In 2020-II, Hatsune Miku's version of "Battlefield - Second Raiding Wings". If you grew up in The '90s, your thought would be 'Miku is singing the Streets of Rage boss music!'.
The second dragon battle theme in III, which plays for dragon encounters in chapters 6 and 7 to remind you of the threat these dragons pose to humanity. It also plays for every random encounter in chapter 8 to warn you that every single enemy in the dungeon is a dragon-class enemy that will brutally murder an unprepared party.
Memetic Loser: Nyala has become the butt of the Japanese fandom's jokes because of his many failed attempts to invade Earth, with each one ending up progressively worse for him. He lost his right wing in Atlantis, suffered a sound defeat in 2020, and finally kicked the bucket in Eden... And not once did Nyala ever consider that humans might be more than just cattle, because he's just THAT much of a Smug Snake. His last invasion doubles as Too Dumb to Live, because the the first thing Nyala did upon arriving on Eden was openly declaring war on the whole planet, which resulted in him immediately getting shot by a magic cannon, forcing him to stand idle while healing his wounds. The developers of III seem to have realized how pathetic Nyala is, because not only is he the first True Dragon you get to kill, you also get the option to make fun of his golden color scheme. If you choose to do that, he'll just respond with silence, which proves his inability to resist being openly taunted.
Moe: Everyone and everything has the appearance of a Nendoroid! Even big burly men like Gatou and Daigo look like plush dolls.
7th Dragon (DS)
Memetic Molester: A Tentacled Terror optional boss from the DS game called Slave of the Sensual (or Sensualist) has become this thanks to its design and pretty much straightforward name. Expect to see a lot of NSWF fanart of it attacking the female characters.
That One Boss: The Raging Wild Beast, which is funny because he's the very first boss. He's pretty difficult to beat for newcomers, since by this point of the game you are just getting started building your party's skills. He has a grand total of 400 HP, can resist most ailments, and his Mow Down skill hits 3 random targets very hard.
7th Dragon 2020 & 2020-II
Nightmare Fuel: Never mind the Dragons, the player characters can dish out a hefty dose of it. The EX-skill of the Psychic class lets loose living shadows from another dimension to devour their opponents. The name of the skill? Dark Invasion.
Sequel Displacement: 2020 is the one that spawned direct sequels; the original was just left on its own. At least, that's how it appeared at first. 2020-II bringing the original into continuity with Tokyo, with everything that implies, was one of II's major Wham Episodes.
That One Boss: Potentially any boss can contend for this, but Jigowatt (in Standard Mode) is the point where you either start planning your characters, or drop the game altogether.
Too Cool to Live: From 2020-II: Shouji and everyone else who sacrifice their life during Fomalhaut invasion.
7th Dragon III: Code VFD
Anti-Climax Boss: ND in VFD has only one strong damaging attack and not much HP or defense, with a high focus on healing itself. Since you can shave off more HP than it can heal, it will go down pretty quickly, especially if you use a game-breaker listed below.
Any dragon in III that can jump is this, since jumping prevents the dragon from taking any sort of damage at all and allows them to fire surprisingly powerful attacks that cause poison. Considering how easy everything is compared to previous games, it comes as a surprise how easily they can wipe a party. After encountering the first dragon that behaves this way, a rescuable NPC notes that you can use a Buddy skill to cancel its jump status.
The upgraded versions of Little Dragon and Micro Dragon of III are significantly dangerous, particularly because they are fast, hit multiple times, and they appear in groups when encountered in the Bonus Dungeon. When the enemy takes up 8 total actions before your party can even move, you'd start reaching for the escape command or rely on Action Initiative to stay alive.
The upgraded Demon Dragon located in the depths of the Bonus Dungeon of III is a nightmare to handle, even for high-levelled parties. It is by far the most resilient random encounter in the game, with health and defenses so high it can take a couple of EX skills (and even a full-power Earthquake!) and still be standing, while it hits hard enough to two-shot any one party member.
Difficulty Spike: The main game consists of Easy Levels, Hard Bosses. The post-game dungeon does away with the "Easy Levels" part, as every encounter is a dragon or four and they will easily shred you to pieces.
The Banisher's Earthquake skill. There is barely any regular enemy that survive a hit from it, and it's still extremely powerful against bosses. The cost of all your bombs barely matters when you always start a battle with a full stock of bombs. The one drawback is the low innate speed of the Banisher, as by the time they've moved to unleash Earthquake, the rest of your party may have already cleaned up most of the mobs, but even that can be corrected with the Retreat Ring (earned by dating Julietta) which removes the Banishers' biggest weakness with a huge speed bonus.
Mage's Consent and Solid Stance. These skills at least double the strength of the character's next attack, which is even more deadly when paired with Mana Bullet, Poplar Admiral, or Sixteen Hand Slash, already high-damaging skills. They may be costly, but when you can greatly shorten boss fights it barely matters. Pair with Mana Float, which makes skills cost no MN for a turn, and you can tear through dragons at little cost. Use them to boost an EX skill, and There Is No Kill Like Overkill.
Drain Sword is a very high damage magic drain move with a fairly low MN cost, turning your Rune Knight into a near-invincible tank. And if you do run short on MN, you can always refill with Aspir Sword which costs no MN; a max-leveled Aspir Sword will recover significantly more MN than they can carry!
Brave Sword. While it forces the Rune Knight to sacrifice up to 70% of their current LF, it makes up for it by being so overwhelmingly powerful that it can one hit kill dragons. So long as you have items to heal them back to full after the battle, only the bosses can pose a threat to your party.
Co-op de grace, which is usable when the backup parties in III have their support meters completely filled. This allows everyone - your active party included - to attack at once. What really does this, however, is that all of the attacks are free. Aside from everything costing zero MN, the only resources that matter are whether the enemy is hacked and how much HP the Rune Knight(s) currently have. Duelists cast spells without needing cards and Banishers attack without needing bombs. Unless you choose to avoid using it, bosses go from being slightly threatening to a question of how many turns are left until your party either kills it or renders it a non-threat. Its only drawbacks are that it can take a lot of time to charge depending on your team composition, and it isn't usable before you get a third party or in dungeons where the team is forced to split up, such as the final dungeon.
Want to kill a boss in three turns? Have your backup parties all be Rune Knights. They charge very quickly — 1 bar per turn — and the Co-op de grace will become available by the third turn. Execute it, then have each Rune Knight unleash Brave Sword, and most bosses won't stand any further chance.
EX Skills seem to be intentional gamebreakers, as they're very highly-damaging skills that must be found first, but can be charged before entering a tough fight and used once per character. Certain items can also charge the EX meter completely, letting you use it again.
The Trickster's EX skill does massive damage to its target but also has a high chance of inflicting every ailment in the game at the same time. Poison, Bleed, Curse, Sleep, Null Action; nothing is spared.
The God-Hand's EX skill, Earth Breaker, can inflict Null Action for 3 turns. Rendering a boss entirely helpless for that long gives you a lot of leeway to wail on them without paying heed to defenses.
The Banisher's EX skill, Ultimate Lance, completely refills their bomb stock, which opens up the possibility of another full-power Earthquake.
The Agent's EX skill, Indra Flames, will Hack anything that isn't outright immune to hacking, including many bosses. Combo this with madstrife.exe to guarantee at least two turns of safety, or with sleepmode.exe to buy yourself free turns to set up.
The Mage class in III seems to be Purposely Overpowered, given the class's incredible versatility that makes some other classes redundant and the class being one of the last two that are unlocked. They have elemental spells like the Duelist, but they don't require secondary resources and there's only two of each spell (one single-target spell and one AoE spell) rather than the Duelist's four (three single-target spells, each one requiring more cards than the last, and an all-targeting spell) thus simplifying SP management, a high-damage Non-Elemental attack, and a charging skill (Mage's Consent) that sends the damage output of their next magic attack up to unholy levels, making them great attackers. They also make great Support Party Members too: a max-level Cure recovers a ridiculous amount of LF for either one person or the entire party for only three mana and their Recovery skill at max level removes all status ailments from the party at no cost. And should there be a risk of teammates getting killed off, they can cast Dead Man's React to give themselves an extra turn if a teammate is slain, allowing them to get the victim back up and running in time for the next turn.
Goddamned Bats: Poison Frogs will spam Poison status, causing your party members to lose small amounts of LF per turn unless you cure it, as well as continue to lose HP on the map if you don't. Considering that they often drop Poison-Aids and that the per-turn life loss is pretty minor, they most likely exist to teach you to figure out how to prevent Poison from happening, because if you don't figure out how, there's a boss after the area they appear in that inflicts higher-damaging poison and will make you learn the harder way.
It's Easy, So It Sucks!: 7th Dragon III is regarded to be much easier than previous games in the series, largely because of the presence of numerous game-breaking skills. Even on Standard difficulty (as opposed to Casual), many players feel that the game's challenge falls apart once they unlock the second back row and the final two classes (especially the Mage class).
Agents in 7th Dragon III are not as liked as the other classes. Their hacks are great at the start for clearing random encounters and sustaining the party's MN during a long dungeon trek, but become far less useful against bosses who have high hacking resistance. By the end, there are enemies who are outright immune to hacking, rendering that part of their skillset useless. On the other hand, their gun skills offer excellent chance for critical hits, so proper investment turns them into a rather devastating Critical Hit Class.
Duelists are a cool class conceptually, but as the other classes become unlocked they become outclassed. Their best strategies take several turns at best to set up, when other classes can deal massive damage starting on turn two. It doesn't help that they can get screwed over if they don't get the needed cards in their hands, though they have skills to search for specific cards and can begin battles with many cards once their skills are leveled up. And they become redundant once you gain access to the Mage class, as Mages can also cast elemental spells but without needing to pray to the Random Number God to give them the correct cards, plus Duelists have to manage SP for twelve different elemental attacks (each of their three attack elements has 3 tiers of single-target spells and one all-target spell) while Mages only have half as many to put SP into. This only applies to them as an active combatant, though, as their backup skill — cleansing the active party of all ailments — is invaluable.
Narm: The final dungeon loses a bit of its oomph due to a couple of interface issues. First, the dungeon, despite being a separate space-time plane that paves the way for a new universe, is listed as part of A.D. 2100 Tokyo. Second, as a result, the random encounter battle theme is the Tokyo battle theme which, given that Atlantis and Eden have their own random battle themes, is rather jarring as the Tokyo battle theme is the very first theme heard in the game and doesn't really convey the gravity of Unit 13's final mission.
Player Punch: Chapter 6 has the moment when Allie kills almost everyone in the main cast as well as every citizen of Tokyo. Including the cats.
Power-Up Letdown: The Fortuner's Sacrifice skill. It deals magic damage to all enemies at the cost of removing the user from the battle. The damage dealt is usually not enough to justify losing a party member.
Changing a character's class in 7th Dragon III resets all relationship values they had with other party members. It affects very little, but it's annoying if you want to build them back up. Which is ironic, as in-universe you're simply modifying what a character does without having them leave, whereas changing a character is explained as replacing a character with a new one of identical functional properties, including their relationship levels (mechanically, it's simply changing a character's cosmetic properties).
Cutscenes cannot be completely skipped. Most of them can be fast-forwarded by mashing the A button to instant-render dialogue and then advance it, but some cutscenes are fixed-pace and don't let you skip at all. This becomes problematic for pre-boss cutscenes; while you can retry a battle if you lose, it will dump you back at the very start of the fight and doesn't let you reconfigure your parties.
Slow-Paced Beginning: III is slow to get you into the fun due to the lack of initial classes available (you start with only four), lack of reliable elemental damage options, and limited support skills; the game isn't terribly difficult but it quickly gets monotonous. Once you unlock back-row teams and the Atlantis classes, your combat options start to diversify.
Insomnia α of 7th Dragon III has Death Sentence, which can inflict Dead on the entire party. While it is telegraphed, without protection and/or guarding this easily causes a Game Over on the spot. Even with protection, it can still take out one or two party members if you're unlucky.
Solitary Sword, the attack used by 7th Dragon III's Chapter 5 boss. Not only does it strike your party for damage multiple times, it also inflicts bleed and seals skills. It has a pretty obvious tell, but if it decides to use the attack multiple times in quick succession, better pray you can survive the onslaught.
Mayhem in Chapter 2 of 7th Dragon III is meant to be a Wake-Up Call Boss that teaches you the value of using Buddy attacks to inflict Break and dispel its defense-raising buffs that reduce all damage sustained to 1. What the game doesn't explicitly teach you is that Mayhem also has Dragon Breath, a party-hitting attack that inflicts a strong form of Poison that takes off 30 LF per turn at a point where your party members will maybe have 100-110 LF tops, while still pelting you with other attacks, and at this point in the game the only means of curing Poison only cure one party member at a time. Stacking two of the Venom Guard accessory (50% chance to prevent Poison) on one character will immunize them to Poison, but you are not likely to know this without getting help.
Insomnia α has a party-wide attack that inflicts Dead. While the game is nice enough to warn you of this threat, it's unlikely that you have anything that can perfectly nullify Dead. Also, your three teams are split up, so you don't have backup or Buddy skills to fall back on. All that we can say is 'good luck with the fight'.
Within the same chapter as Insomnia α, there's Zero Blue α. If you came in with double Freeze Guards on each member and fire-based attacks at the ready thinking you'll steamroll it, Zero Blue will simply laugh in your face. To elaborate: Its regular physical attack will take off at least half of the Life of a character with on-par level (in other words, if it uses its two moves per turn to attack the same character, they're dead), it can cast Blizzard which inflicts party-wide ice damage every turn for several turns and the damage takes priority over even instant and Exhaust, and it pairs up Blizzard with Cold Compression which removes its weakness to fire and makes its defenses shoot through the roof. And like with Insomnia, your three teams are split up which means you can't remove its buffs through Buddy skills. Good luck and don't snap your 3DS too hard!
The Chapter 5 boss fight in 7th Dragon III is brutal for an unprepared party. It frequently uses an ability that has a chance of paralyzing and confusing your party, and even normal attacks can shave off a lot of life. On top of that, it has another attack that hits numerous times, and inflicts bleed and skill seal. Even if you recognize the tell, you're going to have a rough time. At that point in the game, you may have ways to mitigate paralysis and confusion, but nothing you have reliably stops skill seal; the party is guaranteed to get shut down at any one point in the fight.
The penultimate boss of Chapter 6 needs to have all 10,000 of his LF depleted in one turn; if he gets to act, he'll just fill it back up, effectively restarting the battle. And just to make it harder to wipe him out, his attacks can cause either massive damage or inflict Null Action, wrecking your setup.
The final boss of III is stocked to the brim with attacks that damage and shut down the party with ailments. It starts with inflicting Charm on single party members, then Confusion to the entire party in its second form, culminating in Petrify, Null Action, or even instant death in its final form.
That One Level: Chapter 5 in III. It requires you to spend a good chunk of the chapter with your parties split, leaving you without access to rear-team specials, and fight three bosses like this, one of which can cause One-Hit Kills and the other of which likes to buff its defenses and use ice attacks with instant priority. The chapter is topped off by the hardest boss in the game up to this point despite having your three teams finally back together when you fight it. The final chapter is this trope as well, featuring another party split with souped-up versions of two previous True Dragons.
Underused Game Mechanic: In III, you eventually find accessories that defend against Stop, but you'll never encounter an enemy that inflicts it.
and the dragon battle