Dragon Quest IX/YMMV
- Breather Boss: After battling Goresby-Purrvis, some might consider King Godwin to be this trope.
- Complete Monster: Godwin and his men in the Gittish Empire.
- Game Breaker: Two things: Tension makes a comeback, but is optional. A fully tensioned up character, with buff spells, using a powerful attack can do 70-140 TIMES the damage of a standard swing... 7000+ instead of 80. Endgame bosses have an attack that specifically prevents this tactic, but bosses before the end of the main story do not. In addition to that, you keep skill points between switching jobs, meaning that if you level to 15 then switch jobs a few times, you can take one of the class's 5th, passive skill trees to 100, which then affects all jobs that character uses. Taking Courage to 100, for example, will make the character strong and tough even if they are a Mage. Taking a weapon's skill to 100 will make them vastly stronger when using that weapon (+ 60 attack power when most weapons at the time are giving around 27) than they "should" be. Later, doing this up to level 38 (which is when jobs give the first 100th skill point) will allow you to do this with *multiple* skill trees.
- And the legacy and grotto bosses require you to do most of this stuff to have a fighting chance. And most of them have an attack, Disruptive Wave, specifically designed to counteract the first one.
- Forbearance, the ultimate Paladin skill, makes your Paladin take all incoming damage for the team. So in effect, what you can then do is outfit your paladin with the best gear, dedicate one character to healing, and have the paladin cast Forbearance every turn. While this means your paladin will take four hits every time the enemy casts a group-targeting spell, it also means that your healer only has to heal one target. In addition, it means that damage reflection skills (such as the Fan's Reverse Flourish or Shield's Magic Mirror) will reflect breath and magic four times.
- Genius Bonus: Sanguini comes from "sanguine", which is an old, old word for blood. Can be a Bilingual Bonus instead if you are familiar with any of the Latin and other languages that use a similar word for blood.
- Goddamned Bats: The Metal slimes. In order to unlock the Armamentalist vocation, you have to kill two with a wizard ward barrier up. Easier said than done, given the fact that Metal Slimes have a tendency to run before you can even get their health down to the point where a mage can finish them off (granted, mages can inflict one damage, and you can give them Metal slash, or exploit abilities).
- Just about every enemy that insists on chasing after you, no matter how weak they are, beginning with the Teeny Sanguinis around Angel Falls. Especially annoying in the Bad Cave where every enemy is one of these, and in the Bowhole where you can expect the Sculpture Vultures to get in the way of Liquid Metal Slime hunting. They do eventually start running away from you once your level is high enough, but you're normally able to easily decimate them long before that arbitrary point.
- This trope is very much at play in the grottos. While searching for treasure, monsters pop up everywhere. There seems to be a particularly high number of large monsters in cramped hallways. You can use holy water to stop the monsters from chasing you, but if you bump into one, you still get into a fight and the holy water wears off. This becomes particularly irritating when you reach very high level, and the monsters on the upper floors of the grotto are weak. You get knocked into a fight with a monster that is just about worthless and not at all challenging. Not that bumping into the tough monsters lower in the grotto is any better.
- Les Yay: Ivor is bitterly envious of the Main Character getting attention from Erinn (as he clearly Cannot Spit It Out), even if the Main Character is female.
- Most Wonderful Sound: When Half-Inch works, it's very satisfying, and so is the sound effect.
- Ruined FOREVER: Not only were fans complaining about the game based on early design screens long before its release, the fact that it has only one save slot led to screams of bloody murder (because, of course, this couldn't possibly be because the game's multiplayer aspects combined with multiple save slots might have led to abuse...).
- Most of the earliest complaints were about how the game was originally going to be an Action RPG as opposed to a Turn-Based one. Square-Enix listened and Dragon Quest IX became a Turn-Based RPG. Whether or not this is an example of Tropes Are Not Bad depends on who you ask.
- Infamously, Japanese fans of the legendary 2ch BBS (which has been described as "the anus of the Internet" by the founder of Gainax and infamous as the forerunner to 4chan) have been spending the year since the game's release troll-rating it a 1 star on online stores. Why? Cause you can see monsters on the field, and thus it's not a true Dragon Quest game! Ignore how many people complained about metal monster hunting thanks to random encounters, and that You only see ONE of the monsters on the map. They're often in groups, and you don't see all of the monsters (oh, just a metal slime, I think I'll hunt down and-WHAGH! IT'S GOT WIZARDS WITH IT!!).
- And even then, there were cries of Ruined FOREVER because it was on the DS, the first main series game to be released on the DS without being a remake. Some of these cries were, "Oh my god! It's not going to bring anything new to the series!" or "It's just going to be like the other handheld games!". However, many of these were more when the game was announced, when it was released in Japan and was found to actually contain a lot of innovations (see: One Game for the Price of Two, the multiplayer aspects, largely unknown to the series outside of fan-made MMORPGs), some of these silenced.
- The Scrappy: Ivor. He talks big but doesn't ever do a good job with his Inn, at least on his own. This may have been intentional as he's The Scrappy to all of the other villagers (except his sister, who admires him).
- Shipping: In Japan, there's already a blossoming fandom for Your Hero/Aquila.
- Sidetracked by the Gold Saucer: While Dragon Quest IX doesn't have a Casino, it's very easy to get distracted by playing with the Alchemy Pot, rooting out sidequests, spelunking in the grottoes or simply exploring the world once you've got a boat.
- That One Attack: The final boss's Magic Burst, used when he's low on health. The attack unloads all his MP into a single attack that hits your entire party... oh, and he'll remove all your buffs before casting it, then restore his MP to max right after. Have fun if you're under-leveled.
- You can actually learn this move yourself, and even spam it. As long as you have enough Elfin Elixirs to do so.
- There's also Hatchet Man, which is essentially a critical hit at double power. Luckily, it has a high miss chance.
- That One Sidequest: Tag Mode. It's easy enough to find all the players you need in Japan since everyone, and their mother plays Dragon Quest, but players in other regions will find it much more difficult to find the required 30 different people to max out their Inn upgrades in addition to getting the additional items and treasure maps.
- Two sidequests involve killing metal slime variants in what amounts to "as slowly as possible", where said targets really love running at the exact worst time: the first, which grants the armamentalist vocation, can be made much easier by using Metal Slash with the Falcon Blade (which hits twice). The second, which grants the ultimate hammer technique... can't.
- Really, a good deal of the level 40 quests, all of the ultimate weapon skill quests (save shield, bow and sword, if you know where to look in Marco's travel journals, found in the library), and anything involving Critical Hits. These range from tedious (080 'Atchet Job), to difficult (072 Jump for Joy; 074 Mr. Whippy's Wish), to sadistic (091 Critical Appraisal). Special mention goes to 090 "One Latht Tetht" for being outright ludicrous: you have to defeat 50 monsters inside the tenth floor of a grotto or deeper, all while naked.
- The gladiators' level 40 quest, '105 - Challengus Maximus', can be very, very annoying and needlessly tedious. Standing around staring at a green dragon's mug until it finally decides to spew poisonous breath instead of whipping you with its tail is bad enough, but waiting for it to do that AND successfully poison your gladiator(s) can be extremely frustrating. As if once isn't enough, you have to go through this thrice; and no, coming into battle already envenomated doesn't count. In the end, the so-called challenge becomes less about your gladiator fighting a dragon while handicapped, and more about him or her actually getting poisoned by the dragon in the first place.
- 'A Simple Task' is not as simple as the little girl who gives it to you seems to think, Guide Dang It...
- To clarify, you have to be wearing a specific combination of clothes--hat, shield, torso, feet, gloves, weapon, and accessory--without telling you what the combo is. If you've played through to this point, you will have encountered at least 75 of each of those items. No, there are no hints. Same with another fashion-related quest (thankfully most others tell you what to wear).
- Woolseyism: Plenty. Puns and Alliteration aside (which the game uses constantly to mixed results), the translation is top notch, with the few accents around being fairly low key and -- most importantly -- easily readable.