Record Keeper character build talk. Posted it on Reddit too, but it's more for my DL peeps. Incoming Meeple-length rant.
So FFRK is basically the giant FF crossover I've always wanted to see. And for the most part, the translations of all the characters tend to make sense. Yuna is a Summoner/White Mage with Guns down the line, Kain is all about Dragooning, and all that. But sometimes the equipment/skillset choices are a bit odd. Why can Cloud use Spellblade? Why can't Auron use Full Break? Usually the answer is "concessions for balance", and I'm okay with that. But then you get really odd choices like Irvine randomly getting low level magic when he's the only character in FF8 who actively dislikes GFs and magic, and to top it off he, the sniper, doesn't get access to Aim because he has zero levels in Celerity.
So I'm curious which choices people think really don't fit the original flavor, which ones are balance concessions, and which ones just don't make any sense. And maybe through discussion, I might change my mind on which category some of these belong in.
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So starting with the FF3 cast (because 1 and 2 don't matter mostly), the big theme here seems to be that each PC was given a specific job. Arc is the most obvious as a White Mage (and I guess Summoner as his secondary because he randomly has a 4 there?). Ingus, judging by his sprite, was built as a Knight with Breakdowns. Luneth seems built as the stereotypical Warrior archetype. "Advance" is even typically a Warrior class skill in most of the FF games with job systems. Interestingly, there's some unused sprite of Luneth as a Dark Knight, which, given what we've seen of Dark Knight Cecil's skillset, just implies Combat 5, which Luneth has, so maybe he was supposed to be crossclassing as Warrior/Dark Knight? Though now that Darkness abilities are not, he's obviously lacking that. Instead, he has Spellblade 4 now, which isn't really tied to how Warrior nor Dark Knight work in FF3. However, it is a huge boon to his worth as a character, so it's probably a balance concession that doesn't stray too far from his archetype. Amusingly though, there aren't any jobs in FF3 that can use Spellblade skills... Perhaps Geomancer is the closest?
Refia is interesting in that she's a Monk-based character with access to Thrown weapons. Cross-classing as a Ninja would certainly fit the archetype, though she gets no Ninja skills. She does get a lot of Celerity though, so perhaps Ranger? FF3 has two Monk-type jobs, Monk, which is barehanded and gets Retaliate as its job specific skill, and Blackbelt, which gets Fists and Boost. Punishing Palm really simulates Boost well (though obviously -Boost- would have simulated it better...). My guess here would be Refia is intended to be a BlackBelt/Ranger crossclass.
While I'm not really sold on the choices of jobs for each PC (Luneth Warrior, Arc WhiteSummoner, Ingus Knight, Refia Blackbelt/Ranger), if these are the jobs intended, then at least DeNA pretty accurately portrayed them while making solid gameplay builds. Except for Luneth's Spellblade but oh well.
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The FF4 cast is actually perfect both flavor-wise and balance-wise (now that they've patched them a few times). Dark Knight Cecil even got a Darkness skillset! Along with all of the antagonist characters that got released as PCs, including ones like Edea. I'm a bit sad that Palom and Porom didn't get any kind of real Twin Magic mechanic, just some animation nods in their SBs. Missed opportunity.
I do want to point out that I'm particularly pleased that Rydia gets WHM 2 and Rosa gets Celerity 1 since those add very little to their playability, but they make complete sense to toss in just for flavor. Child Rydia started FF4 with a handful of White Magic spells before specializing as a Black Mage as she grew up. And Rosa's signature skill was Aim, which she gets from Celerity 1, despite how useless it is. Nice touch, DeNA!
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The FF5 cast is kind of similar to FF3, having a lot of skillset flexibility in their home game. Lenna and Galuf obviously were assigned the White Mage and Monk jobs and tend to exemplify them. Though oddly Lenna and Faris get Dancer abilities. Perhaps as a nod to FFT where only females could access the Dancer class? It's universal in FF5, Bartz can dance like the rest of them, but I suppose the royal sisters could be seen as good dancers, so it's only a bit of stretch. Bartz is, as usual, a mish-mash of things. Mostly he seems to be a Mystic Knight (Spellblade) based on his SBs and skillset, with Thief as a secondary. Krile is a straightforward Black Mage/Summoner, though she has an unused Beastmaster sprite (which is adorable).
Faris is probably the most interesting one, having a very weird weapon selection (Swords alongside Instruments, Bows, Whips, and Thrown) and a wide collection of abilities. Dancer 4 I can see since she has that sorta-famous scene where she has to dance at her coronation. Although it's notable that she says she doesn't like it. Thief makes the most flavor sense seeing as how she's spent her life as a pirate, though it does become a little redundant with Bartz. Still, makes a nice skillset combination with Support and Celerity, which makes me feel like she's cross-classing in Ranger. Oddly enough, she has an unused sprite where she's dressed as a Summoner.
And Gilgamesh can do basically all the physical jobs because why not?
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The FF6 cast is a case where characters do fit their original game's flavor well but they all kind of end up lackluster. Locke's a Thief (with Celerity too at least!), Sabin does Monk, Shadow does Ninja, Cyan's a Samurai, Gau only has Combat/Celerity. Strago/Relm/Gau are kind of hurt by RK's lack of Blue Magic since all of them have a decent claim to using enemy skills. Terra and Celes are great versatile units and probably the closest thing this game has to proper Red Mages. I want to point out that Mog is another example of DeNA getting it right on Flavor/Balance by making him a Dancer but with a few levels in Dragoon because he was one of the best characters in FF6 to use the Dragoon skills due to his semi-unique ability to equip Spears. And then Edgar (the other spear-user) was an example of DeNA missing that opportunity, but since they added in Machinist skills, his kit actually suits him quite well. Setzer is kind of an odd choice for a Machinist/Support, but I suppose that lines up kind of well with his luck-based unique skills from FF6? I'm not really sure what else they would do with him, and they realized that his skills didn't fit into the RK design and were nice enough to give him his own unique weapon type to acknowledge it, I suppose? I'm really not sure what else they could have done with him? Maybe give him a rank in Samurai since that's usually where the GilToss ability is? (But GilToss will never be in FFRK, at least not with how it functions in FF6.)
Kefka is a Bard/Dancer. I have no clue why, but he's not a PC originally, so I suppose they can just make whatever they want? He gets the Darkness skillset because... villain? Not sure anything about Dark Knight skills really reflect Kefka, so I can't complain about giving him a skillset that's pretty much entirely for flavor!
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FF7 is where things start getting weird. You'd think it'd be easier to make explanations for how PCs get weird skillset combinations in FF7 due to its materia system, but there's a lot more going on here. First of all, in FF7, all PCs have a set weapon type, so the multiple weapons available to most of the cast is kind of odd. At least Cloud uses a Sword and Katanas are still technically a kind of sword. But why is Yuffie able to use Katanas? Because she's a Ninja and that's 'close enough' to Samurai? Also, why can she use Bows? Actually, Yuffie's just the worst offender here, getting Dancer added to her kit recently. There's not even any dancing-themed skills in FF7 that I can recall. Cait Sith has some bard-like things, but that's a different skillset entirely in FFRK (and also Cait hasn't been released at the time of this writing). Surprisingly, apart from the very physically-themed
Cloud/Tifa/Zack/Cid, everyone in the FF7 cast can use at least Black Magic 2, which nicely reflects how the FF7 materia system works. I do kind of wish they'd extended it to include the whole cast, even if they just handed them BLM 1, especialy since Cloud himself starts the game with a handful of green materia. Instead, Cloud gets Spellblade, which is hardly his signature ability in anything, but at least Green Materia + Added Effect can replicate the Spellblade Skills. He also gets Samurai, which is more Sephiroth's forte, but since it's such a great skillset, I'm sure they gave it to him for unbalance reasons.
Barret currently is just a Support 5 with a unique ranged relic, but at least later on he gets Machinist and that suits his flavor and balances him nicely.
Aerith started out as a great white mage with some utility secondaries like Support and Black Magic, but then DeNA handed her Summoning 5. I suppose to allow her to keep up with the White Summoners from FF9/10? She can technically use summons in FF7 through Red materia, though since she's a temp she'll never be able to use the highest level summons, so Summon 5 seems like an odd addition flavor-wise. I suppose you could make the argument she 'summoned holy', so she's clearly a skilled summoner, but I think that just makes her a better white mage really?
Notably, both Aerith and Red XIII have abilities from the Enemy Skill (Blue Magic) materia as Soul Breaks. I think it'd be interesting if/when Blue Magic gets added into the game if they were given a few levels in it as if they were equipping the E.Skill materia.
Vincent is a Black Summoner with a gun. This works fine, but it really kind of ignores his transformation limits, which were his most prominent trait. Even his Record Materia and SBs seem to ignore it, which is really unusual given that Vincent was introduced after BSSBs, which would be the perfect way to implement that aspect of his character. (As it would for Terra's and Zidane's Trance states, too.) He gets the Darkness skillset too, which is good for flavor since he used to work for Shinra. Though oddly, Reno does -not- get this option.
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For FF8, one thing about weapons I noticed was that at this point, there's enough characters in the series that use Gunblades that they could probably have made them their own weapon type like Katanas. Squall/Seifer/Laguna/Lightning is already as many options as like Whips or Blitzballs. Also, the cast apart from Zell all have base levels of White and Black Magic, which nicely relates to how they can all draw magic using their GFs, a much-appreciated nod to flavor that FF7 missed. I still kind of wish Zell could use even 1-star magic to complete the flavor, though I suppose you could argue that he's just not the magic-using type ever? Oddly, I think it would have made more sense for them all to get a base level of Summoning instead due to how they all literally need GFs to get -any- of their skills outside of Limits.
For Squall, Spellblade makes even more sense for him than Cloud due to junctioning elements to weapons being much more common of a build than Added Cut. Rinoa makes a great Sorceress, but I'm confused why she's the only one with Summoning (recently added). I suppose it's for balance purposes, but you could also make the argument that the Sorceress Ultimecia (from whom Rinoa got her powers) had the powerful GF Griever at her disposal so I guess she could have a stronger connection to Summoning than the others if you squint?
Irvine I've already talked about, but seriously why doesn't the Sniper get Aim NOR any of the Machinist "X Shot" skills? They could seriously have just tossed Celerity or Machinist 1 on him for flavor.
I do want to note how much I appreciate that Seifer got Knight 5 though, given his title is "The Sorceress' Knight". It even makes for a fairly niche build, and he's the only Knight with FF8 RS. Also due to being a villain, he has the Knight AND Dark Knight skillset.
Edea's weaponset is perfect: Thrown really takes advantage of the large number of FF8 magic chakrams in FFRK, but also relates to how Rinoa (and Ultimecia in Dissidia) also use that weapon-type and shows off their connection from the FF8 storyline. But I am a little annoyed she didn't get -any- levels in White or Summoning. Especially considering she uses quite a few White Spells (Dispel, Reflect) famously and the previous note on Sorceresses and GFs. She gets the new Darkness skillset, because -villain- though it's just flavor from what I can tell. I don't think it will compliment her build much at all though at least she can use those Chakram for physical damage that registers?
The last elephant to talk about is that Quistis still doesn't have Blue Magic, and for balance purposes she really needs it.
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The FF9 cast is probably my favorite in terms of properly representing their PCs. They had a lot of flavor and gameplay mechanics to work with and they frankly did an excellent job implementing both. The only mildly odd one is Eiko, who got both White 5 AND Summon 5. She's the better White Mage (with Trance Double White which I'm still hoping will be her next RM), whereas Garnet was the superior Summoner. Garnet only had White 4 so it seems logical that Eiko should reflect this with merely Summon 4. It's not a huge balance change either way but it would have been a nice flavor decision. Eiko also oddly got Bard 4. It's a nice balance choice and since she uses Flutes I'm totally okay with it from a flavor perspective and since Bard is mostly support skills anyway it kind of reflects Eiko's in-game performance but still a little surprising. I suppose they just needed more Bards. Better than when they handed out Dance to Yuffie randomly.
Other things of note is that Zidane got Knight 3 due to his unique Protect Girls passive, Steiner got Spellblade but only half way to max skill level because he's only half of the FF9 Spellblade duo, and Amarant got no Ninja levels despite having Throw in FF9 but instead they gave him Thrown weapon type which is actually pretty brilliant considering that he's not Ninja like in the slightest outside of that throw ability. Just lots of Flavorful fridge brilliance in this cast. Quina still wants Blue Magic but otherwise my favorite translation.
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In FFX, characters have a set base sphere grid with "their" skills but they can eventually cross class into other characters skillsets. This isn't represented much in FFRK but it still holds up well flavor and gameplay wise. They've also started adding FFX2 content which makes Yuna and Rikku pretty open to diverse options.
The thing about FFRK is that the two nonstandard skillsets, Celerity and Support, are basically ripped directly from Tidus and Wakka's sphere grids. Like there's no class name for what Tidus and Wakka do in FFX and the archetypes are relatively uncommon in the series, but DeNA basically created the Celerity and Support skillsets around these two, with a little flavor from other jobs like Ranger thrown in. Oddly though, some of Auron's skills ended up in Support but he doesn't get them in FFRK. Probably the biggest complaint I have about the FFX cast.
Rikku gets a lot of weird things in FFRK, but then she had a weird collection of skills in FFX as well, plus FFX2 means she could technically use just about any job. The Thief and Machinist stuff make perfect sense but Bard and Dancer are odd. I guess she's using the Songstress job from FFX2?
Kimahri of course, kinda sucks. But then he did in FFX as well. He really wants that Blue Magic skillset for balance purposes.
Jecht is cool for reflecting his FFX self AND his Dissidia self. In Dissidia he had a lot of punch based skills and had the Kaiser Knuckles as a unique weapon so him getting Monk skills alongside the sword combat skills makes sense. Special note that I think it's awesome that DeNA decided to expand the users of Blitzballs to four of the FFX cast. Really makes that weapon type more useful. It is an odd choice that they also gave all of those PCs Thrown access as well though... I guess it makes sense from a flavor perspective but it kind of diminishes the usefulness of Blitzballs. It would be more interesting if it was the only ranged option for certain PCs.
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FF12 seems to have its own theme going on too. Most of this cast has a very diverse equipment set. This nicely reflects how the license grid worked, where any character could essentially equip anything. Balthier and Fran specialize the most due to being obviously Gun and Bow oriented but even they have a decent array of options. I think it's a bit of a missed opportunity that Penelo doesn't get access to instruments though.
Skill wise the cast is less true to flavor. Some things are completely accurate like Penelo's Dancer 5, Vaan and Balthier getting Thief, Fran having access to Black Magic just like she started with in FF12.
But then there's things like Ashe being a primary Black Mage with some minor White Magic 3 and Support 4. Sure you can make her this in FF12, but it's not really suggested that's her main role. She starts with a longsword and some low level white magic. She also gets the awesome king's greatsword later in the game, so her being a sword girl works well. In her Revenant Wings appearance, she got a bunch of time magic like Slowga and Comet alongside ranged weapons. She gets Bows and Guns though I think Thrown would have fit better based on her RW build. Still, her current incarnation isn't too bad of a translation but it could be a little more focused.
Balthier getting Spellblade is an odd choice. FF12 doesn't really have anything like Spellblade so it's an odd addition. I suspect it was added to him for balance purposes, since he was lacking in a solid secondary skillset at first. And then Thief and Machinist came along and his skillset just bloated. I'm glad he has those since they fit his Sky Pirate job orientation well but I guess he's also getting a bonus Spellblade skillset. The extra skillset doesn't bother me as much as if they had say, neglected to give him the obviously-well-fitting Machinist skillset. Additionally, I suspect the reason he got Combat 5 instead of Celerity 5 was because A.) Fran was the speedy archer so high celerity there made more sense, and B.) Balthier gets Barrage and Tri-Shot as part of his innate skillsets in Tactics and RW, so he needed to be able to get Barrage in RK. Good flavor choices DeNA, but I still can't find any justification for Spellblade in any of his appearances...
Vaan, Penelo, Fran, and Basch are all basically ripped straight from their Revenant Wings builds so I have no complaints there. I would like to see Fran get one more level in Black Magic but it's not a dealbreaker. And Basch doesn't really have any good reason to have Samurai, it certainly can be done in FF12 and it suits him from a gameplay balance perspective. He's basically the tankier version of Gilgamesh.
One last thing of note is that, like FF6, everyone in this game can Summon and no one has any special claim to being 'the summoner' or even any particular ties to specific summons. If they make Dr. Cid a PC, then he'll have some claim to the Esper Famfrit, so he'd make a good Summoner option for 12. But otherwise, the Espers play a pretty major role in the game, and are the entire point of the game in FF12 Revenant Wings, with literally every character using summons as their mook units for RTS gameplay. It seems ill-fitting that no one in 12 has summons.
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FF13 is a bit of an odd one. The game has to balance the new "Paradigm system" with the standard FF archetypes. For example, Fang is clearly modeled after a dragoon - lances, the highwind ability, her unique summon is a dragon. But her actual in-game forte is Saboteur/Sentinel/Commando, which doesn't really fit any of FFRK's archetypes. Additionally, each of the FF13 cast can use their specific Summon (Eidolon), which would imply that they should all get Summon, though that doesn't really work for balance reasons, not to mention that some of their Summons aren't even in FFRK.
Lightning translates really well. Her primary setup of Commando/Ravager/Medic is reflected in her Combat 5, Spellblade4+Black3, and White 2. I suppose she got Celerity 4 to represent her ranged weapon. She's not the best healer in FF13, so White 2 is fine, though I'd personally like to see her get a higher level of it so that her healing can at least register. Or perhaps buff her MND? Ravager is the elemental paradigm role - both magic and physical. Lightning skews towards the physical elemental strikes so her getting Spellblade is a perfect fit. The only complaint is that most of the other characters get Ravager as well, so the cast should be getting more Spellblade levels than it does. Especially since FF13 is the game that really pushed the Spellblade abilities. I'm also a little sad that she doesn't get Summon 5 so she can use Odin, her personal Eidolon, but that might be a bit much balance-wise? Though honestly, it would work out anyway. Her MND and MAG stats are too low to really make much use of Summons. Except of course, Odin's Instant Death which doesn't rely on her stats. It wouldn't functionally change her build at all, it would just be a nice nod to flavor.
For Snow I want to applaud DeNA. His original build was both crappy for balance reasons and crappy for not properly conveying Snow's FF13 build. With the balance update, Snow became a Monk/Knight, which is basically what his FF13 self was: Sentinel/Commando/Ravager. Well, except that they forgot he should be getting Spellblades. Seriously, Snow without Froststrike feels weird. Or it would, but they at least gave it to him as a Soul Break, so here's your applause. Though I still think even Spellblade 2 for Blizzard Strike would have been more appropriate. They -do- give him Celerity 2, which is enough for him to use the mostly-useless Wind Slash, which is functionally a weak spellblade skill and is one of the elements he has access to in FF13. There's definitely some fridge brilliance in his design, though honestly it sounds like they were just trying really hard not to give him spellblade?
Vanille is Ravager/Medic/Saboteur, making her a mage/healer/debuff archetype. Her FFRK Black/White build reflects this mostly but doesn't give her any debuffing options. Instead she gets Summon 3. And she's one of the few FF13 PCs whose Eidolon isn't even available in FFRK! I do hope she they make an Earth-based 3-star summon and it's Hecatoncheir so at least -one- of the FF13 PCs can use their signature Eidolon...
Sazh in FF13 is Commando/Ravager/Synergist - so he's all about buffing. He gets Support 5 and White 3 to reflect this. Notably he gets the magic half of Ravager with Black 3, but no Spellblade which would have actually been a huge boost to him. He instead got Machinist 5, which is the gun-flavored skills despite him not really getting anything like that in FF13. He was at least capable of getting the Saboteur skills so it's still fitting overall, though honestly Vanille/Fang (innate Saboteurs) would have been better fits gameplaywise for Machinist's status effect-heavy skill collection.
Hope got special magic-boosting boomerangs, which is just a cool niche. He's also an accurately-portrayed Red Mage-type. Whereas Vanille had Medic, pure healing, and White 5' Hope has Synergist, mostly buffs, and merely White 4. Their Black magic levels are reversed for balance, though honestly they are both good at elemental magic damage in FF13. Notably, Hope is decent at the physical elemental damage Ravager options, meaning he should -also- have probably gotten some levels in Spellblade. And most egregiously, he only has Summon 3, merely one level away from being able to summon Alexander, his signature Eidolon. This is one of the worst choices and I can't even tell why they did this. There aren't any other FF13 summoners to compete with, why not make him at least useful at it?
I talked about Fang a little bit already, but I actually think Fang is a case of FFRK taking liberties and getting it -right-. She's clearly designed to be a dragoon, but there's no dragoon abilities in FF13, so she's the more basic Commando/Sentinel/Saboteur archetype. Her debuffing Saboteur abilities really stand out, and she's notably the only PC without innate Ravager (read: Spellblades). But DeNA decided to go ahead and make her a Dragoon 5, but supplemented with some status effects from Support 3 and Celerity 4. Combat 5 nicely encapsulates her Commando role, and while she could use Sentinel, it didn't really define her. Also, perhaps Knight/Dragoon is a somewhat oppositional set of abilities? Another missed opporunity not giving her Summon 5, which would let her use Bahamut but not really effect her build otherwise since she doesn't have the magic stat to make use of the other Summons. Maybe she'll get an SB with it somewhere along the way.
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FF14 I don't really know much about other than Y'shtola is in fact a White Mage/Conjurer and that Thancred's class isn't really clearly defined so his FFRK build is fine, if a bit weird.
FF Tactics gives us Ramza, who more than any of the other job-system characters, seems to be crossclassing like a fiend. Support and Combat embody most of his innate Squire skillset, but he also gets Knight, Ninja, and Bard! Three classes he totally -could- get in FFT. Bard is notable for being only accessible to male PCs, so it makes for a nice nod to give it to the main FFT PC. Knight and Ninja are solid physical jobs as well, and ones that make sense for a typical FFT build. It's also nice that they finally gave someone Instruments who can genuinely make use of them as Long Range damage weapons. Good choice for balance.
Agrias, conversely, only gets swords, just like how in FFT she needed a sword to use her special skillset. Combat, Spellblade, and Knight nicely cover Holy Sword's abilities, but they also toss some White Magic at her to make her the top Paladin in FFRK! With as well as they're making these FFT characters, I hope DeNA decides to make more from this realm!
