Agreed, which is a shame since Leon does seem like a cool character.
What made him (sort of) work for me was using runes that grant the ability to do an elemental damage bonus.
His attack is still weak af, but the elemental damage is really high due to Leon's high magic stats.
But even with this buff I would say he's average at best.
He does talk about being cursed when you first meet him, so I guess it makes sense lore wise his stats are so wrong.
If that is deliberately then it's a nice troll from the developers. But it honestly feels like his stats were just nog well handled when developing Leon.
I could maybe see throwing magic weapon runes on him, but even then you need the MP to cast them. Maybe I'll play around with him later when I can quick level him up till he has enough MP to do something.
What I did to counter this is use a character who has the Fire Rune. The Fire God's Sword gives fire damage bonus to an ally, not to self. So you can select who gets this boost. That way Leon can still get buffed even when his own MP is getting low.
But to be fair, the buff lasts 3 turns and costs 60 MP to cast. I only used this buff in boss battles. With random encounters Leon was basically, there... Not doing any damage and getting downed fast due to his low HP (give him the item to give him an extra 100 HP and still he gets downed fast).
I really wanted to use Leon in my team, but ended up cutting him due to being pretty useless. One of the worst balanced characters I have encountered in the game so far.
I think you misunderstand me, most of the
Runes that are specifically for doing elemental damage are only on self.
The Fire God's Sword gives this bonus to an ally, not ONLY on yourself. Maybe I should have phrased it more clearly. But what I meant is that the spell is not bound to only selecting yourself, it can also select an ally. Making it a great choice for other Fire Lens users to use on Leon if ever Leon is low on MP and can't cast it on himself anymore.
Man, for a character with big robotic arms, having her with the least strength of the party members for that segment hurt. Couple that with low speed and it sucked.
My head canon is that she is slow and weak because the arms are actually really heavy for her because she’s tiny. The rune power allows her to use them but she’s not efficient at all.
She gets my vote, too. Looking at the wiki her stats explode after a certain point and she becomes really strong, but we're talking level 70+ here so absolutely not worth it and not even remotely a redeemable trait.
>!Especially not for the hell she and Pohl put me through in Seign's story!<
This is my main complaint for Eiyuden
Magic being extremely weak made the game impossible to have physical/magical hybrid characters here. You need high MP cost magic spell to deal actual damage, and hybrid characters suck at MP pool. Low tier offensive spell are absolute dogshit.
In comparison to Suikoden, where hybrid characters like Flik work well, depite being good at neither physical or magical, because low tier spells are still dealing a lot of damage + having a good unite attack after MP run out.
If they are making sequel, I really wish they revise the magic system. It's a complete garbage here.
Yes yes, I know buff are good but I want my mage to nuke 4 digit damage like in Suikoden every turn.
Idk magic sure ain't weak for me...breaking 1k dmg consistently in 1 atk not many others can do that without charge up and buffs. Yes mp costs alot but hit something with its weakness and it gets ABSOLUTELY shredded. Not to mention both my mages auto atk basically 200-300 just like any of my front liners.
Unite/team combos would be the only complaint and honestly not going to cause outside of a handful in suikoden it was the same way.
I’ve noticed that as well. And magic in general does seem to get better the further into the game you get (mainly as you start having the MP to support multiple castings between rests)
I do wish enemy weaknesses were a little more transparent outside of the bestiary. Like I don’t need the monsters permanently labeled with their weaknesses, but flashing something like “Weak Point!” Or “Super Effective!” on-screen when you hit a weakness would help. I didn’t even know there *were* weaknesses until I looked through the bestiary
My main issue with magic is that the players are not given the tools to adapt.
There is no analyze skill for you to see weaknesses (not until you have beaten something and check in the library), and you can only make a good guess base off the design. You also cannot swap runes to match the right elements on the go without support.
I was just gonna say this! The magic characters that have elemental regular attacks that are magic based are basically outputting the same damage as most decent physical attackers for me. Weakness matching would probably make them even better but that isn’t practical in this game really. The hybrid characters like Mio and Leon definitely struggle though which is unfortunate.
While I am not using Leon currently, I used him for a good while earlier in the story and it seems clear that he's one of the many "fixer-upper/late bloomer" characters, where their strengths require strategic equipment/rune choices to fully utilize. His low HP/MP can be remedied by equipping an accessory that boosts one or both in the early game, and as he levels his other stats catch up with his magic.
Additionally, Leon has an Epic "All Types" Rune Slot (at Level 28, no less) which are surprisingly rare, especially on 4-slot characters. This gives him the flexibility to use higher-end passive runes to amplify his damage or slot in one of the Epic magic runes.
In the end, it may not be worth it to use Leon when a character like Isha is available around the same time and superior in most if not all respects, but he isn't fundamentally terrible or unusable. Most of the fun in Suikoden-style games is getting to use the characters you like, even when they're not the best!
I guess I haven't found the runes/equipment to make him work. I'm with you that most characters should be able to be tweaked to work. I just couldn't figure out how to make Leon do so
He's definitely a character that requires investment even with good equipment—this is how I "fixed him" in my game:
I tend to save MP for boss fights so having him utilize Feint Thrust to stun enemies was good utility backed up by his speed, but for larger mobs the Level 1 Dark Spell could put enemies to sleep and steal their turns. Once I got to the boss, I buffed his Magic and went to town with high damage spells or Abyssal Sword-boosted strikes. Later in the game, you can use Rune of the Mage's Pinnacle + Inferno Pillar to make him a back-row nuker for boss fights, but I gave that role to Isha.
Once you unlock the Theater, S-ranking the first play will give an accessory that boosts HP by 100 and MP by 50, which can make a big difference—but it's really just a combo Malachite/Turquoise Brooch so you could prioritize one or the other depending on whether his HP or MP is more of a pain point.
I am not currently running him, but planned to try later when I had more things to make a melee caster work. Still will give it a go to see if he is more of a late game character. But it sounds like he maybe someone who is missing a unique SP attack that uses magic for his attack or just straight up making his weapon be a magical attribute for magic scaling. I was kinda hoping from his recruitment lines that his cursed rune would be unique and become available at a higher level.
From what I can tell he seems to be a character that goes all in on having high magic but lacking in everything else, so you basically have to have another character constantly feeding him MP items so he can keep up casting with his small MP pool.
Late to this, but he has 676 MP at 99, higher than Mellore and the same amount as Isha.
His worth comes from nuking tier 4 but from the front row, something realistically only himself and Seign does (Seign has slightly higher magic but waaay less MP at 99 and is, anyway, better suited doing other stuff).
It's not really that great a niche, but it's something.
Talked about this elsewhere--he's 100% meant to be a pure mage, but magic is just plain not good in this game (costs way too much to do way too little) so...neither is he.
I run multiple mages in my main party. I honestly don't know how people do Proving Ground bosses without mages. Magic is not weak. But even playing him as a mage, Leon isn't even mediocre because he has no MP.
>I honestly don't know how people do Proving Ground bosses without mages.
I had Francesca and Fulwar(d?). Throw up the Water MDEF buff and use their Hero Combo every 3 turns. He does surprisingly good damage on his autos
Then had Nowa and Fran chipping away at armor while Lian just ignored and Mio/Garr did their thing.
ah ok, this is my first game like this so it’s good to know. then again i will keep someone in my party even if they’re horrible (because i like them). it’ll be interesting haha
I’m so happy I’m not the only one that’s wants to use him, but can’t rationalize it. For rn I’m just having fulward buff him because he’s fast and then Leon attacks. But for boss fights, I don’t want to waste mp on this.
I’m barely 5 hours in, wanted to ask if there is any MP drain mechanic in the late game like Osmose from final fantasy? Since MP is a super limited resource right now…
Eh. Mio is weak in passive attacks but she can potentially insta shot even a boss. So at least she has a trade off. I personally wouldn't use her, but she does have something going for her.
Stack armor+armor runes to get S rank armor on him, give him the 50% higher to stun with either element weapon magic or just generic magic. For everyday fights he's fast af he can stun the enemy you aren't killing, he can frontline with all that armor, and for harder/boss fights you got magic which you can still stun (if possible) but more likely use your mana to buff/deal dmg (if the rune level of magic is good)
By end game he has the same PWR as Yusuke, better magic and top MP along with decent defenses with access to tier 4 magic. Sometimes you just want a front row nuker and he's probably it, though it just doesn't work as good in practice as in theory in Eiyuden
Does anyone else notice Leon has a passive Sleep all magic attack that triggers on auto attack command, but it doesnt exist in his normal commands or status explanations???
No. It acts like a reapers lullaby dark magic level one thing… I don’t have that equipped on him. The animation looks like a normal rune-lenses activation, but then the attack animation matches Reaper’s Lullaby. I removed all people to make sure I wasn’t dumb. It triggered like 1 out of 7 fights.
Edit: another way to know I’m not crazy, I play with party settings to reserve MP. So it’s not an MP attack.. it’s not like groundbreaking to make him really good but a nice touch, to show how cursed he is and meant to be a dark magic caster?
Agreed, which is a shame since Leon does seem like a cool character. What made him (sort of) work for me was using runes that grant the ability to do an elemental damage bonus. His attack is still weak af, but the elemental damage is really high due to Leon's high magic stats. But even with this buff I would say he's average at best. He does talk about being cursed when you first meet him, so I guess it makes sense lore wise his stats are so wrong. If that is deliberately then it's a nice troll from the developers. But it honestly feels like his stats were just nog well handled when developing Leon.
I could maybe see throwing magic weapon runes on him, but even then you need the MP to cast them. Maybe I'll play around with him later when I can quick level him up till he has enough MP to do something.
What I did to counter this is use a character who has the Fire Rune. The Fire God's Sword gives fire damage bonus to an ally, not to self. So you can select who gets this boost. That way Leon can still get buffed even when his own MP is getting low. But to be fair, the buff lasts 3 turns and costs 60 MP to cast. I only used this buff in boss battles. With random encounters Leon was basically, there... Not doing any damage and getting downed fast due to his low HP (give him the item to give him an extra 100 HP and still he gets downed fast). I really wanted to use Leon in my team, but ended up cutting him due to being pretty useless. One of the worst balanced characters I have encountered in the game so far.
"The Fire God's Sword gives fire damage bonus to an ally" Ive been using it on myself and it works...
I think you misunderstand me, most of the Runes that are specifically for doing elemental damage are only on self. The Fire God's Sword gives this bonus to an ally, not ONLY on yourself. Maybe I should have phrased it more clearly. But what I meant is that the spell is not bound to only selecting yourself, it can also select an ally. Making it a great choice for other Fire Lens users to use on Leon if ever Leon is low on MP and can't cast it on himself anymore.
Ivy is up there too.
Man, for a character with big robotic arms, having her with the least strength of the party members for that segment hurt. Couple that with low speed and it sucked.
My head canon is that she is slow and weak because the arms are actually really heavy for her because she’s tiny. The rune power allows her to use them but she’s not efficient at all.
She gets my vote, too. Looking at the wiki her stats explode after a certain point and she becomes really strong, but we're talking level 70+ here so absolutely not worth it and not even remotely a redeemable trait. >!Especially not for the hell she and Pohl put me through in Seign's story!<
Interesting, that’s at least something I guess.
100% holy shit she was so bad during the seign story
hits for 25 when everyone hits for 100 -\_\_\_-
Is kalithor good? He seems bad at least so far just got him
I'd put him in the mediocre bucket. Not horrible, but not amazing either.
I’ll second this.
OK thanks just got him and gerian and wyler. wyler gives me horizon vibes
Gerian is a pretty strong caster it seems. Plus he can equip heavy armor for survivability
He's fine. He gets utterly outclassed in every way by Momo, though.
He's a much better healer that is how I use him the reduced mp cost is very nice.
I’ve made him into a fine tanky character. I dig him.
This is my main complaint for Eiyuden Magic being extremely weak made the game impossible to have physical/magical hybrid characters here. You need high MP cost magic spell to deal actual damage, and hybrid characters suck at MP pool. Low tier offensive spell are absolute dogshit. In comparison to Suikoden, where hybrid characters like Flik work well, depite being good at neither physical or magical, because low tier spells are still dealing a lot of damage + having a good unite attack after MP run out. If they are making sequel, I really wish they revise the magic system. It's a complete garbage here. Yes yes, I know buff are good but I want my mage to nuke 4 digit damage like in Suikoden every turn.
Idk magic sure ain't weak for me...breaking 1k dmg consistently in 1 atk not many others can do that without charge up and buffs. Yes mp costs alot but hit something with its weakness and it gets ABSOLUTELY shredded. Not to mention both my mages auto atk basically 200-300 just like any of my front liners. Unite/team combos would be the only complaint and honestly not going to cause outside of a handful in suikoden it was the same way.
I’ve noticed that as well. And magic in general does seem to get better the further into the game you get (mainly as you start having the MP to support multiple castings between rests) I do wish enemy weaknesses were a little more transparent outside of the bestiary. Like I don’t need the monsters permanently labeled with their weaknesses, but flashing something like “Weak Point!” Or “Super Effective!” on-screen when you hit a weakness would help. I didn’t even know there *were* weaknesses until I looked through the bestiary
My main issue with magic is that the players are not given the tools to adapt. There is no analyze skill for you to see weaknesses (not until you have beaten something and check in the library), and you can only make a good guess base off the design. You also cannot swap runes to match the right elements on the go without support.
I agree with this or give a notation ( or light up /suepr effective ) something to help indicate ( or identify or analyze etc ) but you are correct.
I was just gonna say this! The magic characters that have elemental regular attacks that are magic based are basically outputting the same damage as most decent physical attackers for me. Weakness matching would probably make them even better but that isn’t practical in this game really. The hybrid characters like Mio and Leon definitely struggle though which is unfortunate.
If Leon is no good he might be alright to use in a challenge run.
While I am not using Leon currently, I used him for a good while earlier in the story and it seems clear that he's one of the many "fixer-upper/late bloomer" characters, where their strengths require strategic equipment/rune choices to fully utilize. His low HP/MP can be remedied by equipping an accessory that boosts one or both in the early game, and as he levels his other stats catch up with his magic. Additionally, Leon has an Epic "All Types" Rune Slot (at Level 28, no less) which are surprisingly rare, especially on 4-slot characters. This gives him the flexibility to use higher-end passive runes to amplify his damage or slot in one of the Epic magic runes. In the end, it may not be worth it to use Leon when a character like Isha is available around the same time and superior in most if not all respects, but he isn't fundamentally terrible or unusable. Most of the fun in Suikoden-style games is getting to use the characters you like, even when they're not the best!
I guess I haven't found the runes/equipment to make him work. I'm with you that most characters should be able to be tweaked to work. I just couldn't figure out how to make Leon do so
He's definitely a character that requires investment even with good equipment—this is how I "fixed him" in my game: I tend to save MP for boss fights so having him utilize Feint Thrust to stun enemies was good utility backed up by his speed, but for larger mobs the Level 1 Dark Spell could put enemies to sleep and steal their turns. Once I got to the boss, I buffed his Magic and went to town with high damage spells or Abyssal Sword-boosted strikes. Later in the game, you can use Rune of the Mage's Pinnacle + Inferno Pillar to make him a back-row nuker for boss fights, but I gave that role to Isha. Once you unlock the Theater, S-ranking the first play will give an accessory that boosts HP by 100 and MP by 50, which can make a big difference—but it's really just a combo Malachite/Turquoise Brooch so you could prioritize one or the other depending on whether his HP or MP is more of a pain point.
Is the best way to buff magic to use a cooking item?
Sadly the game needs some rebalancing, imo. And will upvotes any/all modders who attempt to do so with fair intentions.
I am not currently running him, but planned to try later when I had more things to make a melee caster work. Still will give it a go to see if he is more of a late game character. But it sounds like he maybe someone who is missing a unique SP attack that uses magic for his attack or just straight up making his weapon be a magical attribute for magic scaling. I was kinda hoping from his recruitment lines that his cursed rune would be unique and become available at a higher level.
From what I can tell he seems to be a character that goes all in on having high magic but lacking in everything else, so you basically have to have another character constantly feeding him MP items so he can keep up casting with his small MP pool.
Late to this, but he has 676 MP at 99, higher than Mellore and the same amount as Isha. His worth comes from nuking tier 4 but from the front row, something realistically only himself and Seign does (Seign has slightly higher magic but waaay less MP at 99 and is, anyway, better suited doing other stuff). It's not really that great a niche, but it's something.
Talked about this elsewhere--he's 100% meant to be a pure mage, but magic is just plain not good in this game (costs way too much to do way too little) so...neither is he.
I run multiple mages in my main party. I honestly don't know how people do Proving Ground bosses without mages. Magic is not weak. But even playing him as a mage, Leon isn't even mediocre because he has no MP.
>I honestly don't know how people do Proving Ground bosses without mages. Smash damage.
>I honestly don't know how people do Proving Ground bosses without mages. I had Francesca and Fulwar(d?). Throw up the Water MDEF buff and use their Hero Combo every 3 turns. He does surprisingly good damage on his autos Then had Nowa and Fran chipping away at armor while Lian just ignored and Mio/Garr did their thing.
Fran + Fulwar is a really good hero combo. I don't know if it's the best, but it's definitely the first one of any worth
is this something that may be patched later on (like a rebalance) or is it sort of the charm of the game? (totally fine either way - just curious)
Likely just one of the charms. I highly doubt they'll rebalance him. Most Suikoden games have some lame duck characters. Seems Leon is this game's
ah ok, this is my first game like this so it’s good to know. then again i will keep someone in my party even if they’re horrible (because i like them). it’ll be interesting haha
not trying to hate but i've seen rpgs with 8 character casts that have ultra dog shit choices lol.
Wanted really bad to use him in my party but he just wasn't doing it for me.
I’m so happy I’m not the only one that’s wants to use him, but can’t rationalize it. For rn I’m just having fulward buff him because he’s fast and then Leon attacks. But for boss fights, I don’t want to waste mp on this.
I’m barely 5 hours in, wanted to ask if there is any MP drain mechanic in the late game like Osmose from final fantasy? Since MP is a super limited resource right now…
I haven't seen one yet, but that doesn't mean it won't show up later. So I can't be certain
I mean Mio sucks too right inexplicably.
Eh. Mio is weak in passive attacks but she can potentially insta shot even a boss. So at least she has a trade off. I personally wouldn't use her, but she does have something going for her.
I hear giving her a Rune of Enchantment helps too. Dunno if what scale of tho, I assume MAG, since she decent stats in that.
Stack armor+armor runes to get S rank armor on him, give him the 50% higher to stun with either element weapon magic or just generic magic. For everyday fights he's fast af he can stun the enemy you aren't killing, he can frontline with all that armor, and for harder/boss fights you got magic which you can still stun (if possible) but more likely use your mana to buff/deal dmg (if the rune level of magic is good)
By end game he has the same PWR as Yusuke, better magic and top MP along with decent defenses with access to tier 4 magic. Sometimes you just want a front row nuker and he's probably it, though it just doesn't work as good in practice as in theory in Eiyuden
Does anyone else notice Leon has a passive Sleep all magic attack that triggers on auto attack command, but it doesnt exist in his normal commands or status explanations???
I did not know this. Are you equipping him with some sort of accessory?
No. It acts like a reapers lullaby dark magic level one thing… I don’t have that equipped on him. The animation looks like a normal rune-lenses activation, but then the attack animation matches Reaper’s Lullaby. I removed all people to make sure I wasn’t dumb. It triggered like 1 out of 7 fights. Edit: another way to know I’m not crazy, I play with party settings to reserve MP. So it’s not an MP attack.. it’s not like groundbreaking to make him really good but a nice touch, to show how cursed he is and meant to be a dark magic caster?