Why are some units purposely made terrible?

[Slumber]

54 minutes ago, Refa said:

Literally all of the units that you cited are better than Lyre.  Wendell has the highest speed base in the game, so he can double forever with Excalibur (not to mention being able to double in other classes, although he'll benefit greatly from having a forge).  Boah is kind of like Wendell but worse (although he does have a higher magic and staff base).  Both of them are good warpers.  Bantu doesn't have long term potential but he's a decent filler unit who can hit hard and not die in one hit.  Hannibal is the worst unit in FE4 but it's a lot easier to get him to do something useful than it is to get Lyre.  Juno is fairly bad but she has all of the perks that being a flier offers; namely, rescuing units with a high movement base.  Zealot is one of the better units in the game.  When you get him, he either severely weakens units (leaving them for your weaker units to get kills off of) or straight up ORKOes them.  It's really nice to have him and Marcus leading your army, at least up until the end of the Western Isles where you'll probably be benching them.  Still, being your best (or one of your best, since Marcus is better IMO) units for a prolonged period of time is no small feat.

While you could make a case for Hannibal and Juno to be worse than Lyre (although at that point, it's really nitpicking), but everyone else is so much better than her that it's not even funny.

Look. I've never actually used Lyre, because Laguz in FE10 are just a pain to work with and level. The argument aside, my point was that Fire Emblem has generally gotten better at not tossing you terrible units since FE7 or so(Even though I've done a poor job at defending one of the worst in FE10).

Though in my defense, RD has like 70 units, not every one can be a winner. I'd also argue that Gareth is worse than Lyre, but now I'm actively bringing up counter-points to my argument, so I'll shut up.

But I won't budge on Zealot. He joins with stats that are acceptable for the moment you get him, and he can use silver weapons, but even by that point, unpromoted units will be close to reaching his base promoted stats, he has some of the worst growths in the game, and relying on him for anymore than his recruitment chapter is dangerous due to how precious EXP is in FE6. Having a promoted unit with bases and growths that poor will actively be a detriment. Marcus exists to purely baby your early game units so they don't get stuck in bad situations. Zealot doesn't even get that, since you're just about out of that brutally difficult section where having a Jeigan or two would actually be nice.

Edited February 5, 2017 by Slumber

[NekoKnight]

I wish IS would cut those characters. Give them some unique growths/bases or require some extra initial investment but don't just make them garbage. If the character isn't fun or rewarding to play, they might as well not exist. And that's a shame because people will miss out on potentially interesting character interactions by only using the viable members of the cast.

[General Banzai]

48 minutes ago, Slumber said:

I'm new here, so I'm not privy to this site's tier listings, so I'd love to see the reasoning behind this.

Actually, Wendell I can see(Especially in FE1), but not Zealot.

Tiers on this site are generally based around completing the game fast, which is easier to do with units that start overleveled. Even though Wendell and Zealot have atrocious growths, their bases are good enough to be solid contributors for a significant portion of the game, especially in Shadow Dragon where units can be reclassed and given forged weapons that can trivialize many units even lategame.

[Slumber]

6 minutes ago, General Banzai said:

Tiers on this site are generally based around completing the game fast, which is easier to do with units that start overleveled. Even though Wendell and Zealot have atrocious growths, their bases are good enough to be solid contributors for a significant portion of the game, especially in Shadow Dragon where units can be reclassed and given forged weapons that can trivialize many units even lategame.

Then that would by why I can't see Zealot as viable, since that'd be the one case where he is. Even if you're doing it for rankings, you're better off not using him, but if you are going as fast as possible, then there's a case for using him, even if it basically is for only two chapters.

Edited February 5, 2017 by Slumber

[General Banzai]

2 minutes ago, Slumber said:

Then that would by why I can't see Zealot as viable, since that'd be the once case where he is. Even if you're doing it for rankings, you're better off not using him, but if you are going as fast as possible, then there's a case for using him, even if it basically is for only two chapters.

if you wanna see something cool, check out Dondon's 0% growth playthroughs. He mods the games so that all units have 0% growth rates and then beats the games as fast as possible. He also has some pretty cool commentary explaining his strats. (He uses Zealot a lot)

Edited February 5, 2017 by General Banzai

[Truthblade]

28 minutes ago, NekoKnight said:

I wish IS would cut those characters. Give them some unique growths/bases or require some extra initial investment but don't just make them garbage. If the character isn't fun or rewarding to play, they might as well not exist. And that's a shame because people will miss out on potentially interesting character interactions by only using the viable members of the cast.

Thank You, this is exactly my point!

[Dunal]

IS doesn't usually take into consideration availability or inferior stat distributions. Or at least they didn't used to.

It's not that they're intentionally made bad, just that they do not take certain things into account. They tend to be pretty good at 'total growth percentages', skills (conceptually)  or stat potential and things like that. But that means very little when SKL point-for-point is far less valuable than other stats, for instance.

 

[Irysa]

19 hours ago, Slumber said:

But I won't budge on Zealot. He joins with stats that are acceptable for the moment you get him, and he can use silver weapons, but even by that point, unpromoted units will be close to reaching his base promoted stats, he has some of the worst growths in the game, and relying on him for anymore than his recruitment chapter is dangerous due to how precious EXP is in FE6. Having a promoted unit with bases and growths that poor will actively be a detriment. Marcus exists to purely baby your early game units so they don't get stuck in bad situations. Zealot doesn't even get that, since you're just about out of that brutally difficult section where having a Jeigan or two would actually be nice.

EXP is not precious at all in FE6 dude, the Isles are an EXPfest, full of highly leveled but slow, inaccurate and low defence Fighters/Pirates, along with the odd Shaman or two. Even the Archers are generally using Steel Bows and are thus also easy to double. This isn't FE7 where your EXP gain plummets if you start outleveling enemies either. Zealot, much like Marcus also has the flexability to choose to go with strong silver/killer/effective weapons to net KOs on enemies when neccessary, but can easily limit his strength with some weaker weapons to set up kills for your unpromoted units (that they almost certainly couldn't achieve themselves). He is pretty much an automatic deploy till Chapter 14, so that's 9 maps of great contributions. He tapers off after that, but that 8 mov can still be of use when it comes to helping rescuedrop infantry units like your dancer around.

To say that Zealot is comparing somewhat poorly with your unpromoted units is ignoring the fact that he has +1 movement, +2 con, axes and better weapon ranks than his unpromoted competition. Extra movement is a godsend in many maps, axes matter a lot Chapters 7 and 8, guaranteed Steel Sword or better access matters in the Isles, not getting weighed down by Javelins, Steel Swords, Armorslayers etc boosts his effective AS, and so forth. He's also much bulkier than what Alance are going to be at that point. Even when one of them eventually surpasses him by promoting, he's still better than most of your other unit deployment choices, and only one of them can promote till Chapter 15, by which point the Percival is taking over as main Paladin

Edited February 6, 2017 by Irysa

[Topaz Light]

This is gonna sound weird, but I actually really like the fact that characters with weird or outright bad gameplay builds exist. I think it adds a nice bit of variety to the game, and it opens the potential for things like challenge runs using only lower-tier characters, or coming up with wacky and creative strategies for making the bad characters good.

Also, while using prepromoted characters is generally not my style—I personally find it more enjoyable to try to get through the game using only, or at least mostly, characters who come unpromoted—I can definitely appreciate their strong points, and I do kinda like the dynamic of a sliding scale from bases-focused to growth-focused.

I think one of the coolest things about Fire Emblem is how it facilitates so many different playstyles with its unit diversity, and that's definitely not something I'd wanna see axed just because not every single recruitable character in the game is good.

[Florete]

On 2/4/2017 at 6:13 PM, Refa said:

Honestly, I'd say Radiant Dawn's balancing is the worst as well.  While the highest difficulties of both FE11 and FE12 have more unuseable characters (in FE12's case, it's a ridiculous amount), Radiant Dawn throws ridiculous units at you every few chapters and doesn't reward training up 90% of your units.  I can't think of another FE game that fucks that up so badly.  That said, I still enjoyed the balancing more than FE12 (but not FE11) because at least it was easier to use the worse units in Radiant Dawn.

When it comes to balance in RD, it's so common for people to just throw out "lol Laguz Royals" and call it a day, maybe throwing in Meg/Fiona/Lyre for good measure, and not actually considering the rest of the game's balance, or even if those previous factors are examples of bad balance at all. Imo, they're not.

Let's examine the royals. Yes, they kill almost everything and have a hard time dying. But you only have them for part 4 (+2 part 1 maps for Nailah) and they're spread out before 4-E. Additionally, they don't have ranged offense, leaving a potential hole in your strategies should you only use them, and by the time you've actually gotten them you've trained up other units to the point where laguz royals really are only barely better. They're more like crutch units for players who have lost too many good units so that they can actually finish the game, not game breakers in and of themselves. I find it funny, really, that many people will consider Haar the best unit in the game, yet somehow it's the laguz royals who are bad balance, not the actual best unit in the game.

Also, I'm going to take issue at your "doesn't reward training up 90% of your units," because that's entirely false. As mentioned above, most likely any beorc unit used by the player will be capable come part 4, maybe a little weak in the case of Micaiah's team but they'll grow to that point quickly enough. The only units I found to not be rewarding are units who you just don't have often enough to make them good (Vika, Nealuchi, Muarim), and the truly atrocious Lyre - though even she can be made into something if the player is dedicated enough. However, it should also be noted that whether or not a character is rewarding to use is largely going to be subjective, but due to the way BEXP works in RD allowing most characters to reach their potential more-or-less guaranteed, I think in most cases the result is going to disagree with you.

On a scale from "how dominant are the best units" to "how terrible are the worst units," RD's balance is pretty solid. Unlike the previous FEs, no single unit can practically carry the whole game, the best units all have notable flaws (be it speed, availability, range, move, etc.) keeping them from dominating, and almost any unit can be trained into a powerhouse and given a time to shine.

I mean, when you compare the balance of RD to something like PoR, I can't help but wonder how people can possibly see RDs as worse. PoR is just completely dominated by mounts, leaving anyone else in the dust, and rewards using a small team much more than RD, making everyone else even more worthless. In fact, part of the reason RDs balance isn't that bad is because of the team switching, encouraging the use of multiple units so you can't just blaze through with a team of 4, another strike against your idea that the game doesn't reward training up most of the cast. It rewards training up multiple units more than almost any other game in the series.

But here's the real issue, and it annoys me about every topic like this when people bring up balance: Who cares? I doubt IS does. They don't care about our competitive ideas about balance, this is a series of single-player games. They want a varied cast of many different kinds of units that will appeal to many different kinds of players and keep them coming back. That's why Jagens exist. That's why Ests exist. It's not about balance, it's about variety.

[Just call me AL]

On 2017年2月4日 at 9:45 PM, Slumber said:

Well, Meg CAN have worth, but it will come at the cost of sacrificing pretty much every DB member.

Actually, I would argue that this isn't the case. But Meg's "worth" is so niche, that it isn't worth mentioning in a serious unit discussion. Moreso than Mozu's "can be an archer on Conquest" niche worth. Seeing as Meg's "worth" involves setting up a chokepoint in her first available chapter, and as a ledge blocker for 3-13 in spaces where enemies don't have any means to attack anyone at a higher elevation than them.

[Augestein]

46 minutes ago, Florete said:

When it comes to balance in RD, it's so common for people to just throw out "lol Laguz Royals" and call it a day, maybe throwing in Meg/Fiona/Lyre for good measure, and not actually considering the rest of the game's balance, or even if those previous factors are examples of bad balance at all. Imo, they're not.

Let's examine the royals. Yes, they kill almost everything and have a hard time dying. But you only have them for part 4 (+2 part 1 maps for Nailah) and they're spread out before 4-E. Additionally, they don't have ranged offense, leaving a potential hole in your strategies should you only use them, and by the time you've actually gotten them you've trained up other units to the point where laguz royals really are only barely better. They're more like crutch units for players who have lost too many good units so that they can actually finish the game, not game breakers in and of themselves. I find it funny, really, that many people will consider Haar the best unit in the game, yet somehow it's the laguz royals who are bad balance, not the actual best unit in the game.

Also, I'm going to take issue at your "doesn't reward training up 90% of your units," because that's entirely false. As mentioned above, most likely any beorc unit used by the player will be capable come part 4, maybe a little weak in the case of Micaiah's team but they'll grow to that point quickly enough. The only units I found to not be rewarding are units who you just don't have often enough to make them good (Vika, Nealuchi, Muarim), and the truly atrocious Lyre - though even she can be made into something if the player is dedicated enough. However, it should also be noted that whether or not a character is rewarding to use is largely going to be subjective, but due to the way BEXP works in RD allowing most characters to reach their potential more-or-less guaranteed, I think in most cases the result is going to disagree with you.

On a scale from "how dominant are the best units" to "how terrible are the worst units," RD's balance is pretty solid. Unlike the previous FEs, no single unit can practically carry the whole game, the best units all have notable flaws (be it speed, availability, range, move, etc.) keeping them from dominating, and almost any unit can be trained into a powerhouse and given a time to shine.

I mean, when you compare the balance of RD to something like PoR, I can't help but wonder how people can possibly see RDs as worse. PoR is just completely dominated by mounts, leaving anyone else in the dust, and rewards using a small team much more than RD, making everyone else even more worthless. In fact, part of the reason RDs balance isn't that bad is because of the team switching, encouraging the use of multiple units so you can't just blaze through with a team of 4, another strike against your idea that the game doesn't reward training up most of the cast. It rewards training up multiple units more than almost any other game in the series.

But here's the real issue, and it annoys me about every topic like this when people bring up balance: Who cares? I doubt IS does. They don't care about our competitive ideas about balance, this is a series of single-player games. They want a varied cast of many different kinds of units that will appeal to many different kinds of players and keep them coming back. That's why Jagens exist. That's why Ests exist. It's not about balance, it's about variety.

No. It's not just "lol royals." There are a ton of issues and things that really make RD come across as rushed. The issue is that there's just really lopsided balance for enemy : ally ratios, EXP gain ratios for characters joining, characters aren't particularly balanced with their skills given to them  etc. There's a lot of problems that are far more jarring than other Fire Emblem games in that regard. Especially for one so late in the series.

The royals aren't even what I have in mind for that, and as a matter of fact, the royals are only really there in existence because of the mess of RD's balance. They are pretty much "fail safe" units given to you to ensure that you can't get in an unwinnable situation. Sort of like how FE7 hands you Athos to ensure that you can win in the even that you get screwed over with characters (although it's ludicrously unlikely you'd be that screwed). That's not even what we're addressing here. And that's what older games really were meant to do with replacement units. Give you units that could replace lost units and even if they were worse, they could still be passable. RD? The game is most certainly not balanced around that notion. That's especially easy to see on DB chapters where your deployment slots in later chapters are EXACTLY how many units you can recruit. 

Hello Haar. It's nice that you can carry Part 2, Part 3, and still be one of the best in Part 4. Like what? What part is Haar actually bad? And more pressingly, not really. Meg never becomes a powerhouse for instance. Ever. Leo never becomes a powerhouse, and you have to be particularly RNG blessed for this guy to become a powerhouse.  Lyre never becomes a powerhouse, actually pretty much no cat becomes a powerhouse so that's just wrong. And Bishop/Saint caps are so laughably bad that saying they can become a powerhouse is a joke-- I'd go so far as to say mages in general are incredibly underwhelming in this game as well.  I'd go so far as to say no Laguz really becomes a powerhouse that's trainable that didn't start out as one. They all start good and get worse-- even if they are still usable by the end. 

And instead, in RD you have wonderful chapters like 3-4 and 3-6 where mounted units that aren't fliers can't even get through the entire map. That's failure balance if I've ever seen it. And I don't know what you're talking about for PoR, RD encourages using a small team more than PoR ever does.RD has impossible EXP ranges that without any sort of blatant favoritism towards units, you'll never get some to be even worth anything. 

Some people like a game to be balanced. What's so bad about that? It's lame having a bunch of choices when some of them are really bad. Why have a shooter with 10 guns when only 1 is worth using? I'd rather just have 1 game really well designed around that one gun rather than having 9 other lame powers that are pointless. Some people find that games with better balance are more fun. Varied characters are fun, and it's clear that characters with different skills and abilities are going to be different levels of useful. However, there's a huge difference between being say... "Bartre bad" in FE7, and being "Wendy bad" from FE6. One is sub-optimal but can still be a treat to use, the other is a frustrating experience that just makes you wonder why the unit even exists. It's one thing when there's one or two Wendy units in a game, it's another thing when there's tons of them all around and a person doesn't go to an Internet site that tells them what the unit's growths are, so all they can do is guess how the unit will turn out. 

[Cornguy]

I think some characters are obviously made to be good, and others get left behind as a result.

However, some things seem like flat-out oversights. I know FE8 is the last game balance is relevant in, but Marisa and Joshua have always bothered me. I've always wondered why Joshua has the better join-time, better bases despite them both joining at lv5, better weapon level, and arguably better growths. He even has a better affinity, though they can't be expected to be aware of that. I just don't know what role Marisa was expected to fill if you already had Joshua. 

Rutger and Fir are in a similar situation, but Fir has better, or at the very least, different, endgame stats, and she can recruit Bartre and Karel. Rutger's still better, but unlike Marisa, Fir still has some uses Rutger doesn't. 

I don't mind some imbalance here and there, its bound to happen in a game like this, and it makes things interesting. But I do kind of mind when one character just does everything one character can but better.

By the way, on the topic of Fiona, I feel like she could've been just fine if dismounting had returned and she wasn't excluded from that one(two?) map(s). She wouldn't be perfect, but she wouldn't fall so far behind the rest of the DB.

Laguz needed better balance across the board. I think Volug is the only non-royal I've truly used without regretting it halfway through.

I agree with everything Augestein said by the way. RD really needed some better playtesting. The game could've really benefited being held back a little while longer, but that's how these things go. RD's the only reason I'd be excited for the Tellius games getting on the remake list over things like FE4/5, or the Elibe games. Depending on how many things actually get changed in these alleged remakes.

Edited February 6, 2017 by Cornguy

[Shin]

If every character is good in a game, it usually means the game's difficulty is pretty low. Good stats and functionality only matter if they're needed. Bad units allow a fall back if you happen to lose the good ones, and allow a self-imposed increase in difficulty. Mentioning Zealot, it takes Allan until level 20 to match his base durability and around level 15 for his offensive parameters (taking his better weapon ranks into account). It's more than possible to take him and Marcus to end game in normal mode, although their long term performance does tend to decline when people start promoting.

[JSND Alter Dragon Boner]

Actually this is kind of an interesting question

 

Aside from maybe Shanam, how many characters in FE is actually "Bad ON PURPOSE" instead of just "Bad because of the balancing"

 

[Troykv]

1 hour ago, JSND said:

Actually this is kind of an interesting question

 

Aside from maybe Shanam, how many characters in FE is actually "Bad ON PURPOSE" instead of just "Bad because of the balancing"

 

Maybe Bantu (he has the lowest growths in the existence of everything and lives only of his Fire Stone's usage).

[Shadow Mir]

Wrt RD's balance, I fail to see how it's the worst balanced FE game when Genealogy and Sword of Seals are even worse off in that department IMO (the weapon balance in the former in particular is an outright train wreck (it's nice that it implemented the weapon triangle, but fire magic being so heavy that its theoretical advantage over wind magic doesn't manifest in actual practice? Seriously?), to say nothing of how stupidly unbalanced the holy weapons are (30 might and insane stat boosts, especially Holsety and Balmung... What were the developers smoking to think that was even a remotely good idea?!), the maps overly favouring mounted units due to being so large, and Pursuit being needed to double enemies further skews unit balance).

[Just call me AL]

3 hours ago, Levant Mir Celestia said:

Wrt RD's balance, I fail to see how it's the worst balanced FE game when Genealogy and Sword of Seals are even worse off in that department IMO (the weapon balance in the former in particular is an outright train wreck (it's nice that it implemented the weapon triangle, but fire magic being so heavy that its theoretical advantage over wind magic doesn't manifest in actual practice? Seriously?), to say nothing of how stupidly unbalanced the holy weapons are (30 might and insane stat boosts, especially Holsety and Balmung... What were the developers smoking to think that was even a remotely good idea?!), the maps overly favouring mounted units due to being so large, and Pursuit being needed to double enemies further skews unit balance).

On the other hand, The Binding Blade does have it so that no one unit can truly trivialize the game.

[Florete]

17 hours ago, Augestein said:

Hello Haar. It's nice that you can carry Part 2, Part 3, and still be one of the best in Part 4. Like what? What part is Haar actually bad? And more pressingly, not really. Meg never becomes a powerhouse for instance. Ever. Leo never becomes a powerhouse, and you have to be particularly RNG blessed for this guy to become a powerhouse.  Lyre never becomes a powerhouse, actually pretty much no cat becomes a powerhouse so that's just wrong. And Bishop/Saint caps are so laughably bad that saying they can become a powerhouse is a joke-- I'd go so far as to say mages in general are incredibly underwhelming in this game as well.  I'd go so far as to say no Laguz really becomes a powerhouse that's trainable that didn't start out as one. They all start good and get worse-- even if they are still usable by the end. 

And instead, in RD you have wonderful chapters like 3-4 and 3-6 where mounted units that aren't fliers can't even get through the entire map. That's failure balance if I've ever seen it. And I don't know what you're talking about for PoR, RD encourages using a small team more than PoR ever does.RD has impossible EXP ranges that without any sort of blatant favoritism towards units, you'll never get some to be even worth anything. 

Some people like a game to be balanced. What's so bad about that? It's lame having a bunch of choices when some of them are really bad. Why have a shooter with 10 guns when only 1 is worth using? I'd rather just have 1 game really well designed around that one gun rather than having 9 other lame powers that are pointless. Some people find that games with better balance are more fun. Varied characters are fun, and it's clear that characters with different skills and abilities are going to be different levels of useful. However, there's a huge difference between being say... "Bartre bad" in FE7, and being "Wendy bad" from FE6. One is sub-optimal but can still be a treat to use, the other is a frustrating experience that just makes you wonder why the unit even exists. It's one thing when there's one or two Wendy units in a game, it's another thing when there's tons of them all around and a person doesn't go to an Internet site that tells them what the unit's growths are, so all they can do is guess how the unit will turn out. 

Haar has mediocre speed that can potentially prevent him from wrecking everything, and he's not generally among the best Endgame choices. Besides, due simply to how the game is built, Haar can't carry the whole game like Seth or PoR Titania can. I said almost any unit can become a powerhouse for a reason, and I even pointed out Lyre and some other Laguz as some that don't, but Meg and Leo certainly can become strong with effort and BEXP (Meg isn't even tough tbh). Other Laguz mostly just need to be used a lot to ensure they get their strike rank up. It's different from the norm, but it's reasonably doable. Saint isn't a great offensive class, but they're made to be a support class anyway. Mages are underwhelming, but not terrible.

PoR makes it super simple to blast through the game with just a few units. RD gives you ample time to train multiple units, then splits them up onto different teams, allowing you to actually make use of many of them. If you think RD encourages using a small team more than PoR, I have to wonder if you're playing the same games considering RD more or less forces you to use more units. What does "impossible EXP ranges" even mean? Are you aware of BEXP?

You know what's really lame? Having a bunch of choices that all ultimately amount to the same thing. I will agree to a degree, though, that balance can be bad enough that it's problematic, but RD doesn't have that problem. There are, however, at least three FE games that do have that problem: Genealogy, Binding Blade, and Path of Radiance.
Genealogy - Have fun catching up anyone not on a mount.
Binding Blade - Too many units that are too bad and not rewarding to use, and no way to circumvent it. Apparently New Mystery also has this problem but I'm not familiar with it.
Path of Radiance - The opposite of Binding Blade. The strong units are way too strong, making the weaker units - who, by themselves, are fine - feel unrewarding by comparison.

I don't have these problems with RD. There are a few units that are worse than they reasonably should be, but not a large amount by any means, and no units are too strong that they make everyone else feel pointless.

This was tangentially related to the topic at hand before now but since it's straying away I'd rather not continue this here. If you want to continue PM me or start a new topic. If you respond here again I won't reply.

[Cornguy]

3 hours ago, Levant Mir Celestia said:

Wrt RD's balance, I fail to see how it's the worst balanced FE game when Genealogy and Sword of Seals are even worse off in that department IMO (the weapon balance in the former in particular is an outright train wreck (it's nice that it implemented the weapon triangle, but fire magic being so heavy that its theoretical advantage over wind magic doesn't manifest in actual practice? Seriously?), to say nothing of how stupidly unbalanced the holy weapons are (30 might and insane stat boosts, especially Holsety and Balmung... What were the developers smoking to think that was even a remotely good idea?!), the maps overly favouring mounted units due to being so large, and Pursuit being needed to double enemies further skews unit balance).

I  would not call RD the worst balance-wise, and though its a little unfair, FE4 has the excuse of being old.

When RD was rolling around, they had 9 games worth of experience to fall back on. It was just a bummer they hadn't tested it a little further. There were a few things that could've used work, they feel obvious to most of us after playing the game, and that's what's disappointing. Either they didn't test it enough, or they started testing too late to adjust everything they needed to.

[Jotari]

I don't think you can judge Radiant Dawn in the same way you can judge the rest of the games in the series. It's split focus on multiple armies makes it radically different. You need to focus on it on a chapter by chapter basis rather than compare the viability of the cast against each other. Like Brom. You wouldn't necessarily consider him a fantastic unit. His focus on axes probably makes him worse than Gatrie (I never really focused on training either to be honest) and he pales in comparison to Haar. But he's around in part 2 and the player will be using him in part 2. Come part 3 when he rejoins they have the option of continuing to use him (where I'm sure he'll be capable even if he's outclassed by other units) or retiring him and focusing more on someone else. That's not bad balance. It's perfectly fine. He served a role in the game and had a purpose. Most units do (Lyre and Fiona are the exceptions, the later of which I'm convinced was an oversight without how much mounts are penalized in her available chapters).

Basically if you scrutinize it, Radiant Dawn does have a somewhat unbalanced cast. However on a chapter by chapter basis, if you consider the assets the game gives you and the difficulty that lies therein to achieve victory, I think the gameplay does strike a nice balance.

 

Granted the exp gain on laguz could certainly do with some tweaking. I've never felt any compulsion to use a non royal laguz in that game.

Edited February 7, 2017 by Jotari

[Tolvir]

Dont know honestly. With Reclassing and level cap raising being a thing now, it isnt as much of an issue as any character could be made viable through excessive grinding. For example Nyx is an incredibly weak character when it comes to defenses, even in resistance, which makes her incredibly difficult to use. With some extra grinding, reclassing to Dark Knight, and feeding her a few stat boosts, it can really patch up some of those issues.

At the same time, characters like Fiona or Meg cannot be made viable without sacrificing just about every other unit on their team. And with the lack of reclassing and eternal seals, there is no way of trying to make them good either.

As to the question, I don't know. I honestly do not know why a character would be made purposefully bad. Fire Emblem isnt the only one that does it. Final Fantasy is notorious for that one character who is just about useless. Yuffie or Cait Sith severely under perform compared to other units in FF7, Locke in Final Fantasy 6 under performs, Prompto in 15 is lacking, etc. They can all be used, and probably be used effectively with grinding, but it still doesn't mean they vastly under perform compared to other great characters in the same game.

 

 

Edited February 7, 2017 by Tolvir