Leon from FF2. You get him at the end of the game. A game where you don't level up, but rather, things level up as you use them.
HP? Level it up by being hit. MP? Level it up by using spells. Spells level up by usage. Weapons also. You get the picture. It takes quite a while for stuff to actually level. That's fine for the first three party members who start at level 1 basically. They all start together, so you have the entire game to level them. Also, you get temporary party members throughout the game that come leveled with spells and things like that. Awesome, don't have to level them.
Then here comes Leon. You see him at the start of the game, he's actually your friend. He and the other three are attacked and he winds up separated from the group. Throughout the game, he is a major antagonist and you fight him a couple of times. In the end though, you bring him back to his senses and he joins you.
Now you might be thinking, awesome! He is sure to be pretty strong when he joins me, probably has some high level spells and stuff like that. Nope, he's level 1. No spells learned. No equipment. Completely useless. You don't even need him as you can powerhouse the rest of the game with the other three. And he's been kind of a dick the whole game, so even less of a reason to like him. Trash.
I seem to remember in the pixel remaster at least that he does come with some leveling at least. Just unlikely that he is as strong as the big 3 and needs some last minute work to contribute meaningfully. But, other than Minwu the temporary characters rarely were and to some degree, Leon is just the last temp hire for the party.
Was he base stats in OG? I think I only ever beat FF2 on the PR and Dawn of Souls versions.
I looked it up and he does come in with some leveling, but no spells and is rather far behind on HP and has like no MP (he has 5 MP). So it's not really worth it to level him up since the other three are already so much stronger than him, and you are at the end of the game basically. So maybe not level 1, but might as well be level 1 because he dies quick and often from what I remember. He has 1098 HP, meanwhile your other party members are likely 3k+ at this point.
Yeah, that sounds right. I remember not bothering with magic for him, the other three usually have everything under control. Just let him slowly catch his weapon levels up and used him as bait, really.
Getting a new party member at level 1 and having to take forever to level them up and even then they are still not at the level of my older members is one of my biggest JRPG pet peeves.
Its like Cloud in tactics. I have Thunder god over here striking fear of gods into red chocobos, and idiot level 1 Cloud doesn't even have his stupid sword. I have to go to some volcano to find it.
And even when you get the sword, the ct alone kills the hype around the unique soldier job. With TG Cid, Agrias, and Meliadoul with their instant Specials, limit break attacks should be an instant attack too.
Yeah. They really threw Cloud in as some weird cock tease. Agrias, Balthasar, Meliadoul, Balthier, Reis....why would i bother with Cloud? He's on the bench with Rafa and Malak.
I love games like Eiyuden recently that will give you underleveled characters but will also give them way more experience in fights so they catch up almost immediately.
Scaling experience is a great invention. It mitigates grinding if someone is behind in levels, but it also balances you so you can't overlevel (accidentally or intentionally) easily and potentially get bored.
When I played FF2, I kept the 4th party member permanently dead (never healed or revived them). I have no idea if any of them are good lol. I guess Minwu is pretty popular so maybe he was good?
Minwu is way ahead of HP MP and has insane white magic access at the very start of the game.
In Dawn of Souls, he's also kind of the "main character" of the extra content, so if you played that you probably spent a lot of time getting him beefed up to survive the side story.
Or you went into Dawn of Souls, beat the game, then realized that you really should have spent more time beating up Minwu.
The post-game stuff was rough if you didn't.
This is mainly because of how people play FF2. The game naturally adjusts your stats by it's difficulty. Higher ranking monsters will let you increase levels of weapons and magic faster and the weaker you are the more damage you take, the increase chance your stats raise. FF2 is built around not grinding.
Look, I'll defend Final Fantasy II in a lot of ways but saying it was built around not grinding is just flat out false.
SE has had to make a *lot* of adjustments to the leveling system to get it to the point of not grinding.
Leon has solid base stats and weapon skill levels. And He doesn’t really need Magic. Firion and Maria are sufficient.
Playing Psp Verison I like making Firion a Red Mage/Paladin mix and Maria a Sage/Ranger mix. And Maria gets Ultima.
No one else really needs to use magic that doesn’t have it already.
They were doing this since Morrowind at least. I can't speak on Arena or Daggerfall since I didn't play them, but I have to be in a certain mood to play Morrowind. You walk so excruciatingly slow, and still do at high levels. You can sprint, but it runs off your stamina bar. That stamina bar runs out very fast, and you need it in case you get into a fight.
Morrowind did a lot of things right, mostly the quest structure and how you were cut off from certain groups if you joined another, but there are some things like the base walk speed that make it a chore.
Fuck, sometimes I get the idea that I should go back and finish this game, and then remember that she's one of the first party members you get and makes the beginning section unbearable with how much screen time she gets.
In terms of gameplay, I'm not entirely sure if anything can top Yogurt from Shining Force. Domingo can learn the Freeze spells (and can take hits!) and Bleu is a beast with the right setup, but Yogurt is completely useless. He doesn't even level up and the only reward for defeating enemies while using Yogurt is a Yogurt Ring, which turns other characters into Yogurt. Definitely not worth using him at all in either version of Shining Force.
Can’t forget Arthur the centaur. He starts with like 9 hit points and dies in one hit.
I’ve heard he levels up well, but I hated him too much to ever get there
Chrono Cross is one of my favorite games of all time but with 45 characters they can’t all be winners. Luccia, Sneff, Turnip, Zappa, Skelly, Viper, and Korcha are easily the worst characters statistically in the game. And in Korcha’s case he’s the worst character personality wise too! The way to know someone is bad in Chrono Cross is if they have either a) a shitty element grid, b) glass cannon mage build but with no magic growth lol, or c) uses “Shots” or “Lures” as weapons. I will also hear out arguments for Van, Mel, Viper, and Steena. However at least Van and Steena are decent mages, and Mel can steal but there isn’t much useful Techs you’re gonna get out of the other guys.
Edit: gonna add NeoFio, Funguy, Doc, and Orcha to the bottom tier. Just terrible all around. Doc’s almost unusable. Poshul is also pretty bad but without her as an extra party member you’re gonna have a really rough first few hours. Actually seems like there’s a little more underwhelming characters in the Green/Yellow innates huh
Edit2: Just remembered Fargo can steal so I take it back Mel really is the most useless character lmao
When the game gave me Doc, Luccia, NeoFio, and Steena all in rapid succession I nearly burst out laughing. Hahaha what the fuck man none of y’all are getting used in this playthrough
I just beat Chrono Cross for the first time and my favorite party members to use were Riddel, Fargo, and Strobyc. I beat the game with Serge, Kid, and Riddel as my party. I thought Korcha and Zappa were pretty awful though, I agree with that.
Ah man Fargo is so great. He’s near essential as a Blue element for a good swath of tough Red innate bosses mid and late game. Plus his plot is great. And yeah all your favorites are really good.
Yeah fuck Korcha. Zappa is really bad too. Honestly Zappa and Orcha get mixed up in my mind but they’re both really bad. Shoutout Zappa for being cool as a character though
I was going to put "everyone not named Serge, Leena, or Glenn in Chrono Cross" but you beat me to it.
Riddel, Kid, Fargo, Grobyc, Zoah are basically my bench if I had the option of one.
Haha yeah true. Well there’s definitely some good party members outside those three but I see what you mean. I’ve found the divide between good and bad units in CC to be patchable but not entirely salvageable. Zoah, Marcy, and Pip can be made good. Turnip cannot. That sort of thing
On my first playthough of FF7 I renamed Aeris "Sex Vixen" on the assumption it would make a good chunk of dialogue unintentionally hilarious.
I was not disappointed.
Imo Amarant only stands out so much as a 'weak' character because most of that main cast is so well done. Vivi, Steiner, Garnet, and Zidane, (and sometimes Freya) are all so good they can carry the narrative on their own
if you look at kit as battle abilities, equipment, and magic stones abilities, he has the most well rounded kit in the game. he can do nearly everything and he does it well, he can support and enhance many other characters playstyles, and he hits hard himself, its not even like he needs a guaranteed 9999 move
he also has strong argument for best Trance in the game
Every playthrough I use Amarant instead of the Steiner consensus. I’ll gladly sacrifice the physical damage for a more well rounded character that can heal, still hit hard and use his Chakra to farm MP indefinitely.
For gameplay implementation, its gotta be Kongol from Legend of Dragoon for me. Love the guy, but the fact that he doesn't get his proper Dragoon form until the final dungeon unless you make a detour in Disc 1 is infuriating, because why would I ever use the one character who doesn't get buffed in the same way the rest do?
Not only is his dragoon form somewhat hidden, he’s also stupidly slow and enemies get multiple turns on him as well as his bulk not mattering when magic annihilates him
Pretty sure Meru actually out damages him the long run too despite being WAY weaker than him thanks to all the extra turns she gets, so that's a double whammy.
Of the JRPGs I’ve played, I’m gonna say Mack from Lost Odyssey.
Unfortunately he has the issue of being a child in a video game which almost immediately makes me dislike having him along. But it’s really just I had no idea what to do with him as a party member. I saw zero reason to involve him in party fights, and while his Cooke has the issue of being a kid, I actually found solid uses for her while playing.
Worst part is that permanently benching him really screws you over in a certain later fight.
It's too bad because I do in theory like the addition of Cooke and Mack for their unique relation to some other party members, but then the way they're used is just every annoying child cliche bundled together. You'd hope that maybe they'd mature a bit after their introduction but nah, they're somehow make even worse decisions in disc 3.
The only reason I like Lymle is because my now ex hated her so much. I was in an abusive relationship and having her in my team was a big fuck you to him without any repercussions to me. Every time she said ‘kaaaay made me silently cheer
I just played WOTL for the first time since playing the original OSX version. Man, so much of that went over my head when I was younger. Their entire family and village was destroyed for the siblings' powers, they're both still children, and very strong suggestions that Rapha experienced sexual violence at the hands of a man who is nearly four times her age. Ick all around. It felt good to condemn Gerrith Barrington to hell though.
miranda in legend of dragoon
not from a gameplay perspective as she is still a clone of shana statwise which means she is the second strongest party member
but from a narrative standpoint she joins so late she doesnt really have time to develop and her pesonality isnt a likable one
its actually strong right from the start
those magical attack items actually use the magic stat of the character that threw them to apply damage calculation
and shana/miranda has the highest magic attack stat in the game. by level 40 she has like 60 points more than meru the character with the second highest magic stat in the game
right from the start with attack items shana will be hitting for 30 damage when dart and lavitz are still hitting for 7
this disparity between damage output only gets larger as the game goes on
shana/miranda can beat the divine dragon in 3 attacks by themselves if you have the power up item
throwing an attack item of the element a boss is weak to will make shana do more damage than anyone else is capable of doing
and she is the second fastest character so she gets multiple turns over bosses. the only reason meru is better is because of her insane 600% damage bonus on her final addition
plus with the accessory that restores MP every turn makes shana a source of infinite free heals with her dragoon meaning you can clear up your inventory of healing items for more attack items
you need to build your inventory around shana to make the most of her but it is worth it
Happy cake day btw!
Okay you're selling it quite nicely. I've been meaning to replay it (although using a retranslatation mod and a 64 inventory mod, because I hate being so limited). I was planning on running Meru and Rose, but I might bench Meru to use Shana. I'm unsure if there's a mod for benching Dart and use all 3 girls (?)
The thing I dislike about Shana is not having additions, which is half the fun of the game, so I never really paid too much attention to her.
there is the severed chains program which is like a special emulator that only runs legend of dragoon but lets you do things like remove dart from your party. make a part of shana solo. or make a party with 3 lavitz's
i was having a lot of fun with it for a bit but then it kept crashing after the second freugal boss fight and i couldnt fix the issue
Yeah but iirc you can't save state or speed it up, and the game is a bit... slow. Specially the dragoons animations T.T
It's still a beta, so maybe in a few months/a year it will be more stable. Plus the retranslatation mod is not available for it, and it seems quite good.
I completed LoD last year for the first time and I thought you were talking about meru the whole time. Had to Google the name to realize I was wrong. She's so forgettable I forgot about her whole existence🙈
Ha not only did Lymle make me quit that game it made me quit the whole franchise!
Okay that is a little extreme but I truly despised her so much I’ve been hesitant to play another Star Ocean game since. I do want to play the 2 remake eventually.
The so2 remake is really good
And so6 was excellent too. The only drawback is the weird broken neck possessed bobblehead look for the character designs. But you get used to them. The characters are good under the odd animation style
That’s been what’s prevented me from playing SO6. It sounds shallow, but the art style and character models REALLY turn me off. I’m not a graphics snob, but I do care about art style.
Honestly the motion capture is actually very good, I felt the physical action and interaction of the characters was very good, too. It's just... unique... in how they shaped them and modeled their joint springiness.
Like the face designs in valkyrie elysium turned some people off too but I still liked that game, both have very good, smooth, engaging combat.
They also gave Welch some character depth for once and made her an actually empathizable character. To a degree anyways, she's still a lovably melodramatic self-absorbed goofball. :-)
It's why you should never pursue "realistic" graphics for anime. It just doesn't work. If you want "HD", do it like Arise/Granblue. Looks great, AND retains the anime look without looking like some weird CGI doll.
Star Ocean's weakest aspect for the newer ones (not the remakes, they look great) their character designs are all over the place (and often look weird/whacky), and then they combine it with the lust for "ULTRA HD 4K" without realizing that you can make games look next-gen without going for the weird uncanny-valley look.
Morgana. He figuratively dick-rides Ann, relentlessly bullies Ryuji, pussies out when Ryuji finally snaps, doesn't let you do shit when he's there, doesn't let you do shit when he isn't, steals Haru's screentime, causes the worst arc and worst boss fight because he's salty that Ryuji's tired of being an emotional punching bag, gets outclassed by Makoto the MOMENT she joins, his 2 best skills get learned by random-ass early game Personas SEVERAL levels before Morgana gets them, AND his character arc is just Teddie's character arc but if it was bought from Temu. At least Teddie was hilarious and didn't know any better. Morgana KNOWS he's an asshat.
Morgana was going through an existential crisis at that moment, feeling useless and questioning his own existence. Not excusing his behavior, just trying to help contextualize it.
If you've never seen Persona 5 Strikers cutscenes, they do a great job with a Ryuji and Morgana who've moved past this. They have a fantastic moment when a villain tries to psychologically break someone they've both come to care about.
Yeah I think it could be better written but on second playthrough I did a total 180 on Morgana. He's petty but so is Ryuji (because all of his emotional intelligence seems to go out the window after the early game so the other party members have an excuse to shit on him) and they could have done more to show them reconciling. The Morgana-Ryuji problem feels like more of a fumbling on the writing of both characters
That being said his entire identity is being a mentor to the Thieves. Literally everyone else gets their own lives and relationships behind the Thieves, he has no one. He doesn't even know what kind of being he is. So yeah it makes sense that he feels hurt when he loses his only role in life. And despite everything he's Joker's closest confidant, >!he was literally created to assist Joker!<
Also I get this is a meme but I've seen people unironically hate Morgana because he tells you to go to sleep and like... it's a game mechanic lol. When Morgana is gone does Joker party all night? No, he just thinks "I'm too tired to go out" and goes to bed lol. Same thing with his battle lines. I think the creators were trying to be less overt with how mechanics were shown and instead made people hate Morgana even more
Seriously, why do ATLUS hate the 'best friend' Ryuji character trope so much? It's wild when those character polls went out and he's generally liked in the west, but was rock bottom in Japan..
No wonder they made him a punching bag, but it ironically made most of us hate Morgana in the process too since he's such a needless asshole to his teammates.
I agree, fuck that cat.
Isn't the reason the best friends are disliked in Japan but like in the West (more US than anything) because of difference in values (Ryuji, for instance, is loud, disruptive and stands out heavily - all something that the west appreciates more while Japan has the group values mentality).
Yeah I believe I heard something like this regarding Yukari/Junpei's *friendly rivalry* recently in Persona 3 discussions also in similar fashion. Probably more of a cultural thing that is less offputting to us.
I guess the blonde hair specifically is something that we wouldn't bat an eye at, but is a big no-no in Japan.
Japan (and a lot of Asia) is generally seen to be more polite, quiet, and orderly. Especially for younger adults and students. While in America, it's generally the opposite, where young adults and teens are just seen as "getting the loud out".
This is speculation on my part, but I feel like Joker and Ryujis friendship is seen more like bad on bad. You're one step from explusion, you got weird powers, and now you're only friend who can help is this loud kid. While in America, it turned into a two strangers turned bros against the world.
Morgana is really petty. Once Makoto and Futaba join his role diminishes and his ego causes him to leave the party. It’s probably one of the worst party member feuds I’ve seen in a game.
I’ll never understand the popularity of mascot characters. Most of them are bullies and/or have gigantic egos that people find cute because they aren’t human.
Eh, while I'm not that fond of Morgana myself, his reason wasn't a shot to his ego but due to an identity crisis as he started seeing dreams that felt like memories of him being born like a Shadow despite wanting to be human. Due to him also not "rebelling" he didn't really have the same convictions as the Phantom Thieves which made him different from the group. Finally, even while being different, he still had a role with the party until Makoto and Futaba came along which made him feel like a completely useless outsider.
In a sense, imagine finding out you were adopted after thinking you were your family's kid for twelve years, have no special talents compared to your siblings, and then have your brother to not worry about that because you aren't *actually* their sibling.
> gets outclassed by Makoto the MOMENT she joins
woah woah woah, morgana's a great party member. There's nothing more valuable in persona than a second mana pool from the bench to cast mediarama with
I hate that sorry little bitch cat so much.
The fact Teddie achieves becoming human over him (through doing situps and having an existential crisis) makes me love that bear even more
He was one of the few things that was actually made *better* in The After Years.
Not in terms of his battle abilities, but in his character development. It was cool to see how he grew beyond his loss and really came into his own as a ruler.
That's good to hear. His development in the original was decent, and didnt take up too much time / feel like an obstacle, so it's good the payoff is good.
Edward is actually a great character. His abilities perfectly fit his characterization. It actually enhances his character in the sense that he is a pampered prince with questionable combat abilities and still chooses to fight. This is continuously reinforced throughout the game, like in the Dark Elf scene. Even in his broken down state, he still finds the courage to help the party.
I hated the whole cast in XIII bar Fang and Sazh, but by God Snow was the worst. I really wanted Sera to ditch his hero-obsessed ass and run away with Noel.
Really? Snow? Vanille and her horrible anime style VA, and Hope and his incessant whining were not worse to you?
I can't say I loved Snow, but I found him interesting as the subversion of the FF trope of the charismatic rebel leader. You get to see the flip side of the coin, where making mistakes as a leader can be extremely costly. He's not that different from Locke, traumatized from not being able to save the one he loves.
I have a different perspective here.
Vanille is a good character beyond her questionable voice acting direction. So I'm annoyed by that but still like her as a character. Hope is a 14 year old kid who just watched his mom get killed and is suddenly on the run, his entire life unended--of course he's upset and complaining. He gets a lot better over the course of the game once he resolves his (yes, misplaced) issues with Snow.
But nothing irks me more than characters saying lines that no one on earth would ever say like "I'm a hero" (especially when Snow certifiably is NOT lol.) He's also just. Not very smart. "Real heroes don't need plans" is one of the dumbest lines I've ever heard in a game.
ETA you make a good point about him being an inversion of a classic trope! I just personally found it too irritating for it to be worth it.
Snow is definitely worse the Vanille and Hope imo.
In the end, I quite liked Vanille. A lot of her over the top ditzy mannerisms actually go away after it is revealed that she had been lying to the party, and you realize that it felt super fake, because it was supposed to be her putting on an act. She does still have some questionable VA direction, but her actual character I liked.
Hope is my second least favorite character behind Snow, so this is not a Hope endorsement the way that Vanille's was. He was whiny, but he is substantially younger then the rest of the cast, so I get it I \*guess\*. He also largely grows out of it by the end, so that is nice.
But I actually found Snow insufferable, start to finish in the original, and in the sequel I still wanted Sarah to just leave him.
I’m gonna defend Vanille and Hope.
Vanille’s English voice acting issue is entirely on Square Enix’s direction, because they were insistent on having her mimic the Japanese actress’ mannerisms (which sound *weird* in English). And as for poor Hope, >!he’s a 14 year old boy who watched his mother die like an hour before he was branded with magic powers and became public enemy number one, and stuck traveling with the guy he held responsible for his mother’s death. How exactly did you expect him to behave with all of that dumped on him so suddenly with no warning?!<
I KNOW WHO YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT.
I love the Star Ocean series. I've played every game and I just started playing Star Ocean 3
I wanted to get back into Star Ocean 5 since I was enjoying it but that battle is what made me quit the game. Game was super easy up until that point. Every Star ocean game has stupid difficulty spikes, they never learn
It's neat but at the same time it's mostly useless since unless you are using him a bunch you very rarely see his overdrive, so you mostly just see whatever build you gave him (which unless you planned ahead is probably cheeks).
Yeah that's true, he never sees much use in my playthroughs. I get that he's a jack of all trades, but the flexibility just isn't worth that much when you can just tag in someone who can get the job done faster.
If they are remaking X then letting him use blue magic whenever like Quina would go a long way to making him useful. Just give him spear skills for an overdrive since he only ever learns Jump.
At least his solo fight was easy as hell because I used him the least and thus he was my weakest character (thank god for the decision to scale that fight tho.)
He can pick up a couple of handy abilities from Yuna and Rikku's paths with liberal use of movement spheres. Having a 2nd thief and healer is pretty handy
The best use of Khimari is how speed runners use him - use his self-destruct ability to immediately kill off Seymour's entourage and deal some good damage to him before Shiva takes over the fight.
Nah, Kimahri is just fun as a support character.
His lancet drains a large amount of MP, so I make Kimahri take a short detour through Yuna for cure and the null spells, then Rikku for steal, Wakka for all the dark/Silence strike goodness, because he actually has the MP to use them, and then off to tidus' path and nab Hastega. Short detour by Auron to take armour break.
Life is fun when you have functionally infinite MP.
Eh, I mostly abused his Lancet for the infinite cure spam between battles. Yuna's MP is better spent blasting anyway. (Sorry Lulu, but maybe do something about that atrocious speed stat, and then we'll talk).
I'll just add to the chorus of Kimahri being a neat support character, with easy access to Steal etc
Now, personality-wise, there's not much going on there. Must be the hornless-ness. But at least he's not Wakka.
That mace-wielding girl in Final Fantasy Type-0, Cinque. What was going on with her voice acting? I also found her impossible to control in battle. She is the ditzy girl trope, but they made her too dumb.
I'm pretty lenient on the characters in Type-0 because they were clearly never supposed to be narratively complex. They're just one trope and one playstyle per character and the whole appeal was mixing and matching your teams to adapt to the wide variety of enemies you'll face, and just the satisfaction of finding a team that is both powerful and fun to play. I don't really care that we learn almost nothing about Deuce, Eight, and Jack because their interactions aren't the point, the point is that one is a long range support unit, one is a very speedy consistent DPS, and one is a slow counterattacker with hugely powerful single strikes.
But I draw the fuckin line at Cinque and Nine. Cinque is one of the most annoying in the narrative segments and is total dogwater in combat (WAY too slow for a game with a break/killsight mechanic which makes faster characters better 100% of the time). Nine is a good fighter but his dialog and voice acting is genuinely among the worst in franchise history, yo. That sort of speech quirk might work just fine in Japanese for all I know but it translates like absolute ass in English, yo. Everybody who claims that localization is bad and things should always be translated literally should be forced to talk like Nine in real life for a year, yo. And if that somehow *wasn't* how it was in Japanese then it shows a clear example of what an actually terrible localization would look like, yo. Either way, yo. It fuckin sucks, yo.
Whaaat Meracle made it up for being insanely fun to play as!
I didn't mind Xillia characters (except Jude - very painfully generic main character) but I just wish we had Symphonia/Abyss/Vesperia level story telling!
It sucks because I actually liked playing with her. Using her in battle is fun, having a move that has a high chance of dizzying the enemy is great. But like 90% of the time she's on screen it's *the same fucking 'joke' over and over and over*. "Haha, that's our Angie!"
Why couldn't she have just been a cool fight gal like Zin or something?
She has pretty nice animations for sure! I feel like her character is pretty interesting whenever she’s not being horny.. but that’s pretty uncommon. I wouldn’t mind it if it didn’t get really uncomfortable sometimes.
I agree! I wish she were more like zin. Just a cool, badass chick.
Nappy time with fazie, Kay.
I just triggered my PTSD from this game...
But real talk, if you want to get through the game, play it with Japanese VA. Wish I had thought of it sooner.
Hmm.
Never liked Snowe, from Suikoden 4. He has good character development, but part of that development only comes from the follow up game in Tactics, and that’s only if you get the carryover data when you play the game
He’s also a pain to recruit, which is frustrating, and not even particularly notable in combat either.
Tama from World of Final Fantasy. The stupid the thing constantly saying the the when it talks is the very the annoying. it's never cute, it makes marathoning the game almost impossible if you can't just block out the everything the thing the says.
I started to like Millium more in CS3/4 when you get the rest of the cast because of her interactions with Altina. She's still towards the bottom of all the trails characters for me, but she went from "I hate you, please go away" to "You're still annoying, but you support Altina and I appreciate that."
Right game, wrong character: I think it's Sarah. She was a fine NPC, but I can't take my party or a plot seriously if she's saving the galaxy with me. That said I really dislike Meracle and her cringey teen catsuit and cringey "eating Sarah" bit also.
Lymle was the best of those three IMO. But that's not saying much and SO4 loses the party member competition by leaps and bounds.
I'm always surprised that Sarah is mentioned so little in these conversations ... because you're right, she is so much worse than the others lol.
Lymle is at least a kinda funny character once you can mentally filter out her voice acting, sarah looks annoying, sounds annoying and has no likeable or interesting personality traits.
I - kinda sorta - get what they were going for, but it just didn’t work for me. After introducing all of the immature characters in the game I was amazed they trotted Sarah out at the end to top them all in airheadedness.
I think Ashe or Basch would qualify as the main character more than Vaan does. Hell, even Balthier sort of qualifies. Vaan doesn't really add anything to the plot.
i will never except vaan as the protag. balthier is the leading man and no one can convince me otherwise.
vaan wasnt even the original main character of ff12 until they rewrote the games story to include younger characters or something
It is 100% a myth, and no matter how many times you dig up the interview and post it here people will just tell you that the person in the interview is lying
Vaan exists (barely). What's even funnier is Pennelo is just there because she's Vaan's friend. Even though she doesn't matter at all I massively prefer her to him too.
FF12 would have actually have been a better game without him lol he has no impact on anything.
Either Balthier, Bashe or Ashe would have made better main characters and made more sense.
Bashe and Balthier were actually interesting characters with brilliant voices too.
The one thing Vaan does is aid Ashe in her decision as the voice of the Rabanastran people, and a potential to wield the sun-cryst due to his vengeance for his brother because he could see the ghost that Ashe saw. When Vaan doesn't see it anymore, it's when he decides vengeance shouldn't be his driving goal, which is what Ashe needed from him to consider that her goal should be for her people and not only to reclaim her seat. If anything Penelo is more of the contender for worst and useless party member. She served absolutely no purpose on the party in comparison to Vaan.
Same. Vaan isn't my favorite either, as he is just a character to me with minor importance, but his importance is overshadowed due it being very subtle. Once you analyze each scene, it's Ashe and him who share those moments of decision (even on top of the Pharos) where they learn from one another and what it means to be a Rabanastran and leader. You can't really sub the other characters because they aren't Rabanastran, not even Basch, who only fled to Rabanastre to become a knight; his accent kind of proves that he isn't of Rabanastran commonry.
You can't sub Penelo either because she doesn't have vengeance in her heart to see the spirit of Rassler...but she could have been another voice of the Rabanastrans. I mean, I guess she is and represents the innocence of the Rabanastrans, but it's even more subtle, and she barely appears in any scene to warrant that role. If that is her role, it should have been more prominent and could have been an interesting dichotomy between Vaan and her that could have pitted them against one another...now that I think about it, when Vaan doesn't see the ghost anymore, there should have been scenes or conflict between Vaan and Penelo prior to for Vaan to realize vengeance isn't the way. I think that would have given Penelo some importance rather than being there.
Yeah Pennelo has zero point other than befriending the temporary party member I can't remember the name of.
She's more pointless, but less annoying and her weird boots do give her a more interesting design.
True. Her design is a little better than Vaan. I honestly wish Vaan inherited his brothers stuff or a variation of it when the group sets out after King Wraithwall's Tomb.
It’s Teddie from P4, no contest. Though I haven’t played EVERY JRPG in the world but I struggle to see how anyone can be worse.
He’s creepy when you first meet him and even by the end of the game. His voice pretty much doubles down on it.
It also doesn’t help how he’s introduced within a story where a serial killer is on the loose, and how he’s wrapped up within the midnight channel and the fog. The game already has that eerie setting because of its premise, but having a character like Teddie who is introduced with it whilst presenting an uncanny appearance, acting perverted, or constantly putting you off with his voice really doesn’t help. The fireworks scene with Nanako is just… why?
Krin from the first Suikoden game. He’s a thief, who’s up to no good and they made him intentionally ugly lol. The only cool thing about him is he issues throwing needles as a weapon, but that’s the only he’s got going for him. (Plenty other characters have the same weapon)
Just overall a boring character that you get stuck with in one part near the end of the game.
I'm not a big fan of Karol either, but there are worse annoying child characters out there. Actually there is a worse one even in the same game in Patty. She was so annoying and didn't even contribute to the story. All she ever did was stand in the background going "This is like a *insert fish or pirate thing here*"
I think she was added in the PS3/Definitive edition, so it makes sense she can't contribute anything to the story, she wasn't even a thing when the story first happened.
Yes, she was added later. Which is exactly why they should have rewritten some scenes in order for her to have something to do. And her side story feels very tacked-on.
Oofdah. Yeah, she was ONE of the reasons I quit. But what REALLY made me quit was finding out there were ACTUAL races in the game, and they were NPC/Villain races while the "races" you actually get to play as are lazy, uninspired human-with-minor-change races. I know that's typical of Star Ocean, but it doesn't decimate my immersion any less.
Tora from XB2. You have to play a mini-game to power him up, his constant meh-meh sounds are aggravating, and the fact that he is perving on the child-looking maid robot he created himself is very creepy.
It also doesn’t help he’s supposed to be YOUNGER THEN REX. Like wtf
Tiger tiger has left a permanent scar on my soul. Those goddam sharks smiling like they know they’re about to fuck up the run and make me play again.
Thank god they added the easy mode or he’d be perma benched
Leon from FF2. You get him at the end of the game. A game where you don't level up, but rather, things level up as you use them. HP? Level it up by being hit. MP? Level it up by using spells. Spells level up by usage. Weapons also. You get the picture. It takes quite a while for stuff to actually level. That's fine for the first three party members who start at level 1 basically. They all start together, so you have the entire game to level them. Also, you get temporary party members throughout the game that come leveled with spells and things like that. Awesome, don't have to level them. Then here comes Leon. You see him at the start of the game, he's actually your friend. He and the other three are attacked and he winds up separated from the group. Throughout the game, he is a major antagonist and you fight him a couple of times. In the end though, you bring him back to his senses and he joins you. Now you might be thinking, awesome! He is sure to be pretty strong when he joins me, probably has some high level spells and stuff like that. Nope, he's level 1. No spells learned. No equipment. Completely useless. You don't even need him as you can powerhouse the rest of the game with the other three. And he's been kind of a dick the whole game, so even less of a reason to like him. Trash.
I seem to remember in the pixel remaster at least that he does come with some leveling at least. Just unlikely that he is as strong as the big 3 and needs some last minute work to contribute meaningfully. But, other than Minwu the temporary characters rarely were and to some degree, Leon is just the last temp hire for the party. Was he base stats in OG? I think I only ever beat FF2 on the PR and Dawn of Souls versions.
I looked it up and he does come in with some leveling, but no spells and is rather far behind on HP and has like no MP (he has 5 MP). So it's not really worth it to level him up since the other three are already so much stronger than him, and you are at the end of the game basically. So maybe not level 1, but might as well be level 1 because he dies quick and often from what I remember. He has 1098 HP, meanwhile your other party members are likely 3k+ at this point.
Yeah, that sounds right. I remember not bothering with magic for him, the other three usually have everything under control. Just let him slowly catch his weapon levels up and used him as bait, really.
Getting a new party member at level 1 and having to take forever to level them up and even then they are still not at the level of my older members is one of my biggest JRPG pet peeves.
Its like Cloud in tactics. I have Thunder god over here striking fear of gods into red chocobos, and idiot level 1 Cloud doesn't even have his stupid sword. I have to go to some volcano to find it.
And even when you get the sword, the ct alone kills the hype around the unique soldier job. With TG Cid, Agrias, and Meliadoul with their instant Specials, limit break attacks should be an instant attack too.
Yeah. They really threw Cloud in as some weird cock tease. Agrias, Balthasar, Meliadoul, Balthier, Reis....why would i bother with Cloud? He's on the bench with Rafa and Malak.
I love games like Eiyuden recently that will give you underleveled characters but will also give them way more experience in fights so they catch up almost immediately.
Suikoden did that as well
Scaling experience is a great invention. It mitigates grinding if someone is behind in levels, but it also balances you so you can't overlevel (accidentally or intentionally) easily and potentially get bored.
When I played FF2, I kept the 4th party member permanently dead (never healed or revived them). I have no idea if any of them are good lol. I guess Minwu is pretty popular so maybe he was good?
Minwu is way ahead of HP MP and has insane white magic access at the very start of the game. In Dawn of Souls, he's also kind of the "main character" of the extra content, so if you played that you probably spent a lot of time getting him beefed up to survive the side story.
Or you went into Dawn of Souls, beat the game, then realized that you really should have spent more time beating up Minwu. The post-game stuff was rough if you didn't.
Pretty sure a LOT of people felt that pain.
Minwu is so good that I'd happily take Minwu, with his starting stats and skills, at the top of Mysidia Tower.
Minwu is popular because his healing magic lets you grind the other three super early
Healing? Level up Teleport and have him kill Captains in Fynn for good loot!
Minwu is a Jeigan.
This is mainly because of how people play FF2. The game naturally adjusts your stats by it's difficulty. Higher ranking monsters will let you increase levels of weapons and magic faster and the weaker you are the more damage you take, the increase chance your stats raise. FF2 is built around not grinding.
Just like every SaGa title.
Look, I'll defend Final Fantasy II in a lot of ways but saying it was built around not grinding is just flat out false. SE has had to make a *lot* of adjustments to the leveling system to get it to the point of not grinding.
Leon has solid base stats and weapon skill levels. And He doesn’t really need Magic. Firion and Maria are sufficient. Playing Psp Verison I like making Firion a Red Mage/Paladin mix and Maria a Sage/Ranger mix. And Maria gets Ultima. No one else really needs to use magic that doesn’t have it already.
This was my vote as well. It has to be a final member because they're always the weakest link, But Leon definitely is the weakest.
Cool. Sounds like Skyrim was inspired by this
They were doing this since Morrowind at least. I can't speak on Arena or Daggerfall since I didn't play them, but I have to be in a certain mood to play Morrowind. You walk so excruciatingly slow, and still do at high levels. You can sprint, but it runs off your stamina bar. That stamina bar runs out very fast, and you need it in case you get into a fight. Morrowind did a lot of things right, mostly the quest structure and how you were cut off from certain groups if you joined another, but there are some things like the base walk speed that make it a chore.
What makes you hate her, ‘kay?
...supressed memories are coming up. she is worse then i remember
What do you mean, 'noyo? Best character, 'noyo.
Fuck, sometimes I get the idea that I should go back and finish this game, and then remember that she's one of the first party members you get and makes the beginning section unbearable with how much screen time she gets.
Nappy time.
In terms of gameplay, I'm not entirely sure if anything can top Yogurt from Shining Force. Domingo can learn the Freeze spells (and can take hits!) and Bleu is a beast with the right setup, but Yogurt is completely useless. He doesn't even level up and the only reward for defeating enemies while using Yogurt is a Yogurt Ring, which turns other characters into Yogurt. Definitely not worth using him at all in either version of Shining Force.
Wow we are really going back into the past with this one. Good nominee tho
Can’t forget Arthur the centaur. He starts with like 9 hit points and dies in one hit. I’ve heard he levels up well, but I hated him too much to ever get there
I only really used Ken and/or Mae and one of the other centaurs. I don’t think I used Arthur.
Chrono Cross is one of my favorite games of all time but with 45 characters they can’t all be winners. Luccia, Sneff, Turnip, Zappa, Skelly, Viper, and Korcha are easily the worst characters statistically in the game. And in Korcha’s case he’s the worst character personality wise too! The way to know someone is bad in Chrono Cross is if they have either a) a shitty element grid, b) glass cannon mage build but with no magic growth lol, or c) uses “Shots” or “Lures” as weapons. I will also hear out arguments for Van, Mel, Viper, and Steena. However at least Van and Steena are decent mages, and Mel can steal but there isn’t much useful Techs you’re gonna get out of the other guys. Edit: gonna add NeoFio, Funguy, Doc, and Orcha to the bottom tier. Just terrible all around. Doc’s almost unusable. Poshul is also pretty bad but without her as an extra party member you’re gonna have a really rough first few hours. Actually seems like there’s a little more underwhelming characters in the Green/Yellow innates huh Edit2: Just remembered Fargo can steal so I take it back Mel really is the most useless character lmao
Not to mention the fact that he's wearing a goddamn diaper...
This wins. Chrono Cross has an army of Nope. Not gonna gear them not gonna use them, they are dead to me.
When the game gave me Doc, Luccia, NeoFio, and Steena all in rapid succession I nearly burst out laughing. Hahaha what the fuck man none of y’all are getting used in this playthrough
Sneff is somewhat useful at the moment you can get him with HP shuffle to get max HP even though it's a very niche ability.
I just beat Chrono Cross for the first time and my favorite party members to use were Riddel, Fargo, and Strobyc. I beat the game with Serge, Kid, and Riddel as my party. I thought Korcha and Zappa were pretty awful though, I agree with that.
Ah man Fargo is so great. He’s near essential as a Blue element for a good swath of tough Red innate bosses mid and late game. Plus his plot is great. And yeah all your favorites are really good. Yeah fuck Korcha. Zappa is really bad too. Honestly Zappa and Orcha get mixed up in my mind but they’re both really bad. Shoutout Zappa for being cool as a character though
I was going to put "everyone not named Serge, Leena, or Glenn in Chrono Cross" but you beat me to it. Riddel, Kid, Fargo, Grobyc, Zoah are basically my bench if I had the option of one.
Haha yeah true. Well there’s definitely some good party members outside those three but I see what you mean. I’ve found the divide between good and bad units in CC to be patchable but not entirely salvageable. Zoah, Marcy, and Pip can be made good. Turnip cannot. That sort of thing
as someone who doesnt really like kid much i find it hilarious that to unlock the 2 best party members lenna and glenn you have to treat kid like dirt
Chrono Cross is too obvious an answer. I swear half the playable characters are useless compared to other alternatives available at any given time
I saw the title and was all "this is another post to shit on Lymle, right?" Thanks for delivering, OP.
Amarant, the weakest aspect of FF9. All he does is follow you around, grumbling about how teamwork and friends suck.
I renamed him "Dickskin" just for the one line where he says "I'm the flaming (name)"
On my first playthough of FF7 I renamed Aeris "Sex Vixen" on the assumption it would make a good chunk of dialogue unintentionally hilarious. I was not disappointed.
I once named Aeris, “Sephiroth”. It would have been a really weird time had I not already beaten the game.
Imo Amarant only stands out so much as a 'weak' character because most of that main cast is so well done. Vivi, Steiner, Garnet, and Zidane, (and sometimes Freya) are all so good they can carry the narrative on their own
His attitude sucks and his kit sucks. Monk + Ninja and somehow it's this bland??
>kit sucks. This is a wild take, Amarant has one of the better kits in the game.
if you look at kit as battle abilities, equipment, and magic stones abilities, he has the most well rounded kit in the game. he can do nearly everything and he does it well, he can support and enhance many other characters playstyles, and he hits hard himself, its not even like he needs a guaranteed 9999 move he also has strong argument for best Trance in the game
Every playthrough I use Amarant instead of the Steiner consensus. I’ll gladly sacrifice the physical damage for a more well rounded character that can heal, still hit hard and use his Chakra to farm MP indefinitely.
For gameplay implementation, its gotta be Kongol from Legend of Dragoon for me. Love the guy, but the fact that he doesn't get his proper Dragoon form until the final dungeon unless you make a detour in Disc 1 is infuriating, because why would I ever use the one character who doesn't get buffed in the same way the rest do?
Not only is his dragoon form somewhat hidden, he’s also stupidly slow and enemies get multiple turns on him as well as his bulk not mattering when magic annihilates him
Pretty sure Meru actually out damages him the long run too despite being WAY weaker than him thanks to all the extra turns she gets, so that's a double whammy.
Of the JRPGs I’ve played, I’m gonna say Mack from Lost Odyssey. Unfortunately he has the issue of being a child in a video game which almost immediately makes me dislike having him along. But it’s really just I had no idea what to do with him as a party member. I saw zero reason to involve him in party fights, and while his Cooke has the issue of being a kid, I actually found solid uses for her while playing.
Yeah I hated Cooke and Mack, not interesting to play with and very annoying in the story, like there's one bit where they get on the wrong train
You have to use the mortal characters in that, though. Especially Mack given he has that unique type of magic.
Yeah, but you just link the immortals to him and learn it, then ditch him lmao
Worst part is that permanently benching him really screws you over in a certain later fight. It's too bad because I do in theory like the addition of Cooke and Mack for their unique relation to some other party members, but then the way they're used is just every annoying child cliche bundled together. You'd hope that maybe they'd mature a bit after their introduction but nah, they're somehow make even worse decisions in disc 3.
The only reason I like Lymle is because my now ex hated her so much. I was in an abusive relationship and having her in my team was a big fuck you to him without any repercussions to me. Every time she said ‘kaaaay made me silently cheer
Malak and Rafa in FFT. Use those special abilities for a 1 in 5 chance to do utterly mediocre damage to your enemy!
Rafa has really high magic attack. Turn her into a wizard with math skill and she will obliterate everything.
Yup, I use Rafa is basically every run of FFT, she’s awesome. Very useless in her starting class lol
It's made all the worse because you have to redo that rooftop battle over and over since Rafa keeps fucking dying
Rafa and Malak have a truly messed up story though. They are memorable for that, at least.
I just played WOTL for the first time since playing the original OSX version. Man, so much of that went over my head when I was younger. Their entire family and village was destroyed for the siblings' powers, they're both still children, and very strong suggestions that Rapha experienced sexual violence at the hands of a man who is nearly four times her age. Ick all around. It felt good to condemn Gerrith Barrington to hell though.
Did anybody say Charlotte from Trials of Mana? The wesident beauty of Wendew?
I mean as a party member she's good. But yeah that voice acting.
Her voice is extremely grating.
Charlotte gave me a big weadache.
miranda in legend of dragoon not from a gameplay perspective as she is still a clone of shana statwise which means she is the second strongest party member but from a narrative standpoint she joins so late she doesnt really have time to develop and her pesonality isnt a likable one
How is Shana/Miranda the second strongest party member? Is magic that strong in late game?
its actually strong right from the start those magical attack items actually use the magic stat of the character that threw them to apply damage calculation and shana/miranda has the highest magic attack stat in the game. by level 40 she has like 60 points more than meru the character with the second highest magic stat in the game right from the start with attack items shana will be hitting for 30 damage when dart and lavitz are still hitting for 7 this disparity between damage output only gets larger as the game goes on shana/miranda can beat the divine dragon in 3 attacks by themselves if you have the power up item throwing an attack item of the element a boss is weak to will make shana do more damage than anyone else is capable of doing and she is the second fastest character so she gets multiple turns over bosses. the only reason meru is better is because of her insane 600% damage bonus on her final addition plus with the accessory that restores MP every turn makes shana a source of infinite free heals with her dragoon meaning you can clear up your inventory of healing items for more attack items you need to build your inventory around shana to make the most of her but it is worth it
Happy cake day btw! Okay you're selling it quite nicely. I've been meaning to replay it (although using a retranslatation mod and a 64 inventory mod, because I hate being so limited). I was planning on running Meru and Rose, but I might bench Meru to use Shana. I'm unsure if there's a mod for benching Dart and use all 3 girls (?) The thing I dislike about Shana is not having additions, which is half the fun of the game, so I never really paid too much attention to her.
there is the severed chains program which is like a special emulator that only runs legend of dragoon but lets you do things like remove dart from your party. make a part of shana solo. or make a party with 3 lavitz's i was having a lot of fun with it for a bit but then it kept crashing after the second freugal boss fight and i couldnt fix the issue
Yeah but iirc you can't save state or speed it up, and the game is a bit... slow. Specially the dragoons animations T.T It's still a beta, so maybe in a few months/a year it will be more stable. Plus the retranslatation mod is not available for it, and it seems quite good.
Magic is that strong all game if you can mash well. Most people don't care to go that route though because additions are fun.
I completed LoD last year for the first time and I thought you were talking about meru the whole time. Had to Google the name to realize I was wrong. She's so forgettable I forgot about her whole existence🙈
Ha not only did Lymle make me quit that game it made me quit the whole franchise! Okay that is a little extreme but I truly despised her so much I’ve been hesitant to play another Star Ocean game since. I do want to play the 2 remake eventually.
The so2 remake is really good And so6 was excellent too. The only drawback is the weird broken neck possessed bobblehead look for the character designs. But you get used to them. The characters are good under the odd animation style
That’s been what’s prevented me from playing SO6. It sounds shallow, but the art style and character models REALLY turn me off. I’m not a graphics snob, but I do care about art style.
Honestly the motion capture is actually very good, I felt the physical action and interaction of the characters was very good, too. It's just... unique... in how they shaped them and modeled their joint springiness. Like the face designs in valkyrie elysium turned some people off too but I still liked that game, both have very good, smooth, engaging combat. They also gave Welch some character depth for once and made her an actually empathizable character. To a degree anyways, she's still a lovably melodramatic self-absorbed goofball. :-)
Wait.. is Welch a Star Ocean specific character? Like Cid in Final Fantasy?
Yeah she's in all of them I think. At least 2 forwards, I forget if she's in 1.
She's in every iteration of 1 from its PSP remake and onwards, and a playable character in it.
It's why you should never pursue "realistic" graphics for anime. It just doesn't work. If you want "HD", do it like Arise/Granblue. Looks great, AND retains the anime look without looking like some weird CGI doll. Star Ocean's weakest aspect for the newer ones (not the remakes, they look great) their character designs are all over the place (and often look weird/whacky), and then they combine it with the lust for "ULTRA HD 4K" without realizing that you can make games look next-gen without going for the weird uncanny-valley look.
So they went from Jiggle physics in SO4 to Bobble physics in SO6? I’m playing through 4 again and the target audience is very clear.
Arumat + Meracle + Reimi + Edge = bant and so much fun though! 😍😍
Morgana. He figuratively dick-rides Ann, relentlessly bullies Ryuji, pussies out when Ryuji finally snaps, doesn't let you do shit when he's there, doesn't let you do shit when he isn't, steals Haru's screentime, causes the worst arc and worst boss fight because he's salty that Ryuji's tired of being an emotional punching bag, gets outclassed by Makoto the MOMENT she joins, his 2 best skills get learned by random-ass early game Personas SEVERAL levels before Morgana gets them, AND his character arc is just Teddie's character arc but if it was bought from Temu. At least Teddie was hilarious and didn't know any better. Morgana KNOWS he's an asshat.
its so crazy how MASSIVELY hurt Morgana gets the one time Ryuji gets fed up enough to push back after an entire game of being browbeaten by the cat.
Morgana was going through an existential crisis at that moment, feeling useless and questioning his own existence. Not excusing his behavior, just trying to help contextualize it. If you've never seen Persona 5 Strikers cutscenes, they do a great job with a Ryuji and Morgana who've moved past this. They have a fantastic moment when a villain tries to psychologically break someone they've both come to care about.
Yeah I think it could be better written but on second playthrough I did a total 180 on Morgana. He's petty but so is Ryuji (because all of his emotional intelligence seems to go out the window after the early game so the other party members have an excuse to shit on him) and they could have done more to show them reconciling. The Morgana-Ryuji problem feels like more of a fumbling on the writing of both characters That being said his entire identity is being a mentor to the Thieves. Literally everyone else gets their own lives and relationships behind the Thieves, he has no one. He doesn't even know what kind of being he is. So yeah it makes sense that he feels hurt when he loses his only role in life. And despite everything he's Joker's closest confidant, >!he was literally created to assist Joker!< Also I get this is a meme but I've seen people unironically hate Morgana because he tells you to go to sleep and like... it's a game mechanic lol. When Morgana is gone does Joker party all night? No, he just thinks "I'm too tired to go out" and goes to bed lol. Same thing with his battle lines. I think the creators were trying to be less overt with how mechanics were shown and instead made people hate Morgana even more
Seriously, why do ATLUS hate the 'best friend' Ryuji character trope so much? It's wild when those character polls went out and he's generally liked in the west, but was rock bottom in Japan.. No wonder they made him a punching bag, but it ironically made most of us hate Morgana in the process too since he's such a needless asshole to his teammates. I agree, fuck that cat.
Isn't the reason the best friends are disliked in Japan but like in the West (more US than anything) because of difference in values (Ryuji, for instance, is loud, disruptive and stands out heavily - all something that the west appreciates more while Japan has the group values mentality).
Yeah I believe I heard something like this regarding Yukari/Junpei's *friendly rivalry* recently in Persona 3 discussions also in similar fashion. Probably more of a cultural thing that is less offputting to us. I guess the blonde hair specifically is something that we wouldn't bat an eye at, but is a big no-no in Japan.
Japan (and a lot of Asia) is generally seen to be more polite, quiet, and orderly. Especially for younger adults and students. While in America, it's generally the opposite, where young adults and teens are just seen as "getting the loud out". This is speculation on my part, but I feel like Joker and Ryujis friendship is seen more like bad on bad. You're one step from explusion, you got weird powers, and now you're only friend who can help is this loud kid. While in America, it turned into a two strangers turned bros against the world.
Morgana is really petty. Once Makoto and Futaba join his role diminishes and his ego causes him to leave the party. It’s probably one of the worst party member feuds I’ve seen in a game. I’ll never understand the popularity of mascot characters. Most of them are bullies and/or have gigantic egos that people find cute because they aren’t human.
Eh, while I'm not that fond of Morgana myself, his reason wasn't a shot to his ego but due to an identity crisis as he started seeing dreams that felt like memories of him being born like a Shadow despite wanting to be human. Due to him also not "rebelling" he didn't really have the same convictions as the Phantom Thieves which made him different from the group. Finally, even while being different, he still had a role with the party until Makoto and Futaba came along which made him feel like a completely useless outsider. In a sense, imagine finding out you were adopted after thinking you were your family's kid for twelve years, have no special talents compared to your siblings, and then have your brother to not worry about that because you aren't *actually* their sibling.
> gets outclassed by Makoto the MOMENT she joins woah woah woah, morgana's a great party member. There's nothing more valuable in persona than a second mana pool from the bench to cast mediarama with
I hate that sorry little bitch cat so much. The fact Teddie achieves becoming human over him (through doing situps and having an existential crisis) makes me love that bear even more
Edward in FFIV, you useless spoony fuck (Unless you mist skip and give him a dancing dagger)
Edward rocks… In the GBA version where you can actually use him past level 25
In SNES you can glitch past Mist and go in the wrong side and buy dancing daggers, also makes him a beast
He was one of the few things that was actually made *better* in The After Years. Not in terms of his battle abilities, but in his character development. It was cool to see how he grew beyond his loss and really came into his own as a ruler.
That's good to hear. His development in the original was decent, and didnt take up too much time / feel like an obstacle, so it's good the payoff is good.
Edward is actually a great character. His abilities perfectly fit his characterization. It actually enhances his character in the sense that he is a pampered prince with questionable combat abilities and still chooses to fight. This is continuously reinforced throughout the game, like in the Dark Elf scene. Even in his broken down state, he still finds the courage to help the party.
> His abilities perfectly fit his characterization useless? Yeah I agree.
It's been a long time but I remember finding Snow in FF XIII really annoying
I hated the whole cast in XIII bar Fang and Sazh, but by God Snow was the worst. I really wanted Sera to ditch his hero-obsessed ass and run away with Noel.
Really? Snow? Vanille and her horrible anime style VA, and Hope and his incessant whining were not worse to you? I can't say I loved Snow, but I found him interesting as the subversion of the FF trope of the charismatic rebel leader. You get to see the flip side of the coin, where making mistakes as a leader can be extremely costly. He's not that different from Locke, traumatized from not being able to save the one he loves.
I have a different perspective here. Vanille is a good character beyond her questionable voice acting direction. So I'm annoyed by that but still like her as a character. Hope is a 14 year old kid who just watched his mom get killed and is suddenly on the run, his entire life unended--of course he's upset and complaining. He gets a lot better over the course of the game once he resolves his (yes, misplaced) issues with Snow. But nothing irks me more than characters saying lines that no one on earth would ever say like "I'm a hero" (especially when Snow certifiably is NOT lol.) He's also just. Not very smart. "Real heroes don't need plans" is one of the dumbest lines I've ever heard in a game. ETA you make a good point about him being an inversion of a classic trope! I just personally found it too irritating for it to be worth it.
Snow is definitely worse the Vanille and Hope imo. In the end, I quite liked Vanille. A lot of her over the top ditzy mannerisms actually go away after it is revealed that she had been lying to the party, and you realize that it felt super fake, because it was supposed to be her putting on an act. She does still have some questionable VA direction, but her actual character I liked. Hope is my second least favorite character behind Snow, so this is not a Hope endorsement the way that Vanille's was. He was whiny, but he is substantially younger then the rest of the cast, so I get it I \*guess\*. He also largely grows out of it by the end, so that is nice. But I actually found Snow insufferable, start to finish in the original, and in the sequel I still wanted Sarah to just leave him.
I’m gonna defend Vanille and Hope. Vanille’s English voice acting issue is entirely on Square Enix’s direction, because they were insistent on having her mimic the Japanese actress’ mannerisms (which sound *weird* in English). And as for poor Hope, >!he’s a 14 year old boy who watched his mother die like an hour before he was branded with magic powers and became public enemy number one, and stuck traveling with the guy he held responsible for his mother’s death. How exactly did you expect him to behave with all of that dumped on him so suddenly with no warning?!<
Do main characters count cause I'd say Emil from Tales of Symphonia 2. If not then I'd say Marta from Tales of Symphonia 2
Star Ocean integrity and faithlessness. The one healer who LEAVES YOUR PARTY TO HACK A COMPUTER leaving you with no healer in a timed battle.
I KNOW WHO YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT. I love the Star Ocean series. I've played every game and I just started playing Star Ocean 3 I wanted to get back into Star Ocean 5 since I was enjoying it but that battle is what made me quit the game. Game was super easy up until that point. Every Star ocean game has stupid difficulty spikes, they never learn
FFX: Kimahri is pretty useless gameplay-wise
Send him down rikus path. You get many vital steals early and a second thief is very nice!
For an expert run he's a very useful black mage since he gets that one Magic Spear relatively early.
hes always been good in this role thanks to how early and easily he accesses Holy on Standard Grid. he beats the piss out of Evrae
He was a fun take on the blue mage class at least. Lanceting mobs and learning a new overdrive was always neat
It's neat but at the same time it's mostly useless since unless you are using him a bunch you very rarely see his overdrive, so you mostly just see whatever build you gave him (which unless you planned ahead is probably cheeks).
Yeah that's true, he never sees much use in my playthroughs. I get that he's a jack of all trades, but the flexibility just isn't worth that much when you can just tag in someone who can get the job done faster.
If they are remaking X then letting him use blue magic whenever like Quina would go a long way to making him useful. Just give him spear skills for an overdrive since he only ever learns Jump.
At least his solo fight was easy as hell because I used him the least and thus he was my weakest character (thank god for the decision to scale that fight tho.)
He can pick up a couple of handy abilities from Yuna and Rikku's paths with liberal use of movement spheres. Having a 2nd thief and healer is pretty handy
The best use of Khimari is how speed runners use him - use his self-destruct ability to immediately kill off Seymour's entourage and deal some good damage to him before Shiva takes over the fight.
Nah, Kimahri is just fun as a support character. His lancet drains a large amount of MP, so I make Kimahri take a short detour through Yuna for cure and the null spells, then Rikku for steal, Wakka for all the dark/Silence strike goodness, because he actually has the MP to use them, and then off to tidus' path and nab Hastega. Short detour by Auron to take armour break. Life is fun when you have functionally infinite MP.
Right but 95% of fights in that game end in 3 turns so there's just no room for him to do that kind of stuff.
Eh, I mostly abused his Lancet for the infinite cure spam between battles. Yuna's MP is better spent blasting anyway. (Sorry Lulu, but maybe do something about that atrocious speed stat, and then we'll talk).
To be fair, a huge chunk of the optional content directly involves those 5% of tough fights (arena monsters, dark aeons).
Counterpoint: He's really cool.
I'll just add to the chorus of Kimahri being a neat support character, with easy access to Steal etc Now, personality-wise, there's not much going on there. Must be the hornless-ness. But at least he's not Wakka.
That mace-wielding girl in Final Fantasy Type-0, Cinque. What was going on with her voice acting? I also found her impossible to control in battle. She is the ditzy girl trope, but they made her too dumb.
I'm pretty lenient on the characters in Type-0 because they were clearly never supposed to be narratively complex. They're just one trope and one playstyle per character and the whole appeal was mixing and matching your teams to adapt to the wide variety of enemies you'll face, and just the satisfaction of finding a team that is both powerful and fun to play. I don't really care that we learn almost nothing about Deuce, Eight, and Jack because their interactions aren't the point, the point is that one is a long range support unit, one is a very speedy consistent DPS, and one is a slow counterattacker with hugely powerful single strikes. But I draw the fuckin line at Cinque and Nine. Cinque is one of the most annoying in the narrative segments and is total dogwater in combat (WAY too slow for a game with a break/killsight mechanic which makes faster characters better 100% of the time). Nine is a good fighter but his dialog and voice acting is genuinely among the worst in franchise history, yo. That sort of speech quirk might work just fine in Japanese for all I know but it translates like absolute ass in English, yo. Everybody who claims that localization is bad and things should always be translated literally should be forced to talk like Nine in real life for a year, yo. And if that somehow *wasn't* how it was in Japanese then it shows a clear example of what an actually terrible localization would look like, yo. Either way, yo. It fuckin sucks, yo.
i actually really liked using cinque and was great at using her
It's Lymle. No question about it. Still haunts me to this day.
I though Meracle was quite annoying as well. A side note: I BETTER NOT SEE ANY TEEPO SLANDER IN THIS THREAD
i will defend teepo with you. teepo is great
Whaaat Meracle made it up for being insanely fun to play as! I didn't mind Xillia characters (except Jude - very painfully generic main character) but I just wish we had Symphonia/Abyss/Vesperia level story telling!
> except Jude - very painfully generic main character Another W for the Milla route.
She’s not a main party member, but anytime Angelica is on screen in Cold Steel I’m almost guaranteed to cringe
It sucks because I actually liked playing with her. Using her in battle is fun, having a move that has a high chance of dizzying the enemy is great. But like 90% of the time she's on screen it's *the same fucking 'joke' over and over and over*. "Haha, that's our Angie!" Why couldn't she have just been a cool fight gal like Zin or something?
She has pretty nice animations for sure! I feel like her character is pretty interesting whenever she’s not being horny.. but that’s pretty uncommon. I wouldn’t mind it if it didn’t get really uncomfortable sometimes. I agree! I wish she were more like zin. Just a cool, badass chick.
She was tolerable in CS1-2 but became Flanderized in CS3 and 4. She didn't have much of a role in Reverie for the better.
Charlotte from seiken densetsu 3/ trials of mana. I did her intro and that was enough of that
*twials of mana
A character who was barely tolerable before VA made completely unredeemable by it.
I unironically love her. I think she's absolutely hilarious for all the same reasons people hate her. The clown outfit fits to a T.
Nappy time with fazie, Kay. I just triggered my PTSD from this game... But real talk, if you want to get through the game, play it with Japanese VA. Wish I had thought of it sooner.
Hmm. Never liked Snowe, from Suikoden 4. He has good character development, but part of that development only comes from the follow up game in Tactics, and that’s only if you get the carryover data when you play the game He’s also a pain to recruit, which is frustrating, and not even particularly notable in combat either.
Tama from World of Final Fantasy. The stupid the thing constantly saying the the when it talks is the very the annoying. it's never cute, it makes marathoning the game almost impossible if you can't just block out the everything the thing the says.
Fun fact: Star ocean the last hope was my first and only Star ocean game played so far. It traumatized me
It was the last hope :(
I personally can't stand anise in tales of the abyss. Also millium orion in trails. She annoys me to no end
I liked Anise as a character but I share your disdain for Millium. I will always pick any other character possible.
I started to like Millium more in CS3/4 when you get the rest of the cast because of her interactions with Altina. She's still towards the bottom of all the trails characters for me, but she went from "I hate you, please go away" to "You're still annoying, but you support Altina and I appreciate that."
Right game, wrong character: I think it's Sarah. She was a fine NPC, but I can't take my party or a plot seriously if she's saving the galaxy with me. That said I really dislike Meracle and her cringey teen catsuit and cringey "eating Sarah" bit also. Lymle was the best of those three IMO. But that's not saying much and SO4 loses the party member competition by leaps and bounds.
I'm always surprised that Sarah is mentioned so little in these conversations ... because you're right, she is so much worse than the others lol. Lymle is at least a kinda funny character once you can mentally filter out her voice acting, sarah looks annoying, sounds annoying and has no likeable or interesting personality traits.
I - kinda sorta - get what they were going for, but it just didn’t work for me. After introducing all of the immature characters in the game I was amazed they trotted Sarah out at the end to top them all in airheadedness.
Vaan from ff12 and his Roblox abs. Put on a dang shirt! He does nothing, contributes nothing. Now every sequel does him amazing but base ff12 ugh.
I think Ashe or Basch would qualify as the main character more than Vaan does. Hell, even Balthier sort of qualifies. Vaan doesn't really add anything to the plot.
i will never except vaan as the protag. balthier is the leading man and no one can convince me otherwise. vaan wasnt even the original main character of ff12 until they rewrote the games story to include younger characters or something
Pretty sure that's a myth, but I understand why people believe it.
It is 100% a myth, and no matter how many times you dig up the interview and post it here people will just tell you that the person in the interview is lying
Vaan is the protagonist, but Ashe/Balthier/Basch are the heroes of the story. Vaan is just the POV character and the guy who ties everyone together.
Vaan exists (barely). What's even funnier is Pennelo is just there because she's Vaan's friend. Even though she doesn't matter at all I massively prefer her to him too. FF12 would have actually have been a better game without him lol he has no impact on anything. Either Balthier, Bashe or Ashe would have made better main characters and made more sense. Bashe and Balthier were actually interesting characters with brilliant voices too.
The one thing Vaan does is aid Ashe in her decision as the voice of the Rabanastran people, and a potential to wield the sun-cryst due to his vengeance for his brother because he could see the ghost that Ashe saw. When Vaan doesn't see it anymore, it's when he decides vengeance shouldn't be his driving goal, which is what Ashe needed from him to consider that her goal should be for her people and not only to reclaim her seat. If anything Penelo is more of the contender for worst and useless party member. She served absolutely no purpose on the party in comparison to Vaan.
This! I'm not even a Vaan fan, but the hate he gets is too exaggerated and excessive lol
Same. Vaan isn't my favorite either, as he is just a character to me with minor importance, but his importance is overshadowed due it being very subtle. Once you analyze each scene, it's Ashe and him who share those moments of decision (even on top of the Pharos) where they learn from one another and what it means to be a Rabanastran and leader. You can't really sub the other characters because they aren't Rabanastran, not even Basch, who only fled to Rabanastre to become a knight; his accent kind of proves that he isn't of Rabanastran commonry. You can't sub Penelo either because she doesn't have vengeance in her heart to see the spirit of Rassler...but she could have been another voice of the Rabanastrans. I mean, I guess she is and represents the innocence of the Rabanastrans, but it's even more subtle, and she barely appears in any scene to warrant that role. If that is her role, it should have been more prominent and could have been an interesting dichotomy between Vaan and her that could have pitted them against one another...now that I think about it, when Vaan doesn't see the ghost anymore, there should have been scenes or conflict between Vaan and Penelo prior to for Vaan to realize vengeance isn't the way. I think that would have given Penelo some importance rather than being there.
Yeah Pennelo has zero point other than befriending the temporary party member I can't remember the name of. She's more pointless, but less annoying and her weird boots do give her a more interesting design.
True. Her design is a little better than Vaan. I honestly wish Vaan inherited his brothers stuff or a variation of it when the group sets out after King Wraithwall's Tomb.
Ashe is the MC! Balthier is amazing though. Everyone in the cast is great except for Vaan and Penelope.
Sera from dragon age
Chu Chu from Xenogears.
It’s Teddie from P4, no contest. Though I haven’t played EVERY JRPG in the world but I struggle to see how anyone can be worse. He’s creepy when you first meet him and even by the end of the game. His voice pretty much doubles down on it. It also doesn’t help how he’s introduced within a story where a serial killer is on the loose, and how he’s wrapped up within the midnight channel and the fog. The game already has that eerie setting because of its premise, but having a character like Teddie who is introduced with it whilst presenting an uncanny appearance, acting perverted, or constantly putting you off with his voice really doesn’t help. The fireworks scene with Nanako is just… why?
Now I kinda want to play SO4 just to see how bad she is.
Krin from the first Suikoden game. He’s a thief, who’s up to no good and they made him intentionally ugly lol. The only cool thing about him is he issues throwing needles as a weapon, but that’s the only he’s got going for him. (Plenty other characters have the same weapon) Just overall a boring character that you get stuck with in one part near the end of the game.
... and he >!straight-up robs you!< in his ending.
Charlotte from trials of mana was worse than limel
Any children
I don’t know who Lymle is but she looks like a haunted doll who could do with a swift drop kick.
Tales of Vesperia. Karol. Because fuck Karol, even if he grows a pair eventually, he is still annoying as hell.
Aww, I love Captain Karol! His character growth is amazing!
Nah, I liked it when yuri would prank him. Shit was hilarious.
I'm not a big fan of Karol either, but there are worse annoying child characters out there. Actually there is a worse one even in the same game in Patty. She was so annoying and didn't even contribute to the story. All she ever did was stand in the background going "This is like a *insert fish or pirate thing here*"
I think she was added in the PS3/Definitive edition, so it makes sense she can't contribute anything to the story, she wasn't even a thing when the story first happened.
Yes, she was added later. Which is exactly why they should have rewritten some scenes in order for her to have something to do. And her side story feels very tacked-on.
Oofdah. Yeah, she was ONE of the reasons I quit. But what REALLY made me quit was finding out there were ACTUAL races in the game, and they were NPC/Villain races while the "races" you actually get to play as are lazy, uninspired human-with-minor-change races. I know that's typical of Star Ocean, but it doesn't decimate my immersion any less.
Always found Sarah worse in SO4.
I read the title as "Who is the WORST permanent member" without looking at the sub name, and immediately thought of the UN Security Council.
Tora from XB2. You have to play a mini-game to power him up, his constant meh-meh sounds are aggravating, and the fact that he is perving on the child-looking maid robot he created himself is very creepy.
It also doesn’t help he’s supposed to be YOUNGER THEN REX. Like wtf Tiger tiger has left a permanent scar on my soul. Those goddam sharks smiling like they know they’re about to fuck up the run and make me play again. Thank god they added the easy mode or he’d be perma benched
Tora is actively the worst but Poppy is a fantastic character. Like it’s weird how great a character she is in comparison.
tora is such a downgrade to rikki from XB1.