The Reconstruction / YMMV

Alas, Poor Scrappy: Adi and Cort are minor characters that most players probably wouldn't bat an eye at...up until the final battle, anyway, where they defend the Big Bad at the cost of their lives. Made worse by the fact that you have to kill them yourself.
Anticlimax Boss: Compared to the boss(es) that come before them, the Final Boss is kind of a pushover, even the True Final Boss. They only have two flunkies that can be taken out pretty easily by that point, and they themselves don't actually have any abilities, other than a gimmicky passive ability or two. The aforementioned flunkies do have actual abilities, but only one of them is a real threat.
Awesome Music:
- The title theme.
- All the music in Fortifel, full stop.
- Do'Ssha has some pretty great themes as well.
- The music that plays during Tear Jerker scenes is suitably heart-rending.
- The theme of chapter five's boss battle, especially when it suddenly descends into a slow and mournful passage, fitting the mood of the boss basically staging the battle and letting himself be killed by the party.
- The world map theme is surprisingly epic.
- The Final Boss theme, The Blues.
- The battle music for the final dungeon, Naught To Lose.
Funny Moments: Interlude 1. Especially the stealth section.
- After asking Ques to distract a group of bloodthirsty birds, his only reaction is:
  Ques: There will be Hell to pay if I tear my favorite gloves, you know.
  - Really all of Ques' snark is non-stop hilarity.
- At one point, Ques asks you if you are serious about something. Your choices are: "Quite serious," "Dead serious," and "Serious as a heart attack."
Game-Breaker:
- Qualstio's "Stifling Heat" passive skill, which combined with maxing out Flame Burst raises its chance of inflicting Disable to almost 100%, making bosses laughably easy. Unless you focus on his passive skill branch and the Flame Burst spell when levelling him up or do a ridiculous amount of skill point grinding, though, you won't be able to get it until very late in the game.
- Santes, Santes, Santes. She has both potent healing spells and a powerful direct damage spell. One of her early passive abilities grants her a significant Agility boost, too, so she can attack and heal pretty quickly. It's unlikely you'll ever want to remove her from your party throughout the game's entire duration.
  - She's also the only caster who can Rush^note, plus she can advance the skill chain at the same time.
- The full-party buff spells (Rising Morale, Blessing of Wit, and Refreshment) are extremely useful as well, because they effectively regenerate both Mana and Hit Points. They are balanced out somewhat by the fact that the party members who have said skills tend to be weaker or less useful than other party members, however.
  - The exception to that last one is Kulkumatz: Lani has little in the way of offense, which is bad in a game where the best defense is a good offense, while Falitza is frail, has incredibly gimmicky abilities, and her one offensive ability is rarely useful. However, Kulkumatz is well-rounded, durable, and capable of dishing out nearly as much damage as other characters, in addition to having the full-party Regrowth spell.
- Perfect Frenzy. It deals ludicrous Body damage, killing off all non-boss enemies with light armour in one hit. It can leave the character who uses it vulnerable to attack, though.
Goddamn Bats: Skywatch birds in Chapter 4. They come out of nowhere, are extremely hard to dodge and have an annoying knockback attack that can greatly lengthen fights with them. Probably the closest thing this game has to random encounters.
Goddamned Boss: The Hemofalcon, in spades. Not only it's a Giant Space Flea from Nowhere, but the fight starts with the battlefield crammed with Blood Hawks as its flunkies. Blood Hawks have a long range attack that pushes back a character and disables all their abilities for a turn — and there's almost as many of them as your party members. For extra fun, Hemofalcon has an ability that disables the whole party's abilities. You'll spend most of the battle trying to run back to the front line and waiting for disable to wear off.
Heartwarming Moments:
- Yacatec's Jerk with a Heart of Gold scene.
- Dehl's ending scene, where Xopi forgives him for his violent actions earlier in the game.
- Restoring Rehm's self-confidence and helping him come to terms with all the awful things he's been through, especially since it comes after the biggest Tear Jerker in the game.
- This can also be a Tear Jerker depending on how you read it, but: After the "Routing Season" quest, if you choose to have Qualstio let the criminals escape, Dehl asks him why. Qualstio's response: "Look, you're better off than those shra, so you don't care. But that's not how I feel. Especially after knowing you for so long." Qualstio really does care about Dehl, and is one of the few people who actually has issues with the slave trade...
- At the end of the game, the Big Bad attempts a Villain: Exit, Stage Left. However, just as he's about to escape in his getaway boat, he sees that all the people of Wadassia (and the escaped slaves) are there already to block his path. They came all the way to the Drop to support Six Stars, even though they knew it would probably be suicide...
- In the good ending, Tezkhra is seconds away from activating the third pillar and completing the Cycle, which will mean he gets rescued, but also means that everything on the surface will be destroyed. When he thinks of all that he's seen, and how much he's truly bonded with the people, he realizes he can't do it. Not only that, but he then decides to stay and watch over them, even though it means he'll grow old and die.
- In chapter three's ending scene, when Alito is afraid of leaving behind his lost home and the city he's been living in and going on to travel with Six Stars, Lani says that if his feet ever become sore from walking, she'll carry him herself. This is not a plot point and there's no particular reason for her to say that. She's just that compassionate towards the little guy.
- Skint being inducted into Six Stars. In the final chapter, long after it had lost any practical meaning, the group produces the documentation and have him sign it to officially become a member. The game itself also goes through with the formalities: the silly little fanfare that accompanies characters joining the guild and a name/race/class/description screen which is completely pointless because it's clear Skint is moments away from expiring from his wounds and you won't be using him in any battle. All of this is done to allow him to die peacefully among friends, which is an important thing in Shra beliefs.
Moment of Awesome: Santes delivering a "The Reason You Suck" Speech to the Blessed Corps of Do'Ssha.
Nightmare Fuel:
- Chapter 6. The heroes failed. The Bad Guy Wins. The Scenery Gorn of all the devastation the Big Bad caused, the Heroic BSoD on the part of the heroes, and the thousands of people who must have died while Holding Out for a Hero in vain... Sure, it all works out in the end, but it's still heartbreaking and terrifying if you try to put yourself in the shoes of the NPCs.
- The True Final Boss, Chaos Havan. It's physically monstrous, with warped, overstretched skin and absolutely horrifying Black Eyes of Evil. Its Character Portrait also looks like it's perpetually screaming. The knowledge that the alteration capabilities of Tezkhra's Power Fist can backfire so catastrophically like that is...rather unsettling.
- Interlude 4, the resolution of Dehl's backstory that delivers on tons of foreshadowing dropped throughout the game. It starts off innocuously enough, with peaceful humans arriving on Dehl's island, and Dehl then going off to find his father. In the process, he discovers his father's secret 'laboratory', which is swathed in blood and has bloody Sikohlon corpses chained to the walls. Dehl's father rambles about how he killed everyone to try and isolate a cure for the Blue Plague, and Dehl is just barely able to come out alive through the manifestation of his pseudo-magic powers — which causes his father to be graphically impaled by a sword and die. Yeah.
Tear Jerker:
- Interlude 3. Vasra is Killed Off for Real, and Rehm suffers a Heroic BSoD that makes Dehl's Roaring Rampage of Revenge look minor in comparison. His previously cheerful, happy-go-lucky personality is replaced by a traumatized wreck that can barely talk to anyone. This makes Taru suffer a nasty breakdown and run away in anger and disappointment, while Rehm starts sobbing as the screen fades to black. But it's not over, oh no. We then see multiple scenes of Rehm being Driven to Suicide, but being unable to actually die because he has a shra's stamina and regenerative capabilities. He doesn't even manage to finish it within some years of constantly being drunk and slowly starving, as he's captured by Nalians and sold into slavery. Easily the most depressing scene in the game. Fortunately, it has a Happy Ending if you do a certain chain of sidequests.
  - In addition to all that, the incident apparently turns Taru into a shra-hating bigot due to a grudge on Rehm for abandoning the crew. He is still like this half a century later. It's truly sad when you recall how accepting and nice he is towards shra in the other interludes...
- Falitza's sidequest. Her brother desperately tries to reconstruct her mind by putting her through an extensive therapy course in Wassadia, but it's an absolute failure. Falitza refuses to participate in anything except the physical exercise sessions, which she takes an unhealthy interest in. Afterwards, it's clear that her brother is close to tears, but he tries to talk reason into her one last time...which also fails. Major Downer Ending, there.
  - Becomes better after The Reveal during the ending, where Falitza says that she was faking her madness the whole time...though she also says that Hunio didn't care about her in the slightest, only in redeeming the family name. Also, it means she was kind of a jerk for toying with his heart like that.
- Dehl's rejection from the Sikohlon family.
  - Emphasized in his portion of the ending, where, when asked his name, it looks like he's about to say his typical "Dehl. Dehl Sikohlon," when he catches himself and says instead, "Dehl. Just...Dehl." However, since Xopi finds and forgives him a few moments later, he may snap out of it by the sequel.
- Sirush's portion of the ending, as well as the end of his sidequest.
- Skint's Alas, Poor Villain scene, and the fact that it makes Dehl's Freak Out even worse.
That One Attack:
- "God's Gift", used by chapter 4's boss. It only hits one party member, but can deal over twenty points of Soul damage. Combine this with the fact that more than half the battlefield is Energized, and anyone standing on an Energized square takes 50% more damage from it, whoever's hit with it is going to die unless their element is Physical. The boss's other attack also inflicts two full-party debuffs.
- Chapter 5's boss has "The Threshing", though there are multiple ways to prevent him from using it. (The battle actually centers on getting him not to use it, because if he does, you might as well save yourself some time and hit F12)
  - Asarik has a similar move, "Torment". Doesn't deal as much damage, but hits everyone. Mercifully, he doesn't use it very often.
That One Boss: Chapter 4's, because his battle contains a Videogame Set Piece; it's constantly raining, and every turn he gets, the rain has a chance to either double his stats or inflict a nasty full-party debuff. If no one in your party has a full-party buff spell to counter it, gods help you. On top of that, even if the rain does nothing, it Energizes a lot of the battle squares, and if someone's standing on them and gets hit with That One Attack, they're going to die unless their element is Physical or they have 30+ Soul.
- Fortunately, the rain can actually be to your advantage; it's rare, but it can remove the aforementioned debuffs and/or decrease the boss' stats.
- Chapter 5's boss can be quite difficult as well if you don't know how to cancel That One Attack, but by then you're likely to have Stifling Heat, which makes him a joke if you use Flame Burst every round. (He'll actually skip his turn if he's in a position to use the attack and he's disabled)
- The first boss of the entire game is practically a Luck-Based Mission. To wit, his signature move is an AoE attack that can easily one shot your healer, he has all three stat buffs active, and he has three similarly fully buffed guards as backup.
- The Fire Tchiirta at the end of the second mission isn't too tough on its own. its the fact that its backed up by three Tchiirta Hatchlings and two Tchiirta Scouts that makes it a nightmare if you're unprepared.
Unintentionally Sympathetic: It was not very nice of Lord God to torture Donz to death. But this was the guy who decided to plunge the whole planet into an apocalyptic cataclysm and was barely stopped short of wiping all of its life. All this because he was so vindictive about his job that he couldn't bear Six Stars proving his predictions wrong. If it wasn't for him, there would be no Lord God.
The Un-Twist: Tezkhra doesn't have astronaut clothing and a laser attack for no reason.
The Woobie: A lot of characters, but primarily Dehl, Alito, Rehm, and Moke. Also, Tezkhra, once you realize the truth behind him and all the things he's been through.
- Stoic Woobie: Dehl, so very much.

YMMV / The Reconstruction

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