YMMV / Triangle Strategy

• Abandon Shipping: Serenoa and Roland were a popular pairing before the game's release due to their intense friendship. The reveal that Serenoa and Roland are half-brothers killed any pairing they had.
• Anti-Climax Boss: Demigod Idore doesn't really put up much of a fight. It's fairly easy to use the right abilities and Quietus cards to quickly get your best attackers over to him, and while he does have high HP and some nasty attacks, he is fairly slow. And while he does have a lot of minions, they don't have very high Move and won't be able to do much before you beat Idore down.
• Awesome Music:
  • "Pre-Battle", the music that plays during battle preparations, is an intense and dramatic piece that pumps you up for the battles to come.
  • "Combat -Destiny-", this music only plays during some of the most important fights of the game, most notably in Chapter XIII if you take the Morality route and fight against Erika and Thalas (the music only kicks in when engaging one of the siblings), leading to a very cathartic fight which highlights Frederica's growth. The music starts with a high tempo, with the piano and violin starting the dance, before introducing a bombastic electric guitar, percussions and brass instruments, all taking turns in the spotlight and contributing to a fantastic melody.
  • "Unwavering Spear -Roland’s Battle-", a particularly somber piece that plays when Roland fights against Patriatte during chapter XV in the middle of the destroyed capital (be it from the previous assault or from the destroyed dam), and also if you go for the Liberty route in chapter XVII, in which both the piano and the organ (with the brass instruments kicking in later, with the organ staying the main instrument heard) take central stage to highlight how dire the circumstances are (as this event and the ones that follow ultimately shatter Roland) and the extent of Patriatte’s depravity.
  • "Until That Day –Frederica's Battle–", an uplifting Triumphant Reprise of Frederica's somber and subdued personal theme, making use of tribal sounds and wind instruments to convey the swelling sense of a heroic fight for freedom. Appropriately, it plays during chapter XI should you choose to defend the Roselle from being returned to slavery.
  • "No Matter The Cost -Benedict's Battle-" is a desperate marching track that plays during the climactic battle against Exharme, either during the attack against Hyzante in the Liberty Route or during the defense against him and Hyzante's main army in the Conviction Route.
• Base-Breaking Character: Roland is the most polarizing of the main characters, largely because of the debate about if his character is meant to be viewed as flawed, or is just badly written. Some find Roland to be extremely unlikable, because a lot of his choices, and the reasons for them, come across as badly written and hard to accept, even more than Benedict's intentionally extreme choices, since his route has some questionable reasons for why he does the things he does. Others like that Roland is a flawed person who doesn't make the right choices at times, since it makes him interesting without making him outright unlikable, and point out that his insecurities are present from early in the game. While both Benedict and Frederica have some division in terms of their characterization, neither reach the same levels as Roland.
• Best Level Ever: Chapter 18 of the Conviction Route is this to a T: Serenoa finally decides to Screw Destiny and rejects the notion that he has to alienate any of his loved ones, instead performing one hell of a risky gambit to both subvert Gustadolph and destroy Hyzante, while also freeing the Roselle in the process. What follows is a three-pronged power play where you, as the player, send your three main generals (Benedict, Roland, and Frederica) as well as every one of your heroes (divvied up between the generals leading them) to concurrently defend the Wolffort demesne, get Aesfrosti aid from Svarog, and incite a Rosellan rebellion. The battles are suitably climactic and tense, and even have bonus Easter Eggs of multiple mid-battle confrontations between significantly related characters depending on who goes with each general ^note (Archibald/Milo VS. Kamsell, Geela/Avlora/Cordelia/Groma/Flanagan/Maxwell/Hossabara VS. Gustadolph, and Milo/Avlora VS. Exharme). It's a great way to let your entire army shine in a climactic turn of events - and they will all get usage in these fights.
• Breather Level: Chapter VIII, assuming you don't trust the offer from Telliore, if you chose to save Roland in VII. It comes directly after a difficult fight against Avlora, who can give you a bad time despite being at an elevation disadvantage and has a nasty enemy force to contend with; in contrast, House Telliore's army is smaller and less damaging, and attacks you in favorable terrain of Wolffort's choosing. The boss, Rufus, can definitely hit hard and tanks most damage not unlike Avlora, but as he's the one notably strong unit the player has to defeat (as opposed to a rout map of tougher soldiers), this makes for an easier overall fight… Its counterpart map is much tougher.
• Captain Obvious Reveal: While it takes most of the game to reveal just what Dragan found in the Grand Norzelian Mine, it's pretty obvious right from the get-go that it's naturally-occurring salt outside of the Source.
• Catharsis Factor:
  • Chapter VII Morality: Defeating Avlora without setting off the wildfire traps is tough, but feels all the more gratifying for it as the town and its people are spared the destruction of the traps.
  • Getting to kill the hated Erika and Thalas, especially in the Morality and Liberty Chapter XIII; the fight is more challenging than if you flooded the Crown City, yet all the more satisfying for the well-earned victory.
  • The Golden Ending has a few, with the most notable being in Chapter XVIII: Gustadolph’s true colours as a Not-So-Well-Intentioned Extremist who killed his cousin and framed Glenbrook as his Pretext for War are finally exposed, the subsequent fight sees his forces stand down when he loses, and Svarog enacts his justice for Dragan before swearing Aesfrost’s support to toppling Hyzante's control over Norzelia’s salt for good.
    • It gets even better with the update that added the epilogue. After everything Quahaug has gone through, he finally gets to find and embrace his mother. Even better, it's implied Milo set the whole scenario up so that Lyla would have to confront her son and Quahaug would find her.
• Cheese Strategy: The branch of Chapter VII in which you do NOT hand over Roland and are met with the Aesfrosti army's full force is a brutal fight, particularly if you want to get the Golden Ending, since it requires you not to use the map's traps. However, Anna's invisibility and Hughette's flying allow them to stay almost entirely untouchable, which will allow them to bait enemies in range of each other while being out of harm's way, and whittle down the level boss' health while the enemies can't hurt you. Given this path simplifies a brutal fight and enables the Golden Ending to be unlocked, this is the rare example of a cheese strategy that has been positively received.
• Complete Monster:
  • Idore Delmira is Hyzante's Minister of Religion who, despite posing as a loyal servant of the Hierophant, is actually Hyzante's true leader and the man responsible for Norzelia's woes. Having lost faith in both the Goddess and humanity during the Saltiron War, Idore decided to replace the dying Hierophant with a puppet powered by Aelfric, an energy made from the corpses of Rosellan slaves, and use it to advance his agenda of subjugating the entire world. Idore continues his predecessors' policy of brutally oppressing and gaslighting the Roselle in order to protect Hyzante's salt monopoly and create more Aelfric from their corpses and, when Sorsley Ende is killed, demands Serenoa hand over his Rosellan refugees in exchange for Ende's seat, with the threat of sending the Hyzantian army if he refuses. Depending on the path House Wolffort takes, Idore will either attempt to slaughter the escaping Roselle before suicide bombing Serenoa upon defeat; use his Vice-Minister Tenebris Mistel as a sacrifice to escape and later start a resistance movement against Serenoa with Roland; succeed in taking over Norzelia and start enslaving dissidents with the Roselle; or reject Serenoa's offer for atonement and blow his palace up with House Wolffort still in it.
  • Sorsley Ende is the corpulent, greedy Minister of Salt. The most corrupt member of the Saintly Seven, Sorsley barely has any loyalty to Hyzante and lines his pockets with an illegal salt trade founded upon the grueling slavery of countless Roselle, even kids. These slaves work under the duress of constant thirst, sometimes to the point of collapse or death; when one innocent slave begs for just one drink, Sorsley heartlessly has him murdered on the spot and implores no mercy toward the other Roselle. A conniving backstabber, Sorsley attempts to rope House Wolffort into delivering his illegal salt for him as a means of controlling them, gleefully planning to throw them under the bus for his own crimes should it come to it.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Archibald is greatly appreciated for being perhaps the best and most versatile recruitable archer — including a One-Hit Kill ability — having no downsides besides Movement (which can be rectified later), and just being an all-around Cool Old Guy who can keep up with the rest of the cast.
  • Hossabara is also rather well-loved by the fan base: despite being rather average in battle, people appreciate her kind personality, her no-nonsense dialogue, and her tragic backstory, as well as her Ship Tease with Erador.
  • Cordelia has been described as "the fandom's darling" since day one, given her unique and cute voice, her take on the Princess Classic trope revolving around her playing the political game to win back as much of Glenbrook as she could with the power of politics, and her close relationship with Avlora. She's also considered to be second only to Quahaug in terms of being the most powerful unit in the game, having White Magic that can easily turn the tide of any battle. Some fans think she never should have abdicated the throne to Roland, out of the belief she honestly made a better ruler than he did.
• Evil Is Cool: Avlora, thanks to being built up as a deadly threat at a steady pace and delivering on it. There’s also a measure of it to Gustadolph, for being a cunning and intelligent leader with a more pragmatic ruthlessness at play.
• Friendly Fandoms: There is strong overlap between fans of this game and the Game of Thrones fandom, especially those who were burned by the latter's finale, and hope Triangle Strategy will execute the same concept in a better fashion.
• Game-Breaker:
  • Anna is the most immediately obvious standout- you get her for free on every route, and her gimmick is that she can take two actions every turn at no TP cost. This can be any action, ranging from using items twice, attacking twice, or doing one each. To get an idea of how good this is, Medina, a character locked behind Conviction requirements, can do this same trick but only with items- and she has to spend three points of TP to use it! Anna's version is better in every way. Anna also gets XP for both actions, meaning she levels up twice as fast as every other character in the game, furthering her power level. Combine this with the fact that one of the first tricks leveling up gives her is a stealth move that makes her untargetable until she's found or attacks, and Anna is a terrifyingly powerful character despite her relatively weak stats.
  • Frederica is easily the best mage in the game, and only really needs to class up once to get there. She scores TP on a kill, and as a mage she's built to finish off weakened enemies and soften groups, meaning it's very easy for her to get a kill combo going with Blazing Chains and just not stop until everyone's dead. She's damn-near required in Hard mode to deal with bosses, helped by how absurdly powerful Blazing Chains is; for context, Roland's best ability, Four Dragons, takes 4 TP, is a melee blow, and has terrible accuracy in return for piercing defense and dealing really good damage. Blazing Chains costs 2 TP, does more damage than Four Dragons, and is easily renewable. Her near immunity to fire damage also means Frederica can easily set herself up in the middle of an inferno to punish enemies for attempting to engage with her in melee, and she gets a massive boost in power for doing so. Even better, when the sun's out (and most maps take place outdoors in pleasant weather), she gets another boost to her offenses. Her only real issue is being a Squishy Wizard, but that's easily remedied by giving her proper support; Serenoa was practically made to facilitate Frederica's best qualities and is required on every story map, anyway, and even without a tank protecting her, Frederica can actually take some punishment for a mage.
  • Coretin suffers from Magikarp Power on a first playthrough, but like Medina below, he comes into his own in subsequent playthroughs where all of his abilities are available. The standout reason for Corentin's success is 'TP+ On Ice;' whenever he starts his turn on a frozen tile, Corentin gains an extra point of TP. This is massive, because this allows Corentin to fulfill his role as the ultimate battlefield control member of the party. Once he sets up (and it's simplicity itself for him to create frozen tiles under his feet with Icy Breath), Corentin can make it damn near impossible for enemies to reach his party members, either by setting up Walls of Ice his allies can pelt enemies from behind, covering more of the battlefield in ice with Glacial Moon (while also dealing respectable damage) and consistently supplying allies with invulnerability with Shield of Ice. He's also formidably tanky for a mage, being able to take a solid two hits from even Glass Cannon enemies, meaning he has an easy time getting out of danger or dealing with said danger personally. He veers somewhat into Difficult, but Awesome territory if played as a nuker like Frederica, but as a backline support unit and area controller, he synergizes exceptionally well with other potent allies like Benedict and Cordelia, both of whom he can easily protect with Shield of Ice.
  • Rudolph is a situational, downplayed example; he’s an archer with less accuracy than most, but his greater strength stat makes him quite useful when you can rectify it with good positioning (both back attacks and elevation). He has a assortment of later trick moves like his Slumber Shot, but his starting technique beat traps have one major utility: they always take off 11% of an enemy’s total health, no matter if it’s an otherwise deadly boss like Avlora; coupled with the ability to have three at most set up, careful positioning and using turn order to your advantage can clinch unexpected victories with Rudolph’s aid.
  • Medina. Her main utility doesn't reside in her respectable healing potential, but in being able to massively restore everyone's TP, including her own. As long as you have Area of Effect healing items, Medina can give a massive advantage to your army, doubly so if you make her use two items on the same turn. Her unlockable weapon skill heals everyone no matter the distance. Like Benedict, she can advance one unit's turn immediately. Her only but notable drawback is that you need healing items, which are rather scarce and expensive, in a game where you can run out of money easily if you want to upgrade your characters, and making money through mock battles can take a while.
  • Trish. In addition to removing the TP cost for Leap at her second Weapon rank (as well as an ability to gain a TP whenever she collects battle Spoils), which allows her to easily access high terrain to snipe at units with her bow, her third Weapon rank gives her access to "Act Again!", a three-TP skill that allows her to act and move twice for two following turns (compared to Anna's passive only permitting two actions, or Medina being limited to using two items).
  • Quahaug takes whatever semblance of difficulty is still left by the point you recruit him and tears it down for good. As a character requiring 1600 points in Utility to be recruited, many won't see him before entering New Game+ - and for good reason. His weapon skill Reverse Space-Time allows him to instantly refuel any TP that your characters spent beforehand, regardless of where they are on the map - and with ways of restoring TP existing due to Julio or the above-mentioned Medina, it is possible to loop the skill, allowing your characters to constantly use their strongest, most expensive skills. Even before unlocking the skill, his arsenal is tailored towards breaking missions apart - ranging from In Due Course, which scales its damage based on the enemy's maximum HP (being able to take out a large chunk of it in the process, completely ignoring their defenses), being able to isolate dangerous enemies with Distorted Space, or get your units to locations on the map they shouldn't be able to enter any time soon with Warped Space. If a cheese strategy for a map exists, Quahaug is usually the one enabling it.
  • Cordelia continues Ophilia's proud tradition of healing over a character's normal threshold in Triangle Strategy. With Above and Beyond, Cordelia gives a massive influx of HP to a nearby ally, breaking their HP limit to give them even more HP. Combined with tanks like Flanagan or Erador, or hard-hitting but fragile characters like Anna or Frederica, Above and Beyond can make a tank unkillable even when faced with magic and can make a nuker a frontline menace. The best part? Despite being Cordelia's ultimate, Above and Beyond only costs four TP to use, and Cordelia gets TP passively just by standing in a single spot. She rarely has a reason to move anyway beyond repositioning, so you effectively get two TP a turn. As a bonus, Cordelia's Elude enables Groma to take on even more enemies, and Regen makes it easy for units to maintain their presence when faced with powerful foes. Combined with Geela, your team can easily become impossible to fell.
• Genius Bonus: The Saltiron War strongly alludes to World War I, with the decades of peace before another conflict that parallels World War II. Not only is Aesfrost much like Germany at the time (a then-meritocratic system that struggles with poverty before uniting under a charismatic leader), the Norzelia Consortium that was meant to fairly benefit the nations but particularly harms Aesfrost is equivalent to the Treaty of Versailles. Hyzante is also not unlike the Third Reich, being a wealthy country ruled by a totalitarian demagogue that oppresses an ethnic minority to fuel its economy and which imposes an equality in which everyone exists in a strictly-defined role. Finally, Glenbrook’s swift fall in the new conflict (and the internal workings to liberate it) parallels France’s surrender and its resistance’s tireless efforts to free their people.
• Harsher in Hindsight: Lord Symon warning his son and future daughter-in-law of the political machinations behind their union, and to support each other in the face of future manipulations, is a sobering reminder of the cutthroat world of nobility. Once we learn what Serenoa’s mother went through, and what Symon had to do to save her and her unborn child’s life, it retroactively becomes heart-wrenchingly tragic.
• Heartwarming in Hindsight: Chapter XV does this with The Reveal that Serenoa is King Regna’s bastard son in two ways:
  • While it also makes the Liberty route endgame (and some dialogue by Frani) Harsher in Hindsight, it reframes the strength of Serenoa and Roland’s friendship over the course of the game.
  • Serenoa introducing his Family of Choice takes extra meaning given that Symon isn’t his blood father, yet the love between them was no lesser for it.
• Ho Yay:
  • Of the fandom's popular same-sex pairings, Serenoa and Roland is the go-to pairing with how close the two young men are even with the knowledge that Serenoa is betrothed to Frederica, especially helped with how Serenoa throughout the game is nothing short of a faithful friend to Roland in all capacities just as Roland confides in Serenoa more than anyone else. Hughette notes the closeness when she first meets Serenoa to which he responds that they were fast friends since the day they meet as kids… although the fact that they’re paternal half-brothers and later, that Roland would suggest sacrificing the Roselle, of whom Serenoa’s betrothed Love Interest Frederica is a member both definitely damaged the appeal for many.
  • Another one on its way to rivalling this same-sex pairing is yet another of Glenbrook's royals which involves Princess Cordelia and Avlora, all thanks to the former having a very generous amount of development and growing a tough as nails spine while remaining a gentle soul thanks to the latter's genuine support who is already very popular for being a noble badass sworn to defend her queen. Sadly, they don't get too many moments with each other, but the few that they do underscore how much they truly cherish one another despite the circumstances of how they met each other.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • After the first trailer, the term "Saltiron War" gained some minor traction. Particularly when used as a means to refer to heated flame wars on websites like Twitter.
  • With Octopath Traveler and now Triangle Strategy, many people started making names for other potential future RPG games with titles based on other shapes.
  • Undecided Anna. ^ExplanationPlayers noticed that Anna is quite often put in the Undecided category during voting sections, which many found funny and quickly became a meme. This is likely for gameplay reasons, since if all characters had a preferred choice during voting, the player would have a much harder time adjusting the votes to get the majority to their desired outcome, so having an Undecided voter helps prevent this issue. However, since Anna is most commonly the one in Undecided, many took it to mean she has trouble deciding anything unless Serenoa tells her what to do.
• Moral Event Horizon:
  • Hyzante as an entity crossed this a long time ago when they imprisoned and enslaved the visiting Roselle and created their state religion to conceal the possibility that salt exists anywhere outside the Source, all to maintain their wealth and influence over Norzelia.
  • Related directly to the above, Roland crossed this line for many players with his endgame plan of condemning the Roselle to continued slavery based on a lie and rewarding Hyzante with control of the continent despite all of Norzelia's conflicts being a result of the salt monopoly that Hyzante gained from a combination of historical revisionism and the aforementioned slavery of the Roselle.
  • Gustadolph and Thalas crossed it in Chapter IV when they orchestrated the assassination of Dragan and his miners and used it as a false Pretext for War; for the former, it shows him for the Control Freak Hypocrite he really is, while the latter further demonstrates his petulant sadism by deliberately leaving Dragan’s body to scavengers as a final insult.
• Narm: The main theme using the game's awkward title as part of the lyrics can come off as this.
• Nintendo Hard: Much like Square Enix's prior Bravely Default II demos, TRIANGLE STRATEGY's demo difficulty is higher than what players can expect in the final version of the game.
• Player Punch:
  • Dragan’s death in Chapter IV hits hard, doubly so after keeping him alive was the objective of the preceding battle. It’s triply upsetting for those who played both demos — while the first demo made clear it’s a Plot-Triggering Death, the second created enough ambiguity that players vainly hoped for an early route split that might spare him.
  • Chapter XVII, in which the last divergence occurs. The three standard endings inevitably involve alienating one of Frederica, Roland or Benedict and they’re all some degree of bittersweet. Unless you’re aware of the prerequisites to unlock the Golden Ending, odds are you won’t meet them on your first playthrough.
• Slow-Paced Beginning: Several reviews point out the game has a case of this, as the early 3 chapters serve to set up the various factions and characters who will populate the game's story and conflicts, which means that it takes a fair amount of time between the first few battles which are themselves very short, leading to the game feeling more like a visual novel that occasionally has battles in them. Later chapters pick up the pace and feature more complex, longer battles that make it feel less skewed towards the narrative, but due to the first few chapters taking their time, many feel the start of the game makes it a bit slow to pickup.
• That One Attack:
  • Spark. Whether you're trying for a deathless run, a hard run, or just trying to beat the game, mages with Spark will be a constant pain once you start contending with Hyzante and Glenbrook's forces. It's a single-target DPS spell that rips through units like tissue, and in the unlikely event your forces survive, it has a chance to completely neuter a unit for a few turns by paralyzing them. Mages rarely travel alone, which makes the situation worse; bringing a mage to tank that Spark means that Frederica or Corentin are going to get crushed by the standard swordsmen often occupying them, and physical tanks like Groma and even the mighty Avlora rightfully fear the mages making up the enemy backline. And while the mages carting Spark are absolutely Squishy Wizard casters, that's a relative quality, especially on higher difficulties where enemy units are just blatantly better than your own, taking a good three hits to down and often forcing you to overextend your forces to deal with them. Spark is so bad that it's often advisable to try goading the AI into using their weaker group-hitting wind and fire spells, because the single-target damage from Spark is sometimes just too much to handle. Characters like Milo, Groma, Flanagan, and Lionel can carve out an entire niche for themselves based on their ability to trivialize Spark users with Fury and Temptation alone, but all of them are still heavily at risk even closing the gap to make their bid to just turn the damn mages off.
  • Risky Maneuver. It's about as strong as Avlora's best attack, and its 'cost' is 5% of her max health; a comical price given how quickly Avlora acts and the fact she often has healers around her to brush it all off. In higher difficulties it will absolutely oneshot a majority of the playable cast, something Avlora really needed no help with already given the fact she has, bar none, the best stats of any regular boss in the game. As a very small mercy, she never has Risky Maneuver in fights where she isn't a Climax Boss, so you really have to blame yourself for facing her wrath, but if you want to protect the Wolffort demense, you have to make it through her and her overpowered strikes. In the player's hands, it's significantly weaker and costs 15% of Avlora's HP to use, which just feels like a kick in the teeth after the player went through the hardest challenges the Conviction route threw at them to get the good General.
• That One Level:
  • The very first battle on New Game Plus. While this fight isn't necessarily difficult on a first playthrough, you have a severe disadvantage going into this fight on repeat plays because unless you got the Golden Ending, one of your characters will be very underleveled compared to the enemies with no chance to raise their level prior to the fight — moreover, you don't get access to the characters you recruited previously until after this battle. The fight requires much more careful planning as a result.
  • Chapter VIII on the Morality path is quite punishing, especially compared to its counterpart if you denied Telliore. Your forces are scattered across the map on differing elevations, and you must carefully regroup without being ganged up; although the Telliore soldiers aren’t individually as strong as the Aesfrosti last chapter, they can pin down your errant units with numbers, and the boss Rufus is also quite lethal. Worst is that Roland is a mandatory deployment and being a Glass Cannon, must be aided swiftly because if they fall it’s Game Over.
• That One Sidequest: It's completely optional, but Fort Assault (recommended level 43+) is probably the most difficult of Hossabara's missions. Not only does the party start on much lower ground than the enemy, the enemy also has multiple flying units when are easily able to bypass the level's height variance, and a few of those are archers which don't even need to come into range to hit your more vulnerable units (or target Serenoa in particular with Blinding Arrows). There are two miniboss units with more health than the usual enemies in addition to more unique and powerful abilities. Then there are the three stages of reinforcements, which happen in three different corners of the map...and the kicker, which is that it's a Timed Mission—you have only 100 turns to dispatch every single enemy, including all of the reinforcements and the miniboss units, which means you don't get to advance cautiously to overcome your initial positional disadvantage. There are certain units which are well-suited to this map (Hughette, Decimal, and Jens come to mind), but if you're not using them as part of your main party composition, be prepared for a tough time killing every last enemy even if you're at or slightly above the recommended level.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: The removal of Serenoa being able to vote during the voting sections from the demo was a removal some really didn't like, as it not only made the game harder in terms of getting a path you wanted, but it also removes the player's ability to shape Serenoa outside of dialogue options, resulting in Serenoa being a fairly flat character. While seemingly done to avoid situations where the player would just tip the voting in their favor, removing it brings no benefits to the player except to force the player to work hard to ensure they can convince all parties to agree to what the player wants, which isn't easy.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • With the sheer size of the cast and the game's focus on making difficult moral decisions and forging alliances, it's a bit of a shame that most of the characters with anything in the way of plot importance are impossible to recruit. It's a common sentiment among players to wish that characters like Exharme, Svarog and Clarus could become Mutually Exclusive Party Members based on how the story is progressed.
  • Similarly, despite the large number of recruitable characters, some potential for side story interactions gets passed over. While everyone has enough dialogue to keep from being completely flat (for example, all optional characters have a minimum of 3 Character Stories that each work to introduce them and their struggles as they join Serenoa, expand on them and said struggles, and resolve them in a positive way, respectively), some seemingly-obvious established relationships don't get expanded on. For example, Maxwell never interacts with Roland after being recruited (opting for Hughette instead), despite the impact his "death" had on Roland, Cordelia doesn't interact with Roland either after being recruited, and despite the full roster of units being a good third Hyzantian defectors and/or refugees, the only three such characters who can talk to each other about their problems are Geela, Ezana and Narve.
    • Going deeper, all route-exclusive and optional characters will never directly interact with, reference, or (in Character Stories) be seen next to anyone not from the main eight, with a few exceptions for some of the Encampment staff who are guaranteed to always be there, even if you've never recruited them as units. In fact, not even all the main eight: Benedict, Frederica, and Roland will never interact with any of them during or after recruitment, and even Serenoa typically only does so during the initial recruitment Character Story, with the sole exception of Julio's final Character Story as an odd one out. While this is likely a side-effect of pragmatic gameplay logistics, as a player isn't guaranteed to have any other optional or route-locked character but will always have the main eight except Roland, Benedict, or Frederica under certain circumstances, which is likely why these three are also excluded, and programming for all the contingencies would have likely added considerable heft on the development, the lack of it is still a missed opportunity that could have fleshed out all the colorful personalities and characterizations among the recruits even more by letting them have commonality with each other and not just five of the main eight. Amusingly, this also has the consequence of having Hughette front-loaded as the character who's always interacting with everyone. Most of the Character Stories include her as a companion, sympathetic ear, or other counterpoint to the focal recruit in question. And if it isn't her, it'll be Anna.
  • Though not a universally-held opinion, a common complaint is that Serenoa suffers from this due to the game's voting system. Essentially despite being fully voiced Serenoa doesn't display any particular values beyond what the players chose to make him express in dialogue choices (most often when trying to convince others how to vote), and he'll embrace whatever vote result is chosen even if it's not one the player picked. Some even arguing that the voting takes away from Serenoa showing he's a strong leader by having him just offload the decision making to his advisors (as he himself never votes) and push any consequence or responsibility onto that being the result of the vote rather than any personal decision. He never expresses dislike towards any opinions his colleagues have (for example, Benedict's suggestion to surrender the Roselle prompts no reaction from him, despite protecting them being something his father cared dearly about, and his own fiancée being a Roselle). Part of this can be attributed to how, in the demos, the player could make Serenoa vote, which helped give him some degree of character, but with its removal in the final product outside of tie-breakers, it results in Serenoa losing the ability to be characterized. That said there's an argument to be made that this might be done on purpose, as the Golden Ending revolves around Serenoa disregarding the voting system entirely to finally assert his own decisions, showing a level of character growth.
• Too Cool to Live: Landroi Falkes, a courageous and loyal bannerman of Glenbrook who fights to his last in defense of his demesne and the memory of his king. Even if you don’t fight him there’s no way Aesfrost would let him join forces with you, so he dies before that ever can happen.
• Unconventional Learning Experience: In the 21st century, the importance of salt to both the overall quality of life (as sodium is essential to cardiovascular health) and to societal growth and development (as a preservative for food) isn’t as well-understood or taught unless you seek it out. This game’s story putting the focus on it actually inspired debate and saw many gamers verifying for themselves just how much the developed world takes more abundant salt supplies for granted.
• Unintentionally Sympathetic:
  • Benedict, in Chapter 17 and beyond. In many ways the narrative paints his idea as the worst. The ending overwhelmingly focuses on the downsides, it's the only one whose ending image isn't bright and cheerful, and in the Golden Route, Benedict is shown to be by far the most horrified and guilt-ridden of the three supporting protagonists over what might have happened if Serenoa had chosen their plan. Contrast this with the general audience, who by and large find Benedict's plan to be by far the most reasonable of the three main Bittersweet Endings, with Roland's getting the most scorn by far.
  • Similarly, while the game tries to treat Frederica's Chapter XVII conviction as being utterly ridiculous and even selfish and delusional, it's very easy to sympathize with Frederica. The game tries very hard to make the player feel Frederica's desire to be naught but a childish fool's errand, with some characters being hard to convince to side with her, and some will even refuse to assist at all if you try. The issue is that, by all accounts, Frederica wanting to help her people is a noble goal that is understandable, while nobody else tries to remotely address the issue. It's also worth noting that the last time the Roselle tried to do something nice for Norzelia by sharing their salt, they got "rewarded" by being clapped in chains, so it's very understandable that Frederica would want to help them escape at all costs. So despite the game trying to call the player out for seemingly abandoning everything and everyone else, justice for the Roselle by liberating them, then fleeing the continent altogether, Frederica comes out looking very sympathetic for her desires, especially when she achieves it, but it comes as a personal loss in the end.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic:
  • All three of the endgame routes have issues with this, as the game tries to give each one a valid point despite some flaws, but many feel they go overboard in trying to make the routes' main character flawed but still sympathetic that they lose any sympathy in the end. For example, all three routes tackle the Rosellan issue differently; Roland's plan actively forces the Roselle to be in a worse state than they were at the start, Benedict is so focused on "fairness" that he ends up doing very little to properly address the many issues still plaguing them after they've been freed, while Frederica focuses so much on the Rosellan's that it ignores all the other ongoing problems that need to be dealt with. While part of this was likely intended to make each route a Bittersweet Ending, it makes each route hard to sympathize with because each one makes their main character so extreme in how they act that they lose a lot of their sympathetic traits. It makes it seem like the developers really wanted to punish the player for not getting the Golden Ending, but went too far trying to do so that it makes the other characters look worse because of it.
  • Roland is of particular note here. While the other two endings have their defenders who agree with Benedict's pragmatism or sympathize/empathize with Frederica's desire to say Screw This, I'm Outta Here on behalf of the Roselle, Roland's plan of condemning the Roselle to continued slavery and allowing Hyzante, which is ultimately responsible for the entire conflict because of the salt monopoly they gained through historical revisionism, to pull a Karma Houdini is seen by many as a Moral Event Horizon and the clear-cut bad ending.
  • Benedict is the first one, way before the endings, to bring up tossing the Roselle under the bus to save House Wolffort. And while his decision does come from a place of sheer pragmatism, it's still something he suggests with basically full knowledge of what the Roselle will be subjected to. The fact the game has him set to be very hard to convince otherwise during the resulting votes has made plenty of players lose sympathy for basically being willing to be an accomplice to genocide who's staunchly against doing literally anything else. This gets worse as one considers that there's no indication that whatever doom house Wolffort might be threatened with would even remotely compare to what he's willing to have the Roselle suffer for basically minor political leverage.
  • Frederica's impassioned speech on the plight of the Roselle is about one-third outrage for the Roselle at the Source, one-third exalting her heritage as the daughter of a famous Roselle hero and one-third pity-party/self-praise for letting that heritage help her overcome her personal trauma over being a bullied outcast even among her own family. She does acknowledge that she speaks from a place of privilege, but only in the sense that she's never been enslaved; no mention of her place of privilege as an Aesfrosti princess whose family consumed Hyzantian salt to the point of depriving the poor and was personally able to take a sightseeing tour of the Source without anyone threatening her freedom. Her speech concludes with a note of how proud she is to be herself, while Jerrom doesn't even get a seat at the table despite some routes having him and the rest of the villagers willingly submit to enslavement at the Source, a deal that exempts Frederica because of her status. Yeah, glad to hear your self-esteem is doing better, Frederica, but maybe that's not the reason we're mobilizing the army to incite an exodus.
  • Lyla Viscraft, the Hyzantian Minister of Medicine, is treated in-game as a Broken Bird who privately hates the cruelty she's done in the name of the Goddess and is a Death Seeker who believes she's caused too much pain to be forgiven. In the Conviction route she's even allowed a Heel–Face Turn. However, this has done little to endear her to some, who view her callous disregard for the lives of Rosellan slaves and her use of their corpses as a resource to create Aelfric - even if her original intention wasn't to use them as weapons of war - as morally reprehensible and that she was at best a coward who hated what she was doing and yet did it anyway, rendering her undeserving of pity.
• Woolseyism: Ser Maxwell’s Red Baron moniker was "Divine" Spear in the original Japanese; “Dawnspear” conveys similar meaning in arguably more poetic terms, as the sun is associated with the Top God of many mythologies (including Shintoism). It also makes Avlora’s Pre-Asskicking One-Liner in Chapter 6 into a clever pun on the inevitability of Maxwell’s era as the realm’s greatest warrior ending, just as the rise and setting of the sun marks the passage of each day. Although it loses the immediate connection with three other characters who have the Divine Sword, Divine Bow and Divine Fist class, if you recruit him later, "Divine Spear" is the title of his Master level class.

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