Drakengard/YMMV


 * Contested Sequel: Drakengard2 was not directed by Yoko Taro, and it shows. Nier, however, is, leading some to call it the true sequel to Drakengard.
 * Crowning Moment of Awesome: If you can get past the poor flight controls, the dogfight between Inuart and Caim rocked.
 * "Death need not be the end of hope!"
 * The Boss Fight between Nowe and was fairly impressive as well.
 * Crowning Music of Awesome: The boss theme "Fate," used by Caim in the sequel. Also used for Nowe's Journey to The Center of The Mind later.
 * Also Symphonic Poem ~Forbidden Prelude~
 * Darkness Induced Audience Apathy: Part of the reason a lot of people hate the game. On the other hand, quite a few people find it a interesting, or at least a change of pace from JRPGs.
 * Damsel Scrappy: Yeah, despite her status as a Barrier Maiden, Furiae's quite useless. She's also very reserved, leading most players to think her a bland character.
 * Demonic Spiders: The first game has three: archers, then undead, then the Grotesqueries. The second game has the air-stage only enemy reapers.
 * Die for Our Ship: Nowe/Manah fans vs. Nowe/Eris fans. It's actually quite surprising how sharp the divide is here. Possibly the reason why the first game's only love stories were either about obsession or incest.
 * Ensemble Darkhorse: Urick, from the sequel. We don't know why we love him; maybe it's his charming accent, way with words, his beee-utiful hair... or perhaps it's just how awesome he is on a battlefield with that axe.
 * Epileptic Trees: Inevitable given the Mind Screw plot and the heavily toned-down translation.
 * Goddamned Bats: The second game air-stage only enemy Griffins. It takes a long time to kill them and they're hard to ignore as they're one of the few melee enemies encountered in the air.
 * Hell Is That Noise: The soundtrack for the original Drakengard is pretty good at sounding both exciting and terribly bleak. As the end of the world approaches and things become increasingly weirder and weirder, the soundtrack becomes highly discordant and sounds just as insane as the actual events occurring around it.
 * Hey It's That Voice:
 * Arioch is Sophia and Euphemia Li Britannia.
 * Manah is Peppita Rosetti and MOMO Mizrahi
 * Furiae is Raine. And Ashe. And Pellegri. And Mirage. And many more!
 * Leonard is Andrew Cherenkov, and his pact partner is Wendee Lee.
 * Seere is Roger S. Huxley and Koushiro Izumi.
 * Caim is Raphael.
 * Ho Yay: The sequel features what is probably the world's gayest boss fight outside of the Boys Love. Literally. The boss makes a pass at both male party members at least once.
 * Memetic Badass: Caim will kill everything that moves and then some. As Kratos is to Olympian deities, Caim is to goddamn everything that gets in his way. Also kids; Caim is an equal-opportunity killer.
 * Moral Event Horizon: You'll be calling for Gismor's blood when.
 * Narm: The voice-acting from the first game is laughably bad. Chief among them is Manah, whose VA when she is possessed sounds completely bored out of his mind, making what could have been an unsettling character into a hilarious joke.
 * Nightmare Fuel:
 * Special mention must also go to the soundtrack. Never has remixed classical music been so terrifying.
 * in Ending 2 when she's  In the words of The Dark Id: "SWEET ZOMBIE JESUS FUCKING H. CHRIST!!!"
 * Replacement Scrappy: Nowe in the sequel.
 * Even most of Nowe's fans feel replacing Caim with him was a bad idea. Like most things in Drakengard, Caim turned most the standard video game protagonist tropes on their head. His Axe Crazy, almost heartless nature deconstructs and satirizes most player's tendencies to just grind levels in RPGs by mindlessly killing enemies and how players often overlook some morally ambiguous things they do. Nowe on the other hand is just a standard JRPG protagonist and is really out of place in the crapsack nature of the world, Lighter and Softer sequel notwithstanding.
 * Part of the reason is because of the sheer difference in personality. Caim was the embodiment of a Heroic Sociopath, something which is completely at odds to the usual Hero archetype and a nice breath of fresh air for being unique. Compare that to Nowe, who is your cliche JRPG Kid Hero.
 * The Scrappy: Verdelet is greatly disliked by many players due to the fact that he is worse than useless and will not shut up. It's not even in a Stop Helping Me sense; he's just constantly whining about the seals being broken. (Although granted, what they were holding back may be worth whining about.) These fans were delighted to find out that Verdelet had died sometime in between the two games, and if they leveled up a certain weapon all the way and read its history, were even more delighted to find out that
 * Leonard's pact-partner, the faerie, is the only pact partner besides main character Angelus on the Characters page, but for all the wrong reasons as you can go see.
 * Scrappy Mechanic: For all that the plot is incredible, the controls for any and all aerial levels will make you want to break down crying-- for some people. Those with superhuman reflexes or simply an uncanny ability to hit things in the right place may find it the most enjoyable part of the game. Flying on the dragon during field levels, on the other hand, requires a dizzying amount of backtracking and circling.
 * Too Much Information: On a second run through Drakengard 2, there's a bunch of additional scenes. One of them is a flashback to 13-year-olds Nowe and Eris talking, and suddenly Eris brings up her period out of nowhere. Ew.
 * That One Level: The mini-chapter "Leonard's Regret".
 * Uncanny Valley: The Grotesqueries. Those teeth. Those freaking teeth.
 * What an Idiot!: Nowe, full stop. What the hell did he expect would happen by removing the seals?
 * What an Idiot!: Nowe, full stop. What the hell did he expect would happen by removing the seals?