YMMV / SOS

• Awesome Music: The main theme. Also, the boiler room theme.
• Good Bad Bugs:
  • If a room's platforming is too much for the people you're escorting, you can just go to the next room and call for them. They'll make it through to where you are perfectly fine.
  • In some copies of the game, it was possible to abandon a small group of survivors in the main part of the ship and then mysteriously reunite with them inside the boiler room (below the door where you first enter.)
• Memetic Badass: Luke Haines. A Good Bad Translation / Good Bad Bug causes his name to replace each of the three protagonists (Jeffrey/Capris/Redwin) as one of the lead survivors during their runs. This has given him a reputation of being so badass that he managed to survive without your help.
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • Certain rooms have falling objects (e.g. dumbbells, chairs, glass shards) that can knock you out when the ship starts rumbling.
  • If you're still conscious when time runs out, you're forced to continue playing as water floods the sinking ship completely. The game will not actually end until you have drowned.
  • The scene with Paddock is very unsettling for some players.
  • Some of the survivors mysteriously disappear after the boiler explosion about halfway through the game. The ship's bow starts rotating towards a 90° angle, and it may be presumed that the ones who haven't joined you yet have died (unless they are specifically available after the first half of the game.)
  • When you go into a room or a corridor where no background music is playing, all you can hear is the wind whistling, the ship rumbling before shifting unpredictably at regular intervals, and the faint screams of people falling to their deaths.
  • In some endings, the boiler explosion does not blow a hole in the hull of the capsized ship. Usually, no one hears you banging on the side of the hull. People around you slowly die, and eventually, you also succumb to the elements.
• The Scrappy:
  • Ussar, the engineer who will literally take away your survivors (including your key members) if you don't talk to him right.
  • Cooper Smith, because he insists on waiting in a capsized ship for rescue and requires you to persuade him to follow. Most people only tolerate him because he comes with Pamela and Stacy Smith, who give you four points each. What's more, he's only worth two points meaning you can literally get more points by just finding a way to toss him to his doom and pick up someone else.
• Scrappy Mechanic: The escorting. After playing it for a while, it becomes evident that the game's most innovative feature is also its biggest problem. Most importantly, the survivors' AI isn't good enough to handle the more complicated pathing encountered during the game. If they somehow decide to jump in a way you didn't intend to, there's no stopping it. At least you can help them by holding their hands at the edge, or just abuse the above Good Bad Bug to skip most of the platforming.
• Sequelitis: The game had a Japan-only sequel for PlayStation named Septentrion ~Out of the Blue~. It mostly simplified the mechanic that made the original game interesting, and the reception was understandably negative.
• Spiritual Adaptation: This is essentially a video game adaptation of The Poseidon Adventure.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: Captain Evert Phillips. He tries in the beginning to be proactive by ordering the S.O.S., but his employer, Ismay Carl Townsend, pressures him to keep Lady Crithania on a tight schedule and not to be alarmed by the storm. Luke clearly has respect for Captain Phillips' levelheadedness and professionalism, but sadly, the captain dies during the capsizing.
• Vindicated by History: It came and went without so much fanfare, but nowadays many find the game to be a somewhat flawed masterpiece thanks to its innovative game design.