Eh, I'm bored at work and it's only one hour and twenty minutes until the shift is over.
MK2 - Full Grow Books for everybody! Enemies are even pretty badass competent in a vacuum (tons of quirky offense! MT borderline 2HKO and they show up in numbers! Strong break damage!), but your party is just -so good- at not letting them get much in the way of openings. It's the authentic MK endgame experience against randoms. The boss fights are pretty good, if essentially remixes, at least. BOARPOPRESSOR MK. II once again manages Godlikeness. Even with Enna to kill the satellite sphere, his snorts are mean, mean fuckers.
So, Ulrika characters' evaluations in-battle! Ulrika's party is generally less blessed with stats than Raze's, it has more frail PCs, almost no timed sphere offense, less crowd control and overall less offense. However, it gets timed healing, ways to deal with timed spheres besides sucking it up and taking it like a man, more powerful Supports, higher short-term offense and its utility is a bit more spread out in general. While Raze party had its timed spheres and amazing offense spread as strong points, Ulrika's party generally has stronger utility and quirkier niches. It's a cool spread like that.
Ulrika - Okay. Picture Jessica. Give her better stats across the board and a large GT skill that inflicts just about every MK2 status in the book besides the really niche stuff like Lock-on and Freeze. Make her timed sphere healing MT from the get-go, but make it about 50% as effective, take away the cheaper ST option from her. Oh, and slap a Common Skill-boosting natural passive on her. That's basically Ulrika in a nutshell. Like Puniyo, she's a healer who relies rather heavily on Common Skills to muster up actual offense. Unlike Puniyo, however, she doesn't skyrocket into the top of the damage curve with that niche. Puniyo is generally a more powerful mage healer with the revival/status healing (Ulrika has neither) and doublecasting, but Ulrika has far better stats and is quite versatile at utility. Both Magic Hammer and Cannon Ball (her unique damage techs) are handy utility offense: Magic Hammer is her strongest non-CS tech, with insanely accurate Silence attached, and Cannon Ball's excellent AoE means it's pretty neat a tool to annoy enemies. You'd be surprised at how -many- bosses are vulnerable to Slow, and how rarely it's even resisted. Some bosses also hand you niche uses for Curse as well, and Sleep would be a decent status when it hit if it wasn't the most often resisted/immuned status in the game. Straight offense, however, she's unlikely to have until she gets her CS boosting skill, and that's probably over half the game in, and the healing is halfway into the game - so, Ulrika really sorta putters as a pure status whore for the first few chapters (like Raze, she doesn't start terribly impressive). She's yet another poster child of why Common Skills being defailed is cool.
Chloe - Offense. Offense. OFFENSE. Chloe's damage is utterly nuts. Her spells have just about the best mults in the game - partly because they seem to perenially improve. You see, Chloe has an Analyze spell! Only it's better than Analyze for two reasons. First is that it also shows status immunities and elemental resistances, unlike Raze's. Second, it boosts the damage of her other damage skills. Both Summon Demon Lord and Poison Demon Lord gain higher mults as more things get analyzed (and quite likely as they get hit by World of Book), along with being stronger on enemies that were already analyzed, and the effect they have is insane. You already have all reasons to analyze enemies with it being an okay damage spell that gives you all the info you want: having it exponentially raise the damage you deal with two of the best pure damage spells in the game is just ridiculous. By the time Chloe gets Poison Demon Lord, chances are she eked ahead of Pepperoni for offense, and she never gives that (substantial) lead up. Her offense/defense supports are quite neat as well (one of the few MT Guard supports in Ulrika's path, and having it immune Darkness downright spoils a few nasty fights). Problem? Chloe is entirely ST, has somewhat lacking stats across the board outside the ones related to her offense, and Dark reliance is a bit problematic at times, much like Lily's Ice reliance. Chloe benefits from Common Skills, of course, so it's hardly demoralizing, and Cursed Doll is a niche option for when all elements she carries are being walled, but being a Double-Up skill means it also has its issues. Still, the offense is just ridiculous, and, when you get it, Chloe's Intimate Guard is one of the best in the game (MT HP+ST healing? Oh yes!). One of my MVPs in Ulrika path.
Pepperoni - Earlygame, he's your biggest damage cannon, and he's got crazy HP. Pepperoni is at his best in the first four chapters or so, where he just dominates for offensive options in general: line GT offense, scary as fuck damage with ID attached (albeit a Double-Up skill. It's still quite a dangerous bitchslap), good damage with knockback attached, and he gets those before the mages start getting their money stuff as well. However, as the options widen for the party in general, his use sorta dwindles and his poor speed begins showing hard, although he gets money upgrades for his knockback skill and Fairy Swing eventually, which keep him competitive, so it's all good. You often -do- need the physical punch he provides, especially given how Ulrika's party has the worst fighter in the game. Earth reliance is pretty annoying at times, though, and, unlike Chloe, he can't competently use backup elements.
Enna - He was my other MVP along with Chloe. Enna starts out lacking: slow, not terribly durable and all he has for him is a GT timed sphere skill (which is admittedly neat enough, especially given how Raze path hogged all the other timed sphere offensive). It doesn't take him long to gain more - useful - options and steadily improve both his speed and durability, though. Enna gets Interceptor - i.e. the best way to deal with timed sphere skills in the game, as it works as a passive Purify from Roxis. While Enna has to remain in the active party to erase the cards (Roxis could just swap in, clear cards, possibly deal crappy damage to the enemy and swap out as needed), Enna doesn't have to commit full turns every time you need to handle cards, so it balances decently. Enna's offense also only improves: he gets timed sphere knockback skills and more GT offense, along with sorta specializing on Wind/Thunder offense. In-game, this is pretty nice because Wind isn't an element often resisted. More importantly, he's the only elementally reliant fighter who has competent NE backup (Vertical Missile ends up his best long-term damage, on par with Falling Blade besides only lasting one turn, and it's also the most efficient timed sphere skill in the game. Very good stuff). He also has a neat passive in Auto Attack: while the initiative forces him to use his turn on a basic physical, it also does what Et's initiative does and rearranges speed priority for the party. Not to mention that Enna often doubles the entire enemy party if it activates (at least, he does so at endgame), so it ends out being still pretty good. Just a very neat, offensively versatile PC (being the only PC to specialize in timed sphere offense in Ulrika path is a neat niche in a vacuum. Having timed sphere offense that is versatile -and- even fill unique niches is just cool. Enna would be worth using in Raze path even with the overkill amount of timed offense, to give you an idea), and being able to kill timed spheres is crazy good to boot. His Intimate Guard is solid, too (MT full healing! Dunno if it deals with timed spheres, but you sorta hurt for strong healing in MK2).
Goto - Ugh. One of the PCs in the game had to utterly fail it up, and it had to be Goto. He's a physical fighter with middle-range stats, shoddy equips and utterly awful mults on his damage, along with being reliant on ST damage. He tries to balance between magical damage and physical damage, but he isn't competent enough at magic to use Common Skills well, and his physical skills are -awkward- to use at best and downright bad at worse. His biggest unique niche is STEALING! ... in freaking Mana Khemia, where everything but sweets (ironically) drops like candy from enemies, and it's not even perfect rate stealing to boot. His remaining niche then becomes harvesting Goto Points for getting minor stat boosts and unleashing Goto Romancing as a bit of a short burst volley, then slowly go back to building Goto Points. That's not a good niche, even if maxed Goto Romancing's mult is pretty good (it's limited by Goto's shoddy Attack and weaponry). He does get instant-turn getting A and D-Supports late in the game, which is good, but that's the only good thing he -has-. Getting a nerfed Overrealm clone isn't very useful either (it does turn him into an okay Middle if you allow full Goto Points! And sadly, by endgame, he builds Goto Points damned fast. Dear god). Goto really has to be a twisted joke from Gust.
EDIT: This post took me an hour to complete. You'd think I have more important stuff to do at work.
