The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky/YMMV

Complete Monster: Weissman.
Crowning Moment of Awesome: Loewe vs Joshua. Multiple people have called the fight, without irony, even more epic than the entire climax sequence of Advent Children. Made even more impressive by the fact that it's all done WITH SPRITES, and it still manages to be completely awesome.
- Villains may they be, you've gotta admit the scene when the Legions storm the Grancell Castle is completely awesome; it's four Badasses versus one Badass Army and our dear villains proves to be the more badass force.
- Both of the Storming the Castle events in the final chapter of FC. Made even more awesome in that both times the heroes are able to pull it off with a group of less than 20 people!
Crowning Music of Awesome: Metric tons of it. There is no bad music in Trails, only tracks that are marginally less awesome than others.
- "Silver Will" is more than worth mentioning, since it isn't an overstatement to say that this music may be even more popular than the game itself. Hell, it's even listed as the Best RPG Battle theme on 2ch and Youtube!
  - And then there's the vocal version, which takes it even further.
- "Hoshi no Arika" or "The Whereabouts of the Stars", ranked first on several "Best Game Theme Song Ever" lists in Japan. Give it a gander.
Die for Our Ship: surprisingly averted. While this series has Ship Tease for most of the cast (even the Ho Yay and Les Yay variants), the Ship to Ship Combat is mostly civil and near to no-existance. This naturally leads to Ship Mates, as explained below.
Ensemble Darkhorse: Renne. She was popular enough to have one of the Drama CDs focus on her, which wasn't planned originally.
- Apparently Loewe was popular enough to appear in Alternative Saga as a playable character. His Leitmotif really helps his popularity...
  - Naturally, Renne's popularity led to her being playable in Alternative Saga, too.
Epileptic Trees: One's worthy of noting outside the WMG page, with the speculation that this game may take place in the future of the world Ys is set in. Of course, this crops up with other Falcom games and is usually scoffed at... but then Alternative Saga came out and the shaking trees caught fire. The Word of God hasn't explicitly clamped down on this or confirmed it... yet. Another popular option is that it takes place in the far, far future of the same world as the Gagharv trilogy.
- The idea that the Kiseki world is the future of Ys seems exclusive to the English-speaking (and non-Japanese-reading) fandom; the game itself says the characters were drawn from different worlds (the setting is also largely derived from Xanadu Next but nobody seems to think that it's the same world as the Ys or Kiseki games) and it's pretty clear from the lack of reaction to Chester and Loewe and Lloyd not recognizing Renne or the Brights in Zero no Kiseki that the events of the game didn't 'really' happen. The connections to Gagharv are much more solid, mostly centered around the Doll Knight novels from Cagesong of the Ocean.
Even Better Sequel: While the backstory and setting of FC is sweeping in scope, the combat is fun and the characters likable, FC ultimately plays a fair number of tropes relatively straight at least up until its very last act and even comes across as a little cliche at times, and really serves as more of a setting-establishment piece. It was SC that completely blew the lid off of player expectations (and a whole mess of tropes) across the board and cemented Trails' place in history and the Japanese gaming zeitgeist. (Given what initial reactions to SC's announcement were, there's a level on which this is intensely amusing.)
Fashion Victim Villain: The Lord of Phantasma, anyone?
Game Breaker: Agate in SC, Alan in 3rd.
- In Alternative Saga, Loewe. His Arc Drain has the ability to drain the enemies SP, if it hits 3 enemies it would refill the skill's AP cost and add an extra for it so the skill pays for it's own cost. Not to mention his Kienzan is not only fast but also has the power that rivals an Extra Skill.
God Mode Sue: Cassius, just... Cassius...
High Octane Nightmare Fuel: Man, by the end of the main plot a lot of characters have generous helpings of this in their backstories. The younger Ouroboros members like Joshua and Renne have it particularly bad. And then there's what Weissman does during the game, and what ends up happening to him... Needless to say, despite being ultimately optimistic this game gets really, really dark at times.
Magnificent Bastard: Cassius. A rare case where such a character is on the protagonist's side. Mostly.
Memetic Mutation: Among the Japanese fanbase - ~~DRAGON~~ LOLICON DIVE!!!
Moral Event Horizon: Weissman crosses this when he reveals that not only did he mind control Joshua and turn him into a puppet but also indirectly cause the attack on Joshua's village that led to Joshua's sister's death and made Joshua and Loewe's lives a living hell.
Sequel Displacement: The trilogy-cum-franchise has proven to be so popular that it's basically supplanted its parent Legend Of Heroes franchise; the following two games are Zero no Kiseki and Ao no Kiseki, both of which still technically keep the "Legend of Heroes" franchise title but practically as a footnote, and don't even bother with numbering any longer. And the next one, aka Nayuta no Kiseki, drops "The Legend of Heroes" altogether.
Ship Mates: Joshua/Estelle shippers tend to support Agate/Tita and Olivier/Schera as well.
- As sequels popped out, they add these ships in their list: Zane/Kirika, Loewe/Karin, Lechter/Kloe and Kevin/Ries.
- Those who ships Olivier/Mueller pairs Schera with Aina or Lucciola and Julia with Kloe.
Tear Jerker: Mother of God. You have no soul if some of these scenes don't elicit at least Manly Tears from you.
That One Boss: Loewe in SC, Cassius and the Black Knight in TC. Loewe takes the cake though, he is so hard the game actually let you choose to proceed the game without defeating him!
- Renne also tends to make people pull their hair out in SC, particularly the last fight with her when she's accompanied by Pater Mater. It's bad enough that she can use her reaper-esque S-Crafts to one shot your entire party if you're positioned badly. When she's accompanied by a mountain of steel and HP that can punt you across the arena and revive her when she's knocked out? The suffering never ends.
- Grimoire!Kevin and his cannons from The Third. For starters, he likes to spam Grail Sphere EVERY TURN. And the cannons...OHMAIGAWD THE CANNONS. Unless you bring Kloe for her +50% Def S-Craft bonus, you won't survive against their 3-hit cannonballs.
- The spider boss in Chapter 5 of The Third might qualify too. Let's say that you hurt its children too much.
Too Cool to Live: Master Swordsman with a Golden Sword? Rides on a black metal dragon? Silver-haired purple-eyed Aloof Big Brother for the male lead? Has the most awesome Leitmotif? Voiced by Hikaru Midorikawa, named Leonhardt and known as The Sword Emperor? Admit it, it was the only way for the Sora no Kiseki world to not to be frozen by Loewe's epic coolness.
- Although his subsequent appearence in 3rd and his apparent resurrection in Alternative Saga suggest that Falcom might consider him Too Cool To Die.
Toy Ship: Harry and Mina in Bose city. Somewhat hard to notice as they're non-essential NPCs that the player has to talk to on their own initiative.
The Woobie: Joshua, Loewe, Kevin, and Renne.
The Untwist: The Black Knight's identity is so obvious, even the characters weren't surprised when they saw his true face, and in case you haven't figured it out it's Loewe.