Samias

Mist's outfit is so cute in her promotion. I just hate using her because she doesn't have magic swords this time. Oh well. One thing about all these concepts is that I'm really happy at all the attention paid to making everyone's promotions stand out from each other in more ways than just the colour. Almost everyone got some unique flair specific to them. Compared to PoR, and above the rest of the games in the entire series, I think this game did its best to make everyone a bit more distinct. Things like the "softer" characters like Sigrun and Astrid having all sorts of lace detail and luxurious trim compared to their more battle-hardened counterparts like Tanith and Titania. All the swordmasters got unique trueblade looks, etc. I mean sometimes it's just differences in textures but compared to later games, it's very impressive how much work actually went into the designs in this game every step of the way.

I mean some of those enemies are better off as stage hazards like Monty Mole but there's no reason why characters like King Boo, Petey Piranha, Il Piantissimo, E. Gadd, Goombario/Goombella, Spike and a few other notable characters couldn't become consistent racers over Baby Daisy and Pink Gold Peach. Also having Diddy Kong and Dixie Kong seems natural as Donkey Kong and Mario are interconnected franchises and Donkey Kong is a regular racer. So even without dipping into other Nintendo franchises there are still a lot of characters they could pull out from the Mario universe without being too generic. Although a lot of Nintendo fans would still probably be happy to see some crossover with franchises that don't stray too much from the Mario artstyle. No one has ever been up in arms about the inclusion of DK characters, and having Link, Isabella and Villager went over a lot better than Pink Gold Peach and Baby Rosalina. I also don't think the Inklings really break the aesthetic either. On the other hand I probably wouldn't want to see Samus or a Fire Emblem character hop into a kart.

Hmm, not only does Tanith have dracoknight-like growths, it looks like she has their colour scheme too. It's kind of hard to discern in game but she really does look more like Shiraham and his defectors as a Seraph Knight than she does the rest of the Holy Guard. Nice contrast with Sigrun. Also I don't see anything wrong with Brom's design either. He has no love of war so I really like how plain his uniform is compared to the formal knights. Also I love Meg's 3rd tier design, it's such a shame that she's not a very good unit. I feel the same about Fiona, Sigrun and Lucia too.

Part 1 is arguably the hardest part of the game, so being the best unit in part 1 with zero required training is pretty good. I think it merits a high ranking for Sothe. Also Sothe can take hits, just from his crazy bases. He's terrible in part 4 from a late promotion but even in part 3 he's still able to take a hit and fire back at a range. Beastkiller is actually not great because Sothe wants to wall, he doesn't really want to kill (and neither does anyone else except whoever you picked for accelerated leveling in 3-6). But eh, different values I suppose, RD is one of the games where immediate performance tends to outdo growths for all units except Jill, whose class is so broken that not leveling Jill is essentially a detriment to the whole run, second only to Haar's insane performance throughout the whole game. Pretty much anyone who isn't Sothe, Jill and Haar could eventually be interchangeable but Sothe has irreplaceable qualities early on.

Other way around you mean? And I agree, no way in the universe is Mia as essential to the GMs as Sothe is to earlygame DBs. Even if Sothe falls off in the end, playing without Sothe is a giant detriment to his team and part 1 is so painful without him. And yeah Shinon ended up unexpectedly high. I overrated him a bit, didn't expect him to somehow land in top tier above even Naesala. I think having most of the mages end up in mid tier is to be expected. Magic units are not the best but there are undoubtably moments where you want a mage, due to all the cover tiles in endgame you want *some* versatility in your damage types and Micaiah and Sanaki aren't even the best units to deal with that despite being forced.

I'd be down for more franchises being in Mario Kart, if only to stop the rosters from the kind of padding Mario Kart 8 suffered from. All the baby characters were super boring. They could really take a page from Sonic here and do some kind of "Mario and All-Stars Racing", where the focus is mostly on Mario but still celebrates all of Nintendo's franchises. I'm sure a fraction of people would be upset with the removal of Baby Rosalina if we got Kirby or Fox instead.

Cards are pretty bad except for the times when you want to make an attack and not eat a counter, or maybe for Ena... honestly I don't really count them as combat as it is one of the least efficient things you could do with a heron's turn. Healers are fragile and can't fight either until they class up but most people would find it unthinkable to run without one. Like losing a few points for being fragile is fine if you don't know the best ways to position them but Reyson is just as durable as Rhys...

I have no rating for Lehran. He basically doesn't exist, even by the poor availability most units get in the game. I guess he has more-or-less perfect stats but he comes so late that you might see him for like, 1 turn tops.

I'm mostly interested in Breath of the Wild, but Xenoblade 2 and Octopath Travellers look like a good time for RPGs. I'm not personally into Splatoon but many of my friends are and I think it will be a solid game and I might pick it up. As for what I'm not interested in, Arms looks like an expansion of Wii Sports boxing with the telescoping punches introducing a bit of attack lag to the equation. I can't see the gameplay being particularly deep or compelling for what will likely be a full price release. Kinda makes me think it's going to be some kind of flailing simulator. I'm also not into FIFA at all, and to cap off lack of interest would be Snipperclips but mostly because I don't know what it's about. I feel bad about it but I also don't have faith in a new Bomberman game because of Konami. 1-2-Switch didn't really show much gameplay to really demonstrate the concept. But it kinda feels like it should have been a pack-in. It could be as solid as Nintendoland or it could just be a rehash of the motion control shovelware on the Wii. I'm not sure how to feel about it yet.

Yeah, I happen to like FFVIII but it's completely understandable to not like it. The pacing is weird, most of the characters are unlikeable, and really even the players who DO like just play it for Triple Triad. It's kind of a funny legacy that Triple Triad is the most beloved FF minigame, so much so that it appears in other games and as a mobile app. I sometimes feel more people hate FFVIII than they hate FFXIII, and to me that feels weird because I find FFXIII to have an even worse story... Well I guess in general the most hated FF will probably remain 2 for many reasons, though.

Some class builds are easier and/or more effective in A1. I felt status effects had a lot more impact in A1 due to their accuracy, whereas status effects have a flat accuracy in A2, depending on resistances of the enemy and it really decreases the value of early archer status effects, and instead puts pressure to use soldier stat debuffs instead because they don't suffer through the same accuracy woes. And while this isn't universally great, I liked the idea of using law manipulation to hinder the opposition to prevent them from doing certain things. Also, MP reliant classes are very rough to use early game until you get the MP recovery perk, and for the advanced magic classes, Half MP. That said the gameplay in A1 takes an age and a half to execute compared to A2, so I'd rather play A2. But A1 has some concepts that I like exploring and different class meta.

TBH A2 feels more like "a bunch of things that happen along an open-ended journey" compared to the other FFT games. At times it doesn't really feel like the story is that important and it's more of a lighthearted adventure. It gets a bit dark in the end but it's the most upbeat of all the games. I don't think that's a bad thing, but I can see why people would call it a weak entry. Still, the gameplay is really solid for that style of SRPG. I really like it, but it sidegrades some of the stuff from A1 so I go back and forth between games depending on what I want out of the game.

I honestly think A1 is a good starting point. If the gameplay isn't gripping you there, then the more advanced systems in Tactics or A2 are probably still not going to be enjoyable. Personally my favourite game of the set is A2 despite the weak story, but solid gameplay, but I wouldn't go into it without tasting A1 because the various tweaks to the formula between games. There are still parts of A1 I like more, but A2 is more polished. Inversely, Tactics is broken gameplay and very brutal so it is nice to dive into its easier counterparts first before jumping into something more intense.

I can't get into older Zelda games. I keep trying with the original and Zelda 2, and Zelda 2 is slightly more compelling but the difficulty and lack of direction prevents me from enjoying the games. I also have difficulties with Link's Awakening due to the controls and hitboxes being a bit more tight than I enjoy. I like watching other people play them, though. In general I dislike playing NES games even if I like watching them because so many of them are designed to be aggressively hard. Mario 1-3 (excluding Lost Levels) may be the exceptions but I'm still pretty bad at it. Other than having a dislike for old games even if they are considered classics, I also disliked playing World of Warcraft despite getting to a raiding level in that game. I just hate the aesthetic and I think the fantasy games that copy the art style are just not attractive. I don't like the colours, I don't like the goofy proportions, I don't like the overreliance on pop culture to drive the story and the world in general. The gameplay is fine but everything that supports the gameplay has always grated on me. I would rather play a mechanically worse game that has a better aesthetic. Right now I'm a giant FFXIV addict, which has very similar gameplay to WoW, but because I like the graphics and story more I'm waaaay deep into that game while I dropped WoW the moment my friends stopped organizing raids on a regular basis. And this was back before it was "cool" to hate on WoW. I started during the Wrath of the Lich King era and dropped the game almost immediately because I was enjoying Ragnarok Online waaay more. I came back to it later but yeah, no attachment, no urge to resub for any expansions past Cataclysm. Oh yeah, I'm bad at platformers, but I especially have no love for Sonic games. I think all of them are janky and lacking in quality compared to Mario. Doesn't matter what era, Mario has always had superior games to Sonic. The only good thing about Sonic is the music.

Renning: I think he's slightly better than his stats make him out to be. He makes good use of Imbue, can use hammers and wyrmslayers, and can put on an SS sword if you have one free, or at least he can put on a brave sword/axe. He's serviceable even if he doesn't double things in endgame, because he is actually pretty durable compared to the rest of the filler units you get to round out an endgame team if things didn't go well. Kurthnaga: He is essentially invincible in 4-E-3 and that can be free levels if you want, but his aura is the worst of the dragons. If you brought no one else to take down Deghinsea, Kurth can just chip away at him in a slowplay and you'll win. Otherwise even with formshift he's very unimpressive for damage simply because he's so slow and his attack power isn't really that high since he only has A strike. Guh. Ena: Bring her for her auras, but she doesn't really do anything else. At least her durability is impressive in the last chapters and her Boon may be useful in the event you had multiple clustered units get hit by an Elsleep or Elsilence. However Blood Tide is really good and Ena is basically untouchable from 4-E-3 onwards so she's really nice to just have her stand wherever you want. I feel like she has a Mist problem in that they may have planned for her to use a magical weapon like Nasir, but decided to give her a generic strength-using red dragon breath instead, plus she has A strike so she's really, really not hurting anything. Gareth: Actually does damage, but not as flexible on where you can put him and he can only help for 2 chapters instead of 5. I personally think Ena is better, because Gareth's chip just makes me nervous about getting him killed with his bad speed and res. Nasir: Speed aura makes a lot of other units go from good to god. He's pretty decent himself compared to the other dragons you get so he can contribute chip damage while getting into position for everyone else to take advantage of his awesome buff.

You can see what gear gives skills before you buy it... If you hit the R(?) button, it brings up a side window that shows what skills the weapon/armour has and which class learns it. The only thing you may need a guide for in this game is knowing how many A-abilities from each class you need to unlock advanced jobs, and how to obtain skills for blue mages.

Oliver: Pretty much a joke character. Not really important in any way. He is competent in all stats, but uh... negative bias because I don't really like the Saint class and I especially don't like Oliver. Bastian: He joins early enough to contribute to a non-tower chapter, and does a half-decent job of it. Really good weapon ranks and decent stats to chip away at things, though you really don't want to let this chapter drag on. At least his deployment is free and he's almost certainly going to be better than Geoffrey who spent all this time waiting to come back. I should probably rate him lower but eh. I guess my hate for Oliver is love for Bastian as a concept for a character and I wish he were just a little bit better. Volke: Is worth more money than he asks you to spend, and he joins early enough where he can also do something before endgame. He has legit one-hit kills unlike the rogues too! He's got as many stats as he needs to be a functional replacement for any fallen units if you're running short on endgame candidates somehow and is pretty much interchangable with Stefan, except that knives are worse than swords if Volke doesn't proc an assassination. Giffca: Ridiculously strong, fast, and tanky and his only downfall is a need for laguz stones/gems and no 2-range. Otherwise he's going toe-to-toe with the King of Dragons, just like his kingly counterpart. Caineghis: The KING of offense. He's the most reliable killer of bosses with 66 (68 if he procs a strength level up) attack, 36 speed (38 with a speed proc) and crazy durability. Although he probably won't reach it, he could have 70 attack and 40 speed and that's just silly. He really is a king among units.

Naesala: A royal, and while perhaps the weakest one of them all because of S strike, he's still a flying monster whose only weakness is really a lack of reliable 2 range (and he still does it 40% of the time). He doubles everything in the game at base and his other stats aren't too shabby either. Short of eating multiple crossbows, he's pretty much never going to die to anything even for being the least durable royal. He just doesn't one-round everything. Skrimir: Comes with his own Resolve, and with physical endurance like this, who cares about the gauge? Seriously, Skrimir is a beast. However he really does need his Resolve to double things consistently so if you take it off, he isn't nearly as good. He's one of the few laguz who can really perform decently even without being transformed, so he can cheese some EXP gain. Tibarn: An even better version of Naesala. Again, doubles everything, but with more strength, more physical tankiness, and SS strike. Short of Deghinsea, if you set Tibarn against something, they will likely die. Pelleas: He'd be half-decent if he showed up earlier in part 3, because that's how his stats feel like they were designed for. He just comes in at an awkward time where he's underleveled and you're already nailing down your team, plus you're being handed all these godly units and a forced mage in Sanaki. At least he comes with 10 uses of Fenrir that no one else can use. Stefan: An endgame-ready trueblade hiding out in the desert, leveled for the player who couldn't keep their army alive or who feel some units are falling behind. He's nearly capped out in most stats and comes with SS swords, but since he hasn't been around the whole game it's hard to be attached to him in any way. But objectively speaking he's as good as every other trueblade you get, if not for having weak luck (but not as dire as PoR) for his level. However he can't fly like Tibarn and isn't as overbearingly powerful as Caneighis will be, and he comes so late to really have any contributions if you don't choose to take him to the endgame. Since he doesn't make objective clearing faster than anyone else really, I don't think too much of him but I think he's better than most of the other beorc units you'll get in part 4.

http://serenesforest.net/radiant-dawn/characters/base-stats/Everyone's stats as they are recruited are base stats. Good growths can't always fix an excessively bad start. Edit: on the topic of wtf growths, Tormod has 55 strength growth but only 40 magic. That's the same strength growth as Ike. Tormod... Why...

Janaff: Amazing hit rate, actually can see in fog of war when other bird laguz can't (which only comes into play once but eh, it's one thing he has over Ulki), and slightly better bases than his partner with what is functionally 4 more strength. Really strong offense, and his flight utility is very handy when he joins since you need to navigate through swamp and over the pit-filled bridge. I prefer Ulki ever so slightly more because I feel 30% more evasion > 30% more hit rate, but Janaff does hit harder. Despite having to contend with gauge like all non-royals, I think the flexibility of flying with a good gauge and having bases this good really negates the bad. Ulki: I rated him ever so slightly higher because Vigilance > Insight. Otherwise they are almost the same unit. Tanith: Her HP base is pretty bad and she's basically a flying Oscar several chapters later in appearance. She could use more speed but at least Earth affinity gives her some extra tankiness. She comes at a good time where you NEED fliers to ferry people across the bridge and plug pitfalls. Thankfully her growths lead to her being pretty strong in the long run. She caps off her strength and defense fairly quickly and her speed can be fixed. Sigrun: She can basically insta-promote for some extra bases, but her base strength is really bad for her level and her growths are way too slanted towards luck and res, so she has a very hard time keeping up offensively. She's a great ferry for Sanaki but her actual worthiness at combat is suspect, mostly because her defense isn't going anywhere fast and her base HP is not good either. Her taxi service makes her worth fielding over a lot of other units despite not having much going for her otherwise. Sanaki: Terrible base durability and so very little time to train, which basically means she *must* wear Paragon or Resolve, and training her seems logical for her mandatory use in the tower. She's not even as good as Calill or Soren IMO due to lack of staves, traded in for the novelty of using all anima magic + light. At least her personal tome is nearly as strong as Rexflame, but I would rather have Sanaki use a siege tome for immense, safe chip damage over engaging enemies directly, especially with her insanely high growth in magic. At this point in the game it's like raising an Est who isn't really even *great*, but you're forced to use her. Also she's forced but can't hurt Sephiran, which is simultaneously sweet yet frustrating.

Edward is fun to train in my opinion and before Zihark and Sothe show up, he's an essential character alongside Nolan to shield Micaiah and Leo from harm. After that, training him for part 3 usability means you get to binge on what is essentially a free silver sword forge that only he can use. But just one glance at their bases and Zihark is pretty much barely Edward's inferior at the same levels once Ed's growths kick in, except Zihark is nearly untouchable with an earth-earth support and Ed merely has Light, which is way less useful than Earth or Fire, so it makes sense to just drop Ed in favour of Zihark since the likelihood of Ed promoting by that point is insanely low. I can see why people don't rate Edward that well once you look beyond the first three chapters and realize the stats for characters is gonna be all over the place. On the topic of supports and caps, Zihark can get crazy dodge skills with Earth+Earth, but Mia can actually outdo Zihark's damage despite being one strength lower at cap, thanks to her Fire affinity. With another Fire partner, Water or Dark, Mia actually has a 2 attack advantage over her fellow Swordmasters, or else she is their equal if Zihark went Earth + Dark. With Mia's luck closing up the avoid gap, they are pretty much identical units but Zihark gets 5 more HP if he's lucky, but Mia will likely have the health advantage for longer. 1 attack really isn't a significant gain for Zihark or Ed over Mia, but Lucia and Stefan are both losing out somewhat in comparison. Sort of, in Stefan's case.

To add to this, not only is Reyson bulkier than his siblings and more likely to survive one hit, he has a huge movement advantage and canto that allows himself to position himself in ways the other can't. For any map you cannot finish in one turn, Reyson's advantages will surmount Rafiel's quite quickly. Rafiel is so good at the endgame chapters is because those chapters are small, later on full of enemies who cannot to target the herons anyway (Spirits literally cannot target the herons at all, and none of the bosses throughout the tower ever will unless they are using their map-wide AoE), and are ideally finished in 1-2 turns. That said if you were doing a low tier run of RD or just poorly optimized your endgame team somehow despite gods like Caneighis being thrown your way, that means Reyson could be a better choice for endgame since that's the only time you'll see Ashera start throwing out Judgments. At any rate your herons are basically 10/10 units in the tower who are practically invincible and are extremely necessary to squeeze the best out of your elite units, which is already so much more than some units are doing. Giving any heron a score worse than Lyre, a combat-only unit who literally hits a large number of enemies in HM on her joining chapter for 0-2 damage, who cannot even 1RKO the weakest sages without a crit, is frankly an insult. Lyre isn't even remotely approaching "good" in any lower difficulties either because she has to transform to perform that badly. Meanwhile a heron can always be doing something useful every turn, transformed or not. Refreshing your unit who can 1RKO things in your stead is a hell of a lot better than thrusting yourself at an enemy who you literally cannot defeat.

1. Final Fantasy XIV: Stormblood 2. Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild 3. Persona 5 4. Nier: Automata 5. If MonolithSoft announces an RPG I'll definitely be intrigued. Stormblood though. Sure, I'm hyped for Zelda, but I went to Vegas for the FFXIV Fanfest just for the expansion announcement. Not only is it one of the best MMOs I've ever played, it's also my favourite Final Fantasy game.

Mia: A bit fragile to start but her speed and her offensive prowess is not to be underestimated. She's able to absolutely decimate virtually any non-general, especially with Adept given to her. Thankfully her speed gives her a standout presense in the GMs. She could use a little more strength in the beginning but honestly, she deletes people by the end and is the easiest swordmaster to train who has meaningful availability. There are so many SS rank swords so she even gets to pick between Vague Katti and Alondite to bless. Kyza: A tiger without tiger stats. That could be OK, but he's also underleveled and his bases are overall too poor to really contribute by the time he joins. He can hit a few things for OK damage and not die instantly but he's just not setting the world on fire. Considering he also has to deal with gauge yet doesn't actually do anything meaningful during it, he's pretty bad. Lyre: Mist tier offense, except she can't even use a staff. Has to contend with cat gauge. Astrid, Fiona and Meg are positively godly in comparison. Ranulf: Actually has great bases and he's forced, only his gauge is annoying to deal with for how fast it depletes. Still, he pulls his weight and takes big chunks out of the enemy forces when he can mobilize. 28 str and 30 speed while transformed is incredibly powerful. His other major downfall is lack of 2 range and that he starts at A strike, which is pretty bad for cats, but Ranulf is good enough to deal with it. Reyson: The most mobile refresher and the best one when the maps are wide open affairs thanks to canto and having the longest movement of the herons. He's also the most durable, though you still really don't want to expose your herons to danger ever. He's the best refresher for most of the game, and an extremely good choice for all situations where he's available.

Soren has an only slightly higher rating than Boyd, despite the utility he brings to the table when he promotes that all sages get and plentiful siege tomes (2 meteors, 2 blizzards, potentially bolting if you abuse Disarm). Also, Soren is a mere 2 skill and res away from capping both stats, so he can easily fix his defense and speed. With transfers, Soren has already capped skill and res and is on the cusp of capping magic and speed. At level 5, no less. But of course Soren is in a way worse class for combat, so he needs the promotion to become a hybrid support/offense unit faster. Even with transfers, Boyd has a ways to go to work his way out of a rut although it does mean he ORKOs significantly more enemies. That said I think Boyd's final potential is crazy high but he has a harder time getting there compared to Nolan.