Augestein

In terms of investment to usefulness ratio? Yeah, he still is. You can get use out of him with Beastfoe, and Forged Iron bows with his affinity are still decent enough. It's more useful than many other characters with negligible investment. The rest of them I gave higher scores simply because they stop being bad. Leo doesn't. Which is why I still gave him a score of 3.5. Because he's the best of the bad units. But I don't agree that he's better more valuable? Perhaps. But not better. The rating here would be dubious at best, and is still biased, because Elincia should then be lower. As Elincia comes back kinda mediocre even if she was good in Part 2. Her base stats aren't terribly hot, and any unit around her that you raised will probably be more powerful. She's the strongest healer, no doubt though. If we start looking at it the way some people are, I'm calling foul on even more ratings rather than less. Because Haar is there as well as competition, and the Crimea Knights aren't too bad either, and in Endgame is the only time she's really good because in the prologue she has a slim sword. I would still give both a good score. Marcus kinda fades out, but he's still not bad towards the end. Athos appears and is good, but still not invincible at the end. He's still valuable with things like being a unit that can use all of the magical S rank tomes, so if you missed out on someone, you can use it, and he makes it the easiest to kill the dragon. He's 100% able to kill it with the help of maybe a dance or a physic healer. Stuff like that matters to me. There's no reason to be like Athos 7/10 because even if he's super good in his chapter, he's just not there to be good, you feel me? - No. Depends on how many Laguz you bring to the end. There's 1 with the heron that'll probably want it. Ena might want one. Kurth doesn't start with formshift. So that's 3 uses right there for 1. And IIRC you get only 2. So it's hardly an issue to shrug off so quickly. - Of which if I were using Skrimir I'd slap him with a Speedwing and keep resolve on him. There's not much you can do for Volug's attack outside of support someone that grants him atk. Which would be more viable if there were more Atk+ affinities in the DB, but that means giving him Micaiah, or Leonardo. Both of which aren't particularly nice for him. Even Shade won't help there because she's still OHKOed. Both are definitely getting paragon to help level, but it's pretty tough to level Laguz honestly. Part 1 Volug gets dirt nothing, and part 3 he has a hard time fighting too. Volug probably isn't close to speed as that requires like... 13 levels. And I think that's kinda pushing it for him to honestly have for endgame if we're going off of hard mode without some serious help. - But he has resolve. So speed is less of an issue there as you can leave him in resolve range to still fight. So it's not nearly as lopsided, and Skrimir does have enough durability to safely remain in that range. 32 defense is capped Ike defense for reference. That's pretty good. Especially when he has some room for growth. - Which isn't that big of a deal next to Kurth and/or the myriad of res boosting titles on the floor. - Which requires you to bring not one, but two DBers into endgame which means that you're no longer playing as efficiently as possible. Paragon can only go on one of them at a time, and that means intentionally slowing yourself down to ensure that Volug gets enough EXP to be better. The A support is real, but perhaps not the stats for both Volug and his partner. Which is why I said it's more of a resolve versus support. Of which, I'm kinda partial to resolve for free so I can put Nihil on the person so they can actually fight the boss instead of needing Parity. And that's the thing. They DO get outclassed by the royals. My point was that Skrimir and Volug are suspiciously similar by endgame and Volug is nearly 2 points higher. Hence my "we put too much weight on early game" and it's also random because of examples that I'll point out below like... Mist and Sanaki. Like if you examine this more carefully you'll see exactly what I mean. According to this, Nephenee > Giffca (what?) , Stefan < Geoffrey (despite the fact that neither can really get supports, Stefan never sucks at any given point, and Geof has nothing on Stefan in part 4 which literally means that we're saying that 2 chapters make him much better when Geoffrey isn't even close to Stefan stat wise),Giffca >= Skrimir (seriously? They aren't even close in relations to each other. Giffca is much better). A lot of these have no real rhyme or reason to them. Volug is excused for being good early on, fine, so what the heck is Nephenee's excuse? She's never extraordinary and is just an average run of the mill unit. And those aren't the only ones, it's all over the place. Sanaki is somehow better than Mist despite the fact that Mist never is actually bad at her job of being a healer, while Sanaki is just a lousy mage that can't heal... Yet even if they are right next to each other, she's *slightly* better than Mist. I'm not buying it. Mist is fine when you have her, and I don't want to take her to endgame, but Sanaki is never fine and I don't want to take her into endgame. Forced be damned. 1-5: Volug joins. He's arguably better than Zihark outside of 1-2 range for the limited wing edges. Granted Z isn't here but the point still stands. 1-6: Tauroneo joins who is without a doubt the best unit. 1-7: Tormod's clan joins and all of them are respectable. 1-8: So many forced units and all of them are amazing. 1-9: Not there. 1-E: All of those uber units sans Tauroneo for whatever reason. 3-6: Midway through the chapter the BK comes to help. Biorhythms make evasion kinda dicey at moments. 3-12: Can't argue there, and defense is at its best. I'd rather use a raised Jill or Nolan for the chokepoints, and if that's not enough you have a bunch of yellow units that are willing to die for you. 3-13: Nightmare. Everyone here kinda sucks to a certain extent but you still have yellow units to die. It's not nearly as sparse as some make it sound. Even with Paragon in part 1, assuming I'm not playing to simply raise Zihark, he's not nearly as valuable as some would make it. Mia is a good unit in a sea of great units. That doesn't make her worse. She functions fine. It's still false. Con is a stat that doesn't grow in the games. Therefore if Nino uses anything, she's slowed down. Pent isn't slowed down unless he tries to use a Elfire, and you could give him a body ring to end that. That never stops for Nino. Pent will always have better defense than Nino (even if they could somehow reach 20/20 before endgame). She has lousy attack when she first joins, and she doesn't have good defense either. So even assuming that we were talking about endgame stats, it's still able to be debated because it comes from free A support + better defensive merit + A rank in staves versus slightly more raw magic power. That's easy. Pent. I already discussed Erk versus Pent. It's not even the same thing here. Pent joins first and then Nino joins. Not the other way around. For Seth, it's even worse: The only thing Franz wins in is hp and speed. Seth actually has more res than Franz, and if Franz opts to not go Paladin, he loses in movement as well. I guess Franz can be happy that he wins with that 1 whopping point of strength though. Like I said, these examples are absolutely horrible. Zihark isn't worse. No. But he's not that much better is the issue. And that's where it starts counting even less. DB chapters aren't that hard. They are harder, but the game throws super units at you constantly in RD. It's hard when you try to keep every scrub fielded and leveled. When you try to win? It's not that hard.

Well it does for some and not others. That's my issue. Again, Leonardo is one of the more useful units in the DB and he has a wretched endgame, and guess what? He has a low score. Volug has a great early game and a so-so end game. Better score than Caineghis. Like... What?

No. I didn't. I get that Mia is in the better army and needed less. But Zihark isn't really needed either. That's my beef with it. Pent and Seth are not good examples. Pent and Seth start up good, and end with stats similar to what we're having on units that were raised. When Pent joins, Erk is massively underleveled in comparison, will never have A rank in staves even if he were promoted, and Pent always has more defense than Erk. Even if Erk was the exact same level Pent would still be better. He also comes with a free A support. Seth is even worse as the only noteworthy stat Franz has on him is speed eventually, and 20 speed is enough. This isn't even remotely close to the same thing here. You're not investing in either. If either got 0 stat ups the entire game, they'd STILL have use for a considerable amount of the game. Units like Sothe or Zihark cannot say the same. The issue I have is that there are certain units people have to invest in regardless and people just bypass on some and then make it a focal point on others. Sothe on the other hand starts out really good, and becomes worse as the game goes on to the point that he's better of not being deployed by endgame. Even Zihark-- which if you casually use, doesn't suffer from this. It doesn't matter if "endgame is easy," there are enough units like say... Ike, Titania, Haar etc, that start good/fine and end up good/fine, so I think the endgame should in fact count as a weight for their final score. 45 ATK is pretty high. 34 AS isn't easy for him to reach either. That literally means Sothe needs 27 strength and the baselard (you miss the Baselard and you're screwed). Considering that he has a late promotion and terrible caps for strength in tier 2 is a recipe for disaster. Gareth with Pure Water + Tiles > Sothe for that matter. The point is that people don't put enough weight on endgame. It's easier, but that doesn't mean that it shouldn't count against a person either. "Availability" is a weak argument for a person for why they are good. Realistically, it should be "how good are they when they join," and "how long they continue to be good." IE someone like Tormod deserves his low score because he starts out godlike (like seriously, he has like the same stats as Sothe with 1-2 range for like... 2 points of defense), but then leaves and comes back like trash. He's definitely worse than Sothe, not because Sothe is around longer, but because the chapters where Tormod is around are worse. Sothe never sucks as much as Tormod does when he returns. Ever. Even if Sothe gets pretty bad towards the end. Skrmir's chapters should weigh something because it's dumb to be like "well even though they have similar stats, screw that, we're just ignoring that and saying Skrimir is bad while Volug isn't because Volug was good earlier on." That literally makes no sense. It becomes Earth Avoid versus Resolve. Which I'd say that if you snagged an A support with Volug , it would be a smidgen more useful as the option to give Volug resolve exists and there's no much you can do to give Skrimir a support. However, what I don't think is that we should harp on about Skrimir's stats for why he's bad. They are Volug's stats essentially. So if we're talking about Skrimir's stats, then Volug's should be considered as well. In the same way a person might consider replacing Raven with Harken in Blazing Sword. Which is an absolutely ridiculous way of measuring them. That's my issue.

And to me I think that's kinda silly on the account that Zihark and Mia aren't in the same army unless you recruit him, and in that case... Mia > Zihark. Which is why I have a hard time justifying him be that good.

I wasn't just talking about in comparison to Edward though.

This was actually pretty fun. Kinda sad that it's over. And I still stand by that Zihark isn't THAT good. He's decent but not like... Better than half of the cast. Some of them like Meg, Lyre, and Fiona will forever be my favorite unholy trinity , and this pleases me that years later, people still think they are rightfully the worst characters in the game. I still think Fiona is worse, but it's so close it's not worth discussing. I don't. The issue is that Sothe is pretty bad in part 4. Like any DB unit that's raised in part 3 starts behaving comparable to Sothe, so Sothe's godlike tendencies start to vanish after some time. Even in HM. I think people overrate the "hardest / easiest parts of the game." You still have to clear them, and having garbage units at any point will make them hard. It's just that... The DB is filled with units that need EXP desperately, and overusing Sothe can make your Part 3 and Part 4 absolute hell, and in the end Sothe doesn't give you much back for funneling tons of EXP into him. At best he's a crappier Volke-- which as you can see from most ratings here, people don't take too kindly to Volke overall. So realistically, it's fair. Tauroneo is good for 1-6 and 3-12 (and that's even debatable because he's forced deployment puts him in an annoying spot IMO) and by 3-12, you have some decent DBers for anyone you've put effort into raising. Then is pretty mediocre for the rest of the game he appears. Leaving Resolve on him helps his performance, but it's certainly not by enough that I actually care about. People put too much emphasis on like... 1 chapter for characters being good.and the early game I mean look at that gap between Volug and Skrimir. Skrimir and Volug have darn near the same speed stat, and Skrimir destroys him everywhere else-- He comes with Resolve innately making it free, and his S rank is 3 might weaker than Volug's SS rank- which is more than made up for by Skrimir's superior strength base and growth (seriously, Volug has awful strength growth WTF and on average it's plain worse than Skrimir's base when he reaches his highest level). Yet... Volug is nearly 2 points higher than Skrimir. No. I don't think people put too much emphasis on late game. They don't put enough.

And I hate Rhys. Because he can actually be one rounded. It's the exact reason I'd rather use Mist over him despite the fact that he actually can damage enemies. I don't think Ana's vote should totally be discounted. She's going with the argument of "can't fight, and I could use another unit." She feels that the refresh and other support options that they grant are not enough to make up for their lack of durability. THAT is a realistic reason for rating them that lowly. I don't think they are that bad because they have things like canto and the like to move out of the way, but I can see how it would annoy others.

It's not even my forte and I know this is true. In this day in age, there's no excuse for not knowing this, and any person that isn't aware should step down in regards to making decisions like this. And at this point, it's such a lousy choice that I'd question everyone involved with the decision in their ability to lead. Yeah, let's select someone that has a rapsheet for being awful. Even if it DID cause autism, autism is a much smaller problem than viruses that occur as a result of removing vaccination from the equation.

Why would you not want a game to become mainstream? That's like asking: "would you rather not make straight A's in school?" "Would you rather make 20k instead of 90k?" Like... What?

No. FFVIII is not loved. Primarily because the story is just... Weird. Like... I can't even begin to describe the story without seemingly going into a rant. The gameplay is in the same boat. It has some interesting ideas but overall is just ... Easily breakable, and the worst part, is that if you don't break it? It breaks you.

I hope so, and this game was like... MADE for Ephraim.

Just hoping for Robin, Erika, Ephraim, and ... a lot more than I thought. This should be good if it has half the quality of Zelda.

I'm liking the metroid style

Hidden items are just a mess in FFT anyways on the account that in addition to it working in REVERSE for Brave (like seriously, WTF is that garbage), it doesn't tell you that there are rare and common items on a hidden item tile, so it's not just enough to have Move-Find-Item, but then you have a percentage to grab it, and then a percentage to grab the one you want. Without a guide, this is horrible. In general it doesn't bother me for most items, but then you have stuff like Javelin 2 being in 1 battle where a chemist specifically needs either to be able to jump from the top of a big monster or have boots to jump that high. THAT'S some cryptic nonsense. Brave being a hidden modifier for knight weapons, katanas and fist was pretty messed up too. Units leaving from Brave and Faith I was honestly fine with as this was a far better system than Chaos Frame from Tactics Ogre which gave you cryptic hints on how a character felt about you, changed based on storyline decisions (uh... Cool, but at least let me know that this is happening!), how the character performed in battle, and didn't have the same message for different alignments (meaning that you could have say 6 units each with different alignments and loyalties and you wouldn't know what the messages meant or even to check for them because of how the game worked). Faith is in the same boat too on the account that no one will ever leave for Brave loss or Faith gain naturally without player intervention, and there's never a way to buff lower Brave enough or raise Faith enough in one battle for them to leave without a warning or two. While Tactics Ogre warned you, it does it in a way where there's nothing you can really do about it. But honestly, it's less cryptic than being able to get mythril items in FFTA1-- combos are pretty much impossible to get without a guide for each class. FFTA2 is much better in that regard. It has the least amount of cryptic nonsense. Dare I say it, FFTA2 is actually highly ignored and underrated. For stories, I actually understand why you'd prefer the first one the most. It's without a doubt the most straightforward of the bunch. It's also the least wordy. It talks when it needs to and doesn't say much else (which is astoundingly shocking coming from Square Enix).

Might keep using Ilyana then. I liked her in RD:Redux. Actually, I find myself liking all of the characters I kinda don't in Redux. Meg was like the MVP of the game for the DB.

Probably FE10 overall. There are just some bizarre choices in the game that I really don't like. As clunky as FE4 can be, at least it's a feel that you can adjust to its weird rules and deal with it. FE10 has a ton of games under its belt and just... Doesn't fix enough in my eyes.

I also want to say that the Tutorial actually tells you all of this. It's just so long that most people don't want to bother with it. And I never remember it being removed. While I believe that to be a flaw as it is needlessly wordy, it did give you some info on this, just not in a way that most can stomach. The job requirements are the worst offender as the only way to know how to get them is through grinding. The first couple of jobs aren't so bad like Knight, Monk, Geomancer, etc. It's ones like Dancer, Ninja, Samurai, and especially Mime that are bad. WoTL makes it even worse with some like Dark Knight having such stupid requirements that you'd never unlock it without a guide.

Huh. Interesting.Can't believe you managed to do that. Well I can, but it's still impressive! Good work.

That's actually a really good point. Hans wasn't that bad of a guy overall. Just a guy that enjoyed doing what Garon said.

It's still nice. It gives her 1 range counter attacks for what it's worth.

It's still nice. It gives her 1 range counter attacks for what it's worth.

I'd hardly say that they'll be priceless. Once again, the common man is going to have to survive and suffer through a house of insanity.

I actually find tactics ogre worse than fft Though I'd say it's best to play tactics ogre first. The original and the PSP version are not the same.

I can see that as fine. It makes things make a bit more sense in PoR tbh.

For $0 that's a steal! I have games that for $0 I'd still consider it a curse.