YMMV / Sunrider

• Alternative Character Interpretation: Admiral Grey, your main contact with the Alliance. Is he right that War Is Hell and justified in his increasingly extreme responses to PACT, or is he a warmonger trying to use the chaos to gain more power? Was he bluffing about being willing to destroy the neutral planet of Ongess?
• Awesome Moments:
  • Sunrider 4 is subtitled The Captain’s Return for a reason, and not just because of the Title Drop following the reintroduction of the Prototypes. The whole story is about Kayto returning as the badass Captain after so much decay to his character in the long run, over coming his faults and stepping up to the challenges with many achievements worth noting.
    • The plan to restore the orbit of Solar Congress? Tether a black iron cable to the station to hoist it up. Then add everyone else following suit to join in including your Ryder squad, the remnants of the Hawk Faction, whatever civilian and military vessels the Alliance can muster, and the incoming Denari led by Johanna/Qisah.
    • Special mention here goes to Kryska for enacting on said plan as part her own return from Captain Paladin. To show it off, she beats the Insane Admiral Storn to death during a Mexican Standoff he was guaranteed of winning against Shields, all while making him pay for his role in the Kangaroo Court earlier.
    • In Chapter 9 of Sunrider 4, Asaga singlehandedly fights off nine Prototype Ryders and goes 1-v-1 with the Widow, a freakishly powerful machine that can undo the damage she inflicts with its nanomachine hull. She's outmatched, but through sheer determination she keeps fighting, pushing her body and ryder to the limits of their endurance. She doesn't win, but she does hold the Prototypes off long enough for the Maray to come in guns blazing, rescuing her and Kayto.
    • The entirely of the final battle at the World Fountain. The Maray arrives disadvantaged following the lack of support from the Solar Alliance. So what how does he even the odds? Summon the Prototypes and their flagship Cathedral, leaving Fontana in a panic that lasts the whole battle.
    • Kuushana remains entirely calm throughout the battle, as managed ongoing battles at the same time. (The first against the Prototyes, the second in the fleet battle against the Maray, and the third while confronting its Ryder squadron. No matter what sudden surprises Shields brings up, she adapts accordingly and gets the PACT fleet reorganized for a counterattack while Fontana is left in a Villainous Breakdown.
    • Sola awakening her true Sharr abilities, now longer needing to perform a Heroic Sacrifice to launch the graviton torpedo.
    • Finally, the last moment upon detonating the graviton torpedo. After burying the ghosts of his past that are his former ship and now-corrupted ex-girlfriend, how does Kayto get oit with thousands of PACT ships pursuing him? Fly towards the sun he created with the torpedo and use its gravity well to pick up the speed he needs to cruise past the Crimson Armada, all while dragging PACT 4,000 ships into the Star with thousands more heavily damaged. That’s over half of PACT's entire navy of 10,000 disabled or destroyed while shaking off the remaining Prototypes and pursuing forces, leaving a deep impression from Kuushana and an utterly humiliated Fontana who dragged his name down for so long. Once again, what was once a name for a ship, Shields as become a literal sun rider.
• Cry for the Devil: Kayto can have shades for this for Cosette Cosmos after being captured on Ongess and having his beliefs about the Alliance not being the best for the Neutral Rim reaffirmed.
• Demonic Spiders:
  • PACT Supports. As enemy Ryders these have an array of abilities they can use to either buff the enemy fleet or debuff yours. Two of the most brutal are Flak Off (disables one ship's flak, leaving it vulnerable to enemy missiles and rockets) and Shield Down (disables the shields of the enemy ship - if used on the Liberty or the Bianca, it can absolutely cripple your odds of surviving), both of which have infinite range, are impossible to guard against, and can be used twice in a turn. Frustratingly, Supports tend to stay at the back of enemy formations, making them difficult to take down.
  • Assault Carriers. On top of being one of the hardiest ships PACT has (with a pretty solid offensive arsenal to boot), each turn these will spawn either a PACT Support ryder or a PACT Elite ryder. Yes, this is a Demonic Spider that spawns *additional* Demonic Spiders. Assault Carriers are usually the highest priority for takedowns, with the possible exception of PACT Supports that are already on the field. The only upside is that they are the only PACT capital ships that don't have shields.
  • Pirate Ironhogs. Pretty much the only pirate ship that's actually a significant threat, these things fire rockets (up to three times per ship). What makes them such a major threat is the fact that the rockets are fired in volleys of four, meaning it's difficult to shoot them down with flak and any that get through can cause a world of hurt (if all four get through, it's virtually instant death against anything other than the Sunrider). And if it runs out of rockets, it can switch over to its Assault guns, which are deceptively powerful and able to shred most ryders at close range.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Sola quickly became popular with the fanbase, getting enough votes in the dakimakura poll to tie for first, even though she'd never appeared in the game at that point. The release of her chibi icon also led to her getting more edited icons than any other girl, and a large number of posters chose to use her icons. Ultimately, she was one of the only later-game heroines to end up in the Dating Sim spinoff.
  • Veniscar B. Fontana is also considered very likable by fans. Examples include his Pet the Dog moments, his moral concerns in and out of PACT, and becoming the new leader after overthrowing the Prototypes.
• Funny Moments: Through all of the political intrigue and war drama, the visual novel series is lined up with moments worth a chuckle.
  • Cosette overtime goes from a ruthless, malevolent villain into both a sympathetic one and, ultimately, comic relief.
    • Her re-introduction in Sunrider 4 worth a mention.
  Cossette: “Aaaaahahahaha!- (record stop) Hey, who the hell put the camera up!?”
• Harsher in Hindsight: In-universe, Kayto's constant ribbing of Cosette about her childish appearance becomes much less funny to both him and the audience once he learns the reason why.
• Memetic Mutation: Space whales. The only goal not accomplished by the Kickstarter campaign was the option to romance space whales^note and add a harem ending. Even though they didn't make it, they managed to get a surprising number of fans, to the point where some were willing to vote for a space whale to get a dakimakura. Space whales play a minor role in Sunrider Academy, as well.
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • Chigara, especially in the fourth installment. Even after her death, the fact that she constantly stalks Shields gives some nightmares. More so once the fate of the Prototypes has been revealed.
• Rooting for the Empire: PACT has been getting fans with it's cool spear-shaped designs, hammy villains, and a shift in morality when Fontana takes over. Even moreso with Fontana, being described as one of the more likable characters and a very competent opponents of the Sunrider.
• Scrappy Mechanic: The escort missions. There are just two of them in Mask of Arcadius, but they are generally regarded as the two hardest missions in the game by far. Lampshaded in Liberation Day - when you get your initial list of sidequests on the way to Cera, Shields apprehensively asks if there are any escort missions among them, to which Ava replies that she took the liberty of cancelling every last escort contract they had after the way the last one went.
• The Scrappy: Chigara was hardly popular before Liberation Day, but in the initial aftermath of the decision to make her the sole love interest in the game, regardless of prior decisions on the part of the player, many fans began to outright attack her, criticizing her characterization, story role, and personality when compared to the other crewmembers.
• That One Level: Mission 5 in Mask of Arcadius is notorious for being a jarring spike in difficulty. After four relatively gentle and straightforward missions (plus one side mission), you are suddenly tossed into an Escort Mission that requires you to get an unarmed transport across the map. Simple in concept, save for the fact that the mission requires you to fly straight through an enemy fleet. A new player may be tempted to proceed slowly, carefully wiping out the enemies before proceeding... except that doing so is a recipe for disaster, as enemy reinforcements start to pour in during the later parts of the battle, and eventually so many warp in that they can take down the Sunrider in a single turn. This necessitates constantly moving the transport forward, essentially voluntarily moving your ships directly into the teeth of the enemy's most powerful guns. Most players recommend not using any command points until this mission so that you can use them all on this mission (including a borderline-mandatory use of the expensive Vanguard Cannon).
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!:
  • The switch to an all Japanese cast was jarring for many players. It was later clarified to have been done as a compromise as reprising the existing cast proved difficult to contact, but it's still a noticeable change. This practice is still retained in the fourth game.
  • Sunrider 4's lack of an NSFW version — which previous games in the series had — was met with disappointment by fans who were hoping for more of the sort of H-scenes seen in the [RE]turn DLC, Sunrider Academy, and Love In Space's other visual novel Shining Song Starnova.
  • After being given a taste of it in the non-canon Academy and [Re]turn spinoffs, many fans were hoping that Sunrider 4 would have Shields be able to romance the various female characters — a feature that's generally seen as a staple of visual novels and has been requested especially after Liberation Day had Chigara be the only romance option. However, like the previous canon games in the series, this was not to be — with it being noted on Steam that the amount of writing to make that work would have made the game take exponentially longer to develop, used up the limited resources of a small team, and potentially detracted from the story they wanted to tell. The devs have commented that they are well aware of how much the fanbase wants to see traditional character routes, and that those are something they'd like to integrate into the main series — but only "when the time is right and in the right place". However, this does end up partially subverted at the very end of The Captain's Return as, while there aren't any routes, the epilogue finally allows Kayto to choose one of the girl's he's gotten close to for a potential Relationship Upgrade - with Ava and Lynn's having romantic subtext while Asaga and Sola's outright have a Big Damn Kiss - and setting up the possibility of dedicated routes in near future.