Pathologic/YMMV

• Badass Decay: In his own storyline, Dankovski is a fearless and determined Badass Bookworm Science Hero, but in other storylines, he's just a selfish Insufferable Genius.
• Critical Dissonance: A bit of a special example, due to Pathologic being a really bizarre game. Some reviews (even positive ones) don't even call it a game. Many critics disliked Pathologic and warned against playing it, saying that it wasn't fun in the slightest and was far too bleak. Most fans of the game completely agree with this, but love the game's plot and atmosphere nonetheless.
• Cult Classic: It's hard as hell, was notoriously difficult to find until the HD port came about on Steam, and isn't really fun at all. But what it is is an incredibly engrossing experience that boasts incredible atmosphere and a fantastic story.
• Ensemble Darkhorse: It's said that Dankoski was a head of the crew of The Thanatica Laboratory, whose goal was actually cheating Death, and the Laboratory was closed by The Authorities and Professor Tehlmann. Despite having so little information, Thanatica is a frequent object of fanart and WMG.
• Hell Is That Noise: The creepy sound of a baby crying or laughing when you kill an innocent or evil person, respectively.
  • Also, the sound effect that plays when you get infected. It sounds like a distorted, backwards nails-on-chalkboard sound coupled with creepy whisper-like sounds. It doesn't help that infection level is one of the hardest meters to manage, so this will quickly evoke feelings of dread from players due to gameplay reasons as well.
  • The background music for the infected districts. It's often a warped, distorted version of the regular town music (which is already a little unsettling), with the Ominous Latin Chanting and One Woman Wails cranked Up to Eleven. The infected districts are Nightmare Fuel incarnate to begin with, and the music doesn't help matters.
  • The background music for the houses in the locked districts. It's extremely tense, off-key, and has a Recurring Riff that sounds like an Eldritch Abomination is trying to pry into your skull. It's guaranteed to make you extremely nervous and jumpy, especially since there are marauders inside said houses that can jump you seemingly out of nowhere. The cleansed houses aren't even that unsettling by themselves (they look exactly the same as normal houses), but the music makes them almost as creepy as infected houses (possibly even moreso).
  • Most of the background music qualifies, really.
• I Am Not Shazam: Some reviewers refered to the city as "Ancient Steppe". While this title is mentioned a couple of times in the manual fluff, the Ancient Steppe is simply the name of the surrounding steppe region. Cause... you know... it's a steppe.
• Narm: In the English version, several lines of dialogue that should be serious end up becoming hilarious due to the infamously poor translation.
  • You even get unintentional Shout Outs like, "Simon is a sorcerer?".
  • If the sound of the baby crying or laughing when your reputation changes isn't scaring you, then it's most likely making you laugh.
• Paranoia Fuel: Due to the first-person perspective. There could be a disease cloud or a mugger right next to you and you won't know until it's upon you. And of course, you can't see behind you either, so you'll be whipping around to check your back quite often...
• Scrappy Mechanic: Lots.
  • You can't run. At all. Only walk at a leisurely pace. Coupled with the rather brutal In-Universe Game Clock, this can cause the game to range from Nintendo Hard to nigh Unwinnable.
  • The weapon selection is annoyingly clunky, since it's only available by opening your inventory (which is the only menu that averts Menu Time Lockout). This wouldn't be necessarily bad... but imagine you need to switch to another weapon quickly in the middle of a fight with a local looter...
  • This is very minor compared to the other two, but... Melee weapons often have multiple attacks; for example, when unarmed, your character may execute either a quick jab with their left fist, or a long windup punch with their right. However, there is no way to control which attack is executed (it's random), so you have no idea whether you can afford to be right next to an enemy, or if you have to start further back because your character is going to twirl their knife in the air dramatically before plunging it in a downward stab. Given how incredibly important timing is in melee combat, this can be quite irritating.
    • Somewhat related to that: fortunately, ranged weapons avoid this problem, for obvious reasons... however, just drawing a gun takes an absurdly long time: the animation for the revolver in particular makes it look like your character's moving through molasses. Needless to say, this can result in problems when you're being charged at by a crazed mugger...
• True Art Is Incomprehensible: The opinion of many who don't get the story. Might be just a side effect of the Blind Idiot Translation though.