YMMV / The Way (RPG Maker)

• Awesome Music:
  • The series includes several original tracks by Lun himself, a pretty unusual things for an RPG Maker free game at the time. They're often used in the most poignant moments.
  • Many of the other songs, while taken from other works, are used well. For example, the first-level music from Castlevania is the random battle theme.
  • The use of the classic "Zombie", an anti-war song by The Cranberries, in the Blood Lyn training camp is equally awesome, especially if you know the song lyrics and how well they describe the Blood Lyn.
• Demonic Spiders:
  • Cave Rays are quite a nasty threat, not only in Episode 1 when you first encounter them but even all the way in Episode 3 where they show up again. This is because of their Numb Ray attack, which has a chance of paralyzing the entire party. If this happens, you're not very likely to survive.
  • The Lapizua in Episode 5. They have lots of HP, do a good amount of damage, and can use not one but two attacks which can make a character lose a turn, one of which can hit the entire party. The worst part is that they come in groups of three, meaning that getting stunlocked into a Game Over is a very real possibility. Your best hope is to use either Hurricane Cut or Dirk's Tornado as soon as possible in order to disable them while hoping they don't do the same to you.
• Enjoy the Story, Skip the Game: For many players, the battles just get in the way of the story. Thankfully the creator realized this and added the option to skip all the battles. Subverted with the Plunge battles, though, as they are both gameplay and story.
• Epileptic Trees: Tons of them here.
• Esoteric Happy Ending: Two of the endings can be seen as this, depending on how the player interprets them.
  • In the "main" ending, Rhue finds out the truth about himself and the evil deeds that his sword made him commit, and realizes that he has lost his purpose in life. Still, it's implied that he does move on, and that Kloe remains his friend.
  • In the Lexus ending, instead of waking back up into the real world to confront Gaius, Rhue chooses to find happiness with Lexus in Dream Estrana. This can be viewed as a form of escapism, as Dream Estrana doesn't exist in the physical world. Also, it seems this decision leaves the Phantom Slasher in complete control of his body.
• Fan Nickname: Dream Estrana is never referred to as such in the game itself, and in fact is never named in the game at all. The closest thing to an official name is 'The City', which it is called in the coding.
• Faux Symbolism:
  • Some attacks, like "Longinus" and "Outer Darkness," are pointless references to Christianity.
  • Once the Mind Screw gets rolling in chapters five and six, even the Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors starts getting symbolic. Elements are classified into physical attacks, Elemental, "Oneness" and "Transcendental", each with four subelements like Spirit or Atoma. This can get rather confusing in chapter 6, which is ironically the point at which you start getting enough control over your elemental choices that you'd want to understand what's what.
• Fridge Logic: If settling down is uncommon behavior for Wayfarers and most "settlements" consist of a few small buildings for living space, where do all the manufactured goods on The Way come from? Clothes, weapons, furniture, books...
• Funny Moments:
  • Rhue's "story" in Episode 1. Expecially when Lyrra tries to force him to make it a love story.
  • In Episode 4, the cutscene of a young boy arguing with his mom about whether to urinate inside or outside. Then you burst into their house, Rhue and Stoyko apologize for barging in then run outside, the boy flees through the open door so he can finally urinate outside, with his mom chasing him....then Stoyko comes back inside to steal their wine.
  • Fwacho's commercial in Episode 6.
• Game-Breaker: When Rhue learns Hurricane Cut, most combat will become trivialized. It hits all enemies for a lot of damage, and has a high chance of making them Prone, which immobilizes them for at least two whole turns, and halves their defense during this time. Some bosses even lack Contractual Boss Immunity, giving it a chance of working on them!
• Growing the Beard:
  • Episode 3 is often considered this for the plot.
  • The gameplay gets way better in Episode 6, when you start breaking free from the RNG's tyranny.
• Heartwarming Moments: The Lexus ending, since Rhue has recently found out that his identity has been a fake and Serena's Dead All Along, he has found happiness in Dream Estrana with Lexus and starts a new life with her.
• Moment of Awesome: In Episode 5, Traziun killing a fortress full of Blood Lyn, anyone?
• Moral Event Horizon: Many characters cross the line. It's debatable if and when Rhue does so.
• Narm:
  • "Hey, come back here! I'm mad at you!!!"
  • Fighting three RTP Brian clones in Episode One for some classic RPG Maker jank.
  • Rhue's battle scream in Episode Five.
• Scrappy Mechanic: Red Zero/Lexus and Cetsa have an unorthodox fighting style. Unfortunately, it has so many drawbacks that their abilities are borderline unusable. The one thing that prevents them from being Low-Tier Letdowns is that their base stats are pretty good, making them decent if you only use their basic attack and let them tank damage.
  • They can't gain XL points passively like everyone else, instead having to siphon them from their own teammates by using XL Loan. This makes them bad on two fronts: the XL Loan ability takes up their turn, AND it steals XL from their teammates. Most of their skills also have a high XL cost, so they'll have to waste 5-6 turns (and that much XL for each party member) just to charge them up, unless you also use the XL transfer abilities (and waste even more XL as well as another character's turn).
  • Once you do get enough XL, you'll find that their abilities all have nasty drawbacks for some reason: Thorn of a Rose damages all enemies, but also all allies except the user. Photosynthesis heals the user, but makes them waste 2 turns. Petal Purge removes the user's status effects, but is Cast from Hit Points. Blossum (sic) heals the user, but damages all allies (though at least it costs no XL to use).
  • As a cherry on top: for some reason, these characters cannot be healed by other party members. If they need an HP refill, they have to use Blossum or Photosynthesis and suffer the drawbacks.
• Sidetracked by the Gold Saucer: Episode 6 quite possibly has more sidequests than actual storyline quests.
• Tear Jerker: Quite a few.
  • The biggest one is possibly in Episode 4, when Rhue accidentally kills Lexus due to a freak combination of circumstances.
  • Sacrifa's wife, who he researches endlessly to find a cure for her disease, is stoned to death in public in front of his own eyes. This enrages him so much he summons demons from hell and essentially destroys the whole city of Estrana.
• That One Boss: Trying to hold your own against Strata long enough to get the reward at the start of Episode 5. Oddly enough, when you can finally beat him, he isn't really that hard.
• That One Level: The Barrucha Cave. Throughout the cave the titular winged beast swoops down straight at you, killing you on contact. In some areas you can tell when it will come, in some there is no warning, and to top it all off the whole thing is timed. And the game doesn't tell you.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: The Citadels are mentioned in Episode 3 and seem to be extremely important in the history of The Way. Unfortunately, they're not that important in Rhue's story.
• The Un-Twist: During the raid on Jopaga's lab in Episode 4, you are joined by Red Zero, a mysterious female combatant wearing a full-body Ninja suit that hides her identity... or at least, most of it. Red Zero's eyes are still visible through her mask, making it very obvious from the start that she's Lexus. If that wasn't a huge enough hint, a bit later in the episode, Lexus joins your party undisguised, and she just so happens to have the exact same stats and unorthodox fighting style and abilities as Red Zero. Despite this, Rhue still sounds surprised when he learns the truth in Episode 5, but the player is likely rolling their eyes at his inability to connect the dots.
• Useless Useful Spell: Not every X-LIFE ability is useful. Some abilities will likely never see use unless you intentionally go out of your way to set them up.
  • Early on, Traziun's Rejuvenate is pathetic. It only has a 70% chance of working, and when it does, only restores 8 HP to himself. Other healing spells have a much higher success rate, restore several times this amount, and most of them can also be used on any other character.
  • Most of the abilities that only heal Status Effects (or worse, only one specific one). While some ailments can be pretty nasty, specific statuses are rare enough that you'll almost never use the ability to heal them. One particularly notable example of this is the Fire Edge's Thaw ability, which does nothing but remove the Frozen ailment. You earn this in Episode 3, but you won't encounter a single enemy capable of causing this effect until late in Episode 5, at which point you'll probably have graduated from the Elemental swords to the Transcendental ones.
  • Kloe's Mistreated and Revenge of One abilities. Their effects could be good: Mistreated deals damage equal to Kloe's maximum HP minus her current HP (making it stronger the less health she has), and Revenge of One greatly increases her attack, but can only be used while her health is below 50%. The problem is that they cost a huge amount of XL, meaning that nearly every fight she's in will end long before she can use them.
  • Slade's Outer Darkness. It costs a ridiculously massive 12 XL, when he only gains 1 per turn (2 if he spends the turn absorbing XL), meaning that most fights will be over long before you get enough to use it. Then, to make matters worse, the ability only works if Slade is at full HP; otherwise, it does nothing and half the XL cost is wasted. An as if that wasn't useless enough, when Slade is in your party, the only other party member is Rhue himself, who doesn't have a healing ability yet, meaning that if in the many long turns, Slade took even a single hit, the only way he can heal himself is by wasting even more of his own XL on self-healing and hope that he doesn't take any more damage that turn or while recharging the XL he spent on that heal. When he rejoins your party much later on, he thankfully has a Stance System that at least lets him use decent healing abilities.
  • Dirk's Earth Whisper is supposed to be a Random Effect Spell which summons a random creature to attack the enemies, but its chance of actually doing anything is pathetically tiny. At 4 XL a pop, when he only gains 1 per turn (2 or 3 if he spends the turn absorbing XL), it'll probably take you forever to get a useful effect out of it, and you'd be better off spending the time using his other skills, which aren't the best, but at least do something.
• The Woobie: Several, but Lyrra is the biggest one: her life is basically a long Trauma Conga Line. She's the Sole Survivor of the Landorin Massacre, her father dies in a bandit attack but she doesn't know this, leaving her to wander in a hopeless search for him, and her boyfriend Strata is a womanizing Jerkass who dumps her the moment he sees a hotter woman. She stays The Pollyanna through all of this... until that last one, at which point she starts to undergo Sanity Slippage, which gets worse when she finds a Shadow Sword, gets consumed by its evil power, and tries to murder Strata and Rhue, forcing the latter to end her life in self-defense. Her last words, spoken with tears in her eyes, are "What a terrible ending to my story..."

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