Resonance of Fate

Known in Japan as End of Eternity, this is an Action RPG/Eastern RPG for the PS3 and Xbox360 created by Tri-Ace and published by Sega. It was released in January 2010 in Japan and in both America and Europe in March 2010. It received a port to PlayStation 4 and PC in October 2018.

Twenty Minutes Into the Future, the world has become a complete wasteland unable to support human life. As a last resort, humanity built a giant tower-like clockwork machine called Basel that would purify the environment in the immediate area. The last remnants of humanity flocked to live within and around the machine itself, turning it into the last bastion of civilisation in the world.

Hundreds of years later, the people of Basel have forgotten the original purpose of the machine, or even that there is a world beyond its borders. However, Basel has begun to break down and a mysterious ailment called Spontaneous Death Syndrome is striking down citizens seemingly at random. In response, the ruling Cardinals begin to plot ways to save their people from Basel's impeding failure.

Meanwhile, three individuals -- Vashyron, Zephyr and Leanne -- try to eke out a normal life for themselves in the middle of Basel. They work together as a Private Military Firm, gun-slinging mercenaries who will do any odd-job that pays well. However, their Mysterious Pasts are catching up to them and landing them on a collision course with forces outside their control or comprehension...

The Battle System of this game uses a mix of both Eastern RPG system and Action RPG elements, allowing the characters to move in real-time while shooting enemies with their array of guns and explosives in amazing manoeuvres, yet still maintaining a turn-based pace.

Tropes used in Resonance of Fate include:

• Abnormal Ammo: There are Fire, Freeze, and Electric bullets and grenades. And then there's the dog droppings, which are only mostly dried out.
• Accidental Pervert: Zephyr. He says he didn't see anything, but "he's good in the dark."
• A-Cup Angst: Vashyron and Zephyr occasionally make such comments about Leanne's minute figure. A notable scene occurs when the trio meets with Lady Barbarella, who gives them a mission to fetch a rare bottle of wine. Vashyron who is partly paying attention to the mission details, retreats into a little fantasy where he contemplates Lady Barbarella's assets and relates them to wine and grapes.

Vashyron: [In his fantasy, while doing a weird dance] If you're serious about letting loose with those bunker busters... Don't be surprised when I return fire with my trusty magnum.
Vashyron: [focusing] No! No. Have to focus! Come on Vashyron keep it together! What'd she want? Not a war, it's...
Vashyron: [Losing it again] Wine! Of course! Fermented Grapes!
Vashyron: [Staring at Barbarella] Full, ripe grapes need fertile soil. That's it! It's so obvious.
Vashyron: [Back to reality, looking at Leanne's chest, thinking to himself] All we have are raisins. [Cue Leanne elbowing Vashyron in the crotch]

• • An earlier incident during Zephyr's "good in the dark" scenario.

[During a power outage, after Zephyr went to check on Leanne in the shower]
Zephyr: [To Vashyron] See anything?
Vashyron: I was about to ask you the same thing. [Laughs]
Zephyr: I didn't see anything!
Vashyron: Too small to see anything anyway right?
Leanne: [Annoyed] What's too small!?
Vashyron: Your rack.
[SMACK]

• Aerith and Bob: Zephyr, Vashyron, and... Leanne? Less so in the Japanese version, where she was called "Reanbell".
• After Combat Recovery: If you win a battle, all scratch damage is healed and the Hero Gauge is restored to full. However, if you run away it is not and is carried over to the next battle.
• After the End
• American Kirby Is Hardcore: The Japanese cover has the three main characters staring up at Basel. The American cover has all three characters brandishing guns in action poses.
• And Your Reward Is Clothes: You can find some while scrounging around.
• Arc Words: "Never stop imagining the possibilities."
• Attack Its Weak Point: Many enemies have points that are more vulnerable to attack than others since they have less armor (body parts) covering that area. Most notably is a boss that is covered in layers of tough metal armor in the front, but is completely unarmored from the back, leading to a strategy of unloading a fully charged machinegun hero run into it's back (and then hitting it with a single Direct Damage attack) as the quickest and safest way to take it out.
• Awesome McCoolname: Zephyr? Vashyron? Reanbell? Wow.
• Badass Boast: The characters dish these out constantly whenever they enter Hero Actions, but Vashyron squeezes off a particularly good one against Cardinal Rowen, considering he's telling off the leader of the known world:

Vashyron: You really think you have a chance? You're nothing but a common thug. We are the merchants of death!

• Battle in the Rain: on a rainy bridge, no less.
• Bathos: Can be created by the player, of all things. Some of the outfits are downright ridiculous, and when worn during some of the more serious, heartrending scenes can add levity.
• Big Damn Heroes: Leanne has one in in Chapter 10 when she saves Zephyr from Lagerfeld.
• Bling Bling Bang: The strongest guns in the game are all "Golden" versions of other weapons. Additionally, Garigliano wields a golden revolver, and Rowen uses a gold revolver and a silver revolver at the same time.
• Blown Across the Room: Normal attacks from guns and grenades don't move the target much, but multiple or powerful attacks can knock an enemy into the air, where shooting them from above will smash them against the ground for damage to all body parts with enough force to bounce back into the air.
  • Killing an enemy barehanded, though extremally unpractical, makes enemies fly like a ragdolls.
• Bonus Boss: Several of the Red Hex battles on the world map, the Arena bosses that appear every 5 ranks, and ones in the optional dungeons.
• Bonus Dungeon: Neverland is the most obvious example, but there are also several other dungeons in the game which are purely bonuses or only used for sidequests.
• Bottomless Magazines: Partially Averted. The size of the magazine on the gun determines how many shots you get each time you shoot at an enemy. You have to recharge the attack gauge to get off another series of shots, however, the heroes are rarely shown to reload during this charging period. This is especially obvious during Hero Actions, since the character is continually running, jumping, and rolling between bursts of shot.
• Break Meter: A variation. Dealing Direct Damage has a chance to break the enemy's HP gauge. Broken enemies will be briefly stunned and unable to move or attack. Additionally, dealing damage down to the broken point in the gauge will restore one bezel of the Hero Gauge.
• Broken Bridge: This game may be the new reigning champ of this trope. Between the Core Lifts, that require passes obtained during certain missions, the colored hexes that can only be unlocked with the corresponding colored energy hex, and oddly shaped hex patterns that can only be unlocked with certain shapes of energy hexes, you won't be doing any Sequence Breaking.
• Camp Gay: The bartender of Le Chit-Chat Noir.
• Cartography Sidequest: A variation. Completely filling a level with energy hexes allows you to teleport back to your HQ from any Energy Station you erect there. There are also useful items (and fashion items) hidden in the most unlikely places on all the maps, so filling them in is usually worth the time.
• Casual Danger Dialogue: In spades. It's not uncommon, particularly in long boss battles, for enemies and the party to talk to each other, often as they are being shot repeatedly with several magazines from a sub-machine gun.
• Character Customization: The characters' costumes can be changed, even their individual eye colors.
• Cherry Tapping: Killing enemies with dog droppings. As the description says, the damage is mostly psychological.
• Chest Monster: There are monsters that wear the game's version of treasure chests in addition to those that disguise themselves as Exploding Barrels. Fortunately, they're easy to spot thanks to the monster name and HP gauge present on them.
• Cognizant Limbs: Most enemies have multiple body parts, which act as a shield from certain angles for their main body. Destroying a body part nets you a Hero Gauge bezel and any items that part might have, but you get no experience for attacking it.
• Color Coded for Your Convenience: Direct damage weapons are red, scratch damage and weapons that cause scratch damage are blue. Even the color of the tracer rounds reflects this.
• Combination Attack: The Resonance Attacks somewhat work this way, as it enables all three characters to act simultaneously and shoot things.
• Contractual Immortality: An important plot point revolves around this trope. The Zenith System essentially protects humanity from dying of unnatural causes (like the lethal environment of the outside world) by strictly regulating their lifespans through the quartz; in other words, you can only die when the Zenith System decides you die (or when your quartz is broken). This does not necessarily make you "Immortal", as getting severely sick or wounded can cause the system to decide that it is your time; i.e. if you're shot, you will probably die; furthermore, the system has started to break down and kill people spontaneously (such as the late Prelate Frida). However, there are rare occurrences where the system, for unknown reasons, will invert this law and prevent a person's death from something that really should have killed them (such as a shot to the head). This is important for the Three main characters, as all of them should have died in the past, but were spared by Zenith.
• Cool Guns: The main characters start out with a Colt 1911, a Beretta 84 and a H&K MP5K. Later, you can get stuff like a SIG P226, a TDI Vector, a Luger P08 and an IMI Desert Eagle.
• Costume Porn
• Covert Pervert: Zephyr, in the Christmas Episode.

Leanne: Aaah, this skirt's too short!
Zephyr: (muffled due to reindeer costume) Now all we need is a trampoline.
Leanne: What did you say?
Zephyr: (louder) I said, the hem looks really keen.

• Cryptic Conversation: Rowen and Sullivan's specialty. Vashyron has a few with people from his past, as well.
• Death Is a Slap on The Wrist: You can retry a lost battle at a low cost (or an alternative and more expensive option that also restores your Hero Gauge), and you don't even need to die to resort to this.
• Deus Ex Machina: There's a huge chain of literal examples in the ending, when all the Cardinals you've killed up to that point just get up again. It's literal and therefore a little more clever when you consider that RoF's god is a machine, and there's some kind of black-box subroutine that makes it choose to spare certain people's lives at critical points.
  • The control over everyone's lifespans has passed onto the Big Bad by that point, so it was his choice that everyone lived. There was some uncertainty about whether it would work, though.
  • The same black-box subroutine mentioned above plays a big part in the protagonists back-stories; all 3 were saved by that function.
• Dodge the Bullet: Invincible Action makes your character do this while running or jumping in the air. Don't just keep spamming it, though, as using up all your Bezel points will lock you in Critical Condition, where pretty much the opposite of this trope takes effect.
• Do Not Run with a Gun: All three players can shoot while running and jumping.
• Dub Name Change: Reanbell is known as Leanne in the Western releases.
• Enemy Chatter: All of the humanoid enemies talk during battle. In later boss fights, the heroes respond.
• Escort Mission: Escorting a statue, of all things. Good thing it's Made of Iron.
• Eternal Engine: The whole game takes place in a massive clockwork tower, which is where all humans in the world now live.
• Even the Guys Want Him: Cardinal Rowan, according to Familiar Staffer.
• Every Bullet Is a Tracer
• Everybody's Dead, Dave: Happened to Vashyron in the past when he still worked for the Cardinal.
• Everyone Loves Blondes: Zephyr, Vashyron and Leanne - the protagonists of the game - all have blond hair as their default (and starting) selection.
• Exploding Barrels: A few lying around in the stages while the drum-bots' drums function as these as well.
• Fake Difficulty: At several points in the game, you're reduced to two characters. That's when you realize how useful those Tri-attacks are. There are also points where you're reduced to one character, but fortunately you should be able to dual wield a machine gun and handgun by that point, making it only slightly harder than two characters.
• Fight in The Nude: While the clothing your characters wear shows up even in cutscenes, and the guns your characters have equipped do show up in battle, their accessories and gun modifications do not show up. Unfortunate, considering how hilarious seeing those modifications in use would be.
• Firing One-Handed
• Gag Boobs/Jiggle Physics: Countess Barbarella...
• Gameplay and Story Segregation: In the early chapters, the characters often comment on how Leanne isn't very useful, which isn't exactly held up in gameplay since she's just as useful as Vashyron only with less health and with healing items instead of grenades.
• Global Currency Exception: The Arena shop is the only place in the game where you need to exchange Arena coins for items instead of Rubies.
• Gory Discretion Shot: One of the two pre-game cutscenes makes you think this is happening, but the opening cutscene proves that what you think happened, didn't. Or at least it didn't play out the way you think it did.
• Gray and Grey Morality: Essentially, the villains have an arguably noble cause. Unfortunately, this required some rather detrimental sacrifices on the part of our protagonists, who are technically mass murderers. The antagonists win with no really detrimental long term affects, and some possibly quite good ones. The protagonists are just trying to live their lives, and need to impress upon the antagonists the importance of leaving them alone. They do so with gusto. The protagonists could be said to have won MORE.
• Guide Dang It: Pretty much everything is laid out through an in depth tutorial completely accessible from the beginning of the game, except: About halfway through the story it's revealed you can move the guns in the customization page via the right stick, thus opening up many more customization possibilities (Like leaving more room for putting silencers on handguards)... Wait. Did that sound less like a guide dang it and more of a sane thing that a game should tell you? That's because it was a blatant lie. The only way to get your gun past half effectiveness is to either take your thumb off the buttons and tweak the right stick or... Read about it online.
• Gun Fu: Of course.
• Guns Akimbo: You can have any of them do this, but you have to meet the weight requirement, which you won't be able to do until they're at least close to level 30.
• Interface Spoiler: There are several terminals with offensive effects on the top three levels of Basel, despite having only safe hexes. There are several dungeons to explore there, including the final area of the game.
• Impossibly Cool Weapon/BFG: The weapon customization system allows for this. Want a gun with five barrels, half a dozen scopes, two magazines, and three grips? Go right ahead.
• Impractically Fancy Outfit: Mostly averted by our three heroes, as they wear nice and simple clothes when they do what they do. "Mostly", because Leanne's fancy high-heeled boots begs the question of how her heels aren't in pain from running and jumping in those things a lot. (Of course, Leanne also wears high heels when she's lounging around the house in her PJs, so maybe she's just used to it by now.). Still, Barbarella throws in an option of a bottoms for Vashyron that are made of the same fabric as her unmentionables. They are called 'Panty' and they are silver.
• Improbable Aiming Skills: All three main characters, really, starting in the opening cutscene with Zephyr shooting through a rope to rescue a plunging Leanne.
• Infinity Plus One Gun: The golden machinegun and three golden handguns found in Neverland.
• Jigsaw Puzzle Plot: Dear god yes. For those utterly confused: The Zenith System essentially protects humanity from dying of unnatural causes (like the lethal environment of the outside world) by strictly regulating their lifespans through the quartz; in other words, you can only die when the Zenith System decides you die (or when your quartz is broken). But Rowan and Sullivan are both trying to free humanity from the control of the Zenith System because it's starting to break down and kill people spontaneously. Rowan does it by taking control of Zenith, but suffers a crisis of faith since he's gone from worshiping God to being God. Sullivan does it by experimenting on Rebecca- a mutated human who can survive outside Zenith- and incorporating her traits into himself. Zephyr was one of Sullivan's experiments, which gave him superhuman powers but also drove him insane. In the end, Rowan is fatally wounded but survives, proving that he had succeeded in gaining total control over the Zenith System. Sullivan has Rebecca break his quartz and survives, proving that he had also succeeded in separating himself from the Zenith System..
• Large Ham: EVERYONE, who isn't the three main characters, is... a little off. Some of the voice actors must've been told to take some speed before recording. Hell, even the main three characters are prone to some outrageous bits of acting.
• Leap and Fire: If you don't do this at every given opportunity--you die!
• Lost Forever: A very palatable version. Sidequests are tied to particular story chapters and will be missed if you advance the plot without completing them, but the game makes absolutely sure that you know this so you don't skip any by accident.
• Machine Worship: Zenith. It was built by humans long ago to regulate Basil and the Quartz in order to keep humanity alive. By the time the game opens, however, humanity worships it as a god and most are unaware of its true nature.
• Mismatched Eyes: There are separate colored contact lenses for each eye, and you don't have to equip a matching pair.
• Molotov Cocktail: Why yes, and it's also classified as a thrown incendiary.
• More Dakka: if you launch Tri-Attack and spam attack every time it's just enough to shoot, it results in this, and there is even a Trophy/Achievement for making 500-hits chain.
• Monster Arena
• Mood Whiplash: Chapter 11 is dark and very emotional, Chapter 12 is a humorous episode involving Leanne and Zephyr being body doubles for a bride and groom while Vashyron, unknowing, accepts a job to kidnap a certain bride. Chapter 13 is a Christmas Episode. Chapter 14 swings back to dark. Justified, perhaps, because there is an unknown amount of Time Skip between each chapter.
• New Game+: Two versions: One's a traditional New Game+ where you keep many things from your previous playthrough, including your levels, items, and uncolored hexes; the other where you carry over far fewer items, but can access a harder difficulty mode, where enemies have higher HP. This can be repeated multiple times, up to a difficulty where foes have x5 as much HP as the first playthrough!
• Not the Fall That Kills You: Used in all it's trope-y glory in the opening cutscene.
• Panty Shot: with Leanne's most expensive skirt, every Hero Action includes several.
• Peninsula of Power Leveling: The Arena is possibly the first location you visit, located just outside the Ebel City. Linking terminals to it and grinding/farming there is your best bet, since there's quite a few terminals throughout Levels 4 through 6 that accelerate this process: Hint of Luck on Level 4, Luck and Mega Luck on Level 5, and Experience and Effect Amp on Level 6. You can further the experience gain/item drop rate with the EXP Trainer and Lucky Charm accessories, both purchasable at the Arena.
• Private Military Contractors: Not really evident, but the main characters work for Vashyron. There's an explanation in the verse about how the work is stretched and Private Military Firms began to take any job offered in the bounty office, explaining why you do a lot of menial tasks.
• Ragdoll Physics: Especially obvious when you kill a leader and he or she flops around in slow motion.
• Roaring Rampage of Revenge: Zephyr. Described almost word for word by That Other Wiki.
• Sexy Santa Dress: Leanne gets one for the story mission in Chapter 12. The dress is later available in the Bonus Dungeon, Neverland.
• Ship Tease: Zephyr and Leanne. He saves her life, gets slapped for accidentally seeing her naked (maybe), and then there's the wedding job scene.
• Sick Episode: Leanne's out with a cold for most of Chapter 6.
• Sidequest: A bounty board puts up new ones every chapter.
• Slice of Life: Very much so in the first chapters. The three protagonists pretty much treat being badass Gun Kata specialists as just another day-job.
• Socketed Equipment: The guns can be enhanced in extremely ridiculous ways using a grid-based modification system. You can do things like attaching barrels to your gun clip, and you're seriously underpowered if your handgun doesn't have at least five scopes attached. You don't even need to care what your barrels are pointing at. In fact, to most effectively fill the grid, you'll have to install them pointing up. It's just too bad the attachments are Informed Equipment, as it would have been hilarious to see the characters actually carry and fire the kind of Frankenstein monsters that gun customizing inevitably produces.
• Steampunk: The setting and many of the costume designs are obviously heavily influenced by this genre. Oddly, the other half seems to be influenced by modern Japanese fashions.
• Team Dad: it shows especially when Lagerfeld comes to kill Zephyr, how Vash feels about his companions; acting lightly at first, when Lagerfeld invokes a friendship between them thinking that will give him the boy, Vashyron snaps and blocks Lagerfeld way to come in.
  • And there is the wedding job:

Vashyron: Daddy does not approve!

• Theme Music Power-Up: Turned on its head if your Hero Gauge goes empty. While in Critical Condition, the music switches to a track named "Danger Danger".
  • There is also a variant of the straight version of this trope: when you use a Hero Action, the music changes to a more upbeat version of the area's battle music.
• Throw Down the Bomblet: Vashyron starts with the grenade box, but any character can equip it and throw flaming, electric, frozen, or dog shitty death.
• Time Skip: Between the opening cutscene and the prologue and between each chapter. You may not realize how much time is passing until you reach chapter 13 and find out the first twelve chapters covered 8 months.
• Trigger Happy: Even with limited bullets, the protagonists enjoy shooting while jumping alot.
• True Art Is Incomprehensible: An in-Universe example. Garigliano and Jean-Paulet (and quite possibly, Vashyron) certainly have... eccentric tastes in art. Remember that statue Garigliano made and had you put on top of the Forest of Idols? It creeps people out.
• Twenty Bear Asses: Heavily invoked in the first half of the game.
• Universal Ammunition: Whoever has the magazine case equipped can use any ammo the party has stocked, regardless of what kind of gun it is.
• Unnecessary Combat Roll
• Urban Segregation: Easy to see how different life is on the various levels of Basel, especially when one just looks up at Chandelier.
• Vendor Trash: One of the three ways to get money in the game.
• Virtual Paper Doll: You can really customize the main character's appearances, with all articles of clothing, hair color, eye color, and accessories all being changeable. These modifications are even visible in cutscenes, which can turn otherwise serious scenes comedic.
• We Cannot Go on Without You: If any character dies, it's Game Over. Justified, since there are no revival items in the game - dead is dead. Fortunately, you can retry any battle for a small fee.
• What Do You Mean It's Not Awesome?: Since all of the characters are wielding guns, and there's not a great deal of ways you can make gunfighting look Crazy Awesome without going into Bayonetta territory, the characters do all sorts of silly flips and pirouettes whenever you use Invincible Action. Fights seem to take a while because of all the superfluous animations.
• White-Haired Pretty Boy: Sullivan. You can also turn Zephyr into this with the Spray-In Silver fashion accessory.
  • White-Haired Pretty Girl: Leanne also has the hairspray option.