What would you rank from these games: FFT and FE13

[superaielman]

This is always a fun topic to pick at. What would you rank from these games? CKDL doesn't do this, but it was a big part of main site DL rankings. What would you pick to rank from a game and why?

http://www.rpgdl.com/tournament/rankings.php?game=fft&mode=char_name&order=ASC for FFT

http://www.rpgdl.com/forums/index.php/topic,4634.msg159053.html#msg159053 for FE13. this list does not include bosses.

[superaielman]

FFT

Rank:  Agrias, Algus, Altima, Balk, Beowulf,  Celia, Delita, Gafgarion, Izlude, Malak, Meliadoul, Mustadio, Orlandu, Rafa, Ramza, Rofel, Worker 8

Don't rank: Zalbag, Reis, Alma, Olan, anyone else not listed

Rank as Zodiac demons: Dycedarg, Elmdor, Vormav, Draculu, Wiegraf

Zalbag/Olan/Alma are temps who are with you a very short time (1-2 fights) and Alma has some awful votesplit. If FFT weren't so well played, I would axe Miluda/Balk/Izlude/Rofel, but it's FFT so.

[SnowFire]

FFT is a weird case.  If I were the king of the DL I'd mandate form chains for the FFT Zodiac bosses - e.g. Dyce->Adramelk, Wiegraf->Velius, Elmdor->Zalera.  That said that is more complex and the team fights are messy and ugh.  The problem with the Zodiacs, while memorable, the FFT AI doesn't randomly show off its moveset, it picks the "best" move, and some of the moves that are bad in-game (and thus correctly to the AI - it shouldn't be punished for not using them) are broke'd in the DL, e.g. the Zodiac's status game rather than just nuking you with damage.  So, under the old site mindset where people are expected to vote based off memory of the game rather than necessarily peering at stat topics, probably don't use ANY of the zodiac demon bosses, alas.  Stick with PC Elmdor & Wiegraf I suppose.

Anyway the old ranking set was fine but boot Zalbag & frown upon hacked-in PC Alma with equipment changing.

Awakening...  well, it's pretty moot with CKDL rules, but if it had come out in 2009, I'd probably arrange the tiers of rankability like so depending on perceived playership:

Core plotty characters - auto-includes if the game is ranked at all, no huge interp issues.  If you've played the game you know why.
Chrom, Avatar, Lissa, Frederick, Lucina, Say'ri, Tiki, Gangrel
(Tiki is technically optional, and Lucina's stats shift around a little by mother, but these are both minor issues IMHO.)

Distinctive / early / fan favorite characters - Characters to rank if we didn't do a full cast ranking but had enough votership to include some extra interesting duelers, whether they be well liked, unique class options, etc.
Sully, Virion, Stahl, Vaike, Miriel, Sumia, Lon'qu, Maribelle - Shepherds core, all players likely used them at least a little in the early-going.
Cordelia, Tharja, Henry, Anna - Well-liked / distinctive skillsets in the DL / very usable in-game
Aversa - Notable boss, although very swingy by older DL interps (give her average speed / movement and she's a High Heavy, give her Last Strike and she's uh Low Middle.)
Walhart - I don't particularly care but I suppose he is a plotty boss, and he's nice enough to move & have support.

Rank almost everyone
Basilio, Flavia - Plotty but potentially not much used in-game.
Olivia - A FE Dancer in the DL?  Novel.
Validar - Plotty but kinda yawn, his battle doesn't entirely translate either.

Everyone else
Ricken, Panne, Gaius, Gregor, Nowi, Libra, Cherche - All quite rankable & interesting and have fans, but if any PCs would be dropped, I guess it'd be these.
Cervantes - The power of his mustache cannot be denied.

DNR
Donnel, non-Lucina kids, final boss.

Had there been sufficient support in 2009, I'd actually go all the way to the "Everyone else" tier, personally.  (If we assumed that people didn't nominate characters TOO heavily on the basis of "not in for X seasons, therefore must nominate," which could cause a large ranking to lead to Awakening DL.  Not that Awakening DL would be that bad a fate IMHO.)

[Dhyerwolf]

Can't really say on the bigger one, but for FFT it would have been
Ranked PCs minus Reis (optional, two forms that leave a question over which to use. And no, I don't really feel like including her just because Beowulf was in!). Also boot Alma into the sun. I'm fine with Olan. While he doesn't translate well, his quirk is extremely memorable.

Bosses...memory is iffy here, but I probably would have chosen Zodiac Demons over human forms (for all that Zodiac Demons may not have always used their best move, a lot of their human forms I remember as either being steamrolled in game. Although I'm torn here, because the thought of ranking the fail that is Hashmalum hurts.

In terms of other bosses, I don't have a great memory for plot. I seem to remember that we kicked out the truly bad offenders, but I would probably have to replay the game to remember general.

[074]

Might as well give my opinion for FFT rankings for this thread.

Rank: Ramza, Miluda, Algus, Agrias, Mustadio, Gafgarion, Queklain, Zalmo, Izlude, Velius, Rafa, Malak, Meliadoul, Balk, Celia (or Lede), Zalera, Dycedarg, Rofel, Kletain, Hashmal, Altima, Beowulf, Worker 8.  Dycedarg does seem to get a legitimate claim to formchain to Adra at this point, for what it counts. 

Abstain: Zalbag, Delita, Olan, Reis.  Three of these are temps.  The last is an interp frustration.

DNR: Ovelia, Alma - Just...no.  Especially no to Alma.

[Meeplelard]

FFT: All playable characters sans Cloud and maybe Byblos (effectively after-game PC, etc.)

Delita for guests.  For bosses, Algus, Wiegraf, Rofel, Altima, Elmdor, and Vormav.  Kletian I err on because he does so much less than the other two. 


FE13: Do not rank Robin.  Nature of his/her character screams "does not belong here."  Otherwise, rank pretty much the entire Gen 1 PC cast.  I was going to pick and choose but realized that if we isolate it to only Gen 1 characters, it's not too bad and has a nice range of classes represented.  Do not rank any Gen 2 characters outside of Lucina, who I am erring on.

On one hand, she has a canon parent (Sumia), so you could argue we just take that.  On the otherhand, she's still got a number of potential builds because even a canon parent still can lead to a votesplit and such.  The other big thing she has going for her over other Gen 2 PCs is of course a much higher level of plot.  She's not a one map wonder tossed in for eugenics, but an actual consistent player in the story, and a pretty important one at that.

Bosses?  Gangrel, Walhart, Aversa, Validar and Grima.  At first I was saying no to Grima but realized he doesn't really have much plot bull **** as his special ability is just damage halving, which is nowhere near as bad as, oh, Goddess Protect.  Gangrel, Walhart and Validar are all villains of Act 1, 2 and 3 respectively, and Aversa is a prominent henchman of Gangrel and Validar.  I guess we could also rank Cervantes because SCIENCE!

[DjinnAndTonic]

Core plotty characters - auto-includes if the game is ranked at all, no huge interp issues.  If you've played the game you know why.
Chrom, Avatar, Lissa, Frederick, Lucina, Say'ri, Tiki, Gangrel
(Tiki is technically optional, and Lucina's stats shift around a little by mother, but these are both minor issues IMHO.)

Distinctive / early / fan favorite characters - Characters to rank if we didn't do a full cast ranking but had enough votership to include some extra interesting duelers, whether they be well liked, unique class options, etc.
Sully, Virion, Stahl, Vaike, Miriel, Sumia, Lon'qu, Maribelle - Shepherds core, all players likely used them at least a little in the early-going.
Cordelia, Tharja, Henry, Anna - Well-liked / distinctive skillsets in the DL / very usable in-game
Aversa - Notable boss, although very swingy by older DL interps (give her average speed / movement and she's a High Heavy, give her Last Strike and she's uh Low Middle.)
Walhart - I don't particularly care but I suppose he is a plotty boss, and he's nice enough to move & have support.

Rank almost everyone
Basilio, Flavia - Plotty but potentially not much used in-game.
Olivia - A FE Dancer in the DL?  Novel.
Validar - Plotty but kinda yawn, his battle doesn't entirely translate either.

Everyone else
Ricken, Panne, Gaius, Gregor, Nowi, Libra, Cherche - All quite rankable & interesting and have fans, but if any PCs would be dropped, I guess it'd be these.
Cervantes - The power of his mustache cannot be denied.

DNR
Donnel, non-Lucina kids, final boss.

Had there been sufficient support in 2009, I'd actually go all the way to the "Everyone else" tier, personally.  (If we assumed that people didn't nominate characters TOO heavily on the basis of "not in for X seasons, therefore must nominate," which could cause a large ranking to lead to Awakening DL.  Not that Awakening DL would be that bad a fate IMHO.)

I feel like there's something -missing- from this list...

Anyway...

FFT: All PCs except Byblos, Delita, Olan, and all the Zodiac Bosses.

FE13: All Gen1 PCs + Lucina (and of course Robin, Meeps you crazy). Gangrel, Walhart, Aversa, Validar, and Grima. Also, I have no problems with Cervantes being ranked.

[Dark Holy Elf]

FFT

PCs: Ramza, Mustadio, Agrias, Rafa, Malak, Orlandu, Meliadoul, Beowulf, Worker 8.

All the forced permanent PCs, and two of the optional ones. Cloud I'll pass on due to being level 1 and a cameo, Reis has the two forms, the permanent one not translating at all.

Temps: Delita, Algus (or count him as a boss, it makes little difference in his case).

Ovelia, Alma, and Olan are all important characters who don't translate or translate weirdly. I'm not opposed to any of them, but *shrug*.

Human bosses: Wiegraf, Gafgarion, Izlude, Celia, Lede, Balk, Dycedarg, Rofel. Maybe Miluda? On the fence with her.

Straightforward enough. I've excluded Zalmo because he's not memorable except as healing support (and being awful in his second appearance), Zalbag and Elmdor because of blood suck and general weirdness on Zalbag's part, Kletian because he is just so steamrolled in-game, and Vormav because there's a high chance you'll never even target him. There's no really pressing need to rank both assassins but ranking just one feels strange and not having them at all feels even stranger, so eh.

Zodiac bosses: Altima. The rest... I dunno. You could rank all of them because it's FFT and it can draw, but really their AI is so fucking weird in-game there's a high chance you'll never see many of their money moves. This is especially true of Queklain and Zalera, since the AI loves death sentence to the point where few players will see things like Queklain's Chicken Race (100% paralyse) and Zalera's Frog 2. I do have to disagree with Snowfire claiming the AI is choosing the "best" move for them, though! But maybe he used quote marks for a reason.

As for the bosses who appear as both forms, it's tough to say. I suppose you could give Wiegraf and Dycedarg form-chains, this is reasonably consistent with how modern DL operates (we rank Jecht etc. and give them their possessed forms). Honestly maybe just rank those two and Vormav (Hashmalum) since they're the most important characters who happen to become zodiacs, and also the ones least reliant on moves the player never sees. Sure.


Fire Emblem 13

I agree with Snowfire's core list for sure (Chrom, Fred, Lissa, Robin, Lucina, Tiki, Say'ri, Gangrel). You can quibble Robin - s/he's kinda weird - but the DL hasn't ever really struggled with decent FE PCs who end up in Middle, and having both damage types is too cool to pass up for FE in the DL.

The rest of the cast blurs and I don't have a strong opinion on where to cut it off. To be perfectly honest if we're not going for a small ranking (at which point we'd stick to the above), I'd just expand it to all the first-generation PCs since ranking say Cordelia but not Cherche feels an arbitrary cut to me. 30 PCs isn't too large. Two exceptions though: I would pass on both Donnel and Olivia. You could rank Olivia I guess, but I just found her unusually not worth using for a dancer, and I always use dancers, and then she doesn't really translate properly... meh. I don't think I have to explain Donnel.

Wouldn't rank many other bosses from this game. Validar and Walhart and Aversa are all fine but I wouldn't fight for any of them. Validar's the main villain so I guess we -should- rank him but nobody seems to care. Walhart is a memorable opponent at least. Aversa's a major plot player and fairly memorable as well, but god that fight is so weird in DL terms. It is very easy to see her as high as Godlike or as low as Light since her offence is through the roof but her durability isn't so small fluctuations views on her durability, views on her initiative, and views on counters make a ridiculous difference to her.

Grima's a neat fight but meh, pass, and the others can go jump off a bridge. Cervantes is pretty awesome but no I wouldn't actually rank him, he's pretty much in the same boat as people like Denning (that said if I get overruled on this because fan demand is higher than I expect I wouldn't complain). Excellus is a character who seems like he would be important but then wasn't, and his boss form isn't memorable at all.

[Luther Lansfeld]

For FFT I'd rank all the required PCs, Delita, Algus, the big Zodiac Demons (not Zalera or Quek), Gaffy, Rofel, Izlude, Worker 8 and Beowulf and Reis I -guess-. Would formchain because I think it's silly that we don't.

FE13 I would rank all of the first-gen PCs except Olivia and Donnel, as well as Lucina, Gangrel, Validar, Valhart, and Aversa. No to Grima or other kids.