Best/Worst in the Series: Round 90

[Bearissoslow]

I see Micaiah getting a lot of hate in here, but it's not necessarily her fault. I mean, yeah, she's a functionally retarded moron that is willing to compromise her principles and morals for some royal cock, but it's more a matter of the fact that she's presented as the antagonist to Ike, the character we've grown to love and root for. Because of the little emphasis on characterization the Dawn Brigade gets, it's almost wholly unfair to even try to compare the DB to the Greil Mercenaries. Micaiah's a shitty character but most of it is the fact that she's the victim of bad pacing and (to me) a bad plot.

As for my vote, irrelevant and late as it may be, I'll go for:

Best: Jill

Reasoning: Jill is a very intriguing character from the minute she joins the GM. I laughed fuckin' hard at her recruitment dialogue, but all of it is taken seriously by the characters in-game. She genuinely shows pure hatred for the laguz and wants nothing more than to help cleanse the world of the filth. In her mind, she loses all alliances just by committing this act of charity, if you will. I think that this has to be one of the most fascinating ways to have an enemy unit be recruited, since 99% of the time the unit goes "WELL SHIT YOU GUYS ARE AWESOME LET ME JOIN", but in this case, she has no intention of joining the Crimea forces, just the desire to be renown for her determination and skill to pursue an enemy and to kill laguz.

As time goes on, you slowly but surely get the opening into her mentality. When the GM get into Begnion, she opens up to Ike with the reality that she was just following a mantra taught to everyone in Daein. She truly believed that laguz were the filth of the world because of the fact that she was never given a chance not to. Her father even endorsed this idea, for fuck's sake. With this in mind, you'd expect someone who'd been taught to hate all laguz to only react to the conflicting feelings with anger and frustration. But, instead, Jill actually starts to consider the other side. She casts away her hatred that existed only in her home country to see the world right in front of her and make the judgement for herself. She opens her mind because she wants to know the truth, rather than just conveniently tagging onto her hatred. At her heart, Jill's not a hateful person, she's just a misled one.

In her support with Mist, you can see how emotionally damaged she is from the inner conflict she's facing. She isolates herself out of nationalistic pride to not associate with the Crimean forces, but she still needs a friend. She initially rejects Mist, but by A support, she's initiating the conversations and confiding her deepest and darkest issue with her. By doing this, she makes a very stark contrast from the isolated and hate-filled person she originally was. With Lethe, Jill shows a humble side of herself. She's willing to swallow her pride and accept the retorts that Lethe throws at her just to get the deeper understanding. It's noticeably difficult at times for her, but she still follows through with it. For someone with as much pride as her to be able to disregard for something says miles about how much she cares about that something.

This all culminates with the death of her father, as she has to deal with the reality of the fact that Talrega will forever brand her side as the treacherous bastards that caused death and poverty. None of them outright say it but in the info conversation that happens in the chapter after, the villagers essentially tell her that anyone who fought against Shiharam is to blame for their suffering. Jill has to juggle the fact that the villagers she grew up with will forever blame her for their misery and that she had to fight her home country and father (and likely witness his death if she was deployed). The game never outright says it, but Jill is tormented by the conflict between being a soldier and being a human, and it finally comes to a breaking point in this conversation.

What I like about all this is that Jill is a character that not only exemplifies followthrough in characterization, but some of the most important aspects of her character are subtle and low-key. The game won't stop to tell you her story if you're not willing to read it, and when you do begin to ravel yourself into her story and life, it proves to be one of nationality vs. morality and where she stands in it. Jill holds a burden to be both a soldier and a human, but she also is symbolic of what happens when the two worlds collide. Jill exists as a character to show the world that these characters live in isn't black-white or us vs. them. She creates a perspective worth seeing on the Tellius world, and I think more than anything, she deserves the vote for that alone.

Honorable mentions: Hector (for reasons already stated earlier in the thread), Priscilla (for being a criticism of romanticism (which is neither here nor there for the time being)), Eliwood (fuck your shit I love him), Soren (obv.), and Ike (obv.)

Worst: Eirika

Reasoning: Jesus Christ, what the hell? She's an awful combat unit, an awful character, and her path is shitty compared to Ephraim's. More importantly, I can't ever imagine her emoting anything beyond her vacant, blank expression that her sprite shows, whereas with other units, my imagination can go wild. She's just a blank piece of wood with a face on it. FFFFFFuck that.

Honorable mentions: Roy (zzz he's incredibly boring and has nothing defining about him), Canas (but DAT MONOCLE), Naesala (why in fuck's name do they treat him selling Reyson like it's just some Dennis the Menace shit?) and Micaiah (obv. but I wouldn't call her the worst).

Edited May 15, 2011 by Bearissoslow

[Radiant Dragon]

Eirika's an awful combat unit? That's news to me.

[Life]

Eirika's an awful combat unit? That's news to me.

Someone hasn't played FE8 Chapter 1-16 in a while.

[Radiant Dragon]

Someone hasn't played FE8 Chapter 1-16 in a while.

That's true, but I don't recall her having that much difficulty. Then again, I wasn't Seth-skipping through the game either.

[Bearissoslow]

You didn't have to "Seth-skip" to deal with the laughable durability and poor offense that she has. Until she gets that one broken as fuck weapon, she's only being a ball and chain to the team.

[Junkhead]

You're exaggerating. Her combat isn't that bad. It's actually mediocre.

Then you consider the fact that she has a Rapier and can double just about anything for decent offense.

[Bearissoslow]

Too bad she's not killing anything that someone else couldn't kill just as easy, if not easier.

I mean, at level 11, she's only doubling for 13-15 damage between the Iron Sword and Rapier respectively, not even factoring in enemy defense. We could give her the Steel Sword for more attack, but then she's losing AS and hit as well, making her even worse. By level 20, she's sitting at 11.6 Strength. That's 3-4 more MT in 9 levels (can't remember if SS rounds up). All the while, enemy defenses are increasing at a faster rate and it's becoming increasingly harder to field Eirika and keep her being a net positive. She's not doing anything well and she's being frail at the same time.

She's not mediocre, that makes mediocre units like Dozla that are at least contributing something look worse than they are. She's just plain bad until promotion, and I'd argue that she's not terribly fantastic after either unless you spam her weapon.

Edited May 15, 2011 by Bearissoslow

[Radiant Dragon]

Too bad she's not killing anything that someone else couldn't kill just as easy, if not easier.

Define 'someone else'. Because I can only think of Seth, Franz and Joshua until the route split (and she does better than Franz and Joshua against Cavaliers), since Vanessa's combat probably isn't quite up to par yet.

Edit: Actually, Artur should be able to double consistently as well.

Edited May 15, 2011 by Radiant Dragon

[NinjaMonkey]

That's it for this round, next round up shortly!

[Junkhead]

Too bad she's not killing anything that someone else couldn't kill just as easy, if not easier.

What RD said. That's why I said her damage output is at least "mediocre". The other characters aren't doubling and 1RKO'ing everything that quickly.

inb4lock.

[Anouleth]

Define 'someone else'. Because I can only think of Seth, Franz and Joshua until the route split (and she does better than Franz and Joshua against Cavaliers), since Vanessa's combat probably isn't quite up to par yet.

Edit: Actually, Artur should be able to double consistently as well.

Artur should, but he can't. If Artur can double consistently, Eirika can pick up a Steel Sword and do the same. Or a Killing Edge and do better.

Which is also an advantage she has against Franz, since Franz will probably not have the C Swords in order to use the Killing Edge. I think that Franz probably still wins because of movement and durability and Javelins, but in terms of offense, they're pretty comparable.

Edited May 16, 2011 by Black★Star

[Paperblade]

On the Micaiah subject: http://www.springhole.net/quizzes/marysue.htm

This is by no means the absolute "This is a Mary Sue" test (nor is it the only Mary Sue test on the internets or necessarily even the best one), but even ignoring the questions that only the actual writers could answer (like about the name or "Do you wish you could date blah blah") and ones that obviously don't apply (this is not fanfiction), it's not difficult to get scores of 80-90+, which are completely absurd.

Edit: Also I love Roy =(

Edited May 16, 2011 by Paperblade

[Radiant Dragon]

On the Micaiah subject: http://www.springhol...zes/marysue.htm

I tried to take that for Micaiah and got 39, which is apparently pretty high. I think the biggest problem was that she doesn't fit any of the 'De-Suifiers'.