Tales of Vesperia/YMMV

"Lee from Still Gaming: "I was so dumb (Concerning the Tales of series in general) that, by looking at the cover... I thought Yuri was a chick. After all, Yuri means... Uh... never mind.""
 * Alas, Poor Villain:
 * Ass Pull -.
 * Breather Boss - The first Yeager boss battle. He doesn't even have a Secret Mission!
 * Complete Monster:
 * is the Commandant of the Imperial Knights. However, he betrays his Empire in an attempt to conquer the world. To accomplish this, Alexei orchestrates a genocide of the Entelexeia, the race that protects the world, so he can harvest the powerful apatheia from their corpses. Two of his minions are forced to obey him because he will shut off their artificial hearts at the first sign of defiance. He tortures Estelle, a member of the royal family he was sworn to serve, to force her to use her powers to activate Zaude, an ancient superweapon. Using Estelle for this purpose floods Zaphias, the capital city of the Empire, with deadly aer and vicious monsters. While the original version may have positive qualities, the English translation removes these.
 * Ragou is the corrupt magistrate of Nor Harbor. Nor Harbor has been experiencing storms, making it hard for the people there to make a living off of the port commerce. To make things worse, Ragou harshly taxes his people. If someone cannot afford his taxes, Ragou sends his mercenaries to take their loved ones (including children) as collateral. He keeps these loved ones in a basement full of monsters. When the heroes confront him over this, he explains that he finds people getting eaten by monsters to be entertaining. Ragou offers only one hope to his people: if they kill a vicious monster and bring back its horn as proof, they will never have to pay taxes again. Of course, this monster would make short work of most people who try to fight it. The heroes eventually discover that the storms around Nor Harbor are created by a special Blastia in Ragou's mansion, showing that he orchestrated the suffering of his people for his own amusement.
 * Crowning Music of Awesome - Fury Sparks.
 * Tenacity. When even the most minor of battles must be absolutely epic.
 * A Vow of Unity. Possibly one of the best town themes in an RPG ever.
 * Crazy Awesome - Repede, the pipe-smoking, fireball-spitting, backflipping Wonder Dog, naturally.
 * Disappointing Last Level - Part 3.
 * Ensemble Darkhorse - Averted, a possible first for the Tales (series) -- Yuri Lowell actually is the most popular character in the game. Considering he averts the Kid Hero and Idiot Hero tropes in some of the best possible ways, though...
 * Still, the game's secondary characters do receive a lot of love...
 * Flynn is generally overshadowed by Yuri due to the latter's Badassery, but there are people who believe Flynn's ways are better.
 * Raven generally annoys the party, but is one of the most popular characters in the fandom.
 * Yeager doesn't get much screen time, but has been voted the most popular villain in the game on the official forums.
 * Family-Unfriendly Aesop - It is arguable whether or not Yuri's actions are for the greater good. Then again, raising that debate was the whole point of the game.
 * Fanon Discontinuity - Many fans claim this towards The First Strike movie due to its arguably odd approaches to characterization and its many inconsistencies with the game. One of many examples regards Rita being knowledgeable about Aer Krenes, when in the game, she never knew what one was until the visit to Keiv Moc.
 * Fan-Preferred Couple: Thanks to the Ship Tease situation explained on the main page, Vesperia's ripe with these. Of note:
 * Yuri x Judith is much more popular than Yuri x Estelle, probably because they're both Blood Knights with a fair bit of flirting and snark between them. This balance seems to be reversed in Japan, where Yuri x Estelle is the most popular pairing by far and Yuri x Judith is almost nonexistent.
 * The large amounts of Ho Yay in-game have also led to Ristelle and Yuri x Flynn.
 * Rita x Raven is also fairly popular, which has just as many fans reaching for the Brain Bleach given that she's underage and he's, and even if he wasn't, he's still way older than her.
 * Not to mention that she frequently beats him up, but then maybe that's just supposed to be endearing in a couple.
 * Foe Yay: Zagi towards Yuri.
 * Game Breaker -
 * Because of the new Overlimit System, Rita can become extremely gamebreaking. Against a single opponent, use of Splash or Violent Pain can almost singlehandedly lock down anybody not in Overlimit (which removes their own flinching). Against any crowds of opponents, the words "Blah blah blah. TIDAL WAVE! " will destroy entire crowds as long as you don't burn all your mana. You can also build up a massive combo with this and earn a lot of Grade. Spend it in the Grade shop on your next playthrough and bam, you're on the easy road to level 200.
 * Gold Cat also works for massive combos (though if you're rich enough, it unfortunately borders on a literal game breaker...), but her real game breaking spell is Fire Ball, her most basic: power it up through repeated use and you get extra fire balls. TP cost and cast time do not increase, so you're doing massive damage for nothing that easily sets up an FS chain for whatever it doesn't kill. As a bonus, you can directly chain it into Eruption, its altered form.
 * Repede's Gale Dog makes him invincible for about five seconds or an entire Mystic Arte scene. Very useful for getting some of the secret missions.
 * The enhanced form of the Fell Arms weapons. After you the Fell Arms go from lousy weapons to great weapons. Their strength is based on how many kills you have. Ridiculousness ensues.
 * Combine Yuri's Blazor Edge Abyssion with the Dhaos Cape from the 200 man melee and Yuri becomes a demi-God, with Dhaos' Blast hitting a massive radius for well over 20,000 damage.
 * In the Play Station 3 version, Patty's Critical Moment arte is admittedly a crapshoot, but if you're lucky, it can put the entire party in varying levels of Over Limit.
 * Flynn has a skill that allows him to turn his TP into HP. This allows him to survive pretty much anything, allowing him to go through some of the more difficult challenges of the game without being in OVL 4.
 * On a Game Breaker that BORDERS ON being a One-Man Army, THIS VIDEO.
 * To elaborate upon the above: In the Play Station 3 version, Yuri gets a fourth Tension skill which allows him to go Overlimit 4 if he gets enough hits in a combo (96). By catching three or so enemies in his 40+ hit Mystic Arte, it effectively ensures that he'll be able to spam his Mystic Arte as long as his enemies live. That's not even getting into his ability to deal, literally, millions of damage with the Combination skills and his second Mystic Arte. Forget "borders on," Yuri Lowell is a One-Man Army.
 * The game also rewards you for Arte grinding. The higher your arte count, the more powerful the arte; and this goes for all your special attacks. Get your count to 9999, and you triple the attack power in addition to everything else powering you up.
 * Karol's nothing to scoff at either. Please note he finished faster than both Rita and Yuri.
 * And then Repede does it even faster.
 * Judith has many artes and skills that revolve around juggling enemies in mid-air. This can be very useful, especially when combined with Rita's Tractor Beam/Spiral Flare/Ground Dasher or Raven's Havoc Gale.
 * As mentioned below, Estelle's ability of "Eternal Support" means that an effect can last until she is killed or the fight ends. However, one spell gives temporary invincibility. Due to oversight in the 360 version, this can mean that there is a chance that Estelle can become permanently invincible for an entire fight. Take this to the 200 man arena, get it to work early, and do whatever the hell you want to any arena opponent. Use items in front of Barbados. They can't hurt you.
 * Good Bad Bugs: The Xbox360 version had a skill called Eternal Support, which gives the stat boosting spells Estelle casts the chance to remain permanently until the the end of the fight (or until you get killed), instead of only lasting for a few minutes. One of her spells, Force Field, gives all characters in the area of effect invulnerability. Due to an oversight, Force Field works just fine with Eternal Support, meaning it's possible to make characters unkillable for the duration of the fight. You could simply set everyone to Auto Fight once you got it to work, and go make a sandwich or something - you'd win eventually. This oversight was fixed in the Play Station 3 remake.
 * Ho Yay - Zagi wants to carve Yuri's name into his own blood! He pretty much spends a lot of his time hunting Yuri down as well. Yuri does not return the feeling in any way.
 * Yuri and Flynn's relationship has more than a few hints of this, as well.
 * Rita and Estelle have some pretty big Les Yay moments too.
 * , anyone?
 * Internet Backdraft - Mainly over Yuri's alleged hypocrisy, Estelle's usefulness, and the vast number of Play Station 3 extras and whether or not the 360 version was stripped down. Expect lots of Fan Dumb on all sides.
 * It's the Same, Now It Sucks - A frequent criticism tossed at Vesperia was how it's too similiar to previous Tales (series) entries, particularly borrowing quite a number of elements from the last mothership game released in America, Tales of the Abyss.
 * Les Yay - Estelle and Rita. So much.
 * Lampshaded by Karol in one of the victory skits.
 * A subliminal joke in Nam Cobanda Island, in a quick play. One's a hero, one's the damsel to save, guess who plays who?
 * Yuri adds fuel to the fire in a skit triggered by using Rita's Levitation skill for the first time by calling them Ristelle when Rita is flying and Estelle is holding on to her legs.
 * Made even more evident in the Play Station 3 version, including a scene where they
 * One sidequest shows the group at the time (Yuri, Karol, Rita, Estelle, and Repede, the last of which is nowhere to be seen at the time) resting in an inn. On three beds. Guess who are ''sleeping in the same bed together.'
 * Like You Would Really Do It -
 * Memetic Mutation: Ristelle has more or less become the official name for the RitaxEstelle pairing.
 * Due to the aforementioned gamebreaking Tidal Wave and the process in which it is used, we also have: "Blah blah blah. TIDAL WAVE!" *repeat ad nauseum*
 * Moe - Estelle and, to an extent, Rita.
 * Moral Event Horizon - Well, let's see here...
 * Ragou abducting people's children when they fail to pay his cripplingly high taxes.
 * Ragou feeding said children and many others as the game implies to monsters.
 * Cumore fooling the people of Heliord into working in slave labor camps.
 * Cumore sending people from Mantaic on suicide missions hunting for Phaeroh.
 * Cumore sending one of his own knights on said suicide mission after he failed to get kidnapped people on the wagon fast enough.
 * Cumore showing no more remorse for any of this.
 * Anything Cumore does at all, basically.
 * torturing.
 * Many people found it hard to forgive the Hunting Blades when
 * This could also qualify as another crossing for
 * Possibly, when he kidnaps   for   and then fights the party so the villain can make his escape, unless you believe that he sufficiently redeemed himself afterwards.
 * Player Punch - No matter how much you saw that Damsel in Distress trope coming, it just gets worse and worse.
 * Purity Sue - Estelle, anyone?
 * Like Collete, however, she's something of a Deconstruction. She has the power to use magic and heal others without a blastia, but using her power consumes aer at a massive rate causing aer krenes to produce a massive amount of aer in response,
 * The Scrappy -
 * Karol is hated by many in the fanbase for being slow, useless, and the token kid character of the game.
 * Sodia also tends to get a lot of hate, mostly due to In her case, it doesn't help that many view her as a Clingy Jealous Fangirl.
 * Patty is a frequent target as well, for being a loli pirate, crushing on Yuri, adding "-nanoja" to the end of every sentence, not being in the 360 version and squeezing her way into a plot that was already workable. Most of these complaints toned down when the Play Station 3 version was released and she was integrated fairly decently.
 * Ship Tease: It seems like there are ships all over the place in this game. Yuri/Flynn, Yuri/Estelle, Yuri/Judith, Yuri/Rita, Estelle/Flynn, Estelle/Rita, Rita/Raven, Judith/Raven, Karol/Nan (not to mention one-sided ship-teasing with Karol/Judith), Don Whitehorse/Belius, Duke/Elucifer. Not to mention the off-screen triangle between Yeager/Casey/Raven. If you can think it up, you can probably rustle up 'evidence' of the ship tease within the game. I even read someone try to suggest there was ship teasing of Estelle/Repede in the game.
 * Tear Jerker:
 * `That One Boss -
 * Gattuso the wolf in Ehmead Hill was an extremely tough boss in the demo that turned off many people from the game. Developers claimed that the difficulty was turned up for the demo. Then the game came out...and the boss was tuned down, except that doesn't matter much since you have fewer attacks and options than in the demo.
 * Also, the True Final Boss form of, who has ridiculously high stats, incredibly powerful attacks that inflict status effects, and a second Mystic Arte, which damages you and heals him at the same time. Did we also mention that it's the third in a series? Even if you have the opportunity to cook in between the second and third forms, it doesn't make that much of a difference.
 * Due to missing both of your party's main healers at the time, Captain Schwann puts up an extremely tough fight as well.
 * Khroma Dragon. ARGH!!! Aerial enemy!!
 * The Sprial Draco in the Play Station 3 re-release. It's a Bonus Boss, but it's so powerful that you'll only beat it through spamming cheap attacks.
 * That One Sidequest - Secret Mission 17 (or 18), Yeager. Damn you and your, Yeager!
 * People also complain about  because he spams his mystic arte, and can even pull it off when you are in the middle of comboing him. "Screw the rules, I'm...!"
 * Also the waiter minigame it's quite ridiculous when they order about 50 dishes and cancel another 100 when you're doing it as raven.
 * They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot - Debatably. The subplot about  seems to fade about two thirds of the way into the game without ever being concretely resolved.
 * And whatever happened to Dedecchi, the guy who stole the aque blastia?
 * The Play Station 3 version has a small subevent where the party finds him, Rita Stone Blasts him, and he is arrested.
 * The Untwist:
 * Viewer Gender Confusion - Yuri, due to the boxart, and people not recognizing that his name isn't the feminine Japanese version of Yuri, but rather the masculine, Russian, version. Then they see his exposed ("surprisingly flat") chest...
 * Viewer Gender Confusion - Yuri, due to the boxart, and people not recognizing that his name isn't the feminine Japanese version of Yuri, but rather the masculine, Russian, version. Then they see his exposed ("surprisingly flat") chest...


 * Lampshaded in the first few minutes of the game - a male NPC at the inn offers to buy Yuri a drink before realizing Yuri is a guy.
 * A few have mistaken Witcher (aka "Apple Head") as a girl.
 * Duke has gotten this reaction a few times as well.
 * What an Idiot! - Judith's actions immediately following Not so much what she did, since she had a very good reason to do so, but how she responded to the party's reactions.