Sands of Destruction (video game)/YMMV

The Game

• Angst? What Angst? In the beginning of the game, Kyrie levels his entire village, which includes his uncle, in an accidental outburst of power and never thinks twice about it. What.
  • Hey, he's got no time for angst. He's too busy mooning over the cute Omnicidal Maniac.
  • The angst starts weighing down on him after the second outburst at the Sky Gaol and after finding out his fate as the Destruct he asks Naja to kill him so the world would not have to be destroyed.
  • He later elaborates that he was in serious denial about his role in the town's destruction, and when he is finally forced to confront the truth of it, he does not take it well.
• Complete Monster: Porco Rex threatens to eat a human kid who bumped into him, Rana Rex kills humans working in his garden for fertilizer, and Lacertus Rex plans to use humans as raw materials to create a new world.
• Crowning Music of Awesome: The gorgeous main theme, played over the static title theme, stands out as yet another feather in the cap of Yasunori Mitsuda. One could very easily argue that the soundtrack is far superior to the game.
  • The Primal Lord theme is easily the best theme of the game...Shame it only plays three times....
• Game Breaker: Flurry attacks, once chained, will OHKO most normal enemies and easily hit for around 1/4 to 1/3 to even 1/2 of most bosses HP in a turn, thus taking any challenge from the rest of the game. They are, however, a form of Magikarp Power.
  • It's also worth mentioning that these aren't always a Game Breaker...for Kyrie, Agan, and Rhi'a? Most definitely. For Morte and Naja? Well for them, it's the only way you'll ever get to see their special attack since a base flurry with Morte and Naja only do 7 and 9 hits respectively. (Whereas Rhi'a goes for almost 20 hits, Agan goes 12, and Kyrie goes well over 10) Taupy, too, though he's just a bruiser in of himself.
    • And if you want Naja to break the game? Have him use War Cry.
• It's Easy, So It Sucks: This game is actually EASIER than Final Fantasy Mystic Quest, and in fact, most rpgs targeted towards young children
• Moe: Kyrie is a rare male example.
• Narm: The English voice acting leaves much to be desired.
• Scrappy Mechanic: Plenty of them.
  • The chained flurry attacks described above are the only way you're ever going to see each character's special attack unless you get ridiculously lucky with your normal attacks. However, if you try to use them against most bosses, most of them have an ability that pushes them further up the turn queue the more they get hit, meaning they'll get 5-6 turns in a row when they do finally get their turn: while you can get the same ability yourself, nothing else in the game does nearly as many hits as you do and it's mostly useless, while any other methods of trying to fight bosses are infinitely slower and more tedious.
  • Bosses can also spam Battle Boost (which increases their stats and gives them extra turns) with impunity, making the turn queue largely useless both because of this and the previous statement.
  • The previously mentioned special attacks require you to complete a 5-button press minigame to make them do the most damage: however, the buttons are always the same and for the most part consist of repeated button presses (like X,X,X,X,X), except for Raja, whose inputs are noticeably more varied for whatever reason.
    • Actually the button presses are quite difficult unless you have an accessory equipped that sets them to one button.
  • The morale system is supposed to give characters extra turns when they're in good mood, which is accomplished by keeping them in the active party for extended perioids of time and giving them equipment that boosts it: in practice, this never works as intended and you can be stuck with a party full of characters in a miserable mood despite using them for most of the game and sacrificing actually effective gear over the kind they like.
  • Even running away from battles is handled in a supremely awkward way: normally in fully turn-based games, running away works by giving either the party as a whole or each character a chance of successfully running away if they attempt to do so, which if they fail, either they or the party lose their turn, generally leaving them open for a beating. In most RPGs that have more action-oriented battles, running instead leaves the party or currently controlled character open until they finally do decide to run away (either by being allowed to do so by RNG or by filling up a bar) while the monsters keep getting turns at a normal pace. SoD decides to combine both varities into one in a way that makes next to no sense: if you decide to run away (which you will, due to annoyingly common random battles), your entire party forfeits all their turns, allowing the enemies to keep attacking you constantly while you wait for the bar to fill, and if you decide against running afterall, the enemy still gets to use all their turns they've gotten this way before you can actually attack again. This happens regardless of enemy, meaning that running away normally always means that you'll get hit several times with no way around it. However, if you have Agan in your party with his instant-runaway quip equiped, you can instantly run away from any battle, regardless of how strong the monsters are without them being able to attack even once. In other words, there's no middle ground to running away: either you get your ass kicked repeatedly by even the weakest enemies in the game, or you can be facing Demonic Spiders in the final dungeon with a lv1 party and never get hit once.
• That One Boss: Any boss that flies, namely Jade Zephyr, Aquila Rex, and Noctua Rex. Noctua Rex is the worst, because he starts on the ground and if you air-toss him, normally a good thing, HE DOESN'T COME BACK DOWN. Also Serpens Rex, who prevents you from using your Limit Break Special Attack because you're also fighting Morte, who results in a Nonstandard Game Over if killed

The Anime

• Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: Kyrie. SO. MUCH.