Tales of Vesperia- Ranking thoughts. *Spoilers ahead!*

[superaielman]

Said I'd make this topic whenever I got around to finishing the game. Don't know when/if it'll be ready, but as usual I like to sort my thoughts ahead of time.

Rank: PC's, Duke, Alexei. I don't think I'm forgetting any super relevant fights here. You can rank Barbos or whatever the act 1 final boss is, but eh. Alexei is a total loser in terms of screentime till his betrayal, but he's around enough to make him a solid rank.

Maybe: Flynn- Super plot relevant, but his best form is a one fight equip locked PC. Shame.  We'll probably rank anyway, assuming the game ever gets in. Repede- Could be too strong with a certain view of things. I doubt this will prevail, but I want to check this before saying rank him.  Yeager- I didn't find him memorable enough to rank myself, but open to arguments.


There are a couple of joke ranks you can toss in there-  Schwann brigade losers are pretty much just Solt and Peppor remixed.

[Pyro]

Ranks... the PC cast, Alexei, Duke, and Flynn work? I don't know about Flynn either. Barbatos is forgettable enough to ignore.

Flynn is too plot relevant to pass on and has a battle form you can play around with for a good while.

I'm more interested to see what people think about Skills. I'm tempted to allow all unique skills as learned and non-unique if the appropriate weapon/secondary is equipped.

[Fudozukushi]

Rank: PC's, Alexei, Duke, Yeager and Zagi.  Yeager because most people I talk with generally find him as the only villain with personality.  Zagi because he has five goddamn boss fights.

Flynn is maybe.  Right now I'm leaning no because his Tempt form while endgame is annoying to deal with and his boss form is just too sad.


No to Barbos.

[superaielman]

Sounds good. DL ranks... Yuri and Repede as fairly high Godlikes. Rita's a Heavy, Estelle is almost certainly a heavy (Magic immunity as an option+physical walling? Yikes). Judy looks like a technical fighter who doesn't translate, and Karol/Raven are mysteries; as I didn't use them much. Same with bosses.

Edit: Zagi's possible. I'm just apathetic there.

[DjinnAndTonic]

Rank:

PCs:
Yuri (Godlike damage/TP recovery/Turn 1 ID)
Rita (Damage/Turn 1 ID+Magic Immunity)
Estelle (Magic Immunity+Healing/Buffing/Turn 4 ID+Might live to see an Overlimit go off.)
Karol (Some fast light Healing + backloaded Damage + Turn 3 ID)
Raven (Fast Healing, Ranged/Elemental damage + Turn 4 ID; Boss form might be a solid Heavy due to Mystic Arte lolz.)
Judith (Double damage against aerial enemies! + Turn 3 ID)

Bosses:
Zagi (5 forms!)
Belius (We don't rank enough good-guy flying monster bosses, also by far the most plot important Entelexeia, and memorable)
Yeager (Most Memorable villain)
Alexei (tool, but important)
Duke (emo, but cool boss fight. Splitpath 3rd form may prove problematic? Would kneejerk against the  form myself, but it might even out people who claim RitaTidalWaveSpam=AllBossesSuck)

Maybes:
Repede (Get a turn, win unless the enemy has fast Dispel And without the invincibility trick, he's probably only middle unless you allow him items due to all his unique Item skills. Turn 4 ID, too.)
Flynn (Really plot important. Needs a better form option. I'd support him since he's really easy to interp, just kind of a short fight.)
Other Entelexeia: Kind of cool.
Hunting Blades: Apathy
Gauche/Droit: Don't work all that well separately is my kneejerk.

[superaielman]

Duke (emo, but cool boss fight. Splitpath 3rd form may prove problematic? Would kneejerk against the  form myself, but it might even out people who claim RitaTidalWaveSpam=AllBossesSuck)

Third form?

[Pyro]

If you gather all of the Fell Arms you will be forced to fight a third form of his after the second. This form is akin to the ToS and TotA superbosses.

[PurpleOutsider]

So similar to Absolon, that knight that was in the book, Replicantis and Nebillim? Is it end game like them or are you able to fight him during the storyline?

[Meeplelard]

Duke Form 3 is as legal as Unlimited Indalecio; yeah, it exists as an alternate SUPER FORM for the FInal Boss, but requires going out of your way doing a side quest to make a boss harder just for one last boss fight. 

That said, rank the following:

PCs: obvious.
Alexei: Main villain for a good part of the game.
Zagi: The Seifer of the game; Yuri's self proclaimed rival that you keep fighting over and over again.
Duke: Final Boss with plenty of plot
Yeager: Henchman with decent amount of Screen time, and somewhat memorable.
Adecor and Boccos: They're so god awful its hilarious, thus they feel rankable for the same reasons Solt and Peppor are, cause they pretty much ARE Solt/Peppor MkII...heck, they even have similar designs and tutorial fights based on them screwing up; you certainly fight them enough and see them enough to justify it, and they even have one completely legit fight mid way in the game.

Maybes and what not:
Flynn: He's hard to scale based on when you have him as a PC, and the duel can be lost, though I suppose its totally legit beyond that (its not overpowered or anything...far from it in fact, so its not like a "technically winnable plot fight you're suppose to lose" like early Kratos and Mithos fights, as its very clear they intended "You win" to be a conceivable, regular outcome.)  I'm not opposed to ranking him, but he's a bit of an oddball due to the scaling thing.
Barbados (or whatever his name is):  Sort of the villain of the first 1/3rd of the game, but has far less plot than Duke or Alexei.
Hunting Guild Trio: They tie into Karol's plot, but...I don't think they quite justify themselves as a ranking idea, but thought I'd toss them out there; frankly, I couldn't care less if they don't get ranked, just figured getting them mentioned couldn't hurt.  That said, of these three, frankly? Nan's the only one I'd remotely consider ranking, partially cause it says something that I can't even remember the names of the other two, and Nan definitely had a more prominent/important role than those two.

Droite and Gauche or whatever (the loli Twins) can shove it; I didn't even know you CAN fight them, which says something.  Tales side quests can bite me.
Any PS3 exclusive bosses like Don can die too for obvious reasons.
And I'm opposed to any Entelexeia boss; Belius has some plot, but its too brief to really justify ranking to be honest, and she's the best there is.  Well, Phaeroh would be fine...except for the fact that you never actually fight him, which sort of makes him unrankable by default.

[DjinnAndTonic]

Noting that I would definitely support Tweedle A and Tweedle B. Especially if we ranked them by those names.

[superaielman]

I'd have to dig up art for them, which could be annoying.

Repede is definitely rankable, after looking at it. There are enough blitzers in Godlike to take him down.

[Cmdr_King]

I'm against any bosses myself.  Alexei and Duke are the most story relevant, and they still don't really have a good, steady presence through the game.  More than that, they're just terribly unmemorable as fights.  Both are bosses you fight once, at the climax of their story arcs, during which you throw out a limit bottle and blahblahblah VIOLENT PAIN and they die.  It's not really like TotA where you fought every villain three times and they all had Mystic Artes you were pretty well bound to see at least once a fight, meaning you had a baseline for how good they were.  Zagi's the most rankable in terms of gameplay memorability, and he's still got some issues since he makes it a point to change his fighting style every fight and is, even the ToV's plot standards, completely extraneous.

So yeah, I think Flynn's a better idea than any of the bosses.