Tales of Phantasia/YMMV

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• Alas, Poor Villain: Among the earliest RPGs to do this, especially with the Big Bad. It's mentioned that Dhaos actually was trying to save his own people who needed mana to live whereas your races didn't, and that if you look at it from their perspective, you're the villains.
• Anticlimax Boss: After defeating Past Dhaos, in a battle that could possibly be That One Boss because of how fast Dhaos can kill Cress, Dhaos just escapes to the future. When this troper defeated Past Dhaos and saw him escape to 150 years from the past after the game built it up as such a climactic battle against the man who murdered Cress and Mint's parents, burned down Cress's hometown, and murdered countless innocent people, this troper said out loud, "What? That's it?"
  • To be fair, Past Dhaos doesn't have to be such a hard fight, either, since -- as the intro to the game shows you -- he is critically weak against Indignation. Also, it's a Foregone Conclusion that Dhaos will escape into the future -- otherwise, you get a paradox, since why did you go back in time in the first place?
  • Pluto, a secret summon set up as a Bonus Boss at the end of an incredibly difficult Bonus Dungeon, is supposed to be incredibly tough. Which, sadly, he's not. Due to programmer oversight, he flinches and is pushed back nigh constantly when hit with Demon Fang, Cress's first move. The entire battle ends up being Cress sending endless arcs of Demon Fangs at Pluto and the rest of the party nuking the crap out of him, all while he sits ineffectually off in the corner, presumably crying about Cherry Tapping bastards.
• Non Sequitur Scene: The wild goose chase across Freyland for Edward.
• Crowning Music of Awesome: Fighting of the Spirit.
  • Yume-wa Owaranai, the opening theme. All variants of it. But the SNES version takes special mention for being the first SNES game ever to have a fully voiced opening theme, which was unheard of at that time.
    • There's one in the OVA. Mint is trying to heal the World Tree, when Dhaos shows up out of nowhere and easily passes through the barrier separating it and Mint from the rest of the group. Naturally, since Mint has absolutely nothing and nobody to save her from Dhaos, she starts pleading with him. Does she plead for her life? No, she pleads with him to let her finish before he kills her. Luckily for her, Dhaos' actual intent was to help her anyway.
• Complete Monster: Mars. He orders his men to burn Totus village, takes Cless' ill wife hostage to force Miguel to surrender and kills them all afterward, kill everyone even children, and finally, kill Mint's mother, all just for freaking pendents.
• Crowning Moment of Funny: The SFC Fan Translation has its moments of comedy, particularly the famous line of "I bet Arche fucks like a tiger", Arche passing out and fantasizing about having sex with Cress, or Arche telling Mint that "[she's] got the biggest tits [she's] ever seen!" The last two actually do happen in official translations, it's just not as explicit.
  • In the Japanese versions of the game, Mint earns the Boing-chan title (basically named after the comical sound effect of breasts bouncing) from the same sidequest. In Phantasia's prequel, Tales of Symphonia, the character who can earn the same title is ... Sheena. 'nuff said.
• Crowning Moment of Heartwarming: The whole Ary scene before the final dungeon, which also counts as a Tear Jerker. All three parts of it.
• High Octane Nightmare Fuel: The Magitech Cannon. Aside from nearly killing the World Tree, it has enough destruction force to cause it's victims to decompose instantly after they die. Imagine how much getting hit by it must hurt...
  • Arsia the woodcutter. Actually a powerful sorceress, she has gone bonkers since the Elves have banned Half-Elves from their village, meaning that she can't visit her Elven lover anymore. So, when the party asks for help, she turns Cute Witch Arche into a statue to force you to bring her lover to her. When he refuses to stay with her now that she's all psycho, she turns him into rock too. But at least Arche gets freed. Oh, the kicker? When they first arrive at Arsia's manor, the party notices a whole lot of "really realistic and detailed statues". AAAUGGGHHHH!!!
• It Was His Sled: We all know Dhaos was just trying to save his own people.
• Memetic Mutation - A phrase in the Fan Translation gets minor fame in Internet: "I bet Arche fucks like a tiger."
  • Thanks to the So Bad It's Fantastic voice acting of the English release, "WHAT the HECK is THAT?!?!?!" and "This ends HE-YAHHHH! IN-DIG-NAY-SHUN!" are popular in certain circles.
• Misblamed - the official translation is often bashed for such things as "removing" adult humor that was never in the original.
• Narm - "What the HECK is THAT!?"
  • "This ends HEEYA! INDIGNAYSHON!" - "It can't beee~!"
  • It'd be more accurate to say that the entire opening scene with Cress, Mint, and Morrison's ancestors fighting Past Dhaos is just one big case of Narm. Yes, even in Japanese it's hilariously overacted (although Japanese Dhaos does manage to sound Badass at least).
  • The inclusion of voice clips during cutscenes is very narmful, especially in the SFC version.

Mint: I'll create a barrier around the tree. BARRY-YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!!

• Seinfeld Is Unfunny: Needless to say; this game is still playable today but it's shown its age. A lot of the stuff that made this game stand out were later done better by later Tales (series) games or became commonplace. (Tales of Phantasia was called "The game that sings" originally because it had a theme song. This is standard routine for the Tales (series) game; but a lot of other games have theme songs, too.) The Linear Motion battle system was also really cool and innovative for its time; but compared to the other Linear Motion Battle systems (Especially the 3D and pseudo-3D ones) it is pretty much Bare-Bones. Even compared to Tales of Eternia's LMBS, this game's LMBS can frustrate people with how chuggy it is. Also, this game's major twist was that Dhaos wasn't a Complete Monster antagonist - he was just a Well-Intentioned Extremist. (However; Dhaos is still one of the most memorable Tales (series) Villainous Blondes)
• Tear Jerker - This is a Tales games. Expect it. This one's particularly nasty because it slams one in your face within the first 5–10 minutes of the game.
• That One Boss - The Fen Beast is notorious for being extremely challenging. The only reliable form of damage is fire-based attacks (sans Maxwell), he has an attack that does sizable damage to Cress and moves himself ever closer to your cleric, summoner, and witch, and his ice lance attack, which allows Fen Beast to jump in the air so it's even harder to interrupt him, is essentially a guaranteed instant-kill against your Meat Shield Cress. The only reassuring aspect of the fight is that Fen Beast has only 30K HP.
  • Demitel can also wipe out your party pretty fast with his Summon: Lich attack, unless you can interrupt his casting. Considering he starts with several monsters between him and our team, doing so can be a nightmare. Not to mention that there are MORE monsters BEHIND your team, which will quickly make mincemeat out of your casters while you're trying to kill Demitel and his guards.
  • In the PSX version, Dhaos's earlier forms definitely have this potential, especially on higher difficulty levels. Unlike the SFC version he starts in the present with full HP and still hits like a truck. Probably the point in the game where abusing interrupts will become a way of life during boss fights for most players - bonus points since this boss himself demonstrates the power of this technique by chain interrupting you with weak spells before hitting you with a nuke that will nearly wipe you out.
• Troperiffic: Despite some obvious Narm, the typical RPG cliches have some of their best examples here. There's a reason Mint is the picture for White Magician Girl.
• What an Idiot! - Mankind is finally re-emerging from the Dark Ages, and is re-rediscovering magitechnology. One of the first things they build is the Mana Cannon, a device that is ultimately responsible for thrusting mankind into the dark ages twice in the past 8,000 years. And failed to accomplish anything useful for anyone the one time it failed to wipe out all civilization.
  • Note that this only applies to the OVA. In the actual game itself, the Mana Cannon was created so the humans could have a chance to defeat Dhaos, who, incidentally, was attacking them because they were capable of creating such a thing. In the OVA however, humanity just decides to randomly build a Mana Cannon.
    • Actually, they do explain it in the anime, but differently. It was being built by a half-elf so that he could prove half-elves were useful.
      • Because nothing says "useful" like making something that all but kills the source of all magic as a side effect.