Xenosaga/YMMV

""It's been far too long, Uzuki! This feeling...of exhilaration!""
 * Alas Poor Villain:  death at the end of Episode II.
 * Alternate Character Interpretation: Hinted at by Word of God. Big Bad 's plot involves The characters argue that  At this point  may seem like a Well Intentioned Extremist at best and a Complete Monster at worst (he's directly or indirectly responsible for pretty much everything that happens in the series, including each character's individual traumas), but the post-game database suggests that
 * Broken Base: The fanbase is broken into 3 parts with each episode. The drama with Episode II's changes was so bad, the admin of the fansite Zenosaga.com (who was the biggest fansite at the time) would ban anyone on the forums if that person defended the game.
 * Catharsis Factor: If Shion's behavior through the series is a source of frustration to you,
 * Complete Monster:
 * There's no denying that Voyager and Dmitri Yuriev belong somewhere near the top of the list.
 * Citrine leads the raid on the Durandal that results in the murder of its entire crew.
 * Contested Sequel: Episode II to Episode I. Also, Xenosaga in general, in comparison to Xenogears.
 * Draco in Leather Pants: Albedo is an unquestionably horrifying, sadistic, Ax Crazy pedophile who enjoys terrorizing and murdering small robot girls - but he has white hair, so he's probably just misunderstood. May also count as Faux Affably Evil; he takes Ax Crazy and sadomasochism to new heights but god, he does it with such hamminess.
 * Ensemble Darkhorse: Orgulla, a schizophrenic fundamentalist cyborg boss from Episode II that is never heard from again after the fight with her.
 * Evil Is Sexy: Well, sexier if you compare T-elos to KOS-MOS.
 * Fan Disservice: Albedo plays Evil Is Sexy to the hilt...usually for the benefit of preteen-looking Realians and his own brother, all while crossing one Moral Event Horizon after another. In a sillier example, in the latter two games, everyone, not just the more-or-less humans, gets an optional swimsuit. Including Ziggy. It's an unflattering Speedo and ridiculous man-bra of a rebreather harness. In purple. With swim fins. Less justifiably, some gamers, apparently fearful of Wardrobe Malfunctions, would list Jin's fundoshi as well. Allen's 50's style single piece swimsuit could almost count, and there's chaos'...bulge in the first game. He lost it in the subsequent games, thankfully.
 * To be fair, Ziggy only has that hideous eyesore of a swimsuit in the third game. His second game's swimsuit is much better, looking for the most part like his normal outfit but green and he has a snorkeling mask.
 * Foe Yay:
 * Albedo and Jr.'s rather intense, uh, battling.
 * Margulis challenging Jin to 'taste his blade'.

""I wanted to spend my eternal life with you""
 * KOS-MOS and T-elos.
 * Voyager and Ziggy.


 * Freud Was Right:
 * Fridge Brilliance:
 * Jr.'s best weapon in I was the Blood M9, which becomes his first weapon in III because there is no equipment changing in II.
 * Why is Wilhelm such a good Chessmaster?.
 * At the beginning of Episode I, it's mentioned how Virgil has a condition stemming from the consumption of Realian Tissue. At the time, you're told this is treated like a kind of drug to some people, and Shion is horrified at the implications.
 * Game Breaker:
 * Every iteration of Erde Kaiser. It is so powerful its a wonder the game disc in the Play Station 2 can even stay in one piece when it's summoned.
 * Xenosaga I had the Bravesoul and Golden Dice items which both increased attack power as the equipper's HP got lower, letting the player get a maximum of about 200% damage. The drawback of dying in one hit could be controlled with Safety Limit, which guarantees survival with 1 HP once per cast. Jr. in particular makes a joke out of every boss in the game partly due to his exclusive Dandyism, which stacks with Safety Limit and has a similar effect, but also due to the items only working with physical attacks, which he packs more of than any other character in the game.
 * Xenosaga III's ES battles became exponentially easier once you got your hands on the Level II Anima Awakenings, which hit most if not all Mooks on the screen for ridiculous damage. You could simply charge these by walking into a battle and retreating over and over again, then firing off your BFG (or BFS) once full. Also a great way to grind for money and skill points later on.
 * Xenosaga III also brought you Blood Dancer, which let KOS-MOS and MOMO turn red. Then take down the final incarnation of aforementioned Erde Kaiser, itself a game breaker, singlehandedly. The reward, Erde Kaiser Sigma, who, when summoned by someone under the influence of MOMO's Magic-Attack buff, can One Hit Kill the FINAL BOSS.
 * Xenosaga III tends to be filled with these. Jr. and Shion can essentially become invincible for a couple of turns via Phantom Fly, a Master Skill that allows them to evade essentially every attack in the game. While it is normally tempered by an absurdly high EP cost, there's an accessory that you can get with a relatively easy sidequest near the end of the game that reduces SP cost to 1. Add the two together, and you get either Jr. who can support with the best of them, or Shion, who can inflict reasonable damage, break, and heal. And are invincible.
 * Genius Bonus: There's a few of them littered throughout the trilogy, the most obvious being that Sellers is a not-so-subtle Captain Ersatz of Dr. Strangelove, who was played by Peter Sellers.
 * God Mode Sue: KOS-MOS has been accused of being this.
 * Hell Is That Noise: Albedo's laugh.
 * Ho Yay: Albedo stuck his hand inside Rubedo for God's sake. And sniffed his hair. Crispin Freeman's voice acting helps, too.
 * HSQ: Off the charts in the scene where.
 * Hype Aversion: The original was billed as the Final Fantasy X killer and might have been as such if such a big deal wasn't made about it.
 * Large Ham: Many of the antagonists have the obligatory loud and dramatic speechifying on the topics of power and order in the Universe (Margulis, The Ormus Patriarch). However, Albedo takes the Large Ham cake, smears himself with the frosting, lops off body parts with the serving spatula for emphasis, and then hands it off to the protagonists demanding that they HURT HIM MORE.
 * Les Yay: Shion and KOS-MOS (it doesn't help that the latter is a Robot Girl with the combat capabilities of a battleship... though it doesn't hurt it either.)
 * Love Makes You Evil:
 * Magnificent Bastard: Albedo, easily.
 * Manipulative Bastard: Thsi game has plenty of them.
 * Memetic Molester: Albedo is a little too fond with MOMO and Jr.
 * Memetic Mutation:
 * You will not be able to hang around Xenosaga forums or watch Xenosaga videos for very long without hearing "SHION. MY APPEARANCE IS DOWN 5%. I NEED TO BE CLEANED." You just won't.
 * Helmer's "UUUUUUUUUUUU-DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO" line from Episode I has gotten a lot of this, particularly in LPs.
 * A good chunk of Albedo's dialog, with Ma Belle Peche being to most notable.
 * Moral Event Horizon: While it has been trampled to bits by the many villains of the series, the most obvious and earliest example takes place for the character Virgil. When you meet him in the first game, he hates Realians with a passion and has even eaten their flesh in the past. He crosses the Horizon when he decides, in order to protect himself from an oncoming swarm of Gnosis, to input the Override code into some nearby Realians and then self destructs them.
 * Yuriev crosses it irrevocably when he
 * He crosses it again when we find out he ordered Nigredo to
 * Most Annoying Sound: Episode III: Can you people say anything besides "Ether Drive!?" Especially annoying considering each had their own saying when using spells and special attacks in I and II.
 * Ep. II: Mystic powers, grant me a miracle!
 * Nightmare Fuel:
 * The infamous Mind Rape scene between.
 * The 27 Series Asura Realians themselves count, but go over the top when
 * The concept of the Cosmic Horror, U-Do, itself:
 * At the end of Episode III, chaos' consciousness resides within the dilapidated remains of Kos-Mos and is floating in space; considering that he has lived at least 7000 years already, he doesn't seem to mind that much]].
 * Scrappy Mechanic: The Stock system in Episode II.
 * Stoic Woobie: Jin truly has a sucktacular life, on par with Shion's but keeps it all to himself. Implied to be because he doesn't want to 'burden' Shion with his own problems, as he feels partly responsible for not being able to help Shion with hers.
 * Tear Jerker: The series has racked up several moments during its run.
 * The whole Febronia/Virgil story in Episode III.
 * Shion seeing her dead parents, and trying to put the blood back in her mother.
 * second death in Episode II, when Jr. is begging him not to go.
 * Sakura's sad story
 * More specifically, it's how the cutscene and narrative sets up and describes it.
 * The Untwist: The identities of the Red and White Testaments,, are foreshadowed with numerous heavy-handed hints and are both blindingly obvious by the end of Episode II. To smash the point home, their Episode III character art shows them both unmasked, obliterating any residual shock that would have come from The Reveal in the game itself.
 * More specifically, it's how the cutscene and narrative sets up and describes it.
 * The Untwist: The identities of the Red and White Testaments,, are foreshadowed with numerous heavy-handed hints and are both blindingly obvious by the end of Episode II. To smash the point home, their Episode III character art shows them both unmasked, obliterating any residual shock that would have come from The Reveal in the game itself.
 * The Untwist: The identities of the Red and White Testaments,, are foreshadowed with numerous heavy-handed hints and are both blindingly obvious by the end of Episode II. To smash the point home, their Episode III character art shows them both unmasked, obliterating any residual shock that would have come from The Reveal in the game itself.


 * The Woobie: Momo. Later, Shion, as a more annoying variant.