid-Range, and can buff its team with its above average Support Effects and Enflame skill.
  • Buster Points make cleaning fossils much easier, as they tear away huge chunks of the fossils.
  • Poison in Frontier is percentage-based, so the more HP the boss has, the more damage the poison will do. This can turn even the bonus bosses into jokes.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • In the Digadig ruins, there is a large ammonite fossil placed very prominently in the last room, perhaps as a figure that the Digadigs worshipped. Hmm…
  • In the manga of the first game, Holt claims to have 101 V-Raptors. In the second game, the Bank system allows the player to store 100 Vivosaurs of any kind and counting the one in the holder, the player can have 101 V-Raptors.
• It Was His Sled: Even though the plot twist isn't revealed until the third-to-last chapter of the game, the dinaurians from the first game are well-known by people aware of the series, by virtue of being such an out-there surprise that most retrospectives spend a lot of time talking about it.
• Les Yay: With Pauleen in Champions if you play as the female character, as she gets embarrassed when she takes you by the hands.
• Magnificent Bastard (Champions):
  • Don Boneyard is introduced as a Card-Carrying Villain with the intent of ending the Caliosteo Cup prematurely. To this end, Boneyard recruits societal outsiders by showing them genuine respect, then allows them to kidnap fighters, trap them in grape jelly, and steal the islands' power supply so they are no longer willing or able to compete. Boneyard is resilient, and after the other plans are foiled, initiates his own plan to sink the islands, providing ample warning to prevent casualties. After the tournament concludes, Boneyard saves the protagonist from being possessed, explains his motivation of preventing a tyrannical ruler from taking power, and the two successfully team up towards this end. While Good All Along, Boneyard was willing to take extreme measures in service of his goals.
  • Zongazonga takes over the body of Joe Wildwest after the latter unwittingly frees him, leaving Joe as a talking skull. As Joe, Zongazonga puts up a convincing impression and sees the Caliosteo Cup to completion despite frequent sabotage by the BB Brigade. Once the player wins the cup, Zongazonga seeks to take their body as a new vessel, and to this end, uses his outward identity as Joe to turn the islands' staff against them, then Brainwashes the hero's best friend by playing on deep seated jealousy. When seemingly cornered, Zongazonga improvises by fleeing to the elevator and swapping into the runner-up's body with no one the wiser. Zongazonga then takes position at his base, and in a Near-Villain Victory, is only finally defeated after the Fossil Cannon is modified to launch a human through unnavigable winds.
• Most Wonderful Sound:
  • The little jingle that plays when you crack open an obstacle and find some money.
  • The Smashing Success leitmotif inevitably inspires both relief and excitement, especially after a tedious or difficult cleaning.
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • Curious fossil rocks. You have to clean two sides for the one fossil, acting effectively as two separate fossils, in the same amount of time as you would one, with no Buster Points present to accelerate the process. To make matters worse, they're the only body part of that Vivosaur, meaning you have to really grind to make them viable in combat. Even worse is that it can be hard to tell what still needs cleaned if dirt from the other side is still there.
  • Dark fossil rocks can only be broken with the hammer, and if it's fragile your first swing could completely destroy the fossil inside. It's even worse if is there's a tiny bit of shell covering the edge of a fossil, as you'll have to swing and crack it even more to get rid of it.
  • Giant fossil rocks are meant to be cleaned in multiplayer, so if you're in singleplayer you'll have to consume a lot of time pluses.
  • Frontier has Paleo Pals, AI-controlled teammates who only have one Vivosaur they can use and are prone to Artificial Stupidity. They are completely mandatory for filling out your party of three Vivosaurs, as you are only allowed to control one Vivosaur in any given battle.
  • Rogue Vivosaurs in Frontier spawn randomly at any time and they can interrupt your fossil cleanings, sometimes as soon as one starts.
• Sidetracked by the Gold Saucer: Fossil cleaning is addicting. It's possible to be on chapter 2 and have a bunch of upgrades and powerful Viviosaurs. The upgrades that let you find new fossil rocks make it even more addictive.
• Tainted by the Preview: Some review outlets accused the game of being Nintendo ripping off itself based on concept alone, despite the fact that it doesn't actually play all that much like Pokémon.
• That One Boss:
  • Saurhead, the final rank-up boss in the first game. The issue is not that he's exceedingly strong, it's that you have to play extremely defensively, because losing even one vivosaur makes you lose.
  • Zongazonga in Champions, primarily because his defeated Vivosaurs resurrect every other turn, hit every member of your team for good damage, and can greatly cripple their stats.
• That One Sidequest: Champions' Hare Club quest requires you to clean 100 fossil rocks to 80 points or better, many of which are extremely difficult, while wearing a tacky rabbit mask.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: Frontier gets quite a bit of this from fans of the first two games, for reasons ranging from having a smaller roster of Vivosaurs to the complete overhaul of combat, especially after the improvements made to it in Champions, and only having direct control of one Vivosaur in your party. The Real Is Brown cleaning system is also a point of contention.
• Toy Ship: The main character and Rosie; her crush on him is particularly painfully obvious. But near the very end of the game, you can choose to have him end up with Duna instead.
• The Woobie: Rosie realizes she's The Load, and is genuinely sorry when you have to help. She even asks if you hate her at one point, and you can say yes.

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