YMMV / Octopath Traveler II

• Accidental Innuendo:
  • When using Analyze, Osvald says, "Let me look at you". Depending on who or what he's fighting, this can be interpreted as him wanting to see more than just his opponent's HP and weaknesses.
  • Temenos says, "Come, servant of Vide" when the screen transitions to his battle against the Chapter 2 boss, Vados the Architect.
• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • Emerald's actions in Osvald's Chapter 2, where he abruptly gaffs at Osvald's idea to get back to the mainlaid in ice boats and decides to single-handedly commandeer the inspector's boat. Did he genuinely think it was a bad idea, and his earlier agreement was because of overeagerness by the potential Hope Spot? Was it because, being a father who lost his wife and daughter to a crime syndicate he stole from, he didn't want to work with a father who'd kill his own wife and child? Or, inversely, did he realize Osvald was innocent and wanted to further ensure his escape so he could get Revenge on whoever framed him? One side quest reveals that at least when he realized he was going to get caught, his burning of the inspector's boat was for Osvald's sake due to him realizing he was different.
  • A popular subject of debate and analysis is just how much Ori's 'scrivener' personality is a front. Unlike Arcanette, who the game unambiguously paints as a manipulative, vile monster during her scene with Tanzy, and who only pretends to be sweet and soft-spoken to fly under the Pontiff's and Temenos' radars, there's a lot of ambiguity cast on Ori's personality. During her Bungled Suicide, she herself realizes just in time how much Partitio meant to her, and could be reasonably distressed and uncharacteristically dour given the task she intends to complete. As this scene compromises her last speaking role and her own journal flips back and forth between her 'excited' and 'cold' sides, it's difficult to tell which Ori is the real Ori—or if the nihilistic Ori was the real Ori, until Partitio's audacity to buy the steam engine rights for eighty billion leaves inspired honest hope and cheer in her.
  • Cubaryi doesn't bother to hide her true nature, unlike Kaldena who at least attempted to act somewhat professional despite being behind the pontiff's murder. She does this in response to Temenos not sharing his investigation with the Sacred Guard, making it seem like she knows Temenos is on to the Sacred Guard and that there's no point in trying to hide it. Her antagonistic attitude comes off as her subtly bragging to Temenos that she and Kaldena will get away with their crimes, and that they'll kill him for investigating further.
  • Mugen Ku presents himself as a powerful and invincible Blood Knight, but many of his actions imply that deep down, he's a cowardly paranoiac who fears being judged by his own standards. He is obsessed with exterminating the Lumina bloodline partly because one of them influenced King Jigo, despite how they never personally did anything to him and the rest aren't even a threat to him politically^note They did oppose D'arquest in the past and could hypothetically oppose his descendents again in the present, but none of the modern-day Lumina descendents seem to be aware of this besides Hikari, who only finds out just before the final fight with Mugen and was opposing him anyway. When he attacks Ku's castle town and the nation of Sa, he slaughters most of the population of the former and as many as possible of the latter out of fear of potential rebellious elements, despite how this would also kill off potential sources of labor. Finally, he always has his helmet on because he doesn't want to reveal that the Curse of Ku accelerated his aging, instead of simply believing his strength will speak for itself. All of this indicates that he has deeply internalized the strongman aesthetic of his clan and is terrified of failing to uphold that legacy. Hikari proving to be a great warrior and popular prince without even trying to live up to Ku's ideals probably caused no end of resentment from Mugen; he doesn't have the same self-assurance and inner strength as Hikari and he knows it.
• Angst? What Angst?: For some, it's a little jarring that, beyond reacting to individual cases, the game never acknowledges the very consistent pattern of Hikari's friends betraying him, and to the end he advocates for The Power of Friendship. While some of this can be chalked up to his forgiving nature, it's easy to find fans who interpret it as the result of him being emotionally repressed and/or having normalized poor treatment from others.
• Award Snub: Many were upset that the game did not receive a single nomination in The Game Awards, mainly for the "Best RPG," "Best Art Direction," and "Best Score and Music" categories, with several game journalists citing the controversial nature of some nominations (Lies of P for being more of an adventure game, and Final Fantasy XVI having more in common with Devil May Cry than an RPG), contributing said snub being considered a mistake on the show's end. It didn't help that while it was included in the Players' Voice bracket, it didn't make it past the first round.
• Awesome Art: Naoki Ikushima spared no expense in crafting something truly excellent with the various art pieces scattered throughout the game. Though also the genius behind previous HD-2D games' art like Bravely Default II, Live A Live, and Triangle Strategy, Ikushima went above and beyond for Octopath Traveler II, creating several extra pieces of gorgeous art to really punctuate the high points of the adventure, including animesque newspaper articles for Partitio's chapters 2 and 3, the various Crossed Paths title cards, and the brilliant end card that sees off the epilogue in the most gorgeous way possible. As always, the HD-2D style itself continues to impress with meticulously put-together sprites interacting with gorgeous 3D backgrounds, taking everything great about the previous game and elevating it to an art form.
• Base-Breaking Character:
  • Agnea. She and her story are likely intended to be a Foil to the nihilistic Moonshade Order, but she and her story have garnered detractors for being too light-hearted to the point of being saccharine, as well as her helping other characters develop instead of developing herself. Her detractors tend to point to Partitio as an example of a light-hearted story with enough stakes to be interesting. That said, others appreciate Agnea and her story for their simplicity, and think she's cute. There also exists a third group who like her personality and interactions with the other travelers, but think her story is underwhelming.
  • Claude is rather divisive as the Arc Villain of Throné's story. His detractors argue that The Reveal that he is immortal and has fathered the entire Blacksnakes isn't foreshadowed enough and the suddenness of it potentially makes it feel silly in its melodrama rather than horrifying, he is introduced way too late to have the impact he could have had, and is an Anti-Climax Boss with only 68,000 HP and no second phase^note For comparison, Lucia, the Arc Villain with the lowest HP in the first game, had 84,084 HP, and she began the battle with 30 shields. While Claude can summon Phantom Pirro, Mother and Father while hiding himself (and if you add up the total HP of Claude and all three Phantom Snakes, you get 132,000 HP), they can be skipped if the party deals enough damage to him. However, some people think he is foreshadowed enough, and appreciate the horror aspect he brings to an already-dark story.
  • Professor Harvey is either a delightfully despicable and hammy villain whose machinations provide a memorable conclusion to Osvald's story, or a one-dimensional Card-Carrying Villain who is too over-the-top to take seriously^note It doesn't help that, when the demo was released, a few players believed that Harvey was a figment of Osvald's imagination and that Osvald was guilty of the murder of his wife and daughter, and were disappointed when Harvey turned out to be Real After All. While it can be argued that him being one-dimensional is intentional—Osvald snarks during their Boss Banter that Harvey hasn't changed at all since they met—it's still debated if this helps or harms his character.
• Best Boss Ever: Each protagonist has at least one of these in their stories, and there are also some memorable side quest bosses:
  • The Darkling from Ochette's final chapter. On top of it being the Animal Companion you didn't choose after ten years of torture and suffering, Ochette's partner awakens to the Sacred Flame's power in order for the two to fight against it and save their home from the Calamity. The Darkling attacks other party members to gain different status buffs much like the Hunter class's Cleaving Blow move, can reduce all party members down to 1 HP, and the fight is where Akalā/Mahina and Acta obtain their Super Modes, making for a challenging yet exciting Final Boss for the beastling.
  • Trousseau from Castti's final chapter. It's a fight with the Ogre Eagle's gimmick, but against an actually story-relevant foe, with Trousseau's mad laughter ringing out as he basically goes full-on supervillain, from his amused pose at the battle's start to his terrified, frustrated, crying rage when you break his mask. Combine that with the sheer number of status effects he throws, and the rain constantly adding pressure to finish the battle onto the player, and you have a magnificently frantic conclusion to the good doctor's storyline.
  • Throné's story:
    • Chapter 1: Pirro, on top of the gut-punch of fighting him at all, has several multi-hit attacks and a chance to stun Throné, making for a very effective boss in both gameplay and story.
    • Chapter 3: Both the fight against Mother and the fight against Father, for different reasons. On top of Throné needing to kill them to obtain her freedom, Mother is especially satisfying to fight and take down for her abusive nature towards Throné, Mira, and countless others. Father, on the other hand, has his Freudian Excuse revealed as a broken shell of a man desperate for Throné to kill him, with attacks that can one-shot unprepared party members yet are still telegraphed well enough to avoid being annoying.
    • Chapter 4: Claude, the biological father of all the Blacksnakes. After informing Throné of the Blacksnakes' true nature, he will occasionally taunt her / give her backhanded compliments during the fight, during which time he summons phantoms of Pirro, Mother, Father, Marietta, and Throné herself. It can take a long time to finish him off, but it's also an extremely cool gimmick that works well narratively.
  • Harvey from Osvald's final chapter. After everything Harvey put him through, Osvald's resolve to protect his daughter Elena allows him to unlock the One True Magic, harnessing The Power of Love against The Power of Hate Harvey wields. In gameplay, both can use the One True Magic against each other, with Osvald's being an EX skill and Harvey's his Limit Break, making for an incredibly fitting "last debate" between the two scholars.
  • Roque Brilliante from Partitio's final chapter. After Partitio's quest to obtain eighty-billion leaves to buy the steam engine, Roque brings out the Steam Tank Obsidian in a desperate attempt to keep the rights by force. Four different sections of the train can attack the party, with Roque able to repair three of them and restore them from destruction, requiring careful management of attacking their different weaknesses to break their Shield Points and destroy them all at once to make the main body vulnerable.
  • Dolcinaea from Agnea's final chapter. While the gameplay is still structured like a fight, story-wise it's a dual performance between the two dancers as they compete to be the bigger star. Dolcinea uses the audience members as well as Agnea's own teammates to fight with her, with the second phase receiving "Song Of Hope" as unique battle music compare to the other protagonists' final battles.
  • Captain Kaldena from Temenos' final chapter. On top of the personal stakes in her murdering Crick, Kaldena's second phase has her forcibly transformed by the Shadow, becoming a monster that can instantly kill anyone she blinds and reduces the power of healing items and abilities.
  • Hikari's story:
    • Chapter 2: The fight against Bandelam the Reaper. From a story perspective, Hikari and Kazan are toppling the arena fighting scheme and this fight comes right as Kazan's machinations pay off. Hikari and Bandelam share mutual respect after the first fight because Hikari is fighting him so well, then asking him what he fights for, only for Hikari to give an unwavering answer, for his comrades and his country. And then the fight ensues. It's a tough fight for a party at the recommended level. He will constantly switch up his weaknesses and increase his Shield Points by 2 each time you break him, capping out at 10. His attacks are hard-hitting and can reduce an under-leveled party's numbers quickly. He also has quite a bit of HP. But he's not unfairly difficult and gives you more than a few chances to whale on him. And all of this while Critical Clash II is blasting in the background to amp you up.
    • Chapter 5: While he can be quite difficult even by final boss standards to an unprepared team, the fight against Mugen is also very cool. You first fight him normally, and then, after Hikari conquers his dark side, Mugen completely gives in to the curse and turns into The Enshrouded King. It's some great thematic contrast between the two brothers, and it makes it even more satisfying when Mugen finally goes down.
  • Karma is an interesting side quest boss too. First, in order to fight him, you have to bring only one traveler (guided/allured/befriended/hired NPCs cannot be used either), so you'll be fighting him one-on-one. During his fight, he mainly attacks with increasingly aggressive skills, and if not broken in time, he'd use Killer Karma to instantly defeat your character (though you can get around it with Rise Again or Hang Tough if you really can't break him in time). One of his stances include him having one shield with no weaknesses so you'll have to rely on abilities like Temenos' Latent Power, Ochette's Beastly Howl, and Hikari's Vengeful Blade, or items like Almighty Soulstones. Another stance has him being weak to every type of attack, but you'll need to break his 15 shields in 4 turns. It's a challenging boss that really puts your understanding of breaking to the test.
  • Vide. Being the Final Boss and the God of Darkness, Vide delivers on all fronts. First, the music is absolutely incredible, hyping up the confrontation to truly epic proportions. Second, Vide's various tendrils and attacks will keep any party on their toes, especially his ability to dispel your buffs. Then, when he's half-way through his first phase, he sucks up your currently active party, forcing the other four characters to finish the first phase to break the others out. Then you get to his second phase, where you have all eight heroes fighting Vide simultaneously. No, this is not like how the original eight fought Galdera; this time, everyone is in play at the same time, and the voice lines accompanying the final fight show each is going to give everything they've got in putting Vide down once and for all, and restoring the light of day to Solistia.
• Broken Base: While it's generally agreed that both this game and its predecessor have excellent soundtracks, there is a minor but ongoing debate on whether this soundtrack surpasses, equals, or falls short of the first game's.
• Cheese Strategy:
  • The "Bottled Nightmares" item can be used on an enemy for a decently-high percentage chance to inflict four different status ailments. The four ailments in question are Blindness, Confusion, Sleep, and Poison, the last two are most important, as a sleeping opponent won't wake when taking poison damage and can't retaliate. Thus spamming Bottled Nightmares on enemies will slowly whittle down their HP until they are easily defeated. They cost 3,000 Leaves at the Black Market, which may price out early-game players, but Leaves come easily later on. This, however, allows the player to easily farm Battle-Tested weapons from the right NPCs.
  • The Merchant's "Hired Help" is a Boring, but Practical skill that works on every boss. Unleashing a fully-boosted attack on an unshielded enemy guarantees nearly forty-thousand hit-points in damage, all in exchange for thirty-thousand leaves. This can be augmented further if you recruit the foreign assassins found outside Merry Hills, which deals the same attack in addition to healing the party for an additional twenty-thousand leaves.
  • For added nuttiness, make Partitio an Arcanist and take a Cleric in with him. Using Aelfric's Blessing combined with Seal of Diffusion in a specific order can lead to Parti getting a permanent Seal of Diffusion and Aelfric's Blessing. Why is this so broken? Because now Parti can infinitely use Sidestep on the entire party from his Merchant kit, meaning all physical attacks will fail on them without fail; as long as you keep up the buff, the party is going to No-Sell all physical attacks. You'll still have to watch for magic attacks, but don't worry — Partitio can use Rest to heal up the entire party's HP and SP for free too, and if you bring a Dancer, using Sealticge's Seduction to make all buffs party wide can allow him to cast a reflect magic barrier on everyone. Congratulations — you just nerfed every boss in the game (saving the True Final Boss and Superboss, who can cleanse buffs.)
  • Hikari's "Vengeful Blade" skill, which is part of his base kit, utterly trivializes any battle fought via his Sword Fight mechanic. There are two major problems with these one-on-one duels. One is that the Warrior base kit lacks any self-healing... but even Olberic knew he could fix this by taking Apothecary as his subjob, making him a full-fledged Combat Medic and giving him access to Axes. The second is that you only have three, maybe four weapons — and at most three elements, since Warrior also lacks an elemental attack — with which to Break the enemy. Vengeful Blade lets Hikari Counter-Attack whenever the foe hits him... And the attack reduces the enemy's Shield Points regardless of their listed weaknesses. Now, to win duels, all Hikari has to do is alternate between Vengeful Blade stacks and Apothecary healing, and maybe restore his own Magic Points on occasion; the foe will take care of defeating themselves.
• Complete Monster:
  • Arcanette is the true mastermind of the Moonshade Order, so misanthropic and sadistic that she seeks to revive Vide the Wicked God to purge all that lives. Under Arcanette's banner, countless people are tortured, experimented on, and otherwise slain by the Order, with the Kal clan having been subject to genocide. Arcanette manipulates the sole survivor of the Kal clan, Kaldena, into murdering over a dozen innocent people under the illusion it would avenge her people; in truth, Arcanette just uses her to eliminate her foes before transforming her into an agonized abomination. Arcanette has many people manipulated and made into sacrifices to Vide the Wicked God; her most despicable manipulation is to convince the innocent woman Tanzy into falling desperately in love with her, before agonizingly sacrificing her without a second thought to put out one of the Sacred Flames. In the end, Arcanette reveals herself to the party and tries to murder them all, mocking them the whole time about the world's coming destruction and each member's individual trauma.
  • Hikari Ku's route: General Mugen Ku, the half-brother of Hikari and son of King Jigo Ku, despises his family for seeking peace over conquest. As a firm practitioner of Might Makes Right, Mugen decides to act by not only assassinating his father but having the entire civilian city full of friendly NPCs massacred upon taking the throne, all to spite Hikari and make any rebellion against his rule futile. Mugen vows to drown the entire world in war and blood, seeking to build a kingdom built upon the corpses of the weak, and to this end orders his advisor Ageha to carry out the massacre of an entire conquered kingdom's population. When the reluctant Ageha notes this would include children, Mugen ruthlessly threatens him into carrying out the slaughter regardless. Even the clans he spares live in fear of destruction; Mugen forced Clan Mei to assassinate Hikari's birth mother under the threat of destroying them all. Though he is influenced by the destructive voice of D'arqest like his brother and father, it is Mugen's refusal to tolerate anything but bloodshed that ultimately makes him a monster.
  • Osvald V. Vanstein's route: Professor Harvey may be the most sadistic Arc Villain in the entire series. Driven by absolutely nothing but his petty envy of his fellow scholar Osvald, Harvey burned down Osvald's house with his family still inside, then framed Osvald for the deed and has him shipped off to a soul-crushing prison for five years. Harvey didn't murder Osvald's family in the blaze, though, instead making them the centerpiece for something infinitely worse; when Osvald finally confronts him again, Harvey gleefully reveals he's used Osvald's wife to create a horrible monster that he subsequently forces Osvald to put down, mocking his anguish with nothing less than hysterical glee. Even worse is what he does to Osvald's daughter; he brainwashes her into thinking Harvey is in fact her father, staging a loving father-daughter reunion with her just to break Osvald's mind even further, before trying to use the poor girl as a Human Sacrifice while forcing Osvald to watch. Harvey is also responsible for the existence of the Darkling in Ochette's story, taking the Animal Companion she didn't choose and torturing it for ten years to turn it into an omnicidal monster. So depthless is Harvey's envy that he's willing to ally with the omnicidal Moonshade Order and provide them the means with which to summon Vide, a sentiment that disgusts even the cult's heads for how readily he'd "give up the dawn to best the man." It's even revealed at one point that he bribed the court to give Osvald a life sentence instead of a straight execution—it wasn't enough to get one over on Osvald, Harvey felt the need to draw out his torture of the poor man.
  • Throné Anguis's route:
    • Claude is the true creator of the Blacksnakes, who seeks to create a worthy heir to his legacy so that he can finally end his immortal life. The progenitor of "countless children by countless women"—many of which were not remotely consensual—Claude uses the Blacksnakes to transform his many children into unfeeling, killing machines who turn on and murder one another, Claude hoping to whittle down his progeny until only the strongest remain to succeed him. Claude has murdered several of his children with his bare hands when they failed to meet his expectations, and even killed the baby shared by Father and Marietta to take Marietta for himself. Claude is also revealed to have been behind the corruption of Trousseau into an insane mass murderer by showing him the Book of Night and driving him mad with despair. Caring for nothing but satisfying his own ego, Claude has run a campaign of abuse and murder of children for decades, and is willing to sacrifice hundreds of lives to see his legacy secured.
    • "Mother" is the current head of the Blacksnakes, who gained her position by manipulating Father into murdering the previous leader, Throné's true mother. Believing in pain as the ultimate method of control, Mother uses her "Garden" to gather dozens of orphan children at a time and subject them to brutal training that corrupts those who survive into assassins and thieves wholly loyal to her. Mother regularly finds any reason to viciously torture the children under her purview with a whip, taking a sadistic glee in physically and psychologically tearing them down until they are nothing but her broken slaves, and encourages them to murder one another to gain her favor. When confronted by Throné, Mother mocks the girl over her mother's death, and with her dying breaths proclaims her hatred of all children who aren't her personal puppets.
• Diagnosed by the Audience:
  • Given that Castti's response to trauma was to gain amnesia and create a hallucination for the purpose of then restoring her memories, many fans agree that something's wrong with her head, along the lines of a post-traumatic or dissociative disorder.
  • With Osvald's portrayal as a scholar who dislikes basic social interaction and hyperfocuses on his areas of interest, it's no surprise that some players read parallels to autism spectrum disorder.
  • Similar to Osvald, it's not uncommon to find interpretations of Hikari as neurodivergent due to his straightforward, if somewhat emotionally stilted nature, along with an occasional inability to pick up nuances in interactions.
• Even Better Sequel: The original Octopath Traveler earned applause for its novel combat, excellent soundtrack, and for pioneering the "HD-2D" art-style that became its signature. However, it generally received mixed reactions and criticisms for its formulaic structure in both story and world-design. In addition, the playable characters barely interacted with each other, and the end-game was panned for being so brutally unfair that most players never bothered beating it, if they even knew it existed because of the baffling decision to hide it behind a chain of optional side stories. The sequel retains the excellent soundtrack, further develops the art-style, and introduces a raft-load of new features that smooth out and polish the experience. All the main characters' stories now vary wildly in pace and tone while packing much smarter writing, the world is more diverse and beautiful, and the conclusion that ties everything together is fleshed-out and challenging without being a needless chore. Plus, the characters even cheer each other on by name in battle, and the aforementioned conclusion has them interacting with and working together, letting them come across as True Companions even more than the first game's travelers. Overall, the sequel makes a great game even better by fixing its flaws and improving on its strengths.
• Fan Nickname:
  • The Battle-Worn Shark gets called "Sharkie" by the fandom, simply due to its simplicity compared to the full title. Similarly, the "Scourge of the Seas" gets called "Nessie" from time to time.
  • Partitio, the "Socialist Cowboy". Even though his look isn't much of a cowboy^note besides his Fedora of Asskicking, anyway, he has a heavy western accent, comes from a western silver mining town, and his first chapter has him leading a revolution of his workers and overthrowing a corrupt landlord, seizing and redistributing the hoarded wealth to the city's populace. He also has the goal of ending poverty, which helps the interpretation.
  • Temenos is sometimes dubbed "Temenuke" when used as a DPS character, largely due to his second EX skill "Heavenly Shine", a powerful attack that consumes all of Temenos's remaining SP and then calculates damage based on the amount consumed. Fully boosted and buffed, Temenos can easily pump out some absurd damage numbers as early as the first turn of a fight. Additionally, by using Alephan's Wisdom or Advanced Magic, the nuke can go off multiple times. The term 'Temenuke' is used because the animation for 'Heavenly Shine' is quite literally holy energy exploding out from Temenos like an actual bomb.
  • The group of travelers you recruit from the Eastern side of Solistia are collectively nicknamed "TOOT"^note Temenos Ochette Osvald Throné by fans based on the initials of their first names. Likewise, the Western travelers are given the group name "CHAP" ^note Castti Hikari Agnea Partitio in the same way.
• Fanon:
  • Temenos is often favored as the first chosen traveler because that way the first and final battles will be against Vide. Additionally, Temenos' story is the only one that receives significant follow-up in the final chapter, namely through The Reveal of the true mastermind, who he gets to personally confront no matter who you chose first. There is also the fact that during the final scene before the credits, your first character will stand in the center of the campsite before leaving, which is where Temenos is positioned by default.
  • Hikari is another popular first traveler as gathering the other travelers aligns well with his goal of seeking allies. Furthermore, he has strong ties to the Moonshade Order between D'arqest's relation with Clan Ku and Hikari's involvement with Kazan/Oboro, both in terms of Hikari's family having caused the latter's Start of Darkness and his major recurring role in Hikari's story; notably, choosing Hikari allows him to personally respond to Oboro before he summons Vide.
  • While Hikari shows no opinion on the Octopuff monster within the game itself, a few pieces of official art have him specifically interacting with one. As a result, it's common to see fanworks depicting him as having an affinity with them.
• Fanon Discontinuity: Many players prefer to pretend that the death of Crick in Temenos's Chapter 3 never happened, from the many Fix Fics dedicated to remedying this event, to the name "Stormhail" acting as an ominous warning for the uninitiated or trigger word for those who shipped Temenos and Crick together.
• Game-Breaker: Can be found here.
• Genius Bonus: The Watson to Temenos's Sherlock Holmes is named Crick. Watson and Crick are the names of the discoverers of the Double Helix structure of DNA.
• Good Bad Bugs:
  • Want to hear that sweet saxophone from Partitio's theme while you're cruising around a town, but don't want to be stuck in the bar while you do it? There's a loophole! In any location with a gramophone, the tracks played are set to end whenever there's a screen transition aside from opening the menu, such as when you swap party members, and whenever you leave the bar. However, if Ochette, Osvald, Temenos, or Hikari get into a fight with a bar patron, the game no longer registers the trigger for ending the music when you leave the bar. You can now listen to 'All For You' while touring New Delsta or play a silly Cait theme while exploring Crackridge!
  • Another more beneficial bug exists that makes casters more effective. The interaction between Price of Power (from Arcanist) and SP Saver (from Conjurer) is supposed to boost your spell power and negate the drawback of extra SP usage. The bug causes SP Saver's effect on SP cost to completely overwrite the cost drawback of Price of Power, resulting in boosted spells that cost half SP. Healing spells benefit too, so clerics also gain much from this bug.
  • Ochette's Provoke Beasts EX Skill interacts with her Latent Power in such a way that opening the Provoke Beasts menu, turning her Latent on and then back off, then selecting the regular Provoke, allows the player to select any six beasts to use without the intended restrictions. This allows Ochette to reuse captured boss monsters over and over, all of which normally only work a single time and require max Boost.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • Ori's melodramatic goodbye speech to Partitio before throwing herself at the guards on Roque Island is a funny moment at the time, but it becomes much darker when it's later revealed that Ori is planning on killing herself as a sacrifice to Vide.
  • Hikari overcoming his shadow side through the memories of his friends is heartwarming at the time, but one of said friends is Kazan, who in Journey For The Dawn is revealed to be an antagonist who was manipulating Hikari the entire time. Even if his feelings of friendship may have been genuine, his lines in Hikari's internal fight will come off very differently on a second view.
  • Similarly, in a travel banter during Hikari's final chapter, Osvald mentions being impressed with Kazan's tactical thinking, and Hikari offers to introduce them to each other after everything calms down. Kazan's tactics in this chapter are all for the sake of manipulating Ku for the Moonshade Order, and Osvald never gets the chance to actually befriend him; he'll still call out Kazan for his nihilism in the final chapter if he was the starting protagonist, just like everyone else will.
• He Really Can Act: Alejandro Saab is virtually unrecognizable as Osvald V. Vanstein, perfectly oscillating between the bitter tone he has at the beginning of his story and the more optimistic one he displays in flashbacks. Not to mention how he nails the story's emotional beats, such as his Big "NO!" upon coming home to his house burning with Rita and Elena supposedly inside.
• Ho Yay:
  • The Dancer has the "Stimulate" skill, which makes an ally go faster by providing some Fanservice (showing off some legs for female dancers, or taking off the shirt for male dancers). This works regardless of the genders of the dancer and the ally.
  • Similarly, Dolcinaea can charm your party members into fighting for her during Agnea's final boss fight. This even works on the female characters (barring Agnea herself).
  • Veronica and Dolcinaea are extremely close. Veronica positively agonizes over what kind of gift to get Dolcinaea to celebrate the day they met. Meanwhile, Dolcinaea is incredibly supportive of Veronica, encouraging her to follow her own "shine" and being much nicer to her than she is to most other people (at least at first).
  • Papp and Roque have a lot of it, too. Partitio's opening chapter takes its sweet time clarifying what Roque's relationship is to the Yellowils, with his mentorship of a young Partitio coming across as very fatherly. His talk with Papp about leaving Oresrush also heavily resembles a breakup. Then there's the two's making up and plans for the future after Partitio's story ends, and the fact that Roque spends the nighttime hours in Papp's bedroom...
  • Partitio has some going on himself, particularly where it concerns Osvald. Their party banter in Partitio's Chapter 2 sees them complimenting each other's bodies, and their Crossed Path story ends with the two of them stargazing. Additionally, some of their Good Cop/Bad Cop dialogue in that story could be considered mild flirting. 
    Osvald: That sweetness of yours is impeding our progress.
    Partitio: On the contrary, a bit o' sweetness helps everythin' along. As in coffee, as in life, partner.
• I Knew It!:
  • When the demo was released, it didn't take long for several fans to correctly guess ahead of time that the Final Boss of Ochette's story would be the animal companion she didn't choose.
  • It also didn't take very long for some fans to correctly guess that the opening children's story in Temenos' chapter would be a major Chekhov's Gun.
• LGBT Fanbase:
  • Temenos has a massive LGBTQ+ fanbase, with many interpreting his interactions with Crick to be flirtatious in nature as well as Crick's begrudging yet growing respect for Temenos over the course of their story as the two of them growing close. There are also those who see Temenos as ace, usually due to interpreting him and Crick as Heterosexual Life-Partners and him and Throné as Platonic Life-Partners. Further support for this comes during his chapter in Crackridge; though it makes sense he'd see right through Reiza's attempts to seduce him so she could take his life, it's not until Reiza tries to implicitly offer to 'sheathe [his] staff' for him that Temenos completely drops the act of believing her to be an innocent traveler, at which point he shuts her down brutally and succinctly. He honestly sounds bored at the prospect. His 'that won't be necessary' remark and witty comeback about staves not having sheathes just adds fuel to the fire that Temenos is either attracted to men or not attracted to anyone at all. Another point in Temenos's favor is that he is a character archetype traditionally associated with women in eastern RPGs, including his own predecessor in the first game.
  • While only side NPCs, Pala and Mikka enjoy some fan spotlight as one of the most undeniable cases of Ho Yay in the game, going from subtext to borderline text. This is because Pala is Ambiguously Gay to start with, and then in Mikka's sidequest, she's outright suggesting that Mikka become her wife, with there being nothing to imply this is only a joke or that Mikka is averse to the idea.
  • Similarly, the unnamed princess in Timberain and her (female) gardener are minor Ensemble Darkhorses, despite being standard NPCs with zero story relevance, purely due to it being very easy to interpret them as a couple if you Inquire/Scrutinize them.
• Magnificent Bastard:
  • Osvald V. Vanstein is a taciturn scholar researching the One True Magic, and one of the eight playable travelers. Falsely imprisoned in Frigit Isle for the deaths of his wife and daughter, Osvald spends five years plotting his escape, extorting clothing out of Bale and teaming up with Emerald to escape, though he fights the warden to escape just as the exit is out of reach. Now unable to use the inspectors' ship, Osvald improvises a boat made of ice magic and straw, which successfully carries him alone to the mainland, even if he passes out after four days. After coming to, he returns to his home to begin his hunt for the man truly responsible, Harvey, and questions Captain Stenvar, defeating him and burning down his fortune after gaining the information he needs, and heading to Montwise to confront his nemesis. There, he learns that his daughter is still alive, and changes his priorities from revenge to protecting her as Harvey intends to sacrifice her to create the Book of Demons. Following the professor to the Duskruin Shrine, he combines his determination to save Elena with all of his calculations and research, and successfully harnesses the One True Magic, defeating Harvey. With Elena safe, he leaves her in the care of his assistant so that she can recover, while he goes to hunt down Harvey's accomplices.
  • Kazan, the Eagle of Ku, is the nation's finest military strategist and one of Hikari's staunchest allies—at first. Introduced as a pragmatic and manipulative hero, Kazan shows off his cunning in the early chapters by tricking Hikari into signing up for gladiatorial combat in Montwise to supposedly cover his gambling debts, only to spin the situation into a full-on rebellion that ends with the gladiators freeing themselves from their corrupt captors. Ultimately, though, "Kazan" is no friend of the heroes: his real name is Oboro, an embittered orphan of war who ingratiated himself with King Jigo Ku to manipulate Hikari's entire story, including the rise and fall of Mugen. A member of the Moonshade Order, every single manipulation and gambit he lays out is for the purpose of seeing Vide the Wicked God rise and destroy what he sees is a hopelessly corrupt world. The final member of the Order left standing at the end, Oboro calmly sacrifices his own life to see Vide's advent through, remaining utterly convinced to the end that the world would be better off dead than suffering.
• Memetic Badass: While nearly all of the travelers qualify for this trope to varying degrees, it's Castti who gets this reputation the most from the fandom. She's usually characterized as this unstoppable force of nature to be reckoned with and who can easily mow down any of her enemies, up to, and including, Vide with a swing of her gigantic axe as she goes into scary Mama Bear mode whenever her friends and loved ones are in danger. This came about partly due to gameplay reasons as mentioned in her entry under Game Breaker, partly because of her very raw and easily quotable battle lines, and partly because of her many badass moments where she proves that she's certainly a battle-hardened apothecary during her story chapters. Many fans have since designated her as a certified "harmacist" who is feared by most, if not all, characters in the game (even including her fellow travelers!) because of those reasons.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • Much like the first game, people often make jokes about the cast being a bunch of comedic sociopaths due to their ability to harm, steal, mug, incapacitate, and entice all manner of NPCs.
  • When analyzing an NPC, you can see how "Strong" they are. Cue jokes about how there are some literal old ladies that are as strong as late-game bosses.
  • This game's Hunter, Ochette, also being a Pokémon Trainer due to her capturing monsters she defeats and using them as companions. This time, you even get to choose a starter!
  • "KONO HARVEY DA!"^ExplanationHarvey's JP voice actor is Takehito Koyasu, who is famous for voicing Dio Brando and voices Harvey just as hammily as he did with Dio. Harvey's also just as cruel and petty to Osvald as Dio was to Jonathan Joestar. Harvey even poses like Dio does during his boss fight.
  • "THESE HANDS!"^ExplanationOne of Castti's battle quotes when she boosts to 4BP, which a lot of people took a shine to due to its similarity to the "catch these hands" slang.
  • Purple chests.^ExplanationWhen it was discovered that, unlike the original game, there are no chests that the player can't open unless they have the Thief character in their active party, it didn't take long for people to start joking about how there are purple chests in the game, referencing how Throné dresses in purple and has large breasts.
  • Agnea has the most "talent".^ExplanationIn the Japanese version of Agnea's Prologue, Pala suggests that Agnea make use of her "peaches" to round up some people to help at the festival, obviously referring to Agnea's breasts. This, however, was changed in the English dub to Pala speaking of Agnea's "talents". This quickly drew parallels with DiC's English dub of the Sailor Moon anime, where Makoto saying she had the largest breasts in the Japanese version was dubbed in English to her having the most "talent".
  • Osvald's Breasts. ^Explanation MANY times throughout his story, Osvald will mention the "fire in his breast".
• Memetic Psychopath: Considering the much more unethical Path Actions available in this game, with more of them involving attacking innocent bystanders^note Namely Osvald's Mug, Castti's Soothe, Throné's Ambush and Temenos' Coerce, as well as Ochette's Provoke and Hikari's Challenge returning from the last game compared to the last, the party as a whole has a reputation of this even more than the last game. Generally, Osvald and Temenos get the worst of this.^note It "helps" that both of Osvald's Path Actions are rather questionable (even if Mug gets used to save multiple innocent peope late in his route), and Temenos gets the one case in both games where a "violent" Path Action can be used on a child. It's also worth noting that none of the night Path Actions will cost you any reputation no matter how questionable they are, not even Mug and Coerce which can fail! It's further worth noting that the context of using coerce on the child is actually an exorcism (the real target was an evil spirit), something any proper morally good priest would be expected to do.
• Memetic Troll: Harvey has earned this reputation from corners in the fandom because of the medium Fire Soulstone that can be found in a chest behind Osvald's burned house in Conning Creek. Some fans choose to believe that Harvey left the soulstone there as a reminder to Osvald that "Harvey was here".
• Moe: Ochette. Her childlike innocence, enthusiasm and mother-daughter relationship she forms with Castti makes her incredibly adorable.
• Moral Event Horizon:
  • As if murdering Osvald's wife and daughter and framing him for it wasn't enough, Harvey manages to go the extra mile at the climax of Osvald's story where it's revealed he actually faked their deaths...so he could brainwash Elena into thinking Harvey was her father in order to make her more compliant as a Human Sacrifice, but also used Osvald's wife, Rita, to create a mindless monster which he then sics on Osvald, clearly reveling in Osvald's pain as he is forced to put it down while believing it's Rita herself.
  • Arcanette crossed it when she took advantage of Tanzy's genuine love for her and used it to manipulate and string her along before coldly murdering her as a sacrifice to douse the Sacred Flames and revive Vide.
  • Trousseau crossed it when he callously murdered almost everyone in his village, including his fellow apothecaries, before attempting to do the same to Timberain.
  • Claude having a huge number of children over the course of his immortality isn't the problem: the MEH comes in when he reveals that the Blacksnakes are all his children, and that he violently pitted them against each other to try and create the perfect heir. In other words, all the cruelty, backstabbing, and pain that Throné and the others in her story experience was orchestrated by him. If that's not enough to make him cross it, then driving Trousseau mad and thus being directly responsible for all the deaths the latter caused certainly is.
  • Kaldena and Cubaryi crossed it by killing Crick in cold blood for digging too deeply into the investigation, with Cubaryi going further over the line by sadistically taunting Temenos about it when he confronts her.
  • Mugen crossed it by murdering most of Ku's citizens just because he knew he would be unpopular with them. He then kills his father for deciding that Hikari should ascend the throne instead of him.
  • Petrichor, the Dark Hunter crossed it by smashing Glacis' egg and killing her unborn baby out of spite at failing to capture her. Killing Cateracta and mutating Roi and Akalā/Mahina into the Dark Entity and Darkling of the Sorrowful Moon, respectively, were certainly heinous acts, but she committed them on Arcanette's orders for the sake of accentuating the Night of the Scarlet Moon. By contrast, killing Glacis' baby within her egg was a pointless act of cruelty that benefitted no-one.
• Narm: Garnet, the second boss in Partitio's storyline, has a normal-looking dog sprite in the overworld. Her boss sprite, where she's suddenly twice the height of the human characters and has huge fangs and claws, seems comically oversized in comparison.
• One True Pairing: It should come as no surprise for several who played the game, but some characters have a lot of chemistry the fandom has taken note of.
  • At the top of the list are Temenos and Crick. Their popularity as a couple is only rivaled by the idea Temenos is asexual, and pairings between Temenos and Throné, who get some amount of teasing at the end of the game proper, are rarely seen. A lot of fics are devoted to the idea Temenos can never quite move on over the death of Crick, or works with the magically or medically inclined within his party to perform necromancy.
  • Castti and Malaya are next on the list. Andy is almost completely written off as a potential romantic companion for Castti despite the game being blatant about his feelings for her, only ever involved if it's part of a thruple with Castti and Malaya. This pairing has a basis in the fact the game outright says they were passionate rivals before becoming equally passionate friends, and the fact the entirety of Castti's adventure is at least partly spurred on by her memories of Malaya being so strong that the part of her mind trying to recover her memories takes the form of Malaya. The fact the game's art style allows for some doubt as to whether Malaya actually died helps matters.
  • Partitio and Ori are an incredibly popular pairing due to their dynamics, both shared and contrasting. Her natural exuberance and his care and gratitude for her actions, paired with the truth about Ori and her involvement in the Moonshade Order are popular subjects. It is very common to find 'epilogue' fics dealing with Partitio rustling up a tracker like Ochette or a healer like Castti or Temenos to help him find or save Ori after her rescue by apothecaries so the two can talk honestly with each other, or to have Partitio catch Ori at the end of Agnea's performance and have the two work off each other from there.
  • Hikari and Agnea have a handful of straightfoward Ship Tease moments in their Crossed Path story and in some of their party banters, making their dynamic fairly easy to interpret romantically. For another Crossed Path pair, Osvald and Partitio have a decent amount of Ho Yay that fans have picked up on. Often this leads into Partitio becoming a second father to Elena in the epilogue, just as Roque had been to Partitio.
• Player Punch: After spending the entire storyline as Temenos's endearing, naïve sidekick, Crick's untimely murder in Chapter 3 is genuinely upsetting and made Temenos's conflict with the Moonshade Order personal for many a player.
• Realism-Induced Horror:
  • Part of what makes Partitio's initial chapter and its villains terrible is that there's nothing fantastical or unrealistic about them. At its core, it's a story about a city and its workers getting pushed into poverty by an uncaring corporate landowner, who uses trickery and hired goons to get what he wants and suppress the population, all to gain more and more money. It goes without saying that this has happened all the time in real life, especially in the Industrial Revolution-esque era the world is set in.
  • Castti's first chapter has her dealing with a disease epidemic sweeping a town, that turns out to have been caused by contamination of the water supply via diseased animals. Many of the worst outbreaks in human history had similar origins, so it's very lucky someone capable of containing it arrived in its early stages.
  • This is the reason why overarching Big Bad, Arcanette, is such a terrifying, vile, disgusting monster. Ignoring the fact she runs a cult of nihilists hellbent on destroying the world out of a misplaced sense of duty towards helping others by "ending all pain," Arcanette is effectively a fantastical variant of a serial murderer whose crimes drip with horrific subtext. People like Arcanette actually exist. Arcanette's tactics of psychologically brainwashing Tanzy by grooming her following a life-changing tragedy that left Tanzy in her most vulnerable state (the loss of an emotional anchor in Tanzy's life in the form of her would-be husband) and then emotionally manipulating Tanzy by making her 'romantic' partner believe Arcanette may lose interest in Tanzy and favor another woman to get Tanzy to do whatever she wanted are all favorite tactics of rapists and murderers hoping to isolate their targets and leave them vulnerable. Showing Tanzy the Book of Night to further 'induct' her into the Moonshade Order can easily be seen as an allegory for using drugs to manipulate someone, as well. While not as vile as Claude, Arcanette is a lot more realistic and horrifying as an example of what goes on in the real world.
  • Claude has elements of realism to him just like the example above, especially him being a serial rapist, which matches some of the MO's evil cults use to increase their numbers.
  • The Moonshade Order counts as well given how their psychology, recruitment tactics, etc, are perfect matches for the MO of real life death cults.
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • As with the previous game, the lack of Leaked Experience can trip up those who didn't think to/don't want to regularly swap out travelers to grind their levels, and the fact that you Can't Drop the Hero means your starting traveler will likely end up massively overleveled, forcing the player to artificially set handicaps if they don't want to simply steamroll the chapters they saved for last.
  • Wind is the most limited element in the game, with the Dancer job having the only Wind attack in the game outside of Agnea's unique-to-her AoE Wind attack. The only other means of getting Wind damage is from items, certain monsters Ochette can capture, or the Conjurer job giving a elemental Wind buff to melee attacks. This limited application of one element that is not exactly uncommon to see used has been pointed out by some as being extremely frustrating by many players, especially because the first game had more ways to use said element.
• Sequel Difficulty Drop: The original game has a reputation of being difficult due to the presence of multiple difficulty spikes, and some trophies were incredibly hard to get. In the sequel, enemy difficulty remains about the same, but players received so many new tricks like Latent Powers, EX skills, skills/items that lower shields while ignoring weaknesses, and reworked mechanics that it sliced the challenge in half, unless the player deliberately doesn't use them. The sequel also doesn't have any trophies that are extremely difficult or missable, like beating the game in a certain time limit, finding every enemy's weaknesses (including missable enemies'), or opening every chest. The Early Game Hell from the original is also greatly alleviated by alterations in level design: while the original game's intro chapters had to be built with Level Scaling according to how many party members you had or did not have and what levels they were, this game's intro chapters are all solo outings that are primarily played in flashback. Additionally, most travelers get a Guest-Star Party Member or two to help with those chapters, most notably Temenos and Agnea when Ophilia and Primrose were especially hard to start with. Finally, most Damage Sponge Bosses have been removed, making gameplay less tedious.
• Signature Scene: Castti's third chapter is widely regarded as the single most memorable part of the game due to how hard hitting, emotional, and genuinely unsettling the entire sequence is.
• Superlative Dubbing: While both the Japanese and English voice acting are considered excellent and which one to use largely comes down to personal preference, many fans in particular love the southern accent given to Partitio in the English dub, both in terms of his written dialogue and his voice. As a result, he's incredibly popular in the West.
• That One Attack: From Partitio Chapter 3, Thurston's Throw Wrench attack is far more brutal than the name would suggest, being a random three hit physical attack that hits extremely hard. Despite being random target though, it has a consistent habit of hitting the same target when he uses it, meaning he can potentially one-shot any character you bring if you don't debuff his damage before he does it. The attack itself doesn't even do anything besides raw damage, but it hits harder than several other bosses at the same level range for no reason.
• That One Boss:
  • From Hikari's final chapter, The Enshrouded King hits insanely hard, and in later phases can boost himself so that he attacks 4 times in one turn. It's a tough fight, but that alone isn't unusual by final boss standards. The real challenge is that he comes at the end of a four fight-long Boss Rush. The autosave only lets you skip the first of those four if you lose, so if he sweeps your team, you're out of luck until your fight your way back to him. Hikari's last chapter is also the only one to utilize a boss gauntlet, so it's easy to assume you'll just be facing one battle and go in underprepared.
  • From Temenos's Chapter 3, Deputy Cubaryi is no cakewalk. Not only is she a Barrier Change Boss that can utterly cripple breaking strategies if your party can't account for most of her new weaknesses, she also buffs her shield from 7 to 11 hits, and she implements a positively nasty barrier mechanic - one reflects all magic (bad news for Temenos), and the other counters with poison. On top of all of it, she gets two attacks a turn and she has some very unpleasant AOE attacks on both the magical and physical side, leading to her constantly keeping you on the backfoot throughout the fight.
  • From Ochette's Chapter 3, The Darkling can also be quite challenging, especially if you bring certain travelers. It will periodically prey on a traveler, reduce their HP to 1, and gain buffs and skills based on the traveler it preys on. Some travelers will make the boss become even more dangerous, like Hikari giving permanent physical attack boost (which is especially problematic if fighting Lajackal since the latter is physical-oriented, and this combination is common thanks to how many players would choose Mahina and then use Hikari in battle), Throné giving the boss a defense debuff skill and another action. Similarly, Osvald providing a magic buff can be problematic if you get the inverse with Mahina as the Darkling. It's very possible for the boss to be able to severely cripple your team every turn if you bring wrong combination of travelers and/or are underleveled.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • Claude. The Arc Villain of Throné's story is an immortal vessel for Vide, has fathered all the members of the Blacksnakes by impregnating countless women—all for the purpose of grooming an heir that can kill him—and the city he resides in is one of the most disturbing locations in the entire game. However, he suffers from the same problem that Werner from the first game did; his existence isn't revealed until the Father route of Throné's Chapter 3 with minimal Foreshadowing before then^note Most notably, the Masked Boy in Oresrush who looks like a young Pirro, leaving him feeling thrown in for the sake of a Chapter 4 and boss. While more about him is revealed in the Final Chapter after completing all individual routes—including how he became immortal and The Reveal that he is responsible for Trousseau's descent into genocidal nihilism—some fans believe that more about him should have been discerned during Throné's story, and that, like Olberic before her, Throné's story peaks at Chapter 3.
  • Trousseau. While he fares better than Claude by having more buildup, a not uncommon criticism is that his transition from a kind-hearted apothecary to madman is more told than shown and that the player doesn't even get to learn why he fell from grace until after Castti's story. This is especially as his behavior tends to bounce between being a Well-Intentioned Extremist and simply having lost his mind; thus, some players felt a little confused on his intended portrayal due to his motives still being perhaps overly vague by the time you fight him.
  • The Dark Hunter. Given that Ochette's story constantly references them through the Creatures of Legend, you would think the two would cross paths and do battle at some point. However, not only does Petrichor never show up in Ochette's story, she doesn't even show up in the Final Chapter outside of a flashback that shows her sacrificing herself to douse the Sacred Flame on Toto'haha. That being said, the Grotesque Monster is implied to be her, so you at least get to fight The Dark Hunter at one point.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • Amidst multiple other revelations, Ori's journal reveals Claude's true reason for forming the Blacksnakes: to determine which of his children would replace him as the designated vessel for Vide. As the one who ultimately killed him, Throné had taken his place as the vessel. However, not only does this go unmentioned by the party, but the Moonshade Order, the organization Claude sacrificed himself for, does not even follow through with using Throné to fulfill their plans to bring Vide back. It's implied that Vide was summoned in a weakened state and planned to forcibly make Throné his vessel after fighting the party, where he would become powerful enough to end the entire world, but otherwise, what should have been a significant reveal is reduced to a footnote.
  • In the final chapter, as appreciated as the personalization was, many fans felt that since the game was already having the entire group interact in cutscenes, it would've been better to go a step ahead and and have them all say something in the final confrontation with Kazan/Oboro. This is especially because if you didn't pick Hikari as your starting traveler, he and Kazan will have zero interaction despite Kazan's involvement being personal to Hikari, compared to Temenos who does get to acknowledge Mindt's reveal no matter what.
  • Hikari's Curse of Ku has been cited as one of the weakest elements of his story, as beyond being the excuse for his Latent Power, it barely factors into his story despite being in every chapter of it. His Superpowered Evil Side tries to get him to kill who ever he was fighting, but in every case he resists, and the resolution of the plot point is a sudden boss fight near the very end of his final chapter. The one time it is shown where Hikari almost loses control is in a flashback during Chapter Four, but said flashback is more focused on the backstory for Rai Mei than Hikari. Some have pointed out that you could remove it and little would be changed by it.
• The Un-Twist: In Temenos' path, Kaldena and Cubaryi turning out to be the primary and secondary antagonists respectively in Chapter 3, is not the most surprising of plot developments, because they are clad in red and black armor, and Temenos makes it clear as early as Chapter 1 that he distrusts the Sacred Guard^note Notably, In-Universe, Crick is horrified when Kaldena turns out to be a heretic, while Temenos does not sound surprised. However, it helps obscure the real antagonist of Temenos' path, as revealed in the Journey for the Dawn: Arcanette a.k.a. Mindt, who used Kaldena as her Unwitting Pawn.

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