And Fates Worst Character Award Goes To...

[~Inigo~]

Hai! So, I thought up this article in the shower. Fates has been out for about a year now, so I presume everyone has been able to play it. I loved the game, and it's characters. I played through the game so many times, and have gotten to know it's characters quite well. However, there were characters I adored, like Keaton, Laslow, or Selena. Along with that, there were characters I did not enjoy as much. And so, I thought I would share my thoughts on who the worst of the worst was. Please feel free to join and tell me your worst. I thought I would seperate the judging into two categories.

Portrayal, and Unit.

Feel free to judge your least favorite character on one or both of the categories. By Portrayal, I mean how they appear in the story, supports, and overall role they play in the game. For Unit, I mean how they are as that. A soldier. Please do not turn this into a flame war. I only mean to share opinions. And so, I shall throw in my two cents.

My Worst Character Award Goes Too...

CAMILLA!

Yep. That's my opinion. If I may explain before I am run through:

Portrayal

This is where my hate for Camilla stems. From the start, she is shown in cutscenes and the story terribly. In all cutscenes, she is never seen with her axe. Or her wyvern. Think about all the other cutscenes: Everybody has their weapons. Sakura even has her rod, along with Elise! Now, yes. Sakura or Elise does not have their weapons in their positive cutscenes. Nobody does. But everyone else has their weapon in a standoff or fight. Camilla's cutscenes are bad from the start. In the circle around Garon, she just waves her hands around and flips her hair. In Choose Your Side, she has no weapon. She is just shocked. In the third, it's just blatant fanservice. None of her cutscenes have an axe, wyvern, or use of magic.

My next reason if her supports and role in the story. First, the story. She does next to nothing. She doesn't have many twists, other than defecting in Revelation. No other shocks, or major roles. She acts as only a support unit to Kamui, and acts as a foil to Hinoka. To be honest, I found the chapter in which I fought her in Birthright to be rather bland. The chapter wasn't bad, but the fight was forgettable. Hinoka was a helicopter. Sakura pleads not to fight. Ryoma and Takumi act serious, Leo almost kills you, and let's just not talk about Xander. Camilla, wants to hug you. Yep. That's it. Almost all of her supports are bland, and are almost centered about Kamui. However, I admit. There are some gems, like Benny and Ryoma, or Takumi. Other than that, she is boring and repetitive

Unit

Don't get me wrong: She's a fine unit. Quite good really. But with the characters I like to use, the doesn't fit in. I prefer units with growths similar to Ninjas or Adventurers. Camilla doesn't have any horrible growths, but she has what I call "Leo Syndrome."

Her stats are in that slot where nothing stand out except her Strength. Everything else falls into a category that it's not bad, but not great. Not enough to prominently show through in her levels. So, she's not bad, but I prefer others.

Now! Discuss among yourselves! Who is YOUR worst unit in Fates hmm?

[eclipse]

If you want to write articles, start a blog.

Worst character IMO is Corrin, due to the sheer number of moving parts that don't work well together. Also, if that character is truly meant to be me, I expect many more story choices with meaningful impact (Awakening had more choices, but they were dialogue-only).

[Emerson]

I'm temped to say Azama. I've said many times that I hate him with a fiery burning passion, but I really can't put him as the worst since he's at least a very good unit, especially considering all you need to be a good healer is a Mend Staff or Sun Festal.

I'd say Setsuna because how boring I find her character after the translation (Pre-English launch I liked her a lot, although looking back I'm not sure why), and also because find her to be really weak as a unit. Only having Speed as a good stat is a bit annoying, plus Takumi destroys her in every way. Like every unit in Fates besides Gunter, she's usable, but I still find her to be extremely weak overall. I guess the high Might of Bows in Fates is supposed to offset her abysmal Strength? Not too helpful when her Skill is only decent, and high might Yumis have really bad Hit, meaning she has issues hitting things.

Edited January 8, 2017 by Emerson

[Sunwoo]

Corrin, because not only are they a terrible character who gets away with everything and never really learns anything, but they also warp the whole story around them so more interesting things are left out in the cold. Delete Corrin 2017.

[Refa]

Unit

Don't get me wrong: She's a fine unit. Quite good really. But with the characters I like to use, the doesn't fit in. I prefer units with growths similar to Ninjas or Adventurers. Camilla doesn't have any horrible growths, but she has what I call "Leo Syndrome."

Her stats are in that slot where nothing stand out except her Strength. Everything else falls into a category that it's not bad, but not great. Not enough to prominently show through in her levels. So, she's not bad, but I prefer others.

Hate to break it to you, but almost all of Camilla's stats are great.

[Sasori]

In my eyes Camilla is one of the characters that annoyed me most. She is a bit like the Fates story as a whole. An interesting premise that just had to go stupid.

I believe Camilla's character had a lot of potential. An emotionally damaged woman that showers people with love and affection in the hopes they'll love her back. Sadly the 'fanservice' part of her wanting to sleep with her 'brother' is just cringeworthy and should't have been part of her character. Just needy and smothering would get the point across.

I have the same complaints about her design. What works well works really well. The purple long hair and black armour are a very good fit, but the lack of pants really bring her design down for me.

Peri would be my pick for worst character in the game. Not only is insane, but she drags the entire cast down by making them surprising ok with her being a complete lunatic who threatens to kill people when someone doesn't give her some cookies. The character could work with some small story changes, but at the moment it just doesn't.

[Ema Skye]

lmao Camilla is the best unit in Fates in terms of gameplay.

Worst character is Odin and I don't think it should be much of a debate.

[UNLEASH IT]

Oh this is going to be an interesting thread

[Nobody]

Unit

Don't get me wrong: She's a fine unit. Quite good really. But with the characters I like to use, the doesn't fit in. I prefer units with growths similar to Ninjas or Adventurers. Camilla doesn't have any horrible growths, but she has what I call "Leo Syndrome."

Her stats are in that slot where nothing stand out except her Strength. Everything else falls into a category that it's not bad, but not great. Not enough to prominently show through in her levels. So, she's not bad, but I prefer others.

Now! Discuss among yourselves! Who is YOUR worst unit in Fates hmm?

Eh, you might dislike her for any reason, except her performance as a unit. She's the best unit in Conquest and Revelation, and it's not even a competition in the former. She has enough speed to double most things that aren't ninjas or swordmasters (she's actually almost sure to cap her speed), she has great strenght, she has good defense and resistence, she flies. You might have had some RNG screwed Camillas, but she's an almost flawless unit. She even gets EXP at a faster rate despite having stats comparable (or even better) to 20/1 units.

40/65/40/60/60/25/45/60 are not mediocre growths. Few characters in this game have over 60% offense growths coupled with 60% SPD and over 40% defense. Reclass her to Wyvern Lord and you get 50/65/25/65/65/25/55/45, which are downright great.

Either way, my least favorite character is Nyx. She's annoying, treats everyone rudely and is a loli, which is something I dislike.

Edited January 9, 2017 by Nobody

[vanguard333]

I'll start with unit. Unit: there are a few bad ones, but I think the worst is Gunter. Overleveled with bad stats in chapters 2 and 3, unavailable afterwards in Birthright (so wasted experience, and give all his items to Corrin if you can), underleveled with bad stats and bad growths when you get him back in Conquest, and in Revelations he is the most Jagen Jagen in the history of Jagens since the original Jagen. He cannot even support anyone, not even Corrin, in Revelations. He is utterly useless (which is ironic since SPOILERS: he is a decent boss fight).

Portrayal: Oh, there are so many... Azama, Izana, Setsuna, all the 2nd gen children (which is sad since some of them could have been good in another FE game as 1st gen units; and my opinion is the game itself, not DLC), Peri, Odin, Laslow to an extent, Camilla to an extent, Azura in Conquest to an extent... but the worst is almost certainly Corrin. Azama is second place for being such a... jerk is the wrong word; I think the right word starts with Jack..., but Azama is irrelevant in Conquest/Revelations outside of support conversations, whereas Corrin is extremely badly done and remains relevant in all three games.

[twistedxgrace]

Aw, Camilla is one of my favorites; her stats aside from luck are very well-balanced and I find protagonists with deranged behavior to be intriguing. She's not the only one at fault of many uninteresting supports/no character development, either, as the support system I believe has gotten too big to keep it all straight.

There's no one I really hate in Fates, but I'll list two characters who I think are the worst in terms of your ideas of judging unit and portrayal.

Nyx - While she does have some good supports, as a gimmicky character, she's always gotta introduce herself as the one who looks like a child but actually isn't. This would be more tolerable for me, except for the fact that attitude-wise, she really does come off as immature! What am I supposed to believe with her?!?! Unit-wise, in Conquest, she seems more ideal than Odin at first because she has miles better magic and speed, but then there are her other stats. Her HP and defense are so low she can almost never take a hit, and her skill and luck are so low she can barely hit at all. It gets worse in Revelation, in which her stats are the same from Conquest but you get her several chapters later. It seems useless to have her at this point considering you already have Hayato, Orochi, Camilla, and possibly a Nohr Noble avatar. "But what about dark magic" you say. Well, Nosferatu is unfortunately the only dark tome in Fates and has been significantly nerfed, so I rarely use it at all.

Gunter - He's a typical Jagen with a rather intriguing (but unfortunately not fleshed-out like every other Corrinsexual) backstory and is a decent father figure to the avatar, until Revelation chapter 26. I lost all respect for him then and there. Unit-wise, he's pretty useful in the very beginning like Jagens are supposed to be. After chapter 3, though, he disappears in trade for Kaze and Rinkah the next chapter. In Birthright, he never returns for some reason, in Conquest he returns in the middle of the game only to be bested by Xander the very next chapter, and in Revelation, he returns as soon as you choose the path, but he can't even support Corrin or Jakob like he can in Conquest. As a result of this and his pure Jagen status, I prefer to use Mozu as the fourth unit for upcoming chapters instead. Gunter has wonderful HP and skill, but because he is a Jagen, I never use him very much.

[Azure Sen]

Talking solely value as a unit, Nyx hands-down. Nyx is awful, with terrible defensive growths, terrible bases, and overall is not worth using over Leo on either route. She's marginally better in Conquest because she joins earlier, not that it really helps, but she's absolutely worthless in Revelation. Setsuna's a close second, for having similarly bad growths.

As for portrayal...this one is significantly more difficult. Xander, Camilla, Peri, Odin, Azama, Silas, Soleil, Mitama, Setsuna and Keaton are all awful characters in one way or another, but out of all of them, I'd have to give it to Xander as the worst. Not only because he's a selfish, moronic hypocrite who readily abandons his morals, but because unlike the others on my list I can't largely ignore his existence due to his strong story presence on all three routes.

[Radiant head]

subaki is annoying, but hilarious. for a guy who's supposed to be a perfectionist and the envy of everyone, he sure as hell makes an awful unit.

[Slyfox]

1st: Corrin - S/he is every generic trope taken to ridiculous extremes. I've never seen a hero this loved, "pure", stupid, chosen by everything, including the air that everyone breathes, in what was supposed to be a dramatic story. Like stepping on chewing gum, you can't get rid of that disgusting gum easily, and you can't stop thinking about how that gum is disgusting and sticking to you. That is Corrin, to me. I could rant about this for ages.

2nd: Azura - Exposition bot, practically only exists/talks with Corrin, and makes bad decisions all the time.

The rest: 2nd gen and Odin. Other characters have flaws that annoy me, but I can get past those.

By the way, Fates is a great game. I love playing it. But the story and some characters keep slapping me in the face. At that point, I need to take a break and rant about why they keep slapping me. Then it's back to the game.

[SalShich10N]

The worst character in my eyes has to be Garon. His childish Saturday morning cartoon villain really irked me up. If we're talking playable units, then as far as personality goes it goes to either Treehouse's Dwyer (because in the jap version he was actually pretty cool) or Hinata.

I feel Corrin and Azura are more victims of this game's poor writing than them being genuinely bad, specially Azura since she was used as a plot device. Her personality in supports and her ability to dance make me like her too much.

[NekoKnight]

Unit-wise, I would say Setsuna is the worst. There is no reason not to use her over Takumi. Nyx is also feeble but she can at least kill things and she doesn't have a lot of competition early on (Odin is bad and Camilla should be going physical more often than not).

Portrayal-wise: Whoo boy, where to start. Story-wise, Xander has a clear lead for being a impossibly thick-headed hypocrite and leading to a lot of unnecessary drama but Kamui and Azura get (dis)honorable mentions for their contributions to the plot. Personality-wise, Pieri and Asama are some of the worst characters I have ever experienced, the former being a childish psychopath that no one treats as such and the latter being douchebag supreme (Asama x Hinoka and Asama x Sakura, holy shit!). Neither get the punishment they really deserve, save for optionally killing Pieri in Birthright.

Edited January 10, 2017 by NekoKnight

[Radiant head]

I feel Corrin and Azura are more victims of this game's poor writing than them being genuinely bad, specially Azura since she was used as a plot device. Her personality in supports and her ability to dance make me like her too much.

i really liked her support with laslow.

[Time the Crestfallen]

Unit

Nyx, hands down. Good Mag and Spd is the only thing she has to her name. She dies to a sneeze thanks to bad HP, Def and mediocre Res and she can't hit anything due to having bad Skl and Lck. Joining as a lvl 9 Dark Mage in the same chapter as a lvl 10 Adventurer Shura and not having the Fimbulvetr tome she joins with is even worse and being a magic unit in a game were magic is mediocre at best is just the shit-flavoured icing on this disaster of a cake.

Portrayal

Xander, with Garon being a dishonourable mention. Both were equally shit, but the fact that we were meant to like and sympathise with Xander just makes him a failure on top of everything else.

Edited January 9, 2017 by The Blind Idiot God

[SageHarpuiaJDJ]

I feel Corrin and Azura are more victims of this game's poor writing than them being genuinely bad, specially Azura since she was used as a plot device. Her personality in supports and her ability to dance make me like her too much.

I agree with this. I think a lot of characters suffer from the writing in general.

For me:

Unit:

Nyx. Too frail, lack of skill to hit things, and Dark Mages got shafted hard.

Portrayal:

No one really comes to mind since I have a rather high tolerance for a lot the tropes that are presented, but I think my least favorite unit is prolly Xander. Why Birthright in general? Why Zola's Chapter in Conquest? Why Anthony on Revelation? I hate hating Xander's personality because everything else about him is freaking awesome.

[Tolvir]

If they pushed more of Camila's supposed back story and why and how mentally f'ed up she is, it may of helped her a bit. Would of made her far more interesting. In her chapter, if I remember correctly, Corrin gets pretty close to convincing her of what is going on, before Leo shows up and stops that. I think it would of been far more interesting if she is one of the few units that actually defects from Nohr and joins you, since Conquest gets Kaze.

And now that you point it out, it actually frustrates me how much she was pushed as just fanservice. She has so many interesting things about her actual character and backstory, and they decided to focus more on her tits.

Worst character, a tie between Azura and Ryoma for me.

Azura is boring. She is mysterious for the sake of being mysterious. Her actual heritage wasn't shocking, her character for the most part was very blank. I liked Azura, but she is definitely one of the worst.

Ryoma is kind of in the same boat. He is boring as hell. Nothing all that interesting about the guy. He is good at everything, he is a bad ass, he is a great leader, he is a great king, he is a great person, blah, blah, blah. It's not even the fact that he is such a do gooder. I clearly have no problem with those types, just look at my profile pic. A Draenei paladin. It's the fact that he has nothing interesting about him. If a character is good at everything, then they have no flaws that let them grow. And that is his biggest issue that makes him so uninteresting. He doesn't grow at all.

And then the absolute worst is Azama. At least Jakob makes being a dick funny.

Edited January 9, 2017 by Tolvir

[Rend Keaven]

If I had to pick one from each kingdom:

Hoshido: Hana, her support with Corrin is stupid. "Your kidnapping caused by best friend to cry, you're a horrible person!" She has strange RNG in combat, She got hit by <15% hits that took half of her health 7 times in my playthrough and who needs another swordmaster when you have Ryoma. She makes a good mother as well, giving easy access to Astra, so that's one good thing about her (marry her with Takumi to have a killing machine as a son).

Nohr: Beruka, not awful, has good supports but is very forgettable. Honestly, there are very few bad Nohrian characters, I could be wrong though.

Edited January 9, 2017 by Rend Keaven

[EricaofRenais]

All the copy characters from Awakening are the ones I don't like, especially Rhajat and Cealdori. If I want to see Awakening characters I play Awakening, I feel like they should have left those characters out of the over bloated cast and spent a bit more time on other characters. While I am straight I kind of wanted to try out the same sex marriage options for the heck of it, but I found Rhajat to be rather repulsive and I wish Scarlet had been the female same sex option. Niles at least has a bit better personality and a rather interesting backstory.

[Slyfox]

Hoshido: Hana, her support with Corrin is stupid. "Your kidnapping caused by best friend to cry, you're a horrible person!"

There are a lot of people like her in real life who jump to conclusions like that, so I don't think it's poorly written. It's a mark against her for sure, but there are plenty of characters who are actually jerks, and they don't even have the excuse of thinking with their emotions before applying logic. We have Jakob, Azama, Charlotte and Niles, to name a few.

Honestly, it's also why Oboro is such a great character. She is in a constant struggle to not let her emotions get the best of her. She is self-aware enough to know that's it's a problem, and she actively tries to get better.

And I forgot to add some more characters that I think detract from Fates. Garon (but I did like Gooron...), Mikoto, Sumeragi and Arete. They exist to add drama, but we don't know them, so it falls completely flat.

I'm not including Hans and Iago, because Hans slightly bucks the trend of being a heartless goon by covering for Corrin and Iago is just hilarious.

[Delfino]

Unit-wise, I'd say the worst is a tie between Nyx and Setsuna. I've been able to make use of even Odin many times in a lot of classes, but those two? They always seem to turn out terribly. They suffer from similar problems in that they both have only one or two good stats (Setsuna has speed, Nyx has speed and magic), while the rest are either meh or downright terrible. Neither of them gets any skill or luck to even hit anything (further compounded for Setsuna since yumi have horrid hit rates), and they can't even take a hit to make up for it. Setsuna's strength is freakin' terrible because it's supposed to be counter-balanced by the high might of yumi as well as the Quick Draw skill so she's not broken considering her speed, but that just makes her all the more difficult to reclass, which sucks since you have Takumi in the same class, who just blows her out of the water in almost every way, giving her bonus garbage points. Nyx gets bonus points as well being in a nerfed class with a nerfed weapon type in the route that's significantly harder than the other two. And in Revelations, they both suck.

When it comes to portrayal, I'd say Corrin (referring to Corrin as "she" because I always play female). As others have said, though, it's mostly the bad writing that's responsible for this. She is an idealistic moron, trusting Garon up through Conquest chapter 14 even though he's clearly an asshole and has threatened to kill her several times, not recognizing the singer as Azura, etc... and she whines incessantly throughout Conquest. Oh but she's supposed to be this perfect snowflake who everyone loves and that the world revolves around, and if you hate her, you're clearly wrong... I get that they probably wanted the avatar character to be awesome, but they tried way too hard to make her special, to the point where it's bothersome. She also proves to be a hypocrite in some of her supports.

Dishonorable mention goes to Peri, who, as I've said before, is like some 14-year-old fangirl's crazy OC, multi-colored hair and all. She drags every other character down with her in her supports as they all scramble to calm her down when she starts throwing a tantrum whenever she can't have her way. For some reason, they're all willing to overlook the fact that she kills innocent people whenever she feels like it because she's Xander's retainer and she's good at fighting. For a guy who seems to care a lot about his image, Xander sure doesn't seem to care about how her actions may reflect upon him, even though he freaks out at Laslow for his habits.

Edited January 11, 2017 by Delfino

[Thane]

You know, just to come at this from another angle and talk about someone who's often ignored support-wise, I'd like to bring up Setsuna.

In terms of support, Setsuna is arguably the worst character in the entire series from a certain point of view. She doesn't act or even talk as a human, she's got zero chemistry with anyone as a result of that, making her status as royal retainer even stranger, and I believe every single one of her first generation supports revolve almost entirely around her, and it's always the same story: she sucks at something or gets stuck somewhere, and for some reason people either want or have to stick around her.

Even in terms of the most tropy of tropy characters, Setsuna is by far the worst offender, lacking in anything outside of the supposed jokes that are repeated ad nauseam. Every single one of her supports are interchangeable.

Now don't get me wrong, characters like Peri are worse for dragging down her support partners to her level, Xander's main story appearance makes him a far worse character than someone as insignificant as Setsuna could ever hope to be, and Camilla's fan service and revolting supports almost make my physically ill, but the fact that Setsuna does not even act like a human being bothers me.

Edited January 11, 2017 by Thane