YMMV / Grand Chase

• Abridged Arena Array: PVP is dominated by matches set in Gorge of Oath due to the various crevices littered throughout, making it great for knocking opponents into them for a quick win. In fact, wins that came from actually defeating your opponent with attacks are very rare in this stage.
• Breather Level: The Wyrm's Maw/Ignis Mountains. In between the annoyance that is Ashtaroth and the evil that is the Altar of (im)Balance, Ignis looks positively easy in comparison.
• Broken Base:
  • PVP steps into the realm of Serious Business from time to time, to the point where the fan base can get really worked up over it.
  • Various patches that drastically change the gameplay have divided the players in opposing camps whenever they came out.
• Complacent Gaming Syndrome:
  • Lire players have made the Gorge of Oath their official home in PVP, along with anyone else needing wins.
  • When Mari's 4th job was released, it is so ridiculously busted that there was a surge in her players solely for that alone, to the extent that her three other jobs were left in the dirt.
  • Before it was patched, due to a Good Bad Bug, players often cheesed the first two Hero dungeons by stripping all their gear except for their secondary weapon. Any newcomers are immediately told to go "naked" to prevent their stats from buffing the enemies. Even the room names would sometimes go by the "naked" moniker. Practically no one asked for it to be fixed as clearing them is needed to complete the 3rd and 4th job missions.
• Demonic Spiders:
  • EVERY MONSTER in the Altar of Balance (before Season 3).
  • The mooks at the Temple of Cuatal/Origins/Light are no joke either: arrow deflection, high-damage bombs... and a priest can heal and resurrect them.
  • The monsters in the Castle of Domination are already Demonic Spiders. Champion Mode takes this to Nintendo Hard levels.
    • The Hera and Dark Priests can qualify as Boss in Mook Clothing, even if you're not playing Champion Mode.
• Fan Nickname: "Amyzilla" for one of Amy Plie's special moves, where she grows in size, stomps the ground and breathes fire like a miniature Kaiju.
• Game-Breaker:
  • The Skill Trees turn lower-tier jobs into people of mass destruction. This make people even wonder why you should do the other jobs quests.
  • It's still worthwhile to advance your job, because the Skill Trees often have passive boosts that apply to these jobs, too. And in Season 4, advancing to higher jobs gives you a fixed stat bonus.
  • Grabbing.
  • MP-recovery equipment in PVP (though this has been nerfed when Season 4 rolled around).
  • Critical Chance equipment and cards. Double Damage is great in PVP, but when you realize that grabs can take out well over 1/3rd of your HP normally, and some people have up to about 50% critical, it gets game breaking. Then there's the more powerful 1 MP skills, such as Arme's Level 2 Stone Curse - which WILL kill you in one critical hit.
  • The 4 MP/AP bar skills. They are so ridiculously powerful that KOG had eventually to lock them behind a level 70 requirement while reworking their unlocking quests. When they first came out, you can get their unlock missions as early as level 10.
  • Dio at the time of his release was a walking Game-Breaker — while he did take a massive nerf, he is still absurdly versatile and powerful. Dio is the first character that the Korean Version dedicated a whole patch to nerfing, and it was BY FAR the biggest single nerf ever done in the 8-year history of the Korean version of the game. The size of the nerf was to the degree that it was possibly larger than every single other nerf the Korean Version has ever done put together. Using a certain tandem of moves in quick sequence will remove the "skill freeze" from the first move cast.
  • Arme Glenstid is the only character who has a Cash Skill banned in tournaments (Athena's Sword).
  • Though not to the degree that Gladiator Sieghart has, Ryan's Druid Skill Tree greatly improved his maneuverability and utility.
  • Ronan Erudon:
    • Doubling as Good Bad Bug, his (level 1) Blast Bomb skill refills his MP. Against large opponents, this allows him to cast this infinitely, in theory. Samsara is a particularly good example of this.
    • Aegis Knight's level 4 MP special — he summons the Tempest Guardian, and gains a x2 damage multiplier while it is active.
  • Amy Plie:
    • Sistina's Action Mode level 1 special move (Jack Knife) is taking to the air on a bicycle and crashing back down. This is perhaps one of the most damaging and spammable moves in PVP.
    • Metal Idol/Lasting Lyrics in team battles, to the point where in team games, the resident tank Elesis is frequently shoved aside for Amy because of this buff. Isn't it sad, Elesis?
  • Ercnard Sieghart is rather good as a Gladiator, especially with his grabs. Then his Skill Tree came out, which gave him even more speed, even stronger skills, a passive buff to his defense (making him take about 30% less damage than any other character), the ability to heal, block hits like Aegis Knight (avoiding damage altogether), and very high priority on his aerial attacks. Add all those up and you'll see more than half of PVP stuffed with Gladiators. The Imperium Skill update also gave him a four-level MP special that decimates mooks with frightening ease.
  • Although not to the degree Dio was, Ley received a rather substantial nerf shortly after her release. Her combo speed was lowered [Teleporting + a combo which was literally impassable for Melee characters at the speed it was fired] and a nerf to the cooldown of 'Secret Passage', an AoE, instant-cast skill which had the capability to OHKO in PVP with extreme ease.
  • Rin:
    • Post 2nd job, her new "dark" level 3 skill, Screaming Gust, is even more so. Not only it deals ludicrous amounts of damage, almost on par with her 4th skill, it even receives a buff in the 3rd job, allowing Rin to become invincible and cause damage after the skill, in a manner similar to Sieghart's Mocking Blade!
    • Her 4th skill, Ultrasonic Hymn, is essentially Ley's Secret Passage up to eleven! And unlike the other MP characters, Lin's 4th skill is the same, no matter the job or the path you follow, in a manner similar to the AP characters.
  • Decanee can go significantly farther in Dungeons alone than the rest of the cast due to her absurd damage output and all around survivability.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff:
  • Grand Chase is a huge hit in Brazil and easily one of the most popular MMOs in the country alongside with Ragnarok Online and Counter-Strike. In the game's early heyday, the Brazilian server was the biggest of the world in number of players, which KOG took account of when they relaunched the game by forming ten South America servers to connect to. Dio and Mari were the popular choices of the Brazilians. In fact, on the the shut down of the original servers in 2015, Level Up Games tried to buy the rights of the game for keep it running, but KOG refused the deal.
  • Grand Chase was also a huge hit in the Philippines to the extent that it became the first country outside Korea chosen to have its sequel localized for them while becoming the host of its Southeast Asia Server. When the news of the sequel first came out, pre-registrations for it exceeded 100 thousand, which was quite impressive considering that it has been over 3 years since the original closed in mid-2015 and most of its original players have moved on from it.
• Goddamned Bats: Goddamned Harpies and Goddamned Gargoyles, for being flying enemies and infuriating to attack.
• Good Bad Bugs:
  • The "ottoshot", before they fixed it.
  • Stepping as well.
  • The Hero Dungeon bugs, too. Specifically, when they don't account for your secondary weapon when calculating its difficulty. The allows players to One-Hit Kill every enemy as you are smuggling a level 30+ weapon into a level 10 or so dungeon. Note that Tower of Disappearance doesn't have this bug. This was patched in the Eternal update.
  • Before season 4, Zig cannot hit you with his usual attack if you are in front of him. You could easily solo hims for 6 Hero's Bullions everyday
    • This left a question. If they bother to fix the bug in a boss' attack, why they didn't fix the bug in The Iron Guard/Hammermon that enable him to damage player behind him using his regular front punch?
• It's Short, So It Sucks!: In Season 2, you have no more single-player quests by level 46; Season 3 has it at level 61. This means you have to either grind in dungeons or in PVP to level up until the next quest patch.
• Just Here for Godzilla:
  • PVP mostly.
  • Amy's buffs to her Metal Idol dance is worth her entire Skill Tree — as usual.
• Macekre:
  • In a ways, people do NOT like Ntreev for their obvious cash ploys and other "crimes" made into their version of the game such as Class Nerfs for the prospect of PVP having less complaints.
  • Ergo Level-Up Games Philippines and gacha.
• Memetic Badass: Treant is unbeatable! Subverted in the first stage on Phantasmic Sector. After spending minutes defeating 3 Poisonous Mushroom (on steroid), you will be ambushed by 2 level 85 Treant. For your information, the game's level cap is 75 when it was first released.
• Narm:
  • Most of Ronan's lines. "It's my victory!" is a particularly narmful one. (He says it differently for his Magic Knight and Aegis Knight jobs, but both are equally as narmful.)
  • Some of Lire's lines can qualify, such as "Oh, no... I won!".
• Narm Charm: The reason Ronan is particularly popular with the fanbase is his So Bad, It's Good English VA.
• Pandering to the Base:
  • PVP is overpromoted due to the fact that no one in the community really cares that much about dungeons.
  • Ronan came before Lass and Ryan due to people whining about having to play as a girl despite the fact that Lass and Ryan are also guys. This was likely because the levels required to unlock Lass were not available when Ronan was introduced, though Ryan's reason is a little more confusing.
• Scrappy Mechanic: Quests that require you to use specific skills. AP and Hybrid characters will always be able to just dedicate a skill slot for it for the level at worst, but MP character quests always require you to use your first class weapon. If it's not a good class compared to what you have unlocked, you're not used to their first class, or you just plain don't like playing it, you're going to have a bad time. Later quests also require very specific skills unlocked, potentially wasting your precious SP.
  • The level "Relics of Kounat" gives you quests to defeat both bosses. The problem is unlike Battle for Bermesiah's Mini bosses and Xenia Border's Bosses which have similar quests, the boss you fight is random and there's no way to accurately guess which one you're going to get, meaning you can be on it much longer than you need to because you keep being matched against the wrong guy. Not helped by the rather strict time limit if you're not overpowered for the level.
• Tear Jerker: Crosses into Heartwarming Moments but mostly Tear Jerker. When the game's servers being turned off for good on April 2015, the staff of KOG and the top players said their thanks and farewells in a video called: A Farewell From Grand Chase. Pretty much all of the players state that they had great memories playing the game and are sad to see it go. Somewhat more heartwarming now that the servers are officially up again.
• The Scrappy: Arme and Lire in PvP in the Brazilian server. Many Brazilian players (especially Lass/Ryan/Ronan users) complained about Arme and Lire being "too broken" for PvP (especially the former for having healing abilities) because of their ranged attacks, such as Arme's infamous Fire Ball move (super handy for even the most inexperienced Arme players, but a pain in the neck for non-users of Arme). "NO LIRE/ARME" becomes a trademark in the name of the rooms of this server.
• That One Attack:
  • Lire Eryuell:
    • Her first bar skill key moves are know to cause fits in PvP.
    • Her non-skill key special moves are also very dangerous, as getting hit by one point-blank means you will get grabbed or hit with another special move in short order.
    • Headshot Level 2 is a ranged version of Lass' Fatal Attack, which hits twice; for the same mana cost. And if at point blank, she can follow it up with an immediate grab for an instant kill if successful. This skill was so potent it was initially removed in NAGC.
  • Everyone and Ryan Woodguard's dog who buys a cash skill key for Ryan will always, always, always get Poison Spore.
• That One Boss: The game starts off easy, but then smacks you with quite a few of these. Each fully completed continent has at least one, besides Bermesiah: Ellia has the Giant Stone Golem, Silver Land has King Guang/Ness and Victor, and Xenia has Yamini/Juriore and Thanatos. Archaemedia and Alcubra/Atum haven't got their hard bosses...yet.
  • The minibosses Vanessa and Ashtaroth are usually considered to be much harder than their end-of-level bosses Zen/Samsara and Bultaros/Mynos, respectively. To wit: Vanessa can corner-lock you with consecutive Spinning Phantom attacks when in Wolf form.
  • Iblis of the Temple of Domination is also a mind-numbingly hard miniboss in Champion Mode.
  • Kassias Grandiel, the boss in Wizards Labyrinth is bigger pain than Thanatos. He starts with huge 600 life bar with powerful attacks such as homing energy ball, lightning streams and circullar lightning ball. Keep reducing his health then he will summon two elite mooks,Veron and Drawl with equal stats with Grandiel and he will remain invincible unless if those two were eliminated. Having fun? Wait until you see when his life bar is 200 below. He will summon 4 clones of him that can turn the entire arena into one freaking bullet hell.
  • KoG went too far when they turn KazeAze to become the queen of this trope. She got new insane moves and an insane life bar. The players will fight her twice, she got 220 life bars in first round, taken to the extreme on second round as her life bar is 2200 with shield. The player will notice that she summon a huge monster to assist her in battle, retain all her moves and teleports fast, though the players here are withstand on KazeAze's attacks for 5 minutes.
• That One Level:
  • The Altar of Balance in Season 2; the Castle of Domination in Season 3.
    • The Castle of Domination puts the Altar of Balance to shame, and is practically Nintendo Hard on Champion Mode.
  • Heroic Dungeons qualify, unless you know the way around them.
  • The Temple of Cuatal/Origins qualifies if you go through it using a solo Lire. Nearly all of the enemies there (including Vanessa and Samsara/Zen) have Arrow Defense.
  • And now there's The Shrine of Ruin, which despite its level requirement (40 and up) makes the Altar of Balance look like a walk in the park by comparison.
    • Hell's Furnace (despite the lower level requirement) can contend with The Shrine of Ruin in sheer difficulty if you come unprepared.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!:
  • The supposed "Ottofix" by Ntreev.
  • The raising of the level requirement of the level 4 skills to 70 has pissed off quite a few players as they are now locked out of a powerful crutch that would have helped them reach higher levels. Lime and Asin players got it even worse as they have to reach level 85 to unlock the skills, which is the game's final level cap!!
  • Changing from the shared inventory system, a staple since day one, to an individual-based inventory with a shared warehouse system has been met with near total disdain, due to how it just makes item handling needlessly complicated among the 20 characters. Many veterans quit the game and refuse to play the 2021 re-release over this!
• Unexpected Character: A crossover character with Grand Chase Dimensional Chaser was expected if a new character since reopening was going to happen at all, but who expected major antagonist Decanee?
• Viewer Gender Confusion: Equip the Valkyrie, Highlander and/or Mohican sets on a male character (notably Ronan) and watch this happen.