After doing more research on the game, bracketing as a mechanic has completely captured my mind. The fact that you can always predict where a unit will be floored at when given certain resources is incredible, as it helps immeasurably with reliability (especially in a game as silly and reliably unreliable as Berwick), along with progression being guaranteed with both weapon and unit level itself being consistent (enough) to raise.
Looking at unit brackets, a lot of them make sense. Units with high bases often have tight brackets, likely so you can't just feed them a few levels and watch them go to town with rigged growths. It's a way of keeping them within expectations (Goodness knows I'd love extra speed/def on Clifford/Ward, but the one point they can basically ever get makes that moot, especially with how aggressive the experience curve is. It's a reasonable piece of design. The offensive mages and thieves have them as well, save for Perceval and Axel, (the latter of the two being a thief mechanically) which makes sense that the magic users are expected to not be able to become *too* powerful (And in Enid's case, effectively guaranteeing a time for her to promote), and the thieves will stay in their lanes. It's rather thoughtful design.
Units that you're expected to raise, for the most part, have loose brackets. It's a way of indulging that pleasure of watching the boxes tick up (example below, spoiled to compress the post):
The fact growth units have loose brackets makes sense mechanically, as well as in the interest of effective anecdote generation that keeps conversation about these games going. You're gonna have something different every time, and you may have new stars of the show that surprise you every time you play.
However, not all growth units have loose brackets, and therein lies the reason I wanted to make this post and see what people thought. Because some units that you'd expect to have tight brackets given their capabilities have loose ones (Perceval being the primo example, as he's a magic user. I'd argue Reese fits too, as he's a force deploy and you'd hope for consistency from a mandated unit), and some units that are meant to be projects the player uses through the game have tight ones. Notably, the units like that (Dean, Arthur, Sherlock, and Enid [how special! She gets to be mentioned in both the praise and attempted disassembly of brackets]) are ones that I don't think you would ever want to not use, unless it was a self imposed challenge? These units are consistent powerhouses who you can always rely on to be useful to you. They aren't prohibitively expensive, permanent recruitment of them is accessible (or, for half of them, free), and they're all very good at killing and providing utility that well, you always want in Berwick. (Especially Enid's hit aura. Sometimes I'd deploy her to fill the slot not just to raise her fire rank and be good chip, but because that hit aura is an incredible thing on side chapters when you don't have Reese's aura)
These units being consistently good and effective roster mainstays isn't necessarily a problem. It's good to always have units you can rely on! Rather, I wanted to ask (and provide my own potential answers to) two questions, to hopefully learn something. What units would benefit from tight brackets, and what ones are fine with their loose ones.
Faye's the obvious answer for tight brackets, given both her plot relevance, the fact that I swear the greater fan community loves their female myrms, and the fact that, even if as it stands now she is a bad unit, she's satisfying to use because of progression. She's probably the only unit in the game who can reliably avoid attacks without a bane skill. While frivolous, especially since Berwick is in 1rn, the optics and pleasures of that are, at least to the metaphorical lizard brain, a tempting thing. Tight brackets would hurt her dodgetanking (likely something that would fit better with the intended play of the game, unless you kill eight people) but it would actually mean that she can fulfill her intended mechanical and narrative purpose significantly better (Plus, it would help blind players deal with Chaos! That was a rough time). Foresight may be the number one thing to improve the capabilities and how "in control" a player feels in a strategy game, but I'd argue that thoughtful design and making sure they have the tools goes a long way as well. That, and it turns her from an unreliable female myrmidon into a somewhat squishy, yet reliable unit. She doesn't have the overkill combat of her other reliable buddy, Dean, but I think it would do her a great service to not be as wildly variable.
I think there's also an argument to be made for Sylvis, as well (2 strength takes her to Faramir's 33 with Rossweisse+mithril arrows that I swear feels like the one shot threshold for a lot of enemies.) I don't know if this is a common take, but she's kind of... middling? Maim isn't an active skill, which is both understandable for balance yet terrible for it's intended usage. Sure, you can make that Aperion early for the somewhat more reliable cripples, but with how a lot in this game is command skills, it'd be nice to have it on a cooldown or a command thing, even with the limiter. (Plus, Aegina/Perceval exist for incredible capture duos. Let her have this!) Her bow progression isn't incredible, and while she does have aim+overwatch+deadeye as options for her that other archers don't have (deadeye being unique to her), it doesn't feel like it puts the ball enough in her court to use her over other archers. Esteban's got a better progression and doesn't break the bank to use, even if he's half a meme. Sherlock is well, Sherlock, the moment you get past that middling early game he becomes a demon. Faramir has the bases and five movement! The thing is, unless you want to recruit her/do her map/some certain overwatch cheese that Sherlock just hasn't gotten enough experience yet to do, you can basically always field another archer. Tight brackets would hopefully give her some reliability that makes her worth using, even despite her frankly concerning recruitment costs.
There's likely arguments to be made for Ruby (can get nothing but one speed before promotion) and Larentia (She's already incredible because she's on a wyvern, and the best indicator for the unit quality of a woman in an SRPG is "is she on a dragon," and it's not like she's an incredible combat mainstay, she's just Enough, like Christine) but I don't have as intense thoughts on those two as I do the others (despite me using Larentia every map I could since her joining, and her out-levelling Ward. There's just always something she can be doing!) so I'm curious if others have any thoughts, or if this is discourse I've missed for one reason or another. Bare minimum, I think brackets are genius and I hope to see other strategy games take advantage of similar systems to further emphasize player capability and predictability.
Rare
