Castlevania: Harmony of Despair/YMMV


 * Complacent Gaming Syndrome: Most of the online players pick Soma due to the sheer number of souls from enemies to collect and the amount of versatility and brokenness of some of them. Most of the other characters just can't compete, which inevitably leads to Tier Induced Scrappies.
 * Crowning Music of Awesome: It's a Castlevania game, what did you expect? The soundtrack is composed entirely of remixes from the DS games, and there are more songs then there are stages. Go into Options and you can assign new songs to the stages and bosses you fight.
 * Chapter 10 includes the entire Castlevania 1 soundtrack. And the Fandom Rejoiced yet again.
 * Excuse Plot: Basically, Castlevania's manifesting itself within the pages of a book, and you have to stop it. Yep. That's all the plot amounts to.
 * Word of God states that it actually isn't supposed to have a plot.
 * Fan Nickname: Hard mode is introduced to first-timers by more experienced players as "Ultra Hard Rape Mode" for good reason.
 * Normal Mode can get hair-pullingly difficult!!!
 * Yatsucard, Blendercard, Blendmatic, Blender, and so on for Alucard players using dual Yasutsunas, due to this weapon's nature of slashing incredibly fast in front of the character, effectively creating a tornado of cutting death.
 * First Installment Wins: Averted. Every playable character comes from Rondo of Blood or later. Simon Belmont appears in his original 8-bit glory.
 * Game Breaker: It's a Castlevania game, so of course it's going to have its fair share of these.
 * Charlotte has a heal spell. With high spell levels and good intelligence bonuses, it recovers significantly more HP than it costs in MP, and is very quick to activate as well. The Astral Ring, when equipped, causes you to use HP instead of MP to use magic. Enjoy your effectively infinite health and magic power! You can also equip the Skull Ring should you decide to use attacking spells in your arsenal.
 * As of Dec 20 update, this doesn't work anymore: the amount of healing gotten has been greatly reduced and the spell takes 50 MP now, meaning it's hard if not impossible to break even with it. It also doesn't have any invincibility frames anymore when cast, meaning you can't use it to bypass stage hazards.
 * The Yatsu/Blendercard cited above, if the player doing that doesn't forget to dodge stuff while mashing the two attack buttons, pretty much anything coming across his way is gonna die in seconds. Yes, even Dracula in Hard mode, especially if there are other Blenders in the team. Applies to Soma and 2 Valmanways as well. It's almost the same, a little bit weaker, but faster and with more range. And Soma can use the Succubus soul to regain health every time he hits an enemy. This kind of weapon allows you to strike more than 20 times per second or so. Do the math. Winged Boots and Berserker Mail work wonders in this set.
 * The update described above also decreased the damage output of the Yatsutsuna a great deal, making it a much less effective method of dealing damage, although to compensate, Muramasa received a massive damage increase. Amusingly enough, Chapter 11 adds both a Yasutsuna+1, which only has +2 attack over the normal version (compare +20 most other +1 gear gets, even Valmanway+1 gets +6) but hits just as fast as the original version used to, along with a Muramasa+1 which makes it the strongest katana in the game.
 * Do you have your Shanoa maxed out in everything with an Astral Ring equipped? Does one of your friends or allies have a healer Charlotte mentioned above? Proceed to use ice or lightning spells and watch as your score skyrockets.
 * Overlaps with Bribing Your Way to Victory & maybe Lethal Joke Stages, but this troper figured out that the DLC stages can be used to farm cash in increments of 2k, which will allow you (with a little farming) to get very expensive gear for your characters before you even beat the first stage (making said stage, and a few thereafter, pretty much cake).
 * The Valmanway (AKA the Crissaegrim) hits four times for each push of the attack button. Soma's Succubus soul recovers 1 HP every time he scores a hit (2 HP if you have nine of them). The HP you can recover with these two items piles up very fast, moreso if you have a second Valmanway. Combined with the above mentioned Astral Ring, you get infinite magic attacks, and you can hover in place indefinitely with the Medusa Head soul, which breaks Legion entirely if you hover between its core and the spot where its tentacle laser appears. See why some people refer to this game as Somavania?
 * Also note that if the 2 HP per hit seems hardly worth mentioning, everyone starts with 300 HP and can only increase it with equipment, with the best gear for that purpose being barely able to push it to 400 HP, with the overall enemy damage being scaled appropriately.
 * Goddamned Boss: Menace. He is actually very easy to dodge, but the problem is how damn long it takes for him to open himself up, leading to a long, drawn out chase around his stage to get the switches in place, climb up if he knocks you off a ledge, and so on.
 * There are ways to trigger him to wake up early (mostly by using some longranged attacks that go through walls, the game only checks if you're on the same horizontal level as he is and allows such attacks to hit him where they shouldn't), but it still takes an eternity for him to lumber his way to the left side of the stage where he's meant to be fought. Once he does get there, it doesn't take long to kill off his weakpoints and consecutively the rest of him.
 * Good Bad Bugs: Chapter 10 is filled with these. When you get to the elevator, you'll most likely see a Soma player on the elevator, throwing a puppet off the wall, then teleporting into the opposite wall and flying into what is supposed to be Stage 6 of the original Castlevania. If you're lucky, however, you'll see a really good Soma player do the same thing...but at the start of the level.
 * Growing the Beard: Arguably. Many that hated the game or thought it was So Okay Its Average when it came out have been drawn to it thanks to all of the DLC and the update which fixed several issues about the game.
 * Internet Backdraft: The moment information about it was released to the public, Sony fans scurried to the internet and started complaining that it's going to be an Xbox 360 exclusive.
 * Well so far, it is, as IGA is currently "thinking" about making a PSN version sometime soon.
 * Xbox exclusive no more.
 * That One Attack: Legion is flat out pathetic in his first form... And then he pulls out his flame jets which are an absolute pain to dodge. Same with 8 Bit Dracula's Second Form fireballs, which become a Bullet Hell-esque spread.
 * That One Boss: The number of hits each one of the Puppet Master's puppets takes goes up to a ridiculous degree on Hard with several players, and with some character setups, it's literally impossible to destroy them before he manages to place one in an iron maiden, and on Hard, it's an instant kill.
 * It's three or four hits to kill a puppet, per character in the group. That's anywhere from 18 to 24 hits needed to prevent instant death, and you'll find that some people eschew tactics in favor of spamming the boss with expensive and sometimes not very effective attacks... Ugh.
 * So... the trick to survival is to be dedicated to how he's killing you?
 * Pretty much every boss in hard mode not named Gergoth or Brauner qualifies as That One Boss.
 * Or Menace. Or
 * Ryukotsuki and his goddamn screen filling knives and fireballs.
 * They Changed It Now It Sucks: Everyone who enjoys the game was probably once complaining about the lack of experience, story, or a large castle to explore. Only to become addicted to the game.
 * Predictably, the reaction to those who abused the previously mentioned healing trick with Charlotte once it was no longer possible. According to them, though, it enabled Charlotte to be just as effective as Soma or Alucard in the right hands, so its removal just centers the game even further around those two.