Crisis Core/YMMV


 * Crowning Music of Awesome: Most of the game's soundtrack accounts to this, such as some of the remixes of music from FFVII such as "On The Verge of the Assault" which is a remix of Those Who Fight. An epic version is part of the ending credits music.
 * Also, "The Price of Freedom". Whilst this pops up in one or two cutscenes, this music finds its place in the background of Zack's final battle.
 * Demonic Spiders: Take your pick: Wasps that are highly defensive against weapon damage and have insta-death abilities, those blobs that are highly resistant to all damage and are capable of casting spells in the max damage range, or... just see the damn article already. This game has a lot.
 * Ensemble Darkhorse: Director Lizard, Cissnei, and Kunzel.
 * Excuse Plot: The mission briefings. With a couple of exceptions, pretty much every mission boils down to looking for the boss-type enemy visible on the map and kill it to win. AVALANCHE has infiltrated the slums? An shipment of experimental new Shinra robots has gone haywire? The science department wants you to recover rare materials for Materia fusion? They all play exactly the same.
 * Drinking Game: Take a shot every time someone says 'honor' or 'hero'; you'll be buzzing before you reach the game's halfway mark.
 * Foe Yay: The rivalry between Genesis and Sephiroth can be considered this if the Shipping Goggles are on tight enough.
 * Game Breaker: The Costly Punch; do 9999 damage each hit regardless of stats or level for the cost of just a few HP! Made worse if you equip the accessory that ups the damage limit to 99999.
 * With enough time spent using Materia Fusion (expedited significantly if you know what you're doing), you can get Zack's stats to absolute perfect levels, and with the right equipment, make consistently perfect use of them.
 * Vital Slash, a materia that allows you to do a critical attack that is much more powerful than a normal critical attack. Level it up and it does 9,999 damage pretty much every time, with just a couple seconds' delay. Equip an item or materia that gives Endure, and you can basically just brush off most attacks and smash tougher enemies' faces into the floor in about a second and a half. And if you equip the aforementioned accessory to raise the damage limit...
 * Hilarious in Hindsight: The significance the three characters who wield it put in the Buster Sword can be this if one remembers how in the original game the first thing you did when you came to a weapons shop was to ditch it and buy a better one. Fridge Brilliance then kicks in when you remember that it couldn't be sold (it was obviously because Cloud needed it for the cutscenes, but now you can Retcon that into "it's invaluable for Cloud" if you so wish).
 * To be fair, the original game also used the sword as a representation of Zack's influence on Cloud. That's not new to this game.
 * Ho Yay: Various combinations with Zack, Sephiroth, and/or Angeal.
 * Narm: The Climax Boss fight with quickly becomes silly when you behold his cinematic attack -- he reaches into his satchel, pulls out a giant missile bigger than him that he has trouble holding, and throws it at Zack.
 * Never Live It Down: "Zack the puppy"
 * Paranoia Fuel: The "find the Wutai spies" sidequest that happens midway through the game.
 * Player Punch: . It says a lot about the standard of the writing for the character that something that was briefly shown in Final Fantasy VII & Advent Children can still count as this.
 * The Scrappy: Genesis, largely for the fact he spends a lot of the time he's on-screen reciting bad poetry. Also Angeal for all the times he talks about "honor!" And no one likes Dr. Hollander.
 * Squick: Sephiroth's fanclub, the "Silver Elite" is headed by a mysterious "Chairwoman H." The game implies this is Hojo. Okay, he's the head of Sephiroth's fanclub, not so bad...until you read the email where he informs the club members of what Sephiroth uses to wash his hair, including rose and vanilla-scented perfumes, and says he goes through a bottle of conditioner every wash. Get your Brain Bleach ready--first, think about the possible ways Hojo could know Sephiroth's bathing habits. Second, think about why he would want to know. Hair care isn't exactly pivotal to scientific research...
 * If it lessens the squick any, Hojo might just be going into his home and pawing through his stuff when he's not there or could have him under 24/7 surveillance...Nah, it's still damn creepy. Man, talk about  Though it would certainly explain why Sephiroth dislikes him so much.
 * Tear Jerker: That Downer Ending. Even though, you can hear the fangirls wail when.
 * They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: The game could easily have gone more in-depth on Zack and Cloud's time as friends under Shinra, and focused on the Wutai War, the Turks and Aerith. There was no real need to introduce Genesis or to center the plot so heavily around him, especially since he ended up being a Scrappy Villain Sue and generally one of the least liked things about the game.
 * The game also contains almost no references to Before Crisis or the events in that game including AVALANCHE, save for fighting them in one mission. This is despite the fact that Zack was a prominent supporting character in Before Crisis and Cissnei is actually one of the playable Turks of Before Crisis, and according to the official timeline the events of the two games run parallel to each other.
 * Villain Sue: Genesis. Powers to rival Sephiroth's, an outfit and weapon that essentially are exactly the same as his except red, but unlike Sephiroth he's meant to be a sympathetic character who just wants to heal himself and regain his pride. And ultimately he's . According to Word of God,.
 * Wangst: A lot of Angeal's What Measure Is a Non-Human?.
 * Wangst: A lot of Angeal's What Measure Is a Non-Human?.