Ranking characters by in-game use: obscura edition

[Random Consonant]

Sure why not, I can post Snowfire bait ratings that are also Elfboy bait for once.

Fire Emblem Echoes: OrangesShadows of Valentia

Expect a lot of ballpark 5s.

Alm: Starts off on shakier ground than I'd like to allow top marks (6 SPD/5 DEF to start isn't particularly ideal on a frontliner with no large promotion gains in his immediate future, even if the growths are fine) and the bad RES does come up from time to time but those are his only real problems.  Fantastic growths by the game's standards, Royal Sword is great even when unupgraded, even gets unconditional range 1-2 on promotion, for all that standard bows without a range boost isn't that big a benefit.  7.5/10.

Lukas: Armor Knight/10, except he needs a bit of initial work to get there (not a big deal to pull off though).  This... somewhat works, for the reasons mentioned but he really wants to run a shield in case of enemies that have weapons and thus something resembing actual offense which doesn't really do wonders for his own, so his ultimate fate is to fall behind, but he's useful bait when he's relevent.  Also lives in fear of witches teleporting on top of him, they all double him and he has awful RES which is just gross.  5/10.

Gray: Well all male villagers have merc access which grants them good speed/ok strength so they do have a means to get by maingame even if their growths are shit.  Gray's growths... probably aren't shit by the game's standards but he is glassier than I'd like going down this route and doesn't really excel at anything, however his other options aside from maybe, MAYBE archer look a lot bleaker, and Alm route does at least benefit from someone getting Apotrope eventually.  5/10.

Tobin: Tobin leveled up *+1 SKL*! 30% ATK/25% SPD growth is a pretty wretched combo at base, not gonna lie, he pretty much relies on promotions to salvage him, but the promotions that give him the mad stats he wants also want a ATK/SPD/DEF growth combo that isn't shit, lest you end up like Clive.  So Archer for saftey or Mage for early Excalibur/eventual Physic and then dump a bunch of stat bonuses on him I guess. Neither of these seem particularly enticing, though I suppose he can critfish at least.  4/10.

Kliff: Oh hey, an actual speed growth that is actually actual.  That helps a lot for mages, and his spell selection is pretty great, my only complaint about it that I'd prefer Seraphim to Aura, but no one gets everything I suppose.   Other options seem... not unworkable but not really worth what you give up in exchange.  7/10.

Faye: So my rating here is going to be a bit of a guess, admittedly, I went Mage route for Faye banking on early Seraphim/gimmicking hard with Alm support/thinking it'd be the best solution to her initial speed problems since going Peg Knight seemed particularly tragic with Gray-like growths (sorry Elfboy), though Cleric might have been the better option due to Physic/Rescue despite the prospect of leveling a second Cleric in this game being a thing that fills me with existential dread (though gimmicking hard with Alm support does make Nosferatu use a bit more bearable).  Past that... she's basically Gray with better LUK/DEF but worse HP and no merc access.  6.5/10.

Silque: Well Warp is a nice trick to pull out, a pity she doesn't offer much else for support, and while unlike other clerics in the series Clerics in Echoes do have offense relying on Nosferatu to actually deal with anything is a problem.  Still going without a healer in this game seems incredibly poor life decisions and she's potentially the only one you get on Alm's route for a long time.  6/10.

Clair: I'm not especially fond of Pegasus Knights in this game past their role in the Anti-Terror patrol after promotion, low offense even by the game's standards plus being generally undurable isn't a great combo for a frontline class, and not being able to benefit from terrain evade is particularly not great in this game (a pity, since Clair is pretty much The Best).  At least their bow weakness is pretty irrelevent in a vacuum and flight does have some perks at least, and if you have to be a niche PC being in the Anti-Terror patrol is a legitimate one to fill.  5/10.

Clive: Dude you kind of suck at everything that isn't HP.  Well no, ATK is okay at least but come on man, you have to have something other than that.  3/10.

Forsyth: Lukas with more SPD/RES but worse HP/DEF.  Though since Lukas pretty much rides on class bases for HP/DEF this isn't as bad as it could be!  He uh still starts off in Soldier though which is not ideal however and while his SPD/RES are better they're not that much better so yeah ultimately still a bit worse.  4/10.

Python: Unlike Tobin, he actually gains ATK/SPD and while he does have a very not hot start, I'm a bit confused as to why you'd prefer Tobin on average since Python will at least be able to double something that isn't an arcanist or knight eventually.  I guess his SKL is trash so going Steel Bow for Heavy Draw sucks but if you're relying on Heavy Draw in the first place I have some bad news for you, friend.  5/10.

Luthier: Well Excalibur off the bat is something... as is those growths, holy shit man you're a mage, you don't need 75% SKL growth especially at the expense of things you do need.  Really doesn't do anything better than Mage Kliff and while mages in Echoes can only get so low a score, well.  5/10.

Mathilda: Bringing offense is cool, 7 DEF to start on Paladin is less cool but at least that's fixable and she actually has a decent RES value (on a frontliner!  in Alm's route!  le gasp), probably the best Cav.  7/10.

Delthea: Awesome ATK/SPD growth combo, I'd say something about being Lv3 to start but she's pretty overstatted for that level and more importantly not -especially- understatted compared to your other dudes and since EXP scaling in Echoes is pretty harsh, this isn't as bad as it could be, especially since mages aren't too hard to level.  I don't really like the lack of any range 1-3 options however and Lv11 is a bit late to be picking up an intermediate spell for my tastes, and of course like all mages she's stuck at 4 move and while solutions exist there's also competition for said options so I think an 8 is a bit overblown here, considering she effectively joins on Act 4.  7/10.

Tatiana: So hey Physic AND Fortify are actually pretty good to have, turns out, and I kind of regret not going through the effort of getting her the three levels needed to get the latter.  The offense I wouldn't hype so much since while she's probably faster than the other clerics she's not that much faster nor is her ATK that much better, but hey, Physic/Fortify alone are good enough, and if by some miracle you can get Warp in a timely fashion that's just icing.  7/10.

Zeke: Mathilda trading speed for durability, kind of in an awkward spot though since Mycen makes the same trade but probably does it better and isn't that much later.  Probably great in postgame, for all that I don't really care for him in the maingame.  4/10.

Mycen: Growths are a raging trash fire but who cares, 44 HP/18 DEF/8 RES is all I want you for, the SPD doesn't completely fail, and he can at least deliver solid hits in the endgame if given a weapon, which makes you worth consideration for a slot in Duma's Temple.  5/10.

Celica: In case it hasn't been said enough, when mages are good they are really really good!  Good offense to start with (and picking up Seraphim at Lv5 is mildly absurd) backed by acceptable speed that eventually becomes good, hits both defenses right out of the starting gate.  Main downsides are being stuck at 4 move and she's a touch glassy (though not nearly as bad as she could be, especially compared to people on her own route, and she does at least have range).  Oh yeah she can even do secondary healer duty before anyone else on her route if you care (you probably don't care that much)  I guess Beloved Zofia is a bit worse than Alm's fancy Royal Sword due to no Double Lion but eh.  Probably wouldn't put her at Eph/Ike10/Robin level but still one of the best lords in the series.  8.5/10.

Mae: A glassier Celica with a worse spell list who has to wait to promote to hit both defenses.  This is still really good, mind you.  7.5/10

Boey: I think I'd like Boey better if it didn't take him forever to get a spell that wasn't Fire or Thunder, pretty much every other mage does what he does better except for maybe being OK at getting stabbed, which is questionable considering he's a mage and not a cleric and thus doesn't have Nosferatu.  I know, I know, mage and all that but I wouldn't use him unless I had to.  4.5/10.

Ginny: Physic as mentioned is good, Invoke isn't the sort of thing I'd like to put my trust in but when it works it works, otherwise, cleric/10.  7/10.

Saber: Bit odd to see a defense-focused (to the extent that he can be called such considering his princely start of 4 DEF) merc in the series but it's workable.  Stuff outside of HP/DEF aren't hypeable but class bases to the rescue there.  5.5/10.

Valbar: Well at least he doesn't have to suffer through soldier.  He just has to suffer through Celica route map design instead.  Well that's a little unfair, Celica route does like a high DEF unit for Acts 2/3... and then Act 4 rears its ugly head and he hides under the bedsheets so yeah clear loser of the route.  3.5/10.

Leon: Tobin but slightly faster and a bit more ATK to start, but archer is still a niche that Celica route likes being filled so a bit of score inflation is at work here.  5/10.

Kamui: Saber, trading durability for offense, except he's a bit understatted to start and his offense isn't that much better so clearly worse.  4.5/10.

Palla: Well a peg knight with an attack stat is nice and the HP/DEF combo could be worse!  Giving up speed to get it is not the best decision but that's Palla for you.  6/10.

Catria: Slightly better Clair I guess?  At least supports with her sisters helps.  5.5/10.

Atlas: Clive if Clive could be an archer instead, so better than Clive, really.  I guess mage is a funny enough alternative to be at least better than his non-archer options though.  Not a huge fan but I think I still like this better than Tobin.  4.5/10.

Jesse: Well... he's faster than the other mercs eventually?  Not really the best time to be getting someone who starts off in Mercenary though, even if he is only a level off from promotion and he doesn't seem like he has much to recommend him otherwise on average, for all that mine decided to defy this expectation.  4.5/10.

Sonya: Does more or less the same things as Boey but is better in every area worth caring about on a mage.  I guess she's underleveled to start but I'm not going to argue with 13 ATK/12 SPD at Lv5 Mage, especially considering she has Excalibur on join instead of having to wait a stupidly long time.  7/10.

Deen: Also a bit of a guess here since I didn't grab him, but seems like he has the best potential out of all the Dread Fighter candidates and doesn't really have any underleveled/understatted issues dragging him down.  6/10.

Est: Noooot really the best point to have Clair-level bases (well okay, 12 RES is good, everything else though...) to start with.  I guess she isn't -as- painful to catch up as she is in other games but the part before promotion is still far from ideal.  4.5/10.

Nomah: Casts Recover so better mages don't have to.  I guess he can Sagittae something for kind of okay damage but eh.  3.5/10.

Conrad: Not quite as tanky as I'd like to start and he's a bit underleveled.  I guess he does fine for himself if you can catch him up but that's a bit of an if, but Celica route will take what it can get in that regard.  5/10.

[SnowFire]

The one thing I'll throw in Luthier's favor - and it varies by playstyle, I'll admit - is that you get a Speed Ring on Alm's route, and Luthier's a good candidate for it to make that Speed of his less of a liability.  Delthea doesn't really need it (although likes the +1 Move) and would rather have the +2 Range, and Sage Kliff should be fast enough to not need it much either (although it helps him kill Gargoyles / Rudolf better, I guess?!) 

Sage/Priestess Grey/Tobin/Faye all want it too if you promote that way, as would a battle-Saint Tatiana / Faye, but I did different promotions and was fine with my Saints being more pure supports, so Luthier got it.  I figure even pricing it in with half credit or the like is worth something.

[Reiska]

Alright, I've got another one here. 

Super Robot Wars OG: The Moon Dwellers

Finished this about two months ago, and feel reasonably comfortable with my thoughts on it now.  I got all SR Points (aka battle masteries) on my playthrough, which considerably increases the game's (already unusually high by SRW standards) difficulty.

Being an OG title, this is one of those games where most of the cast can be reassigned freely.  So all the scores are based on people using their default units, but I will sometimes comment on switches that make sense or improve things.

I've organized the character list by the SRW game they originated from before OG.  Newcomers are at the top.

Note: The translations for this game can be kind of questionable sometimes.  Nonetheless, I'm using the names displayed in game, even when they don't match Atlus' translations of OG1/2.

Newcomers

Super Robot Wars Judgment

Calvina Coulange (Bellzelute/Bellzelute Brigandy): 10/10.  The only thing that keeps her from being the clear best unit in the game is that she has to compete with the Neo Granzon for the last ~20% or so of the game.  And she still has a massive availability advantage over him.  There's really just nothing at all bad to say about her - she has a great spirit pool, she gets a subpilot (which can and probably should be Festenia for extra shots of Valor), she gets +10% damage against the overall most dangerous enemy faction in the game from her ace bonus, and she has a ridiculously broken MAP attack.  She's also basically unhittable.  If you don't care about SR points she can probably effectively solo large parts of the game I suspect (probably not bosses due to various gimmicks).

Touya Shiun (Granteed/Granteed Dracodeus): 8/10?  Dracodeus is really strong and basically unkillable, but unfortunately, you have to suffer through 29 stages of the original Granteed first.  And the original Granteed is hot garbage in OGMD, with the lovely combination of 5 move and not having any post-movement attacks above range 1 until it reaches like 130 will or something similarly dumb.  This means most of the time it will be lagging behind your army and everything will be dead by the time it gets there.  It also suffers from getting its finisher way, way too late (in the third to last map of the game).  Still, a basically unkillable super with 3 pilots has a pretty high floor for usability.  I wouldn't question you benching Touya for every stage he's not forced until you get Dracodeus though.  It's forced for the final boss map.

Al-Van Ranks (Raftclans Aurum): DNR.  Comes too late to really rank.  I did use him in my final team, so he's at least perfectly fine filler.

Super Robot Wars GC/XO

Akimi Akatsuki (Soulsaber FF/Super Soulsaber FF): Didn't use him enough this playthrough to really judge.  On paper, he looks pretty good, and like Touya, a super with 3 pilots has a pretty high usability floor.  Soulsaber is not quite as durable at base though.  Note that you can only use one of the Soulsabers at a time; if you use Akimi then Akemi is shunted into being a subpilot, and vice versa.

Akemi Akatsuki (Soulsaber GG/Super Soulsaber GG): 8/10.  Very solid ranged super.  I personally liked it better than the time or two I was forced to use Akimi by plot, but they're both good.  Akemi has to wait longer for her finisher than Akimi does, but still gets it early enough that you get to use it heavily.  Both Soulsabers are pretty much indestructible if you give them a barrier option part like G-Territory, since the pilots have Potential or Prevail or whatever they're calling it now.  Soulsaber is often forced in one form or another, so best to develop it.

Sieg Altolied (Leonisis Hagar): 5/10 or so?  Sieg is actually pretty decent but his default unit is a severe mismatch to his seishin pool.  If you want to use him, he's going to play much better in one of the extra Grungusts or Giganscudo or the like.  Even then, he's held back a bit by having no Iron Wall (though you can patch this with a subpilot in Grungust Type-3) and a relatively expensive Strike (20 instead of the typical 15).  As for his default unit, it's also quite good - probably the second best non-locked melee real in the game that doesn't depend on a telekinetic pilot - despite its lack of an ALL weapon.  It's a pretty solid candidate for a filler melee unit you're using who doesn't have Telekinesis and doesn't get the Gespenst Haken.  It's just not a good machine for Sieg.

Sally Emil (Leonisis Virga): 9/10.  Basically the optimal twin unit partner for Calvina, as one of the only reals that has a post-movement ALL weapon besides Bellzelute and also has compatible movement types.  Sally herself is fairly average but comes with everything she needs to and has an acceptable seishin pool.  If you don't want to use her, of course, any good ranged pilot can fill the seat and will appreciate the unit, which is probably the best non-locked ranged real in the game for a pilot without telekinesis.  Whoever you put in the thing, they should be glued to Calvina at the hip, and you should be using Calvina, so.

Super Robot Wars OG Saga: Endless Frontier

Haken Browning (Gespenst Haken): 9/10.  Truth be told, I didn't actually use *him* much, but I used his mech extensively with pilots that are worse than him.  He's very good, and if Leonisis Hagar is the second best non-locked melee real in the game for non-telekinesis pilots, Gespenst Haken is the first best.  Very respectable power, and has some of the greatest battle dialogue in the game to boot regardless of who you put in it.  Speaking of which, it always gets Aschen Broedel as a subpilot, even if you put someone else in the mech instead of Haken, and she has Accel and one of only two sources of the enemy will debuff seishin in the game, so that's pretty invaluable too.

The Great Battle II: Last Fighter Twin

Skull Knight: DNR, final stage bonus.

Returning Characters

Super Robot Wars: Original Generation Exclusive

Ginto Kitaumi (Hagwane): DNR.  You're always forced to bring it when the plot dictates, so DNR.  It's an OG battleship, which is not all that great.  And yes, they did call it Hagwane.  From my understanding Banpresto has actually fairly consistently used this romanization when referring to the ship in first party promotional materials, which doesn't make it any less dumb.  (It apparently derives from the fact that the ship's name uses archaic Japanese characters that aren't normally really used in modern Japanese anymore.)

Lefina Enfield (Hiryu Kai): DNR, see Ginto.  Worse than Hagane in this game, mostly because Hagane has Accel and Hiryu Kai doesn't.

Kurt Bittner (Kurogwane): DNR, see Ginto.  The worst of the battleships because it only has one pilot.

Ing Wish (EX Exbein): 9/10.  Unlike 2nd OG, you can now kick him out of this mech and give it to any of your pilots with telekinesis.  It's the best ranged telekinesis mech in the game, flat out, and even if you don't have Ing piloting it you should have SOMEONE piloting it because it's seriously good.  Two really strong ALL weapons which run off ammo and a really strong post-movement melee attack for good measure.  Really the only things that make it worse than Bellzelute are that the ALL weapons aren't post-movement, the finisher's EN cost is atrocious, and it doesn't have a MAP attack.  Whatever?  It's good.

Kohta Azuma (G Compatible Kaiser): 9/10.  Solid super with a damage shield and a pilot with prevail.  It's basically unkillable and it does good damage, not much else to be said.  It's technically a combiner with 2 pilots, and you can separate them but there's never a good reason too that I can see.  Mechanically speaking it's kind of the Mazinger of this game really, but not quite as dominant as a Mazinger often is.  Still good, cheap valor helps a lot.  Also, he's forced for endgame, so ignore him at your peril.

Michiru Hanaten (G Bankaran): 7.5/10.  Basically the Boss Borot of this game, except instead of having really shitty durability it has really absurd durability (I think highest raw armor stat in the game?) so it's actually pretty good.  There are games where I'd rate a unit like this higher, but it has stiff competition in this game.  Biggest problem is Michiru's seishin pool is kind of junk.

Katina Tarask (Gespenst mk-II Mass Production Model Kai): 7/10.  As usual for her, pretty decent in spite of the Gespenst, is best moved to a stronger red unit such as the Grungust Type-3 or even an Exbein Boxer/Gunner in spite of her lack of telekinesis.  The color IS important due to her ace bonus.

Russel Bergman (Gespenst mk-II Mass Production Model Kai): 1/10.  There's simply no reason to bring him in his own mech ever.  He is one of the two best choices for a subpilot in Grungust Type-3 though, since his support seishin pool is still awesome.  But you want him not actually taking up a deployment slot ideally.

Kai Kitamura (Gespenst mk-II Mass Production Model Kai): 7/10.  Actually pretty decent in spite of the Gespenst, since he's one of the few pilots to get Maximum Break activation access by default and he has Attacker, which you can't hand out to everyone in this game.  That said, if you're going to use Kai you should strongly consider giving him the Gespenst Haken as his bonus still applies to it and it's a much better machine.

Latooni Subota (Wildraubtier Schnabel): 6.5/10.  ... I hate to say it, but Moon Dwellers is a poor showing for her.  She's usable, but she noticeably lags behind all the pilots with telekinesis now, and she also noticeably lags behind all the newer characters with shiny custom units.  And the Schnabel frankly sucks, IMO.  Since her offensive stats are balanced, she's a prime candidate for one of the Leonisis mechs, or Gespenst Haken, provided you don't go meme it up with Royal Heartbreaker, which might honestly be her best use.  That's certainly what I ended up doing with her in the end.

Shine Hausen (Fairlion Type-Something): DNR.  Deploy her with Latooni in the Fairlion or not at all, there really is no middle ground.  By herself she's awful.

Radha Byraban (Gespenst mk-II Mass Production Model Kai): See Russel, everything I said about him applies to her.  Russel is better at supporting the Grungust Type-3 itself while Radha is better at supporting the rest of your team.

Rishu Togoh (Grungust Type-0): 8.5/10.  I mean, he's basically just OG1 Sanger.  Which still holds up in this game just fine.  Shame you can't reassign the Type-0 except to him or Sanger.

Amala Burton (Galilnagant): 8/10.  Basically the ideal twin unit to partner with Rim or Glacies, as her ranges and weapons sync up extremely well with either (good post-movement attack with ALL-typed finisher).  Low availability is kind of a drag.

Yon Gebana (Pfeil III): 6/10.  The Pfeil is kind of not good and she honestly might be better off in a Gespenst.  Maybe.  She has a secret connected to getting her 70 kills that will earn her a significantly better unit on NG+.  As a pilot I felt she was merely okay.

Super Robot Wars EX

Masaki Andoh (Cybaster): 7/10.  Not that impressive in this game to be honest.  He lacks ALL attacks and he has accuracy problems with only Focus to help patch them.  Plus he has low availability.  Of the four lategame units coming out of the Masoukishin games he's probably the worst this time around.  He just comes too late for Cyflash to really shine too.

Ryune Zoldark (Valsione R): 7.5/10.  Pretty good overall, if not amazing.  She's basically a worse Granteed Dracodeus - slightly worse offense, significantly less durable (though she can dodge sometimes).  She does have a post-move MAP though, albeit a very weak one.  Better than Masaki this time.  As usual Valsione R can equip option weapons, and while few of them are relevant to it, this does diversify Ryune's options a bit.

Shu Shirakawa (Granzon/Neo Granzon): 10/10.  I don't think I actually have to explain this, do I?  He's every bit as terrifying as he ever was in his appearances as a boss.  Except he's yours now.  Yeah.  He's hideously broken, enjoy - he takes half damage from everything for free, can initiate Maximum Breaks, has the most powerful weapon of any mech in the game, has an absurdly strong post-move MAP, etc. etc. etc.  Him and Calvina together tend to leave very little for any of your other characters to do.

Super Robot Wars 4

Irmgult Kazahara (Grungust Kai): Probably 8.5/10?  Honestly I never used him.  But he's good on paper; he has a good seishin set, prevail, can initiate maximum breaks, and the Grungust Kai is as good as the other Grungusts still.  I just don't like him as a character much, plus I was biased against the dumb romanization of his nickname ("Irum").

Shin Super Robot Wars

Ryusei Date (R-1/SRX): 9/10.  SRX is still great.  R-1 is still shit.  You can actually form SRX as soon as he joins pretty much, though you can't do anything with it till he reaches level 18 due to telekinesis level requirements.  Only flaw of SRX really is that it takes 3 deployment slots still.

Raidiese F. Branstein (R-2 Powered/SRX subpilot): 6/10 (based on use outside of SRX).  Probably not really worth fielding outside of SRX honestly, but the R-2 is at least passable.  His seishin pool isn't great as a standalone, but he's one of only two pilots with Smite that can pilot a mech with option weapon access so he can be used as your debuffer.

Aya Kobayashi (R-3 Powered/SRX subpilot): 1/10 (based on use outside of SRX).  R-3 is one of the worst units in the game.  If you want to use her as a pilot outside of SRX, which isn't completely invalid since she can initiate Maximum Breaks, give her a unit that isn't terrible like EX Exbein.

Super Hero Sakusen

Viletta Vadim (R-GUN Powered): 7/10.  She can initiate Maximum Breaks, but you'll probably want to put her in a better unit if you use her for that.  Her main use is enabling the SRX's combination attack, but said combination attack is better if you take her mech and give it to Mai instead.  Still, Mai can't initiate Maximum Break and Viletta can, so that's something in her favor.  Anyway, she's plenty usable and she has cool music.

Compati-Hero

Guiliam Jeager (Gespenst Type RV): 8/10.  Pretty much an ideal partner for Alfimi, since SP Regen is a nice thing to combine with confusion as a twin seishin.  As a combat unit, he's decent, but only so.  Pretty much most of his worth is that Confusion spam.

Super Robot Wars Compact 2

Kyosuke Nanbu (Alteisen Riese): 7.5/10.  Could be worse, but Kyosuke is really feeling the fact that he hasn't gotten a midseason upgrade since OG2.  I wouldn't deploy him without Excellen, but Rampage Ghost is still worthwhile.

Excellen Browning (Rein Weissritter): 7.5/10.  See Kyosuke, all the same points apply.

Alfimi (Person-Lichkeit): 9.5/10.  To be clear: The mech itself is really mediocre, Alfimi's worth is 100% being an Inspire bot to give all your characters who lack Strike guaranteed hits forever since she's also got SP Regen (which you can't give to anyone who doesn't have it innately).  Pretty much a must-deploy, but it's legitimate to never put her near the front lines.

Super Robot Wars Alpha

Kusuha Mizuha/Brooklyn Luckfield (Grungust Type-3/Ryuko-o/Koryu-o): 8.5/10 overall (taking all the units into account).  The Chokijin are picked up pretty early in this game.  I've rated them together since there's really no reason to use them separately ever.  I guess if you ever consider it, Kusuha is better alone than Bullet is, as usual.  Anyway, all three units are solid workhorse Supers.  Koryu-o is better than Ryuko-o early in maps but Ryuko-o is superior at 120+ will.

Ryoto Hikawa (Exbein Boxer/Exbein Gunner): 8/10.  Ryoto's a great pilot but Exbein Boxer is kind of merely okay since it doesn't have an ALL attack.  Exbein Gunner is probably better.

Rio Meilong (Exbein Gunner/Exbein Boxer): 7/10.  Ryoto but worse.  Her Exbein is red and might be a good option for Katina.  The Exbeins' damage shields require telekinesis, but all of the attacks are usable without.

Tasuku Shinguji (Giganscudo Duro): 8/10.  Workhorse super etc. etc.  I didn't use it much because it looks stupid but it definitely gets the job done.

Leona Garschtein (Siegerlion): 8.5/10.  Let me be clear about this rating: Siegerlion is kind of junk.  However, besides Rai, she's the other pilot with Smite that can pilot units capable of equipping option weapons, making her the other choice for a debuffer, and probably the better one over Rai because you should probably be using him to form SRX.  You really don't want to fight the lategame bosses in this without debuffs, *especially* if you got into Hard difficulty from SR Point acquisition.  There are other options, but she's the best one as she's the only one who can use Armor Down L3, which is an extra -250 armor over the Armor Down L2 you'll get from using SRX's finisher or Shu's Gran Worm Sword (not to mention you'll be giving up their actual peak offense).  She's a good TK pilot, so the usual unit choices apply; she makes another good choice for EX Exbein if you don't want to use Ing.

Yuuki Jegnan (Razangriff Raven): 6/10.  Razangriff is kind of junk and wastes Yuuki's telekinesis.  If you're going to use him he should probably get an Exbein Gunner.

Rilkara Borgnine (Randgriz Raven): 4/10.  Basically Yuuki but worse.  Carla's actually about even with him as a pilot (slightly worse stats, slightly better seishins), but the Randgriz is really bad.  If you're going to use her, Exbein Gunner, etc.  She's basically Katina with telekinesis honestly.

Mai Kobayashi (ART-1): 7/10.  Better in the R-GUN Powered.  This mech is only really worthwhile if you intend to make serious use of Ryusei/Rai/Aya outside of SRX, which you probably shouldn't.  It's not awful though.

Super Robot Wars Alpha Gaiden

Sanger Zonvolt (Dygenguar): 9.5/10.  Would be 10/10 in a game that didn't have Calvina and Shu, probably.  Stellar unit, but he can't quite solo maps the way they can.

Super Robot Wars Alpha 2

Arado Balanga (Wildwurger): 7/10.  Essentially Kyosuke but slightly worse.  Not really worth using outside of the combination attack, which is about equal to Rampage Ghost.

Seolla Schweitzer (Wildfalken): 7.5/10.  Essentially Excellen but slightly worse but with a better personal seishin pool.  Not really worth using without exploiting the combination, at least in this unit.

Ibis Douglas/Srey Presty (Hyperlion): 8/10.  Solid unit with a rough start on account of shitty ammo counts.  What a shitty romanization though.  Three pilots is pretty grand.  Biggest flaw is that it's hard to find a good twin unit for because of the eccentric as hell ranges on her attacks, and her post-movement options are awful.  She also needs Hit & Away, so she's a project.

Ratsel Feinschmecker (Aussenseiter): Trombe/10.  Okay, seriously, 9.5/10.  He's basically a slightly worse Calvina who happens to have an amazing combo attack with Sanger so.

Super Robot Wars Alpha 3

Touma Kanou (Rai-o): 8/10.  Good workhorse super with a post-move ALL attack and a very cheap finisher, making him the other obvious partner for Calvina.  He barely has any plot in this game, so I didn't actually use him much.  Unfortunately, his seishin pool is absolutely awful and he has accuracy problems.

Serena Recital: DNR, one-stage cameo (in a route split to boot).

Super Robot Wars Advance

Axel Almer (Soulgain): 9/10.  Really good as always.  Can't really go wrong with him.

Lamia Loveless (Angelg): 8/10.  Basically Axel but worse.  Vaisaga is better than Angelg in this game in general, IMO, but both are decent.  You lose nothing by giving her Vaisaga since it doesn't have a default pilot.

Super Robot Wars Reversal

Raul Greden/Fiona Greden/Despinis Greden (Excellence Rescue): 7.5/10.  Your only dedicated repair + resupply bot for this game.  Has middling offense, not completely fail.  Later in the game, Despinis becomes the main pilot, Raul and Fiona get their own combat units, and she gets two new subpilots.  This is generally an improvement as they have better support seishin pools than Raul/Fiona did.

Raul Greden (Excellence Gunstriker): 7.5/10.  Reasonably good hybrid melee/ranged real mech.  He's forced into this by plot midgame, and you can't take him out of it after that point.

Fiona Greden (Excellence Gunstriker): 7.75/10.  Basically Raul with a slightly better seishin pool.  The units themselves are identical.  You can deploy both together.

Super Robot Wars Destiny

Joshua Radcliffe (Geant Chevalier): 4/10.  Holy balls this thing is awful - it's actually better to ditch his midseason upgrade from 2nd OG and use his earlygame unit because the "upgrade" has no post-move weapons until 120 will.  Or use Fortegigas.  Fortegigas is actually very good.  If you ditch the midseason upgrade and use Aile Chevalier it's like a 6 or 6.5 or something.

Joshua Radcliffe (Fortegigas): 9/10.  Now, see, this is more like it.  Using Fortegigas effectively removes one of Rim or Glacies from your roster though as they have to take up the role of subpilot to Josh.  It's worth it.  IMO, Rim has a slightly better seishin pool, but you're losing a bit more by giving up Dea Blancheneige than you are giving up Fabularis.  I mostly used Glacies as the subpilot.

Cliana Rimskaya (Dea Blancheneige): 7.5/10.  Quite a bit better than Geant Chevalier.  The finisher is ALL, which can make it awkward for twinning, and by using this you give up the ability to have Rim as a subpilot in Fortegigas, where she's a slightly better choice than Glacies.  Base form Blancheneige is a downgrade from this, unlike with Josh and the Aile Chevalier.

Glacies (Fabularis): 7.5/10.  Basically a weaker but more evasive Rim.  She has Smite, but you can't equip debuffing weapons on the Fabularis, unfortunately.  Finisher is ALL, so she has the same twinning issues.

Super Robot Wars MX

Hugo Medio/Aqua Centrum (Cerberus Ignite/Garmraid Blaze): 8.5/10.  There's actually 4 units involved here, since it transforms like Ryuko-o/Koryu-o.  Garmraid is a super, Cerberus is a real, Hugo's units are melee focused, Aqua's are range focused.  Hugo's are generally stronger, but Aqua's Cerberus Ignite has an ALL finisher.  Aqua is much more of a project as she needs Hit & Away added.

Real Robot Regiment

Arriere Ogre (Flickerei Geist): 7.5/10.  Basically a slightly better Kyosuke that also has a combination attack with him.  At worst she's a cheap Accel-bot for a twin unit, so she actually is worth deploying even if you don't use Kyosuke, though her performance is merely middling by herself.

Devant Ogre (Endlich Geist): DNR, final stage secret bonus.

[Random Consonant]

You know, it occurs to me that I never got around to rating Fishsodia despite spending way too long trying to figure out what idiots that aren't Kika/archers/mages were worth.

Suikoden Tactics:

Kyril: Pretty middling for most of the game in that "wouldn't use unless forced" sort of way, STR/SKL don't really start picking up until late and Swallow Rune isn't particularly good for much outside of its L3.  4/10.

Seneca: Fishsodia archer!  Range is good for a variety of reasons.  Being stuck at FFM is less good (and she can't ride cute birds for whatever reason) but range means she doesn't really suffer from it that much.  7.5/10.

Andarc: Fishsodia mage!  Basic physical is weirdly competent if you wanted to use it for some reason and lightning magic is pretty cool, oh no he gets locked out of earth, the horror.  Is a mage so he has the FFM problem, but mage range means it's not really damning.  7.5/10.

Rita: Exists to be a warm body for a couple maps.  She's not bad at it but her relevent stats are pretty middling and her skills are pretty expensive for what she does.  3/10.

Kika: So Falcon Rune is kiiiiiiind of good at enabling the murdering of dudes.  Natural 6 move kind of good too (pity about the lack of Godspeed) on top of cast-best SKL.  STR could be a bit better but with what you're given, why ask for more?  8/10.

Mizuki: You exist, I guess?  Claw users aren't awful but I don't recall her being one of the better ones.  5/10.

Akaghi: Mizuki with better HP/STR/DEF but worse SKL/SPD/EVA.  I value one of these a bit more than the other on claw users and it's not Akaghi's stat spread.  4.5/10.

Flare: Fishsodia archer!  Lacks Extra Move but escapes the FFM hellhole.  7.5/10.

Trishtan: Shit son you bad.  1H swordsmen are a dime-a-dozen in Fishsodia and even the best of them aren't that great, and Trishtan's bizzare stat spread and frankly awful skill selection (no Extra Move?  no Parry?  Absurdly expensive Battle Lust?  Locked Guard?) pretty much consigns him to the garbage heap.  1/10.

Eugene: Not really the sort of game where I like people pretending to be a FE knight.  He's not entirely shameful but he's still rather projecty and stuck with FFM.  3/10.

Dario: Less shameful than in S4, but still a bit too slow for my liking, also heavy weapon user, so you know, really expensive Battle Lust ahoy.  Unite with Nalleo is alright though and saves him from being the worst of Kika's underlings though.  4/10.

Hervey: Good stats, but kind of bad skill selection, not stuck at FFM but lacks Extra Move and Bull's Eye and is a 1H swordsman, so yeah.  2/10.

Nalleo: Also a bit projecty but hey look, a fighter with natural 6 move who can boost it to 7 and doesn't entirely suck at other things too.  Low STR early on hurts and he does kind of want you to get that Rusty Cog to help him out there.  Again, axe user, but honestly he's pretty okay outside that.  6/10.

Sigurd: Well he has range, sort of.  He's also stuck in the FFM hellhole and isn't really doing anything that archers aren't already doing (and probably doing better at that) so.  4/10.

Maxine: Fishsodia mage!  With... 2 JMP?  Kind of random but whatever.  Worst gimmick out of the three gimmick mages but since the gimmick mages are probably the best mages anyways this says little.  7.5/10.

Pablo: I could say many things about Pablo and what's wrong with him, but then I might as well just quote the ST LP.  That said he is still a mage and thus better than shit like Trishtan, even if there's no reason to use him ever.  3/10.

Jeremy: 1H swordsman, okay stat spread, skill selection is pretty good, natural 6 move and can learn Godspeed to get that to 7.  Okay enough if you insist on using a 1H swordsman but the non-Gretchen female ones are better.  4/10.

Millay: Speaking of!  Has a better stat spread than Jeremy, along with a skill selection that is about as good and also natural 6 move.  Oh, also can use the Rusty Cog like Nalleo (and Dario, but Dario) can for +10 STR.  Still a 1H swordsman so you shouldn't expect too much from her but she's pretty much the best one.  6/10.

Axel: Vaguely bad at everything that isn't HP.  Heavy weapon user so you know what that means.  LOCKED HIDDEN POWER WHY DO YOU DO THIS FISHSODIA.  At least he has Godspeed/Extra Move so he's less shit than Trishtan due to escaping the FFM hellhole, but still.  1.5/10.

Ameria: Millay with a worse stat spread and no Bull's Eye.  5/10.

Wendel: Better than Mizuki in pretty much every way, I think?  Could be I got lucky, but.  6.5/10.

Gretchen: Female Hervey.  2/10.

Lazlo: I'd DNR if this were an actual thing instead of something I'm doing for fun, but anyways pretty much the best?  His only "problems" (outside of getting all 108 SoDs in S4 if you don't want to steal someone else's save file off of GFAQs or whereever) are that he has three locked skills and a natural move of 5 but those are irrelevent.  Pretty much meets my architypical definition of a 9/10, I don't hand him higher because really, what is he doing to the game that Kika/archers/mage combo wasn't already doing in a game where you have slots for all of those?

Snowe: Projecty, joins at Lv1, decent skill set that's hurt by the lack of Extra Move, is a 1H swordsman.  Strictly speaking he's actually okay when caught up but not really worth the effort required to do so.  2/10.

Rachel: Exists I guess?  Natural 6 move + Godspeed is alright but no Extra Move and the stat spread doesn't really speak to me.  4/10.

Keneth: Really mediocre stat spread, stuck in the FFM hellhole, 1H swordsman.  I guess he can use the Rusty Cog too but he's the third-best choice of four for that -at best-.  3.5/10.

Katarina: Pablo if Pablo didn't entirely fail at the sort of thing he was supposed to do.  6/10.

Tal: Why.  Why are you stuck in the FFM hellhole.  Why does leveling Battle Lust for you cost as much as it does to level it for axe/hammer/2H sword people.  Why do you have two locked skills that aren't very good.  Why are you all this and a 1H swordsman.  Why are earth innate characters such shit.  Why.  1.5/10.

Corselia: Fishsodia gimmick mage #3.  Not having lightning magic as a skill isn't great but still good past that.  Also that evasion is kind of silly.  7.5/10.

Coop: A less shameful Axel.  Workable but I'm not a huge fan since by the time he joins you're pretty close to getting a better 2H swordsman anyways.  3/10.

Nalkul: Wendel with slightly better STR in exchange for being worthless at Magic Swording.  But since you need L3 charges to do that, well.  6.5/10.

Champo: Better Akaghi wait he's earth innate why is he not awful.  6/10.

Mitsuba: Hi cast-best STR stat.  Also hi heavy weapon person who doesn't have an absurdly expensive Battle Lust skill.  I'd say something about the locked Chameleon Rune but Mitsuba wasn't unlocking the head slot anyways.  Her starting skill layout could be better though.  5.5/10.

Reinhold: Uh you have a STR stat I guess?  You also have FFM and don't really do anything for me that I couldn't get from other people with a STR stat, also join with the need for less SP investment please.  3/10.

Reinbach: I think I'd like you better if rapiers didn't suck.  3/10.

Charlemange: Back to the shitty earth innates I guess.  2/10.

Karl: I don't care about the stats, no range, no Extra Move, AND FFM?!  Good lord get out.  1/10.

Simeon: Corselia with better MAG but worse at most other things.  Fair enough, really.  7/10.

Frederica: Fishsodia archer!  Squishier than the other archers but who cares.  Half a point lower than the others since she joins so late.  7/10.

Jewel: How long have you had Millay for by this point?  I mean Jewel isn't bad by 1H swordsman standards but still.  5/10.

Paula: See Jewel.  5/10.

Selma: Honestly if you're not already using a 2H swordsman by now Selma isn't getting you to do otherwise really.  3/10.

Jeane: Unlike Karl at least she's a mage and has range.  Lack of Extra Move hurts my soul as always though.  5/10.

Kate: I mean technically she's better than Sigurd?  You have three archers by now though.  5/10.

Lino: A little too late there, buddy.  3/10.

Ornela: Nice stats, where was a spear user like this half a game ago, though?  4/10.

Busk: I'm running out of things to say about these latejointers.  3.5/10.

Roget: Fastest mage for whatever that's worth, a bit too late to be much help but still, mage.  6/10.

[Dark Holy Elf]

Man I wish I remembered this game better.

What's FFM? Four freaking move?

I found immunity to permadeath a significant upside, not like archers need the help but it's a pretty compelling reason to use Akaghi and Mizuki over some of the other randos for instance. I used most of the latejoining plot folks, too; I missed a lot of optional recruits so this probably colours my view but I found 'em pretty serviceable. Lino is certainly better in this game than S4 (granted, a 3/10 doesn't necessarily preclude that...). On the other hand I remember Rita joining badly underlevelled and dying (permanently) on her first map so 3/10 feels pretty generous if I wasn't missing something there.

[Random Consonant]

Five Freaking Move in this case but yeah (okay mages have 4 base but they all can get Godspeed so basically the same thing).

I don't really count permadeath much since it's pretty random as to whether or not it kicks in (I've anectodally heard that luck stat plays a role but who knows) and generally speaking the goal is to not die in the first place (although most of the best PCs are already permadeath immune, so), and the problem (such as it is) with the latejoiners is that they often don't join with many skills or even necessarily the ones you'd prefer them to come with.  This doesn't apply to the likes of, say, Frederica or Lino (and yes to be fair he is probably better than in S4, not that this is hard) IIRC but a few do have it.

I think what you're missing about Rita is that you can get her like almost immediately after the prologue timeskip where everyone else is Lv3 at best.

[SnowFire]

Random, you might find this Reddit discussion interesting:

https://www.reddit.com/r/fireemblem/comments/aus8pb/fe10_radiant_dawn_nutier_list_redux_round_2e5/

I totally ripped off your comments here:
http://www.rpgdl.com/forums/index.php?topic=4634.msg140966#msg140966
Basically the context was that RD Edward got ranked as "D" originally (in their Tier List-ese, "kinda bad but usable I guess"), but the Edward fan crew got a re-ranking round for him, where he was sadly re-ranked upward.  I attempted to rag on Edward some (despite using him myself) and got massively downvoted.  Alas.

---

Anyway, VSM / Saika / Sierra going through Dragon Quest 11 reminded me to maybe write one of these up for that cast...

Luminary: 7/10.  Very typical DQ lead who can do a little of everything, gets some late game absurdly MP-expensive panic button MT healing, and has Lightning magic to himself which is rather good at several times.  I tended to use him as the main physical damage cannon with greatswords; with the way subtractive defense works, especially on Stronger Enemies, strategies that are "1 Oomph'd person beats down, 3 people support and heal" is actually rather viable.  That said, he doesn't quite reach the upper tiers of broken, since you have several damage cannon options, and his buff/debuff support is bad-to-nonexistent.  (Side note: Good on DQ11 to make Zoom spells cost 0 MP, can't screw yourself over for getting out of the dungeon that way.)

Erik: 3/10.  Probably my LVP?  He's not bad, exactly, just a bit one-dimensional: he does damage, usually single-target damage, unless he goes with his boomerangs build which takes a damage hit.  That's nice, but I'd rather have at least some sort of utility stapled on.  He's a bit on the frail side as well, at least among physical fighters.  He gets better in the lategame, where he gets Dually Deadly swords and substantially better damage than anyone else, as well as his high speed enabling him to reliably get some smiting on nasty-but-frail randoms.  (He's also obviously very essential super-early when you have little party choice, but unsure how much hype that gets.)

Veronica: 8/10.  Probably the MVP?  Magic is great vs. randoms, is extremely great early, and she gets the Oomphle / Sap combo early for going physical beatdown vs. bosses (where physical damage shines).  Has some key rare buffs like Magic Barrier as well.  She's got some solid status, she resists elements for free.  Very late game, Magic Burst is incredibly good for some of the postgame bosses.  On the downside, her healing is awful and her durability is awful, and her damage vs. bosses isn't special after she's finished setting up buffs, but whatever.  Her availability has issues as well.  Still, overall, she's fantastic.

Serena: 4/10.  Tough to rank.  Her early game is unbelievably horrible, where she exists to be a healing battery in the backrow.  She's not even great as a front-line healer in boss fights; Kabuff isn't the most important buff to have, the Hymns are very situational, her MT healing comes later and is more MP-gated than Rab.  That said, after a 2/10 Part I, she has massive power leap in Part II & III.  She steals all of Veronica's stuff, she gets MT instant death, she's by far the best user of the one Meteorite Armband you'll get which fixes her speed issues, she gets some great equips, her MP issues are no longer as bad.  The bosses at the end of Part II are no joke, so this is the right time to blossom!  Still, while she's great in Part II, she's merely pretty good in Part III, so inclined to still give an overall meh score.

Sylvando: 7/10.  The other potential candidate for MVP.  His early game is nothing special, and he falls off hard in the very late postgame, but he is the absolute MVP for a huge, huge swathe of the game in the middle off the mighty Hustle Dance, which is great MT healing that runs off Charm and doesn't cost that much MP.  Sobering Slap is incredibly important, too; status'd PCs is incredibly horrible, and the Slap is the only cure you have for some really awful stuff like Beguile, which can't usually be healed by items, and usually can't be resisted by accessories much either for a long time (uh, Gemma's Charm I guess for the Hero for a mighty 30% resist?).  Finally, he eventually becomes a backup Veronica in having Oomphle.  He never really deals much damage himself, but he doesn't need to the way DQ11 works, where having somebody spam Hustle dance 2/3 of their turns is A-OK, and toss down the occasional buff otherwise.

Jade: 5/10.  One of your other physical damage cannon options.  I generally preferred Jade to Erik: she's a bit tankier and has better MT options.  Despite being theoretically harshly MP limited, you get her MP-regen accessory quite early, which greatly helps with that issue.  In Part II, she gets the ability to set up buffs herself without need for help, which is also nice for getting things rolling, and also helps hose status a bit.  That said, like Erik, she's one-dimensional, so certainly replaceable.

Rab: 5/10.  Well he's slow and frail, but he also packs MT healing, MT magic damage, Sap, and some weird buffs like Insulatle which are occasionally quite useful.  Certainly makes his build work, he's especially good early when Serena's MT healing isn't online yet.  He's crazy skill point hungry though - it felt like he simultaneously get less and needed more to hack through his grid for the good stuff.

Eighth character: 6/10.  Your final physical damage cannon option, and probably my 2nd favorite (Hero > 8 > Jade > Erik).  He's really slow, but gets immense tankiness, Kabuff, Magic Barrier, and equips shields.  This is actually a decent trade; somebody who can just flat survive enemies and help the rest of the team survive has a lot of use.  His damage is also just fine; perhaps the worst of the 4, but not really by much, and he gets access to his best damage move really fast, which is also pretty reasonable in its MP cost.  Basically, when you're getting wrecked, he can go on full support mode, and if you have some breathing space to Oomphle him or a Sap'd enemy, he can do respectable beatdown.

[Tide]

Just finished Zero myself. So detailed PC thoughts. Kind of different than Random's but also kinda not?

Lloyd: 3/10. Wow, Lloyd is so underwhelming. He's basically the jack-of-all-trades and these are *very* rarely if ever good unless they offer some kind of advantage. Unfortunately Lloyd doesn't. Early on he has nothing. The girls can hit harder with magic and he just flat out loses to Randy on physical damage and even higher Defense isn't that useful due to Trails Defense and lower HP. Later on, he is just flat out outclassed by either random guests that join (Chief Inspector Dudley/Estelle) or he's just not great for the job. Getting a GT S-Craft doesn't mean much when everyone else in cast has gotten theirs earlier. The only way I was able to make him useful was to jack up his Evade and send him in as bait when I didn't feel like casting Dark Matter.

Elie: 8/10. Cast MVP. Elie is just extremely versatile. A couple of things contribute to this. First is her Orbment grid. 5-1 is pretty good and gives Elie access to lots of spells, meaning she can do damage/buff/heal, etc. She also has game best ATS (not by much, but worth pointing out) so she's an amazing cannon. Loses EP and 1 Orbment link to Tio so its not a clear advantage. However, this is where her second advantage comes in - her crafts are just amazing. The damage ones kind of suck but the utility ones are great. Holy Bullet costs 40 CP but restores a fair chunk of HP (40% HP maybe?) and recover 20 CP to all in range. The catch? It can SELF TARGET. So instant GT healing that also restores CP is really damn good. She also has GT Turn Shift cause why not. Then finally, she has the "Lichtkreis" clone  or whatever it is in Skies in Aura Rain. This thing is also instant Resurrects any dead PCs and at 200 CP is full healing so it's kind of borke. Oh yeah, since it's S-craft you can just deploy it any time. Her main fault is her HP is a tad under average so she can feel a little more fragile, but you can boost Evade or something if you want to mitigate the most common damage type + she's a long range ordinance specialist anyway.

Randy: 6.5/10. Randy's actually pretty good for someone who's focused primarily on physicals. Like Elie, a couple of factors at play here. First: He starts with an AoE S-craft. This is a huge deal when both Elie and Lloyd do not and Tio's mainly wide line fire. Randy's S-craft is just able to catch more people on average. Second: His crafts are all great and have a variety of use. Flash bomb and Power Smash wreck randoms pretty badly. Power Smash in particular can just end some bosses as they aren't immune to Delay. The caveat to this is that Randy's not very fast on base, and CP Recovery without cooking is not terribly quick so he can't pull Delay loops like Rean can. Then if you're using him as burster, her has Wild Rage. This single crafts basically lets him dominate the physical side of things since no other PC can drop to 0 and then quickly jump back up to 100 like he can. Oh and just for shits and giggles, all of the great cooking items are created primarily by him (the +90 CP Burger and the +50% Strength steak are just *chef kiss* when you're going for fast kills). His faults are lowish speed and bad magic, which are notable, but can't win 'em all.

Tio: 7.5/10. The girls > the boys pretty handidly. Single line orbment so she gets a list of amazing spells and her ATS is still really good. The main advantage she has over Elie is her huge EP pool around mid-game. Early on, this hurts Tio because early game EP is very restrictive so she can't put the single line to use. Late game though, she has like...880 EP, meaning she can cast a bunch of stuff before running dry. The scan craft is nice, but often having Lloyd just drop a Battle scope is a better use since what else is he doing? Her crafts exists but you won't really use it since the spell casting  options just dominate. Zero Field is situational but is amazing when it is called for. Mocks the final boss something fierce. Bonus for having the second best set of cooking items (complicated pots that restore lots of CP and +50% ATS Juice are the shining stars). 

Noel: Noel wins the distinction of being one of two guest PCs who end up being not better than Lloyd. HOWEVER, this only applies to her when she rejoins for the 2nd time. The first time around she's basically just a better version of Lloyd. Even during her second stint, it is arguable as Noel has range and her physical is GT. Her main selling point is her Electromagnetic Net craft. It heavily nukes Speed and Move so it cripples enemies really badly on mobility. If you've built the girls to be caster, you can then basically lob spells at your leisure and mock afterwards. Less good on bosses since this craft doesn't work that well, but ah wells. 4/10

Wazy/Lazy: Eh, not sure? Both time Wazy is available is when you are undermanned and having an extra PC would always be a plus then. He is built for speed + magic, and having access to Dark Matter is great, especially during the 2nd time. None of his crafts are really worth writing home about but being a more durable caster is something. 5/10.

"Yin": The other guest PC who is basically worse than Lloyd. Jesus. Is worse as a caster due to less EP, loses to Randy on physicals and has no crafts really worth pointing out. Even her support craft is bad since as Random noted, instant death against undurable and randoms = lawlz. 2/10.

Chief Inspector Dudley: He's around for a pretty short stint, but when you do get from him he does deliver. Wider AoE Delay craft + Command as a support craft would already justify him either in the active line up or in the back row. However, he has a 4-2 grid, meaning he's actually okay at magic too if needed. Can't be a battery since his CP recovery tech is ST only, but he's pretty strong for when he is around. 5/10.

Estelle: Estelle is basically a straight up better version of Lloyd. Higher ATS means she works better as a caster and she already starts with a combo craft with Joshua so you don't even need to achieve a final bonding event to start cracking heads. Basically, Lloyd needed her stat spread to not suck. He wins HP and EP tho!!!1  6/10.

Joshua: The fastest character in the game and works great with Estelle. Can basically substitute for Randy, but in some cases, you are better off running both as he also has a Delay craft. Not too shabby without Estelle either since his S-craft is true MT and has a badass mult behind it. His raw physical strength is lower than Lloyd and he has less HP than Estelle but if you're using him as back up support + physical crafts, that's all he needs. 6/10

The best part is that Estelle and Joshua are around for only 1 dungeon but probably has a longer stint than all the guests sans Noel.

[Luther Lansfeld]

Three Houses is not as polarizing as some of the older Fire Emblems; most of the units are useful and can play a valuable role. There’s a couple of exceptions, but mostly this is true.

For the students, I ranked them based on their strongest form. Most students are better in their own house, but Ingrid might be an exception.

Byleth: 8.5/10. Generically good unit who can vary from “your best unit” especially early to “decent” depending on RNG luck. Female Byleth is a bit better due to access to early Peg Knight.

Black Eagle house:

Edelgard: 9.75???/10. Strength in axe means that she is a natural born Wyvern Rider/Lord. When I did her route I actually made her a Mortal Savant, which she also excels at! She has actually has pretty good Magic growth along with that monstrous Strength (although minus Faith is a bummer for a mage build). Her defences are decent as well. Generally a dominant unit with very few weaknesses, and Raging Storm, her unique combat art, is broken as fuck. Galeforce except without any requirement to kill or even hit? YIKES. Also, her Charm is so, so dumb. Gambit life.

Hubert: 5.5/10. Not one of the better mages, but he is a very solid player-phase unit as a Paladin with Frozen Lance and Fiendish Blow. That build is quite pathetic on the enemy phase, though, and you don’t get his magic back until Level 30. Also, his Faith list is garbage and he is minus in Faith. Arrow of Indra helps some mid-late game before you open up Dark Knight.

Ferdinand: 7/10. He’s a bit on the weak end of the ‘generically decent fighter builds’. His start is quite bad but he has pretty good growths and his personal ability gives him +15 hit and +15 evade when he’s at full HP. Alert Stance+ and his personal can work together to make quite an effective evade-based build. He also has strength in axes, which can make him an ideal candidate for Wyvern Rider/Lord. The game kinda shoehorns him into a role as a Paladin but most physical units prefer the Wyvern Rider line, especially those with Strength in axes. Alternatively, he is a good candidate for Dancer due to Dancer’s evade build.

Linhardt: 5.5/10. He is slow and fragile and overshadowed throughly by Marianne, Mercedes, and Dorothea, but he gets the job done as a Physic user if you want to use him. Warp is nice and he’s the only person who gets both Physic and Warp.

Caspar: 3/10. Caspar is one of the worst units of the students; his stat build is awkward, with neither enough speed to double anything (or survive doubles) nor enough defence to be a true defence tank. He doesn’t really end up having much of a niche, but nor is he unusable. At least he has Strength in axes so he can obtain Wyvern Rider relatively easily. His Charm is also ass.

Bernadetta: 4.5/10. A serviceable unit with so-so growths in both strength and speed AND very frail. Props for easy access to Pegasus Knight and Persecution Complex, which gives her +5 damage when she is damaged. She also has Encloser, which is a Don’t Move archer move that only her and Claude get.

Dorothea: 8.5/10. Fantastic unit with high magic growth, decent speed growth, and the trinity of money moves for a magic-user: Thoron (three range magic), Physic (stupid range healing), and Meteor. Meteor serves two niches in this game; the first is, of course, the ability to hit your enemies at long range, which it in and of itself is good. But that’s not what makes it truly broken. What makes it truly broken is its ability to offer both support boosts and Gambit boosts while equipped, giving another attacker bonuses (with an A support, it provides 10 hit and 10 evade for regular attacks and +20 hit for Gambit boost, and it scales down every support level less) while they attack, just because Dorothea has Meteor equipped, even if she doesn’t use it. So Dorothea offers passive bonuses to everyone around her just by virtue of existing and having Meteor equipped. So basically you equip it at the beginning of the turn, which does not use your turn, and then attack with everyone else, and then attack with Dorothea. Rinse and repeat. Her only downside is that she doesn’t have a Crest, which means you probably don’t want to give her Thyrsus, and she is rather fragile.

Petra: 8.5/10. She is in the classic swordmaster ‘fast and dodgy’ and you can build her as a good Wyvern Rider (strong at Axes) or a good Assassin build. Solid character, a little one-dimensional but she is great at that dimension.

Blue Lion house:

Dimitri: 9.5/10. I feel like Dimitri’s Part 1 isn’t quite as good as Edelgard’s, but he has better growths and ends up as such a good unit. Because he is a Lance-based male character, he gets a little hosed by the fact that men can’t class change into Peg Knights, but the Paladin build ends up working for him just fine. He is tied for the highest combination of speed and strength growth in the game, and his monster strength really shows up later. He also gets Evade +20 at full HP post-timeskip. I think he is an excellent unit, best unit in the Lions, but he falls a little short of Edelgard in terms of character worth. But they never compete so it doesn’t really matter. Atrocity is worse than Raging Storm because everything is worse than Raging Storm, but if you want a boss who isn’t the final boss to die, it will die dammit.

Dedue: 4.5/10. A better version of Caspar due to his “+4 def while waiting” skill (not to mention +3 str, +2 def, and +1 spd base stats), at least early. He is a decent unit until he leaves for four chapters and then comes back and is generally bad. Oh well, still higher than the other characters in his stat build mold.

Felix: 8.5/10. Probably the best physical non-lord unit in the game. He is tied with Dimitri for the highest strength/speed combination, and unlike Catherine, who has a similar stat build, he can start building toward the holy grail of Wyvern early. Unfortunately his talent list doesn’t really line up that well with Wyvern, and minus Authority means he has to scrape from the bottom of the barrel for Battalions, but his earlygame passive (+5 damage without a Battalion) makes that more palatable. He is quite frail both physically and magically, but he can be built for evade. He can be built as a Bow Knight as well, which is also quite a good class.

Ashe: 4/10. A worse version of Bernadetta with some utility with Lockpick, but doesn’t have the passive +5 damage when damaged. Also can’t be a Peg Knight.

Sylvain: 7.5/10. An interesting mixed unit who can be built both as a decent fighter, with his Riding and Axe and Lance talents for your Paladin and Wyvern needs, or can be built as an evade-tank mage with Physic. Neither build will blow you away, but both are valid and decent. Ruined Sky is a nice option and has saved my ass at a few random intervals. Also very easy to recruit as female Byleth, which is incidentally the objectively correct decision. (:

Mercedes: 8.5/10. Mercie brings a lot to the table; mage tanking, Physic, high magic, and she is the only healer in the game who gets both Fortify and Physic. Another nice thing about Mercie is that she always trains both Reason and Faith when you recruit her because she is strong at both. She can also use Thyrsus, and quite well might I add.

Annette: 4/10. She is a serviceable mage who can fulfil that role, but she is overshadowed by pretty much every other student mage in the game. Hubert/Marianne/Dorothea/Hanneman gets 3 range, many of the other mages get a variety of Physic and Warp and Rescue, and Annette just gets a pretty crappy list of both Reason and Faith. And she is slow and more fragile to magic than Mercedes. Still, she is okay and can be a decent magic user in your army, so she isn’t that low.

Ingrid: 7.5/10. She is a classic peg build of ‘fast and dodgy’ with high RES. She gets docked some points for a bad start, but she gets points for being very good to recruit on other routes due to high growths in Peg Knight during that time (and a free D in flying, yay!), which no other character gets. She is a great mage killer and a generally solid unit. Burning Quake is also a nice option, especially because it has crit evade.

Golden Deer house:

Claude: 9.5/10. Much like the other two lords, a very solid unit with few weaknesses. He is a little more fragile than the other two, but his strength and speed are so so dumb. Again, much like Dimitri, I feel that his Part 1 isn’t quite as good as Edelgard’s, which is why I gave him a slightly lower score. Failnaught is very good and very interesting and allows you to let Claude bait one dangerous enemy without getting hit, which is generally cool but was HELLA VALUABLE on the Chapter after the timeskip where I kept getting wrecked. His unique class is so so good, although it doesn’t have as much range as Bow Knight. Oh well!

Lorenz: 3/10. His magic and strength are both pretty mediocre, and his speed leaves something to be desired. I’m not really sure what role he plays that others don’t play better. Bad Charm does not help. He’s like Sylvain minus minus.

Raphael: 3/10. Raphael is a variant Dedue with less bases and a crappy passive ability, but he’s not weak in flying and doesn’t leave for four chapters. Overall I think neither character is great long term, but Dedue fills a gap during the earlygame that Raphael does not.

Ignatz: 4/10. Hit +20 is cool, otherwise has a pretty similar stat build to Ashe. That’s not a great place to be.

Lysithea: 7/10. A magic user with only 2 range, doesn’t have Physic, and is super fragile. But she does have very high power and can kill Paladins well with Dark Spikes. Decent unit, but does seem to get a lot of hype for a mage without Physic.

Marianne: 8/10. Kinda like Lysithea except has Thoron and Physic, but with a bit lower magic and speed. I think that’s a winning trade, personally. She also has plus in both Lance and Riding, which makes her an ideal candidate for Dark Knight.

Hilda: 7.5/10. Similar to Sylvain, she makes a good Wyvern Rider with her axe talent, and she has very good overall stats, with higher Cha than Sylvain. She also has own unique weapon Freikugel which is quite solid. She doesn’t have the interesting magic build that Sylvain does, but she does get Bolting if you want to make her the Dancer and let her buff people’s accuracy like Dorothea does. :p

Leonie: 7.5/10. See Petra, pretty much, trading some strength and talent list for defence and charm. A bit worse overall, but not bad.

Church of Seiros:

Just gonna mention that most of the characters in this section are a bit overall worse because it is harder to give them skills like Speed+2, Str+2, Reposition, Draw Back, and in some cases, even things like Death Blow, Darting Blow, and Fiendish Blow depending on how late the unit joins.

Seteth: 6.5/10. He has a similar stat build to Hilda, but because he doesn’t join until Chapter 12, he has a couple of disadvantages. 1. He doesn’t acquire all of the cool earlygame skills like Darting Blow (okay, he can never get that), Death Blow, Reposition, all of that good stuff. and 2. wyvern does not benefit him as much as Hilda because of Freikugal. Still, he’s one of the better staff members because his talent list is good and his stats are at least decent.

Flayn: 4/10. She has Rescue and Fortify, but other than that, she’s pretty trashy. And those can only be used a certain amount of times per battle. I’ve never tried a physical build on her… no clue if that is viable at all.

Hanneman: 3/10. He has Meteor and Thoron, 2/3 of the holy grail, but his stats are so disastrous that he is still a pretty bad unit. He is doubled by almost everything.

Manuela: 4/10. Weird unit. Fast but weak physical unit or bad healer??? I ended up building her as a Swordmaster -> Mortal Savant, which gave her a decent Levin Sword attack and eventually Warp when she turns into an MS. She’s alright, but not great.

Gilbert: 1/10. Slow as fuck and explodes to magic. Joining post-timeskip is not really acceptable for a unit with his stat build.

Alois: 2/10. Uh, he seems pretty bad but not as bad as Gilbert? I dunno. Joins quite late as well, and doesn’t start with a great set of talents.

Catherine: 7.5/10. Similar to Felix except joins later so a bit less customizable. Still a pretty good unit though. She joins at level 15 as a Swordmaster, which is sweet for Swordfaire. Thunderbrand is cool but the art isn’t wonderful, so you can just swipe it and give it to someone else. Her passive is worse than Felix’s because she joins later.

Shamir: 5/10. Decent placeholder unit who gets the job done. Her stats aren’t great, but she joins as a Sniper at level 15, which is cool for Bowfaire.

Cyril: 3/10. He is a crappy version of that growth character, but Flying and Axe talent makes him passable. Pretty uninspiring, though, especially because Aptitude only really catches him up in growths to other units.

EDIT: moved Dorothea down to 8.5/10 and Marianne up to 8. They really shouldn't be shouldn't be 1.5 points apart.

[SnowFire]

Ciato's ratings look good to me, with the usual proviso that sometimes you slot a character into a less effective role in a vacuum because you need somebody to be that role-player, and being able to do that is good.  Lots of the archers aren't amazing at base (Ignatz/Bernie/Ashe/Shamir) but having some sort of archer at all is highly useful.  OTOH, you can just toss a bow on a none-archer class and have some access to Curved Shot chipping if you want easily enough.

I'd probably ding most units a point just due to being a harsher scorer, but the more notable ones - Edelgard doesn't quite get to Wyvern Lord super-free, and Raging Storm is busted but you have to parcel out those uses very very carefully.  Annette is just - ack, I'd maybe be tempted by Hanneman more than her, awful Faith list, Excalibur is really weak, slow, etc.  She'll get better with DLC wave 4 though since she can maybe be a Dark Flier then at least.  Leonie has super-growths as a late recruit when not on Golden Deer, but I think her Strength is a little too questionable to get a super-high score.  (She's still good, I've used her in both playthroughs.)

Re what Lorenz's role is supposed to be: yeah, Lorenz is stuck in jack-of-all-trades hell, but I think he's supposed to be a mixed tank for his niche.  He's your only (GD+CoS) option with both good Def & Res growth - Marianne & Flayn are exclusively magic tanks, Raphael/Hilda/Leonie/Alois are exclusively physical tanks.  This is sorta interesting on Normal/Hard, but is much less so vs. the insane enemy offensive stats of Maddening.

Cyril is weird.  Since Wyvern Lord is so damn good, in a "DL legal" playthrough he's pretty amazing since he has easy access to it.  But yeah, you'd think he'd have super-stats by endgame, but IntSys kinda cheated by having his base growths be awful.  Makes his passive pretty misleading, he might as well not even have a passive.  I can easily see a score anywhere from 3 to 7 depending on how willing you are to move characters into Wyvern Lord despite not having a perfect set of skill growth strengths.  (And the bow talent in Bowpremacy the game is obviously non-trivial, too.)
 
--
Anyway.  Class rankings!  With the usual proviso above that you want a somewhat mixed force anyway so that you can bait enemy archers.  Focusing on just Advanced + Master classes here, although I'll throw in Intermediate Pegasus Knight as well since you will legitimately stick in that during L20-30 for characters going for Falcon Knight, and it's still probably better than a lot of Advanced classes.  I'm mostly with the Serenes consensus that flying & mounted units > most everything else - immense mobility & Canto make almost any strategy better.

Busted: (Barbarossa), Wyvern Lord
Excellent: Falcon Knight, Bow Knight, Dancer
V. Good: Paladin, Dark Knight, Assassin, Wyvern Rider, Pegasus Knight
Decent: Holy Knight, Sniper, (Enlightened One), (Great Lord?), Infantry Mages (Gremory / Mortal Savant / Warlock / Bishop / Dark Bishop, which one is best varies by character)
Okay: War Master, Grappler
Situational: Swordmaster, Warrior, Fortress Knight
Outclassed: Hero, (Emperor)
WTF: Great Knight

Flying & mounted units are good for the reasons above.  Dancer is Dancer/10.  Assassin, Sniper, Enlightened One, and presumably Great Lord (no BL for me yet) are the "good" infantry physical classes - Assassin has the best version of Stealth in the series & amazing speed & 6 Move, Sniper has Hunter's Volley which kills things dead even for slower archers and is one of the best skills in the game, Enlightened One combines Swordfaire w/ Magic and a great passive skill in Sacred Power (extra good in a game with Braves!), GL has generally above-the-board stats.

War Master & Grappler are some of the best units at killing stuff thanks to Fistfaire, e.g. low defense or high-HP units like mages or monsters.  They can both pop a mage before they get to counter or quad a monster for massive damage, and both pack 6 Move.  Swordmaster & Warrior are okay but they're 5-move infantry so they're "fair".  Fortress Knight has 4 move so really wants a March Ring, but the massive Def boost does give them some role in walling physical enemy units.

Hero is outclassed.  Just go either Swordmaster or Warrior instead, both of them pack better growths and more useful skills.  Hero really shoulda been a Master Class, gotten 6 Move, required A Swords & A Axes, and gotten better stat boosts / growths.  Same deal with Emperor, it's either a worse Warrior or a worse Fortress Knight, depending on if you want offense or tanking.

Great Knight - oh, what have you done.  It is by far the hardest class to access in the game; it really should have been B+ (Axes or Lances) rather than B+ Axes only, but even if so, both Heavy Armor A and Riding B+?  Holy wow.  You'd have to be training in either Paladin (which uses Lances, not Axes...) and Weed Picking / Rubble Removal, or Fortress Knight + Stables duty to get there (and FK is only a situational class).  I would estimate that the only characters with a chance in hell of doing this reasonably are Edelgard, Ferdinand, Sylvain, Hilda, Cyril, and Gilbert.  For Edelgard, Hilda, & Cyril - why not just go Wyvern Lord instead?  It's no more difficult for them to train flying than it is horsies.  For Ferdie & Sylvain - well, maybe, but they both learn Swift Strikes meaning they really want to learn Lances, so you're having to off-road and grab a lot of Axe training that doesn't really matter.  But okay, fine, you did all that for them.  GK is still a sidegrade from Paladin!  They both pack Lancefaire for deadly Swift Strikes, but you get some more Def & HP at a Str & Spd & Res cost.  So much work for something so fair.  That leaves us with one option: Gilbert.  And GK is a genuinely solid option for Gilbert - his resistance & speed is beyond saving anyway as an FK, so GK is basically "mobile Fortress Knight" for him.  Great, an option for one trashy character to be moderately more mobile in time for the last few maps of the game.  IntSys really needed to either make GK's requirements less onerous or make this class substantially more broken, or both.

[Luther Lansfeld]

Ciato's ratings look good to me, with the usual proviso that sometimes you slot a character into a less effective role in a vacuum because you need somebody to be that role-player, and being able to do that is good.  Lots of the archers aren't amazing at base (Ignatz/Bernie/Ashe/Shamir) but having some sort of archer at all is highly useful.  OTOH, you can just toss a bow on a none-archer class and have some access to Curved Shot chipping if you want easily enough.

I'd probably ding most units a point just due to being a harsher scorer, but the more notable ones - Edelgard doesn't quite get to Wyvern Lord super-free, and Raging Storm is busted but you have to parcel out those uses very very carefully.  Annette is just - ack, I'd maybe be tempted by Hanneman more than her, awful Faith list, Excalibur is really weak, slow, etc.  She'll get better with DLC wave 4 though since she can maybe be a Dark Flier then at least.  Leonie has super-growths as a late recruit when not on Golden Deer, but I think her Strength is a little too questionable to get a super-high score.  (She's still good, I've used her in both playthroughs.)

Re what Lorenz's role is supposed to be: yeah, Lorenz is stuck in jack-of-all-trades hell, but I think he's supposed to be a mixed tank for his niche.  He's your only (GD+CoS) option with both good Def & Res growth - Marianne & Flayn are exclusively magic tanks, Raphael/Hilda/Leonie/Alois are exclusively physical tanks.  This is sorta interesting on Normal/Hard, but is much less so vs. the insane enemy offensive stats of Maddening.

Cyril is weird.  Since Wyvern Lord is so damn good, in a "DL legal" playthrough he's pretty amazing since he has easy access to it.  But yeah, you'd think he'd have super-stats by endgame, but IntSys kinda cheated by having his base growths be awful.  Makes his passive pretty misleading, he might as well not even have a passive.  I can easily see a score anywhere from 3 to 7 depending on how willing you are to move characters into Wyvern Lord despite not having a perfect set of skill growth strengths.  (And the bow talent in Bowpremacy the game is obviously non-trivial, too.)

I am going to say that a general observation about your comments is that you seem to want to stick with what you feel is a balanced party with characters who play different roles. I feel that some of those roles are not very important. On my Golden Deer run I had three Falcon Knights and two Wyvern Lords, as well as Barbarossa, and it was a very effective team that didn’t encounter much difficulty from not being versatile, especially considering that you can Dismount. On non-Claude routes you probably want a Bow Knight, which is a role that a variety of people can slot into. Both Felix and Leonie are plus in Bows so they can fulfill the role of archer better than the group of units you mentioned. Felix in particular has quite an optimum stat build for Bows with both high STR and SPD, although on non-BL routes he doesn't train it, which is a bummer.

Re:Edelgard: Raging Storm is the tool where you say “I am dying, please save me” and you are saved. Hell, I used Raging Storm with Mortal Savant, and it’s not nearly as broken as with Wyvern Lord because you are allowed to Canto the full extent of your move after using it and then get another turn after that move (as well as offering, what, +6 damage compared to MS?). It is so so silly. I feel like it’s a tool that the other lords don’t match, and since all three of them have great stats, Edelgard having the best tool means she gets the highest score of the three.

I also feel like you might be overrating the difficulty required to access Wyvern Rider; you only need a C in Flying and a B in Axe, which seems quite easy for her to achieve. And Wyvern Lord is level 30, which gives you lots of time to develop skills. Hell, I got to Wyvern Lord at level 30 with Felix, who has zero of the talents required. I’m not certain why you wouldn’t unless you’ve decided to use her bad unique class for some reason (like that you are a masochist who enjoys making the game harder).

Yeah, Cyril isn't getting any credit in in-game use for a niche he is clearly outclassed by in-game thanks to joining a few maps in (believe it's Chapter 5) where you have already done some building of your units. There’s no particularly compelling reason to build him except that you like him, which to be fair is something that applies to most of the characters in question.

[Dark Holy Elf]

Character stuff, just commenting on a few ratings plus comments.

Edelgard: She gets to Wyvern Lord as easily as anyone who doesn't literally just start there (comparable to Petra IMO, better than anyone else save Seteth); yeah, she's "only" axe boon/flying neutral, but she's also strong in both authority and armour, both skills your wyvern lords badly want. She certainly has an easier time getting there than Cyril, who can't start training flying until recruited and can't go to Pegasus Knight to speed this up.

Dorothea: She's a great PC for sure but I dunno about 9, mages have some definite statistical downsides in this game (move, durability, AS, no braves) and it's not as if she's perfect statwise for a mage (killing power is decent but could be better with only 40% mag growth). Obviously mage utility is killer and why you'll always use some. I have a very hard time comparing mages and fighters though. Easier to compare fighters against each other and mages against each other.

Annette: I want to try out magical combat art Annette before giving her a rating, as some people speak reasonably highly of that. Basically a flying version of Paladin Hubert. I don't think she'll deserve an amazing score anyway (like Paladin Hubert she's a one-dimensional, and while flying > horse, Hubert does have advantages like transitioning into Dark Knight and the lack of flying mage batallion) but it should get her above trash.

Archers: Snowfire raises a point about "hey, you want an archer for their utility, right?" and my initial kneejerk response was "yeah but Felix craps on them, also has bow talent and has 55/55 growths and better bases". But it's a fair point that Felix is a dope and doesn't train bows until recruited (sword/brawling whyyyyy). But this isn't a problem on BL; Ashe probably suffers a bit because of the direct Felix competition. Ignatz faces competition from Claude and I suppose Leonie as well. Bernadetta does the best here, although I still don't consider her amazing.

Lorenz: One issue Lorenz has is that def/res (and HP, which he's decent in) aren't the only tanking stats: charm and speed are as well, and he's bad in both. It's not like his def/res are that exceptional, anyway: checking their Level 21 stats in the same classes, Mercedes is -2 Def but +4 Res for instance (I know she's not GD, but she's an easy recruit if you get Byleth Curved Shot). (And obviously she has many advantages he doesn't.) He actually has okay power despite his poor listed magic due to early Ragnarok + his personal but as a power mage he's outclassed, and in general I'm using mages not for raw killing power but for utility.

Shamir (and Catherine): I'm very conflicted on Shamir. If you get her ASAP (which definitely does require some effort), she has quite good stats (due to always having at least Sniper bases even if she joins at Level 11), and gets Hunter's Volley early enough to be well ahead of the Brave Bow. Overall I think I like her more than Bernadetta for these reasons, for instance, but the latter does have advantages (can pick up Reposition/etc., Encloser). I guess I might push her higher but not much. Some of these comments apply to Catherine too but I'd probably roughly agree with the score she's been given.


Class stuff:

I'd move Dancer up to the highest tier: their ability to use magic and/or dodge-tank, while having the best non-infantry move, are all advantages that Dancers don't normally have in Fire Emblem. Special Dance is great too, though shared with Fates. Dancer is a really good class in almost any FE, so one where it's extra good deserves the highest tier IMO.

Emperor, while obviously deserving the label "outlassed", is better than Fortress Knight. Yeah, it has -2 Def... but +3 HP, +2 Spd, +1 Luck, +2 Charm, and most importantly +1 Move. You mentioned Fortress Knight with March Ring; well, Emperor with a +2 def Shield is better in every way, and frees up the March Ring for someone else since basically everyone would like it (but in particular, your dancer and infantry mages). Whether that means Emperor should go up or Fortress Knight should go down I have no strong opinion on, I don't think very highly of either (but Hero and Great Knight have no reason to be used as you note).

[Tide]

Azure: Unlike Random, while MQs definitely help curb some stat holes, for the most part, I think this is still a game where the stats help determine which MQ goes on who and which in turn determines how good a PC is at certain things. Think of it as kind of like WA3. So base stats matter, but you can augment them. Being good at a particular stat helps out in the long run.

Lloyd: I have really mixed feelings about Lloyd. For the most part, he's better than in Zero, but its due to a few very select niche cases. As Random already pointed out 3-3 Orbment with bad strength means offensively, Lloyd is pretty underwhelming. However, he does have 2 advantages that other fights don't. 1) Some of his weapons have Weapon Evade. This is very notable as Evade tanking works pretty well in-game. It doesn't dodge the crazy MT OHKO stuff but it dodges a lot of other stuff and lets you use him as pretty effective bait. 2) Once he gets the Accel Rush upgrade to Raging Spin, he can start pulling susceptible enemies away to him. This let's him draw them in and encourages the AI to attack him. This along with his good HP and defense means he actually does the tanking thing better than other bulky chars (Randy/Dudley). It's funny because even though Strong Heart is the same busted version as it is in CS2, you still probably won't use it that often because again, offensively, Lloyd just isn't very good. His one caveat to that is he gets good combo crafts and has the most out of every char, but the cases for using those tend to be quite limited. 5/10.

Noel: Noel is basically a Jeigan. When the game first starts, her GT physical, and passable weapon strength are enough to make her shine pretty well. Then she gets the upgrade to Sleep grenade pretty early and that smokes things up to the end of Chapter 2 easy. However, by the time mid-Chapter 3 hits, her weaknesses are very pronounced. Bad EP and an awful orbment grid sink her from doing any offensive spell casting, and the bad strength starts showing. Then all the late game relevant randoms and enemies are all status immune and boy is she bad when her crafts don't matter. 4/10.
 
Elie: Cast MVP AGAIN. Certain crafts such as Holy Bullet have taken a nerf, but she's basically kept all her other good points (high Magic attack, GT Turn Shift, Aura Rain).  EP inflation means she has some early game issues but this is then made up by being absolutely game breaking at end game since she can do an infinite turn loop set up, ensuring every boss until the last phase of the final boss becomes a total joke. In short, it's like if Machias didn't have the entire early game suckage and was just great all throughout. 9/10. Would be a 10/10 PC if she didn't have a few weaknesses and the final boss was actually cheesable.

Wazy: Wazy has a really odd stat mix. Statistically, he's the most durable of the casters but is made up but having the lowest magic of the three. His weapons also give him weapon evade and he's fairly speedy to begin with so this all encourages him to be some kind of front line caster who has a usable physical game if you so choose. To make up for this, he has a really bad S-craft (ST with a bad mult - just why) and his locked Space node is worse than Elie's locked Wind or Tio's locked Water. For a good portion of the game, he's probably a little worse than the girls since they just offer better things than him. Then Chapter 4 happens and holy shit. Chapter 4 marks an entire change in the game because 1) The three higher elements are prominent almost every where and Wazy's locked Space node is no longer a liability 2) He gains a GT high-mult Magic S-craft. 3) He gains all of his techs on rejoin and some of them get upgraded to become really good. Of note is Trinity Card, which goes from this tiny AoE effect to like near whole screen effect cancelling. He's not really a reverse Jeigan, but he definitely becomes very good at the end and well worth a party slot if you so choose. Can be more versatile than Tio too in some ways. 7.5/10.

Randy: Er...so Randy basically has similar issues to Wazy. Early on, Noel is probably better because her crafts are more decisive and Randy's extra bulk doesn't really matter. Then at the end of the game he gains Berserker, War Cry becomes +150 CP (so instant S-craft spamming! Heyo!) and the extra bulk actually matters since it lets him soak a hit or two without batting an eye. Gets an extra point for being the most effective person under infinite turn works because of War Cry. All other PCs basically need Impassion or the Tomato Pizza to really do much, whereas Randy just needs to be healed...which you can do in numerous ways. 6.5/10.

Tio: Finally gained cast best magic. Keeps single orbment line so is the definitive caster. In case that wasn't clear enough, everything she has except for call Doggo is magic based too. So yeah, Tio rules for the most part, although when she gets hosed, she gets hosed really hard. Zero Field is still amazing and is mandatory for like all the serious optional boss fights. In fact, its so good, the final basically has a move to cancel it instantly. Her bad points (other than being hosed by magic immunity) is absolutely terrible HP (like she has 10000 less than Randy) and her crafts other than Analyzer are pretty non-existent. But those are minor hiccups and she's great for a majority of the game. Bonus 0.5 point for being the best infinite turn battery as she has the highest EP pool by far. 8/10.

Rixia: Uh...the instant death is okay this time around in select cases, but Rixia still has all the same problems as in Zero. Bad Orbment line (lol 4-1-1 why) means she's bad at casting and the low EP means you pretty much have to build her as a fighter. She does have a notable niche in that like Lloyd, she can draw enemies to her but since she's not as built defensively as he is, she's obviously worse at this job. 4/10.

Chief Inspector Dudley: For the few times you get to use him, along with his final stint, Dudley is actually...pretty damn good. Like he's a hybrid character that can swing both attack types and do well with both. Good HP + good crafts + actual orbment line. Has instant death too, meaning he totally encroaches on Rixia's territory too. His faults are limited availability and lowish EP.  6/10.

Doggo: You'd think not having a S-craft wouldn't be a huge deal, but it actually matters quite significantly since it limits your ability to burst out your offense. On the whole, he's servicable when you get him and at worst is a good enough healer so Lloyd and Wazy and can attack offensively. 3/10.

Mafia-man: I imagine you can probably take out all the goons in his chapter with just Lloyd, albeit it would be a bit tougher so his assistance is appreciated. Still, never felt like he was mandatory even though he's around when you only have 2 PCs. 3/10.

[Random Consonant]

You can't say you didn't see this coming.

Fire Emblem Legend of Continental Wyvern Lords Three Houses/PCs:

Byleth: Great start but fairly average growths.  Breaking into the better Advanced classes is a bit annoying for them but Enlightened One is an okay consolation prize I guess?  7/10.

Edelgard: Good freaking lord.  Byleth-level start but with one of the highest strength growths and obscene amounts of charm, peg knight access in Intermediate for the Death/Darting Blow combo, strength in axes so that's the harder part of the wyvern puzzle out of the way, what in the actual fuck is Raging Storm on okay I see why weapon durability made its return because what the hell.  I guess you need Agarthium to repair Aymr so there's an actual kind of downside to it... prior to the end of C16 anyways.  I guess her durability isn't that amazing and her unique class blows but uh I'm not sure how you'd justify less than 9.5/10 here and I think I'm one of the harsher scorers for FE character performance here.

Hubert: Alas, poor Hubie, you deserved better.  I'm not sure what the dev team was on with regards to the black/dark magic split in this game but it's clear that he drew the short straw here considering the bad Faith list and medium value attack/utility spells.  At least he gets range 3?  Frozen Lance and Arrow of Indra are also a couple points in his favor so he's not... completely wretched.   Just, well.  5/10.

Dorothea: I too am a big fan of the Thoron/Meteor/Physic combo.  She definitely has some downsides compared to the other good mages (less magic growth, no Thyrsus for all that Caduceus works well enough for her, Faith list is whatever outside of Physic, generally undurable) but it's not like she's a hard poach target and even if she doesn't turn out offensively there's always Dancer.  8/10.

Ferdinand: Respectable enough at any physical need you might want to cover though not amazing in any particular area without some work (although he does lend himself agreeably well to dodgetanking roles).  Not really a great start with the middling stats and starting off on lances (early game lance cost performance aaaaaaaaa) however.  6/10.

Bernadetta: She has enough perks in her favor that I'm willing to give her the best score out of the default archers (none of whom probably want to actually -go- archer thanks to dat strength growth) but getting a better level of performance than adequate out of her requires some hoop-jumping and she rather notably has one of the worst starts out of any of the students.  5/10.

Caspar: And here's the actual worst start!  9 strength/6 speed isn't good for much of... anything, really, let alone an axe/gauntlet start and the Black Eagles have don't have the early Rally Strength or Speed pickup to make that marginally less awful.  And it's not like his growths are amazing either, so shittier Edward he be (granted this is an easier earlygame than Radiant Dawn's, I would have harsher words and an even lower score were this not the case).  Weakness in authority is just rubbing salt in the wound, for all that I don't actually consider it to be a huge deal (easy enough to get to C by the time it's relevent, and you're not using Caspar for gambit damage anyways.  I guess it's a problem if there's a particular B rank battalion you want.  It sure don't help his case but I'm far more affronted by that garbage charm stat.)  I guess since he can actually break past Advanced class speed floors it's not a waste to throw speedwings at him early but that's such a poor selling point compared to almost literally anything else I think 2/10 is justified here.

Petra: Hello wyvern ez mode.  Can also do the classic dodgetank build but you probably wanted wyvern.  Also 9 strength/10 speed for one of the best starts out of the non-lord students.  Did I mention she has a free D in flying and can do the Death/Darting Blow thing?  8/10.

Linhardt: Slow as fuck to start with, but man, starting one Faith rank off from Physic?  I care.  Warp's a cool trick too.  Not wonderful offensively and his charm is trash garbage, and he's stuck with Bishop for doubled Faith magic uses so he's outclassed by Mercie and Marianne but I still like this better than Hubie.  5.5/10.

Dimitri: Dimitri is a very strong boy and I am a big fan of the eventual strength/speed combo of silliness but his start's not as good as Byleth or Edelgard and I feel Areadbhar is the worst relic of the three in the boiling of eggs (although if something's gotta die at all costs it's good at accomplishing that at least), and being bad at axe is a bit of a downer compared to the other two lords since that's the harder part of the wyvern puzzle.  However he also has the potential to dodgetank very well thanks to the post-timeskip version of his passive.  Really the biggest strike against him though is the fact that he's unavailable for training for a good chunk of the post-timeskip part of the game, so while I agree that he's still better than the other non-lords I think he's the worst of the three.  8.5/10.

Dedue: Well having Dimitri's bases is a good way to start your career and the passive does make him a fairly good tank if you choose to work at it.  His speed/resistance are awful though and he has the same problem Dimitri does post-timeskip, can be salvaged by wyvern but that's because wyvern is stupid and can salvage just about anything oh noes he's weak in flying except wyvern only needs C in flying and it's also trainable via group activity for an added push, I don't see how that's a problem unless you hate the Cichol statue bonuses or something.  Anyways he's not really good or anything but at least the earlygame is strong enough to get him above the dregs.  4/10.

Felix: Speaking of strong earlygames, there's this guy.  I think I agree with him being the best non-lord physical PC on Azure Moon and even though I'm less sure of it on other routes (sword/brawling whyyyyyyyyyy) there's no question that he's up there (and he's such an easy pickup for anyone doing a sword build).  Authority weakness is a strike against him, technically speaking, and technically speaking he does require more work to get into wyvern than some others but who cares in the face of all he has going for him?  8/10.

Mercedes: Hello other pick for best mage!  Doesn't get range 3 options normally but man, it's hard to argue against having Physic and Fortify.  I guess she's slightly worse than Dorothea if you don't get Thyrsus?  Certainly not by enough to care.  Also one of the easiest pickups since you probably want Curved Shot regardless.  8/10.

Ashe: Well.  His start is better than Bernie and he -does- have strength in axes.  Having locktouch on a wyvern is technically something but my feelings on thief utility in this game are about the same as they are in most other FE games (in other words, something of a bad meme).  And not having Encloser/Peg Knight/Persecution Complex/a crest isn't worth having a speedwing's worth of starting speed on her in the end.  Also has bad charm life.  4/10.

Annette: Finally, after 10,000 years, someone who can use the Bolt Axe (okay so can Edie shut up).  Rather mediocre as a mage but at least she has options to do magic axe things and fly around on a wyvern?  That has to be a better plan than mimicing Ilyana.  Also free Rally Strength is nice early, as is the earlyish Rally Speed pickup, but Three Houses is not Awakening or Fates and the single target lock is a rather notable downer.  5/10 is a bit of a guess here since I haven't tried that build but magic axe a thing on a wyvern (now options for range 3 and OHKOs!) then canto back to somewhere safer has to be worth a fair score.

Sylvain: Is bad at bow, but has a better start than Ferdie and does have an interesting dodge tank mage build that also nets you a Physic user.  Is also the easiest poach ever potentially.  7/10.

Ingrid: Start's about as mediocre as Ferdie's (although Minor Daphnel > Minor Cichol I guess) but hey it's hard to argue against ez mode flyer access.  Also probably the easiest poach that isn't Sylvain (and since IntSys was drunk her autolevel growths are disgusting) and while she is neutral in axes she does have a workable if unexciting mage build with Thoron/Physic if her strength goes sour (although with Luin it'd have to go more sour than what I've seen).  7.5/10.

Claude: The concrete durability leaves something to be desired and he does have the worst strength out of the three lords... but being good at bow and being good at wyvern is a pretty good way to win at the game and while Falling Star is worse than Raging Storm because everything is worse than Raging Storm it is still very good and interesting and the auto-dodge does appeal to me more than Atrocity's MOAR DAMAGE approach and being handed Barbarossa for free means you can do things like pick up Movement +1 which is cool.  Also has Encloser in case it's more practical to inflict Don't Move than it is to inflict Dead.  Which can happen.  9/10.

Lorenz: Uh.  Sub-Ferdie start with those growths isn't exactly starting off on the right foot there, Hell Man.  He can do an almost...?  passable impersonation of a power mage with that Reason list and passive?  This still requires you to overlook the fact that he's 1) doing it with Dorothea's magic growth and a lower base and 2) doing an impersonation of a power mage in a game where toolkit is the bigger consideration and Hell Man has no toolkit.  And yet this is still probably better than Caspar since he at least has a level of earlygame performance.  3/10.

Hilda: Oh hey it's someone with strength in axes and lances and can do the Death/Darting Blow combo, that's cool, as is 10 strength to start.  Weakness in authority is of course less cool but it's so irrelevent on Verdant Wind (and Azure Moon should you poach her and not make her a flyer for whatever reason) it's funny.  Growths being basically Ferdie But With More Charm is a bit less cool but had to give up something.  7.5/10.

Raphael: Dedue with less everything that matters.  Considering that what Dedue has to start with is pretty much the only reason I consider him to be anything resembling decent this is a very bad thing!  Gauntlets are not an earlygame weapon for the most part and axe AS is particularly gross early so his enemy phase is especially wretched early!  Yes his start is better than Caspar statistically (because all of the studens have better starts than Caspar statistically) but if the practical difference doesn't actually amount to much then what does it matter?  Not like his defense is that amazing anyways compared to other picks for the defense tank role, considering his only tanking stats are HP/defense.  I guess plan wyvern does work out better for him than Caspar since he would at least have -that- much going for him but since babying him to get there is about as bad I can't say I care enough to give him a meaningfully better score since it's not like I have any respect for a slightly more salvageable Gilliam.  2/10.

Lysithea: Well Mastermind is nice, as is Warp at B Faith, and hey it's that min-maxed power mage growth spread that everyone loves!  Oh, what's that?  Ah.  Right.  The black/dark magic split that exists for some reason.  This does work out better for her than Hubie in the end despite the lack of range 3 since apart from Dark Spikes and its wonderful meme value, Luna and Seraphim aren't exactly to be sneezed at either (also she is the only mage who gets it and is also strong in Faith), it does however mean that for a supposed power mage she doesn't perform as relatively well in standard situations as one would hope and Warp is the only real departure she has from the power mage front, and in the end I just can't bring myself to think -that- highly of the build.  6/10.

Ignatz: Well free Hit+20 is something since that means he doesn't have to go to Archer for it.  As is early Rally Speed so people can pretend Raphael is good for something.  Otherwise he doesn't really lend himself to much since he has all of Ashe's problems.  4/10.

Marianne: Easily the worst of the good mage trio in terms of overall toolkit (but she has Thoron/Physic and that's what matters) but at least she is good at horse and having a solution to the mobility problem that plagues most mages is nice and makes up for some of the lost goodwill.  7.5/10.

Leonie: A more defensive version of Petra.  Not as good as going wyvern as her (so not a winning trade) but hey Bow Knight is legit at least and her charm is even fairly decent.  7.5/10.

Seteth: Oh hey free wyvern with B in Authority, that's cool.  Less cool is the fact that he's working up from a base lv1 speed of -5- and can't learn Darting Blow (or Death Blow without regressing to Intermediate for a bit) and that yeah strictly speaking wyvern is a bit at cross purpose with the fact that Swift Strikes is cool and good and something you probably want him to have.  Still, he's good filler with those stats and skill ranks.  6/10.

Flayn: Uh.  She learns Fortify, at least?  Rescue has such bad range though, she doesn't have Physic, and she's slower than -Linhardt-.  Even more insultingly even if you wanted to do a magical combat art build with her she doesn't get Frozen Lance until A in Lances which is aaaaaaaaaaa.  At least she can magic tank?  3/10.

Hanneman: Uh.  He learns Thoron and Meteor, at least?  Has to be kept away from like everything due to that horribad speed though and like most other power mages his Faith list is ass.  Although at least Thoron and Meteor are actually good power mage spells to have so he can actually be okay.  If you hand him Thyrsus so of course I'm not going to respect this in an actual rating.  At least he can reasonably pick up Fiendish Blow?  3/10.

Manuela: Uh.  I don't have many good things to say about her Faith list other than yay Warp.  I guess she learns Bolting if you're willing to work against her weakness in Reason?  Mortal Savant is at least an out that she can work with with her speed and probably gets her above Hanneman since it's not -literally hogging a relic-.  3.5/10.

Gilbert: Autolevels in Fortress Knight and joins post-timeskip to boot.  Yes this gets colored text it beats text shouting.  1/10.

Alois: Oh look it's someone who's secretly working up from the same lv1 bases as Caspar.  At least he actually has strength and defense this way?  The skill ranks ain't that great and 15 speed at Lv21 isn't really something I'm willing to accept on a frontliner however.  2/10.

Catherine: Oh look it's a mildly worse Felix.  7/10.

Shamir: Exists.  At least you can get her early enough that the start in Sniper actually means something.  This does work for Jeganing purposes but the speed's not great (technically same as Alois, at least you can recruit her far earlier) and she doesn't have -that- much to recommend her unless you're riding the crazy train and get her ASAP.  4.5/10.

Cyril: Functionally similar to the likes of Petra and Leonie except his bases are trash, can't be recruited until like chapter 5, always autolevels in Commoner, and can't go peg knight.  At least early Point-Blank Volley is nice!  3.5/10.

Jeritza: Whoops almost forgot someone.  Anyways, Seteth but better outside of not flying?  Actually can learn Darting Blow to boot that's nice.  I do agree with Elfboy that Counterstrike probably isn't OP in the player's hands, you'd really want that for siege assholes and the siege assholes have Bolting which have A Crit Rate against him which is a good way to have a bad time.  Also bad charm.  7/10 I think?

And now, Class Families ish.  Because I'm crazy.

Obviously I'm excluding Commoner/Noble and the Basic tier classes.

Armored Lord/Emperor: Ok supposing you were desperate enough to use an armored class and its speed penalties for direct tanking purposes, -why would you use Edelgard, who is not really all that physically durable to start with and who really benefits from being mobile thanks to the stupidity that is Raging Storm, for it?-  Spoilers this is technically better than Fortress Knight since this has 5 move and that doesn't but since we are talking about a unique class here the opportunity cost and not-wonderful suitability makes this ultimately irrelevent.  2/10.

High Lord/Great Lord: Behold, the high water mark of infantry, I guess.  6 move base is alright enough and Dimitri is certainly fast with it.  To be honest I like the speed better than I do Paladin's 8 move/canto.  Obviously worse than flying.  6.5/10.

Wyvern Master/Barbarossa: Oh look it's a free wyvern and all you need to do to get it is start chapter 13.  Stat boots are worse than Wyvern Lord but who cares, this class is basically as dumb and busted.  9.5/10.

Dancer: Certainly the strongest iteration of the class that doesn't fly but I wouldn't put it at wyvern tier because at the end of the day it doesn't fly and only refreshes a single target and you're going to have an easier time convincing me of intelligent life on Mars than you are of convincing me this is better than Reyson.  8/10.

Mercenary/Swordmaster: Standard as infantry goes.  The speed's nice, at least, 5 move less nice.  RIP Astra.  5/10.

Hero: Literally no point outside of being easier to access than the standard infantry Advanced classes, except you need Sword and Axe to access it which there's literally no reason to do!  Furthermore the only character who trains in swords and axes as a poach is Petra, who can't even access it due to it being males only oh intsys go home, you're drunk.  1/10.

Thief/Assassin: I like 6 move and not caring about terrain.  I also like the easy entry requirements.  I don't like the lack of any sort of strength bonus and I've made it clear enough to anyone who cares that I don't think much of thief utility.  5/10.

Armored Knight/Fortress Knight: Well I guess the defense bonus is sizeable enough to maybe care.  It's still FFM which is hell world and is saddled with unacceptable speed penalties because heaven forbid IntSys can actually make weight mitigation a meaningful mechanic without finding a dozen ways to shoot themselves in the foot first.  I guess Armored Blow isn't literally nothing?  2/10.

Cavalier/Paladin: 8 move and Canto!  Ok look IntSys I know there had to be some downside here to make infantry classes more appealing but you kind of screwed up in this particular instance if you ask me.  Those speed penalties aren't entirely nothing and there's certainly little compelling reason to stick around here compared to other mounted classes.  Never mind some of the map design choices this game has.  8 move and Canto though... 5/10?  I guess.

Great Knight: what the fuck.  it's in bold this time.  0/10.

Wyvern Rider/Wyvern Lord: See, this exists.  This also has 8 move and Canto.  This also happens to fly.   There also happens to be no actual downside for flying due to free dismounting other than being restricted to flying battalions but since all that means is that you don't make literally everyone wyverns if you care about such things this is irrelevent.  This also happens to have easier entry requirements in Advanced.  This also happens to have dumb stat bonuses despite the fact that this also has 8 move, Canto, and the ability to fly.  IntSys, go home, you're drunk.  9.5/10.

Pegasus Knight/Falcon Knight: This is not a wyvern but it is still something with 8 movement, canto, flight, and better stats than Paladin.  IntSys, go home, you're drunk.  8.5/10.

Brigand/Warrior: Death Blow/10.  Warrior is for people who like axes and hate wyverns but since wyvern is the easier class to enter and better by far this is beyond irrelevent.  3/10.

Archer/Sniper: Added range on bows is quite nice and relevent to the state of bowpremacy and kind of makes the class's traditional lack of stats... actually worth it?!  Weird thought, for all that the default archers kiiiind of don't want to actually be here.  And of course Hunter's Volley is quite nice as well.  Still only 5 move though and it really isn't good on stats.  Still like this better than most infantry.  5.5/10.

Bow Knight: Even more bow range!  Does have stat bonuses but the growth bonuses sort of don't exist.  This is the sort of tradeoff I'd be more happy with even without Bowrange +2, but with?  Hello best ground class that isn't dancer.  7.5/10.

Brawler/Grappler: Fistfaire!  Congratulations on leveling your Magikarp to Lv20!  You may now punch out all the blood of any magic using nerd* you see and enjoy 6 move! *Certain restrictions may apply, void where prohibited.  Overreliance on gauntlets may lead to poor enemy phase performance and range dysfunction.  Also we're not sure what Dubstep Molemen are made of so try not to get any of that on you.  Please consult your professor to find out if punching out all of a mage's blood is right for you.  4.5/10.

War Master: Well okay when you need to berserker you just need to berserker.  You're still training up two melee weapon types to A rank for this for what essentially amounts to a bit more strength and +20 crit and more notably training up axes for a class that isn't wyvern so while this is not, strictly speaking, as bad as the score I'm about to give it (objectively it's quite good for infantry), it represents the fact that you're not actually getting the best deal here.  3/10.

Mage/Warlock: For all that I rag on power mages this is probably still the better route for straight maging unless you care desperately about white magic use count because you probably still need to blow up a fool more often than you're going to use Physic and hey Fiendish Blow and Black Tomefaire (unless your name is Hubert or Lysithea) help with that.  Obviously this is only as good as a mage's spell list and it has the FFM problem because this is the result of the wish we made upon the monkey's paw or something so any score for this (and any other magic using class for that matter) is going to be more tummyfeels than anything but this is basically the standard level of performance here.  5/10.

Dark Knight: The mobility is quite nice, but lances/reason/riding can be a bit of a bear (though at least Master classes are... shockingly lenient if you know what's up) and you do only get standard amount of uses.  Still seems like a fine place to be for the most part.  6.5/10.

Mortal Savant: Infantry mage, now with 6 move!  Speed bonus but speed growth penalty.  Really the annoying thing is having someone who can actually make decent enough use of it but it's... actually functional?  I guess some people are really just weird about speed growth penalties.  6/10.

Priest/Bishop: Not a waste of time but unless your name is Linhardt you probably aren't all that excited about this.  4/10.

Holy Knight: Why are you using faith for offense stop that put that down.  Strictly speaking this is not actually a bad chassis since it is a cavalry mage and thus has Canto but why did you not just go Dark Knight instead?  2/10.

Gremory: Mage with 5 move!  Yay!  Also has a dumb magic bonus which can make up for the lack of any kind of Tomefaire but really, you're here for the 5 move and doubled uses on everything.  6.5/10.

Dark Mage/Dark Bishop: ok but why.  Even putting aside that you need two Dark Seals (which are not trivial to get in a timely manner in the first place unless you have Lysithea) for this to be even remotely worthwhile since Dark Mage is worth nothing by itself, this is strictly a power mage vehicle.  And moreover, it's a power mage vehicle that is male-locked, and the males typically do not make for good power mages in the first place!  Even past that, it's not even that amazing of a power mage vehicle until you hit S+ Reason for a Tomefaire!  This does not happen unless you grind a bunch!  What is the point of this?!  1/10.

Death Knight: It's like Dark Knight, but with slightly better stats and worse unmounted movement.  Oh and lancefaire instead of tomefaire.  Oh and you don't really care about the magic use all that much outside of Heal.  Still better than Paladin despite the lessened movement.  6/10.

[Tide]

Since I'm on Trails binge...Cold Steel 3 rankings since I'm fresh off a playthrough. Standard difficulty:

Rean: Unlike Lloyd, Rean's pretty much always been solid in the 3 games he's been in. Rean3 feels worse than Rean2 but stronger than Rean1. One of his best selling points here are low cost Brave Orders (basically field wide buffs that effect all allies). This lets you put up either 50% damage reduction, 20% damage boost or instant cast (which is a much bigger deal here than CS1 or 2) in almost every fight. You won't cause there are better ones, but that goes to show the extent of power you have on the table - although instant cast is a big deal if you're running mages. He also has a lot of usable set ups - going for big damage, Crit set ups and being a Breaker are all viable. The only role he isn't really great at is being a mage, but that's okay because mages aren't that strong in this game compared to Azure (or even CS2). 8/10

Juna: In actual combat, Juna's kind of mediocre. She doesn't do anyone thing particularly well, but she's still probably tied with Rean due to one primary thing: Her Brave Order, Sledgehammer, is ridiculously powerful. It lets you stun any boss in like 2-3 hits and instant stuns any random if you're using a Breaker and a solid craft with good Break damage. You can then use the stun to set up huge damage hits, infinite turns, and generally kill enemies before they recover. It's so good in fact that despite not having her in the front line, she's always in the support slots whenever I had a team choice. Oh, then to top off the silliness, she also gets to do the Machias infinite turn loop ensuring that the bosses in the last stretch sans that final never get a turn once you get going. Probably would be a 9/10 PC if her actual combat abilities were better, but as is, she doesn't really need them to be great. 8/10.

Kurt: Kurt's pretty great as well. His main weakness is being locked to 1 range - which given how he's set up doesn't make great strides at him being very effective with Sirius. You could make him an evade attacker but he needs to be point blank range, which isn't super common. He does have 2 Wind nodes to support evade tanking so he's definitely New Class 7's person in that department. Being pretty quick is his other selling point and having access to a cheap cost effective Delay + Breaking tech are good things to have. His Brave Order promotes super speed since it cuts recovery time by 70%, allowing you to chain multiple turns together (excellent on stunned targets) but offers no other bonuses. It's situational compared to other Speed type Brave Orders, but I got pretty good mileage out of it. Not as strong as Juna or Rean, but he's still a solid choice on teams. 7/10.

Altina: Okay, out of all the new class 7 characters, Altina is the one who ends up being a dud. There are a variety of factors working against her here: Awkward range for a caster, probable game worst speed, mediocre orbment line (2 Mirage, 1 Time is very belch - made worse by the fact that the 3 higher tier elements are slower to unlock) and she starts as a caster at a time when spellcasting is even more underwhelming. The one saving grace Altina does have her is her Brave Order. Ebon Crest granting full party protection for 4 turns helps early when enemy attacks will likely get through. Later on, it's not very useful since you have other heavy defense options and Ebon Crest is still 3 BP, but it's a nice "Get out of Jail" card to play that can buy you sometime. 4/10.

Ash: On the other hand, here's someone who I thought would be generally terrible but actually ended up being solid. Unlike Juna and Kurt who have passable magic scores, Ash is basically all physicals. He has a bunch of good crafts too with Unbound Rage and Void Breaker as notable standouts as one gives him CP without sacrificing HP (AND it gives him Str Up) and the other has massive stun damage. The other two are excellent for random sweeping. The main drawback on Ash aside from his bad magic score and mediocre speed is actually his Movement. He's probably one of the very few PCs who actually wants to optimize Move. Great for setting up powerful heavy hits. He actually reminds me a bit of Zero Randy in terms of overall effectiveness. His Brave Order is okay. It's a good offensive one, but there are better ones on the table most of the time, so it doesn't tend to see use. 6/10.

Musse: The other dedicated caster on N7 and feels better than Altina overall but still not terribly great. 2 Water, 1 Space is better for a caster here, especially since early on, your Master Quartz choices are so limited, that this actually helps gives Musse variety that Altina will be lacking. She has a range magic typed physical, which is pretty neat although she has party worst HP because of her long range specialties. Good at what she does, but doesn't tend to shine compared to Juna/Kurt/Ash. Oh, and her Brave Order is pretty terrible. 0 EP Cost would be a thing maybe in Azure, but CS3's spell costs aren't terrible and you have a EP absorbing MQ pretty early + EP Cuts that really make this Brave Order not worth using. 5/10.

Laura: I was speaking with Soppy and VSM and the overall trend of Old Class 7 is that they feel nerfed compared to CS1 and 2. I like to think of it more that O7 basically function like guests in CS2. They are around in one chapter for usually the penultimate quest and then Rean's orders. In short, the chances to use them aren't huge and they have a lot of things scaled back because of it. Laura overall, however, doesn't really feel all that different. She comes at a time when Ash isn't around so being a pure brute strength attacker is notable. Even after Ash is there, Laura probably is still better at straight up smashing enemies. There is a CP inflation cost in CS3, but giving her Brigid usually fixes this problem and makes Laura great for sweeping/mopping things up. Lion Rush is also great, like Void Breaker, at stunning enemies. Still slow and very one dimensional, but that's typically how it's always been for Laura. 6/10.

Elliot: Elliot on the other hand feels like he gained some and lost some. He no longer has a damaging S-craft but he doesn't need it since he kept the Aura Rain/full MT revive one. And boy is it better here than CS1 or 2. In the other two games, OHKO hits weren't too common. Here - boss/monsters getting their Enraged status usually means you're going to see one and if you're in the line of fire, those PCs are usually dead. If you can keep Elliot alive, he basically goes, "lol no" and reverses it. Gets more ridiculous later when you can give him Alisa's 2PB max CP on death MQ, requiring the enemies to full party kill you basically 3 times over. While all of this good, his damage hasn't improved and the overall nerfage to mages is notable for him. Still being a good healer and the full res S-craft are great things to have in an emergency. 6/10.

Fie: Overall, feels like she loses compared to Laura and Elliot who are more neutral trades. Loses 10% innate evade and now can't spell cast while evade tanking due to change in mechanics. Her crafts also cost more overall sans Concealing Wind. In return, she's still probably the best evade tank due to counters now actually meaning something and having a counter range of 6 is a big deal. Unlike Elliot and Laura, Fie's Brave Order also deserves a mention since it's a speed boost but it also gives you Insight for a couple of turns so there's a slight defensive element there, although the delay reduction here is only 50%. Like Kurt, has situational use. We're about to get to the speed type Brave Orders that completely wreck the game. 5/10.

Alisa: She maintains a unique role in that she’s the entire game’s only battery. Heavenly Gift is still amazing and it hasn’t changed outside of the CP Regen being stronger. Lost Blessed Arrow, but her Brave Order sort of makes up for that. Radical Design restores 20% HP/EP on activation but only gives you 150% Break Damage. It’s serviceable, but requires more hits to get the stun usually. On the plus side, it lasts for 12 turns so you can take all the time you want and still press the offense if you need to be defensive for a little. Alisa’s other strength of having a long ranged physical helps here as well and she can serve to add that last little bit of Break or spell cancelling thanks to it. A very solid PC overall. 7/10

Machias: Probably the most improved of the O7 PCs? Like Alisa, lost Energy Shell but he picked up the amazing Sigma Operation for a Brave Order. This Order is like the ultimate blitz style, giving you a massive strength and defense boost for a couple of turns while cutting delay down by 50%. His MQ is also better essentially getting the damage reduction in CS2’s Emblem while still having strong offense properties. Then of course, late game, has the broken infinite turn loop. Really, he’s basically CS1/2 Machias but now with actual early game presence. 6/10

Emma: Overall weakening effect on mages probably hurts Emma the most of O7. She’s still serviceable, but she doesn’t have any real standout strengths and feels rather underwhelming on join compared to the other members of O7 or even N7. Her S-Craft is now basically Tio’s Zero Field, so it has a lot of chances to save your bacon against humanoid enemies…except she’s the first to leave in the final dungeon. SIGH. 4.5/10

Sara: Sara’s always been good and in CS3, she is still good. Possibly better because other members got nerfs but Sara is overall unaffected and probably gains more than she loses. Yes, the magic nerf hurts her hybrid build a bit, but look at everything else. Her crafts are super useful for Breaking and she can actually pull enemies together – one of the only few who can. Her 6 range counter, like Fie, is a notable strength here now compared to just being a side note in 1 and 2. Thor’s very low draining got replaced with something more relevant. Then, there’s her Brave Order, which allows you to start an infinite turn train once you Break an enemy. It’s more restrictive than Machias/Juna’s turn loop but in return, it’s easier to set up and you can keep it going as long as you can keep paying the BP cost and 1 casting of Chrono Burst. A really strong PC – possibly better than Rean at that. 9/10

Jusis: Like the inverse of Machias ironically. Probably the most nerfed of the O7 members. Jusis suffers like Sara in that the mage portion of him is weaker, but the problem here is, he doesn’t gain much to make up for this loss. He’s lost Rapid Thrusts and Treasure Sword is now also magical, meaning he has no physical techs. His big selling point of Noble Command spam has been replaced with a Brave Order – one that is essentially Noble Command but it’s a really effect here when compared to the others. It really should’ve been kept as a craft. He has all the issues of a close range melee character such as range and move but doesn’t have that type of stat build (mainly HP) to capitalize on that side. As a result, he’s just kind of…there. The one thing that did improve of his is Platinum Shield. It’s now Absolute Guard instead of Craft Guard, so that’s pretty good although it doesn’t really cover his issues. 4/10.

Millium: She also doesn’t really feel like she’s changed much compared to CS2. Still has stat weaknesses but her crafts are all solid and her Brave Order is a massive 90% damage reduction or something. So while not as good as Altina’s perfect reflect, she’ll also nuke damage something fierce and it lasts longer too.  Actually feels improved overall, though I didn’t get much use out of her, so hard to tell. 5/10

Gaius: Speaking of people who are just there – hi, Gaius. Gaius has his CS1 issues here (lack of availability) and on top of that he has no S-craft for like the entire game until the last dungeon. Given this is the PC that ALSO has Wild Rage – what the actual fuck. His other two crafts are serviceable and do pretty well for Breaking, which Gaius is poised to do – but other than that set up, he doesn’t have much else. His Brave Order is also kind of meh. It’s not that there’s anything wrong with it, but 4 BP cost is very high and it’s only 200% Break Power instead of 300% like Juna’s. You do get 80% recovery and 4 more turns out of it, but I’ve never found much use for these so it’s basically a super overpriced Brave Order. Bleh. 3/10.

Significant Guests:
A note about all guests in general - they come with locked orbment slots as well as locked equipment sans Accessories. So their skills matter a little more here as you can customize them to fill in holes that you might find in the active party. Also, I have a split here between Significant and Non-Significant in that Significant guests basically stick around for a long dungeon area or in Sharon's case, becomes playable multiple times and is in some of the game's more memorable scenes.

Agate - End C1 guest. Agate's kind of overshadowed here by Laura in that they offer the same type of mold but Laura's more customizable and a little faster. To make up for this, he gets a CP generation skill, which lets him spam crafts easier. Notable due to CS3's CP inflation costs. His Brave Order is also devastating since it's an offense Boost PLUS a break boost, meaning you don't have to change orders. Regardless, he probably more significant in the All-Guests dungeon because then he's not competing with Laura, even if he has a couple of perks. 4.5/10

Sharon - Joins for a short stint in C2, then takes part in the big mid C2 boss with only Rean. She's lost Tea Time so she can't battery, but everything else is pretty much the same. Evade game is weaker due to locked orbments though and of course, she's not the greatest boss fighter. Wrecks randoms something fierce as always. 5/10.

Olivier - End C2 guest. Gets the shaft on the guest stick mainly due to element variety. Comes at a time when the number of elemental master quartz is limited for magic, so Olivier is kind of stuck casting Mirage spells for the most part. Made worse by the fact that his orbments are locked here, so he's mostly mono-mage. He feels worse than Emma as at least she can access spells that aren't locked to MQs. 3.5/10.

Angelica - Mid C3 guest that joins all the way to the end. Overall, feels weaker. Her delay ability is a little more notable this time due to almost everyone elses being stuck behind huge CP costs, but other than that, doesn't feel like she does much compared to N7. Competes with Ash/Kurt and Juna to a certain extent. Probably like a 3.5/10.

Aurelia - End C3 guest. So Aurelia replaces Sharon/Claire for being the "Broken Guest award" in the game. Still if you agree with Random in that the power craft is flatter, it means she's only so much better. The main thing she can't do here is infinite turn loop everything. Past that though, has her own unique MQ and her stats are all really strong. Great damage, S-craft, etc. 7/10. Would probably get up to an 8 if she was perm, but she's great for the time when available.

Not really Significant Guests (very short dungeon stints)

Claire - Mid C1 guest. Claire is weird. She's stuck with the bad MQ (y'know, the one Towa got stuck with in CS2?) but her Brave Order is truly broke. Once you stun someone, if you have 3 CP and Claire is on the team, it's over. It's MT Turn Shift that costs ONLY 3 CP. Meaning it's even more self sustaining than Sara's and Sara's already pretty broke! The main argument here is that she's available for an extremely limited period of time and unlike other guests who are fighting bosses/end of chapter big bads, Claire never really has a good chance to exercise this. I guess she has the ALL GUESTS dungeon bosses to show off, but really. 4/10.

Tio - Mid C2 guest and not a great one. Has all the problem of being a mage AND a guest (see Olivier), made up for by the fact what made her so good in Zero and Azure was her long orbment line that meant something. Here, Tio is basically Altina except worse. Yuck. All guest dungeon is somewhat unique in that she's the only true mage other than Olivier, but like Claire, who cares at that point? 3/10

Tita - Early C3 guest, and FTR, is a DNR for me as I never used Tita at that point. N7 at this point is pretty much up and running so Tita never really has a spot. She does have HUGE HPs (18000 compared to when the average is about maybe 8000) but no S-craft. Probably not terrible in theory, but may be stuck with Claire syndrome in this case.

Lechter - Only available in the ALL GUEST dungeon and he's the worst person there. He has a physical MQ but is built a mage and one of his crafts is basically lottery. So he's hugely hampered by options, lots of other good PCs and his skill set is terrible. Truly cast LVP and would be a 2/10 but he's around for so short, DNR is the right call IMO.

[Random Consonant]

Trails of Cold Steel 3: Extremely Cold Steel

As I said in WGAYP the tl;dr of this is going to be that I sort of agree with Tide and sort of don't, the big things here are pretty unique toolset and to a lesser extent speed since it's pretty hard to be unsalvageably bad in either attack stat (though you should still try to actually specialize one way or the other) and enemy offense is either irrelevent in the sense that it's too low to matter or that it's high enough that you pull out the busted defensive options the game gives you anyways.

I do want to talk a bit about power being nerfed across the board before I get into the ratings proper, however.  It's more noticeable with arts since, well, look at their qualified power ratings in CS1/2 and look at them in 3, they seem to be tuned around the idea that you use them to 1) hit weaknesses that don't always exist and 2) have offense while being able to stay at 200 CP.  I point out the second thing because the damage boost for firing off an S-Craft at 200 CP seems to be rather larger than it normally has been, to the point where I'd call them a lot more situational than they ever were (it doesn't help that S-Crafts are -horrible- at dealing break damage, which is actually a big deal.)  But in-combat CP maintenance is a bigger deal than it's usually been, since it's harder to restore it through items and costs are higher in general (and much higher in specific cases.)  I think multiplier stacking might have gotten hit with a nerf too but unlike CS1/2 I don't know the damage formulas and I didn't actually mess with things too much so this is pretty much anectodal.

Anyways.

Rean: So apart from all that Rean got hit with another (deserved) nerf; his delay game is much weaker now for a couple of reasons, namely that 1) Impede quartz are not only weaker in general but they're also space element instead of time now and 2) his delay inflicting craft is now Gale, which has a whopping 80 CP cost (90 in ogre form) and only adds 10 delay.  That said he's still a speedy and strong physical beater with a non-hopeless ATS stat if you want to do a caster build that's honestly wasted on him but I want to call special attention to Divine Song, which does one thing and one thing only; for 2 BP this entirely elimates charge times for arts.  See, the thing with offensive arts is that their charge time is longer than their recovery time, and their recovery time can be drastically reduced through certain MQ as well as Bell quartz which can be obtained fairly early; it's an extremely specific benefit that you have to build a team around to get maximum benefit (and you have to account for the EP and BP costs somehow) but this isn't a hard game and even if you half-ass it like I did you realize that it's really fucking absurd, the only actual strike against it is that proper caster use is really unwieldy compared to the more plug-and-play style fighters have.  Oh, something about his other Brave Orders?  Eh, the first two are cheap filler but you really should have better options for their role 99% of the time and the last one is 5 BP so it's automatically lol-tier.  7.5/10?  I dunno, the loss of the extremely braindead infinite delay loop feels like it outweighs a fair few considerations and CS3's overall power curve is flatter than 1/2's in general.

Juna: I have considerably less to say about Junie.  Yeah she gets the dumb GT Accelerate craft that Machias also gets that but really, she's there for Sledgehammer because having free reign to clown on stuff is that big a deal.  Her stats are pretty much universal mediocrity save for her ATS, which is actually wretched (sub-Ash!  I actually bothered to compare this!) but since you're never actually going to build her as an offensive caster and the STR spread in this game doesn't amount to much you don't really care about that.  Having an Earth lock is also less bad since Break quartz exists and is something you probably want to use.  7.5/10.

Kurt: Good speed and can function for any sort of reasonable offensive build.  The orbment locks say evade build but capitalizing on that pidgeonholes you pretty damn badly and the range thing means he's worse at it than say Fie or Sara are.  You'd probably be tempted to run a more specialized beater over him if you have the chance and his Brave Order ranges from situational to really underwhelming depending on the time of day but you can't really go wrong with using him.  6/10.

Altina: So calling Altina a dud is going a bit too far in my opinion but uh.  There's no dancing around the fact that she has issues (although really what do you expect from someone related to noted problem child Millium), casters don't really get going until Chapter 2 and she compounds the issue by having garbage speed (it's not castworst, Emma and Millium are slower still, but it's worst out of the New Class 7 people so the distinction is pretty irrelevent) and her craft loadout is all over the place.  Two Mirage locks don't really help matters much either as noted.  On the plus side Ebon Crest is actually busted since because it's a Brave Order and not a buff attacks that have a dispel effect won't pierce it but ON THE OTHER HAND she gets shanghai'd by the plot and misses the final dungeon so lol.  4.5/10.

Ash: -Also- gets shanghai'd by the plot and misses the final dungeon so lol.  Putting that aside he's a physical beater with okay orbment locks for the job but the thing here is that unlike a lot of other physical beaters he -actually has to move- a lot of the time, and while building him for movement solves one problem he still needs a spot to stand in while he does his thing which can actually be something of a problem against certain formations so I'd call his randobusting actually somewhat low-end despite how good it looks on paper.  Unbound Rage is cute, but the CP gain is very delayed and it has notably more delay than Wild Rage and its ilk so there's a limit to how much I'm willing to hype it (Ash is also not what one would call fast).  Crazy Hunt is certainly a Brave Order that exists.  I guess he doesn't have Altina's borderline awful early game so he comes out ahead technically but regardless he doesn't impress me.  It doesn't help that the New Class 7 students have relatively bad S-Crafts so I can't even say he's better than Rean at the thing he does well.  4.5/10.

Musse: Well at least she has the decency to stick around.  She's serviceable enough at her role but like Ash her speed isn't what you'd call good and she's a caster which as I've stated before has performance value but isn't exactly you can just run plug-and-play.  Arts Celebration is... certainly a Brave Order that exists except for the fact that it may as well not so you'd almost certainly want to have another one in her place if you at all can.  5.5/10.

Laura: To be honest Old Class 7 doesn't feel all that nerfed, a couple exceptions aside, the power curve was just changed to be flatter and it stands out because CS2 was an extremely broken mess of a game where Laura hit the S-Craft button and everything died.  As has been said Laura is more or less the same, CP inflation aside, and kind of makes Ash look like a chump at the whole physical beater thing due to being mostly The Same, But Better.  Less happily she's among the first to leave in the final dungeon but so it goes.  5.5/10.

Elliot: Hello, yes, it's "Remedy Oratorio," the thing you hope you never have to use but are really happy to have when you do.  Still has pure caster speed issues but he's pretty much the best pure caster like everyone with Lichtkreis and its ilk were?  Also sticks around for the nearly the entire final dungeon.  6.5/10.

Fie: Okay here's a clear loser relative to before, not really because of any evade nerf but because she can't pull her delay game shenanigans off as well thanks to that nonsense getting hit with a much needed nerf bat.  She still has speed but her STR is pretty mediocre which isn't the best look for someone with near-unsalvageable ATS.  Insight buff on her Brave Order probably makes it a little better than Kurt's but uh it's still not one of the better speed Brave Orders.  5/10.

Alisa: So Alisa comes out pretty much unscathed here.  Radical Design may not be Sledgehammer (because pretty much nothing is Sledgehammer) but it is still a thing that says +Break Damage% and it going for 12 actions makes it worth the price of entry.  Heavenly Gift still owns, has fairly good speed and Flamberge is actually good this time, and high ATS lets her fill the caster role should you want (and arguably better than the actual pure casters thanks to having a speed stat that doesn't suck), so she fits in pretty much any party you could arrange.  7/10.

Machias: Still has pretty junk stats and unimpressive offensive crafts to go with it but Sigma Operation is good enough that, like Junie, you'd probably want him around in a support slot anyways.  It's very much a physical team Brave Order, but it's really good at being a physical team Brave Order.  6/10.

Emma: So as I've said earlier, Emma's speed is trash and as Tide said, casters don't have the same level of raw power as they did in CS2 (though still better than CS1 here because it's hard not to be).  I'd hype her S-Craft but uh here's the thing, dispel is a thing that exists in this game, and the thing with dispel in Trails is that when it's attached to damage (and it's always attached to damage) the dispel happens before the damage.  And I know that at minimum a certain pyromaniac has dispel attached to his S-Craft and that a certain zombie saint has it somewhere in her skillset as well.  This is, as you might imagine, a problem should you try to rely on this. (Of course, this game being what it is, you don't actually care about this fact if you set things up so that Emma fires off infinite Albion Wolves at 2 delay thanks to the absurdity that is Divine Song.)  Emma's other issue is that her pre-lategame guest appearance is uh Chapter 2.  Alongside Alisa and noted beautiful genius hunted by hell world Olivier Lenheim, both of whom have this thing called a speed stat and can do the caster thing and follow it up with a damaging S-Craft.  SIGH is right.  4/10.

Sara: Sara is pretty ridiculous but I don't think I'd go so far as 9 because Trails is that absurd of a series now.  But no seriously why is that Brave Order just 4 BP it's pretty much self-sustaining once enemies get broken and you get the ball rolling.  I guess she doesn't hybrid as well as she used to but why care.  8/10.

Jusis: I mean Jusis was never really all that great outside of Noble Command since he did the hybrid thing and wasn't -that- amazing at it.  Though Treasure Sword is still physical?  I know I'm not crazy here, I used it against the arts reflecting mirrors and it didn't bounce off, and arts reflect certainly hasn't become any less comprehensive.  But yeah, losing Noble Command kind of sucks bad and Noble Rise isn't really an amazing replacement or anything.  4/10.

Millium: Millium is still bad except for White Decoration aka what is this thing you call taking damage.  So naturally PLOT means she's not playable for the final dungeon.  And you still eat the status anyways so loud shrug, I'm running out of things to say.  4/10.

Gaius: I'd say he's better than Ash when they're both around except he doesn't have an S-Craft until the final chapter.  And like Laura and Emma he's amongst the first to leave during the final dungeon.  I think his ATS may have actually gotten buffed but why care.  I can't think that poorly of his Brave Order since it's a thing that says +Break Damage% but it costs 4 BP and neither gives as much as Sledgehammer or lasts as long as Radical Design.  I guess there's the recovery aspect but typically you want to fire off the +Break Damage% Brave Orders before the bombs start dropping, not after.  So.  Uh.  Yeah.  3/10.

I guess there's the special guest characters (one of whom I already mentioned) but I messed with less than half of them and I can't be bothered to care to rate them.

[Pyro]

Cold Steel 3: I wish I had played on Nightmare for a better assessment.

Rean: 8/10? C1/C2 is "The best and has an S-Craft". His brave orders are always decent. The damage halving for 1 BP is so crucial when you need it, more flexible than other defensive Orders because 1BP, and +20% damage is what you use before a finishing blitz. C3-endgame he makes a great physical fighter with his transformation and the various CP+ stuff. He's the best at it, so the physical teinks should go on him (Brigand/Minotauros). This is insane. Unlike other physical fighters accessories that restore lots of CP don't leave him with status holes because his super-form is status immune! That's a really good thing. 2Time/1Fire is decent although I suppose Fire isn't optimal.

Juna:  C1 isn't too impressive, as she doesn't get an S craft.. C2 onwards...SLEDGEHAMMER. It's an amazing thing from the moment you get it and is the default unless something else is specifically called for or it succeeds in breaking enemies. Her first Craft has a high break mult so serves it's purpose for the earlygame. Later, her selling point is the Accelerate skill, which is always awesome. Other than that she never really fits a niche. Space/Earth isn't really amazing for fighting reasons, and she doesn't have mage stats. Her fighting stats are 'okay' but with nothing to stand out can't compete with the high end stuff. Ironically her crafts are probably the worst at breaking out of the cast come endgame. Still. SLEDGEHAMMER.

Kurt:  He comes default set up as a evade tanker and he can kinda work for that if you position him manually but his short range negates the counters that are the whole point of that build. Otherwise he just generally had "OK" written all over him. His Insta-buff 30 CP craft makes him stand out some, but his selling point would have to be the 2BP -70% recharge for 4 turns Order. It might be too expensive but it's basically free against a broken enemy, racking lots of follow-ups (switching partner to a character with the Scorpion MQ for ridiculousness). You could also use it defensively to restore people, or to get a buff in place before smashing. It's versatile and amazing.

Altina: C1 her durability and speed make her less useful but... she gets her S-Craft early, and her Brave Order is valuable for surviving some otherwise brutal early fights (especially on Nightmare). Her Mirage locks make her the ideal for Saintly Force. C2 she gets a really good Break craft (Fragarach) and that's hard to argue with. She is good to give any decent Arts you have, which start to pick up a little steam. Then C3 hits and a bunch of things swing in her favor. Titania MQ means EP is no longer much of an issue, Cast 3 and Tier 2 bells show up and make magic hyperfast. A bunch of spd+ equips show up and flatten the natural speed curve. She gets her Stealth skill soon thereafter, which solves durability woes and grants auto crits. C4 it gets even better with the Pandora/Titania combo from hell.

Ash: Atk buff and CP regen skill is relatively strong, especially if he has any kind of other CP-regaining skills. It actually makes sense to give him a Move+ quartz because of how restricted he is in that regard. His Brave Order is in theory cool because crits lead to more BP which leads to more usage of the crit order but in practice there are generally better options for offensive smashing. If he gets a hold of Chrono Burst he can maximize his advantage with his CP Regen and self-buff, laying down lots of S-Crafts as long as he has EP.

Musse: Another decent caster. 2Water/1Space is good as an HP up or Water Bell is always nice, and space for EP cut quartz. She joins pretty much right when magic picks up, and is suited for an Ocean Bell/EP Cut Quartz giving her good stuff in C3. Her charm status is surprisingly not blocked by some annoying enemies, so there's that. She makes a good mage with water/ocean bells and EP Cutting and Cast/Action. She isn't really built for Titania/Pandora, but her magic artes are so powerful she can function without it.

Elliot: Emergency "Revive everyone" button is good, although having no damaging S-Craft is unfortunate. But he's in a party with 4 others so you can sub him out for blitzing. His Brave Order, at 2 BP, a little healing, and -70% damage for 12 turns, is likely the best raw defensive brave order (Except for status) and is a must-have for the C1 boss battle.

Laura: +60% Damage Brave Order for when you want to S-Craft blitz things into oblivion! That is the best there is for that. Otherwise she has a strong S-Craft and a self-buff move that gives it some more oomph, so Buff -> Brave Order -> S Craft Blitz is feasible. She makes a good case for the Physical twink builds come endgame, with her emphasis on blowing things up to kingdom come.

Fie: Good evade setup by default and *40CP* Stealth-> crit S-Craft out of the gate is nice (and it's a stronger S-Craft than most). Her Order isn't really worth it. Change her to Sirius or sub it and she is one of, if not the, best at evade/counter tricks with her base evade and ranged counters, which is one of the best tricks in the game. Stealth is notable in that even the "Dispel+OHKO damage" nonsense can't get through it, and auto-crits lead to more BP which lead to more Orders, or crit S-Crafting. Lategame makes the most logical choice for the Crit damage boost MQ because of that Stealth.

Agate: Wild Rage->Dragon Dive is the name of the game and nothing has changed. It's a good game! His Order is pretty good for breaking or Blitzing or both.

Emma: She is a decent magic user, and makes a logical choice for the awesome magic setups. I don't recall having issues with enemy magic users but her Brave Order is theoretically really really good for that. Her S-Craft being dispellable makes it less useful than you'd like but still can eat up to 8 enemy turns at 200CP and that's amazing (was pretty clutch for the murder crab in C2).

Alisa: Her default setup has the traditional auto-rez shenanigans (nerfed a bit because no EP restoration), her stats are pretty good, and her Brave Order compares to Sledgehammer but is 2.5x instead of 4x Break and costs 2 BP... but lasts for 12 turns and heals HP/EP. Still... comparing okay with Sledgehammer is great!

Machias: Accelerate and decent physical skills. Accelerate is still your god. His default kit is good for tanking hits and if you give him some healing he works pretty well. His Brave Order is like a weaker (only 2x spd instead of 3.33x) Wind Blade that lasts 8 turns and gives a few 2-turn Strength/Def buffs. His basic Craft (Mail breaker) is quite good.

Jusis: His Brave Order is a good damage buff to lay down if you have a Zero Order turn. His most unique selling point is giving everyone some free invincibility for one attack using his Platinum Shield Craft. But it's dispellable so that's unfortunate. Not much stood out with him otherwise.

Sara: Her Brave Order Gives everyone a turn. Against a broken enemy, they can basically beat them up forever and ever and just... win. No questions asked. So there's that! Other than that her Self-buff move is a good setup for S-Crafting things into oblivion, and her stats are generally good so lots of setups can work for her.

Gaius: Outside like one endgame part he's rather lacking? He has a CP Generation move but can't S-Craft out of it till really late so that's depressing. At endgame his S-Craft is pretty amazing (best damage and a good side-effect). His Brave Order healing as much as it did was a nice feature, but otherwise he didn't stand out. Given the availability he didn't leave an impression.

Millium: Millium's Brave Order is a better (but beware status!) alternative to Altina's if you need defense. Her S-craft is one of the stronger ones amongst the PCs, and she has a skill that's pretty good for breaking things. She's made for Breaking things with her Crafts, and her defenses are good. Not much stands out when you have her however.

[Tide]

Troubleshooter - I'm about 70% of the way done I think? The game keeps releasing extra story + bonus missions so hard to tell, but I have like all the PCs and got a pretty idea of what they do. Worse comes to worse, I'll edit this over time.

A note about this game are the durability stats. So I have no idea how effective armor is, but Evade and Block rates are pretty much raw evade block chance, so they matter a lot for PC durability. Also, the sub stats here for things like Move/Sight/etc. are all meaningful as well given how big the maps are in the game.

Albus - Pretty damn good! He's a frontline fighter with some weak magic available, although the magic is useful you need it. Albus is set up to be an evade-attacker with a good blend of durability from evade/block and high move and good speed to get into position. His main drawback is that he's mostly stuck to ST as he doesn't have any group target physicals unless he hits 100 SP (basically gives you a super move and your abilities don't cost any stamina). So unless you feel confident and stick him out in the middle of the field, he's picking things off one at a time. Would probably be amazing at DL duels if I ever get around to figuring out how to stat topic this game. 7/10.

Sion - The game's pure mage and also really good. Unlike Albus, Sion has more durability issues (notably, he has much lower block rate) but in return, he gets lots of group target abilities and he hits like a freight train. A true glass cannon type albeit his speed is not as fast as more traditional cannons. 7/10.

Irene - Like Albus, she's a frontliner but she's basically more of a tank while he's more of an attacker. One thing I've noticed is that her Hit rate always feels really low, which kind of sucks. However, because she's bulkier, she can step more into enemy range and take a hit or two. Fighter masteries give her an access to huge block rate so she does this better than anyone. Also, she's very melee oriented, so for awhile, she was my LVP as she could never get into range to do much. I've recently respec'd her, so it will be interesting to see if she gets better. 5/10.

Anne - Until you get Anne, the game doesn't really pick up. Good thing too because otherwise you're stuck using Potions to heal and those tend to drop off rather quick and have limited charges. She's the game's main healer but she can also battery effectively as she has skills that let's her restore vigor on heal, as well as remove status and adds regen. Her main drawback is very bad offense and being rather frail. Why you are getting into combat situations with Anne is a mystery, but it does mean she can't do everything. Another issue she has is starting speed. Double turn speed is less of an issue as there are lots of skills that improve her recovery rate, meaning once she gets going, she'll heal pretty frequently. 8.5/10

Heixing - While Sion is the magic cannon, Heixing is the physical cannon. Has huge range, which is notable due to the game's large maps and decent sub stats in Move/Sight to make use of them. Also actually has decent HP too! It means he can actually take a hit, but because his Block and Evade are quite low, he can't take much more than that. Still, he's a good candidate for One-Shot One Kill mastery and chaining multiple turns together. Operates best at mid-range like Sion due to his ability limitations. One thing he has over Sion is that his base attack also has an innate +50% accuracy so he almost never misses. And generally faster too. 8/10.

Ray - Support character with a modicum of offense, although not great at it. Ray's unique spray abilities though are her real selling points here. Full HP, instant Overcharge, full stamina recovery are all really powerful. She lobs items at people so she also doesn't need direct line of sight and can be spec'd to have respectable enough offense. Her main issue is primarily speed - and unlike Anne, she doesn't get faster as the battle progresses, so it's really noticeable overtime. 6/10

Giselle - Quite similar to Heixing on paper, but they are definitely different in practice. She has notably less HP, meaning unlike Heixing who operates best at mid-range, Giselle operates best at long range. Makes sense since she's wielding a sniper rifle. Same defensive problems as him, but she's better able to use the range due to her abilities all operating with her amazing attack range. Also a good candidate for One-shot One kill due to having high offensive power and the ability to refresh her cooldowns. Her other class is "Hunter" which lets her summon beasts to fight on your side. More on this when I have experimented more. In theory though, it means that she's bringing +1 body to the field at least, so even if it weakens her long range abilities, it can only be so bad. 8/10

Kylie - Ray minus? She's a support character as well, but requires line of sight and has less power than the 2 gunmen on the team. So kind of not good on offense. Made worse by the fact that she has a unique weapon type which I'm not sure how to upgrade yet. Yikes. On the plus side, her primary class, like Giselle lets her summon an additional ally in the form of robots. Better on paper because robots have a ton of HP and are largely status immune. Like Giselle, I will have more to say once I experiment more. For now though, she operates best as a scout - still valuable, but her combat abilities are pretty meh. 5/10

[Dark Holy Elf]

Fire Emblem: Three Houses

tl;dr version:


Detailed ratings:

Mostly rating on a "1 is the worst, 10 is the best" scale rather than worrying what a 10 is compared to other games.

In general, the optimum path for physical characters is (any beginner class) -> Brigand/Pegasus Knight -> Wyvern. Everyone can take it, and while talent list matters it's never a deal-breaker. I'll mention other roles sometimes but that's generally the baseline for a character's performance, even though in practice you will probably send some people to other classes just for weapon/battalion variety reasons. Magic users have an assumed default path of Monk -> Mage -> Warlock, with an optional finish in Dark Knight or Gremory.

I'm not factoring in paid DLC for this, outside the characters who only exist with it.

Byleth: 8.5/10. Has the same stupid base stats and accelerate exp as Edelgard, but lower str growth, worse talent list, and no Raging Storm. The (bad) wildcard is his/her training method; assuming 2/3 instruct rate everyone else gets +70 skill exp per weak if training neutral things on Maddening, while Byleth needs 3.5 explore actions to keep up, which is rough. Later on it's not a big deal though, so the great stats do shine through.

Edelgard: 10/10. The only real concern here is the speed is merely "decent" but a lot of things prop it up in practice (str, Weight-3, her exp bonus, Darting Blow). The overall stats (str/cha in particular) and talent list are outstanding, and Raging Storm is kinda insane. 15 uses of "take an extra turn" pretty much cement her as the best character in the game on her own route, and... probably overall too.

Hubert: 5/10. He's okay. He has solid stats, gets 3 range spells, and his Frozen Lance hits pretty hard once he closes to melee. A trash faith list combined with the fact that there's no way for him to have both good move and his spells until Level 30 hurts, though.

Dorothea: 8/10. Thoron, Physic, Meteor is quite a combo. The magic stat is less good, but since it's all in the growth instead of the base it's not as bad as it could be.

Ferdinand: 6/10. A bit of a slow start with his bases (and truthfully his stats never stand out), but his personal makes him one of the best dodge-tanks. Swift Strikes is kinda cool too, though brave weapons are available soon enough after reaching A ranks that I don't care that much.

Bernadetta: 4.5/10. Bernie has bad stats (bases, growths, you name it) and a bad talent list, but is saved by a neat personal skill which props up her damage and some cool combat arts like Vengeance and Encloser. It's enough you probably do want to train her in bows/lances whatever class you send her (some combination of pegasus and archer classes is probably best).

Caspar: 3/10. Probably the worst of the 24 students, he doesn't have much going for him. His personal's decent, but his stats are poor (even his strength doesn't really stand out, it's Petra with +5% growth or Ferdie with +1 base) and he did not need an authority bane on top of that.

Petra: 7.5/10. There's a lot to like here: axe/flying talent, great speed (combos with flying talent to make her a great dodge-tank candidate) and adequate str. Doesn't really go the extra mile by having better charm/durability and her personal skill is kinda worthless, but she's obviously good.

Linhardt: 6/10. He has Physic and Warp, and the magic stat to use them. He also has the worst combat stats of the mages, though Wind makes his speed less terrible than it first appears (still bad). So he's behind the likes of Dorothea and Marianne, but still a solid choice.

Dimitri: 9.5/10. Well Edelgard is the obvious comparison: he's slightly ahead on stats overall though has a worse start, has no pegasus, won't train for four chapters, and no Raging Storm. That said most of the good stuff otherwise applies to him, and he has Battalion Vantage/Wrath which is a mean combo that lets him pull off unique things.

Dedue: 5.5/10. Probably shouldn't be used in the second half of the game (though you can, and if you're gonna set up anyone for raw def in the second half it's gonna be him) but he's very solid in the first half, with enough def (thanks to his personal) that even I take notice, and good str/Vengeance to output some strong part 1 offence.

Felix: 7.5/10. In that conversation for "best non-lord physical student". Out of the people in the running for that, he has the best stats (10 str/9 spd and 55% growth in both) but the worst talent list (authority bane in particular). Great start on his own route thanks to his personal, which is nice.

Mercedes: 8/10. Would be basically perfect if she had 3 range. Her stats are a cut above most mages (actually has 8 base spd, solid def/res/charm), and Physic + Fortify is great. Her personal and statline both encourage you to frontline her then heal herself as she heals others which is neat for action economy.

Ashe: 4/10. He's somewhat speedy and having both axe+bow talents is nice whichever route you end up going with him. His personal is more convenient than objectively useful, but it's there. The rest of the stat build doesn't really do him favours but it's workable. Deadeye has some niche use. Probably a little worse than Bernie.

Annette: 4/10. Her spell list is just depressing, and it's not like her stats make up for it or anything (in fact, they're pretty subpar too tbh). She does have a solid Rally (Str from her personal, gets Spd pretty fast) and an authority boon, and can do some decent stuff with magical axes (Bolt Axe, Lightning Axe, her relic) later in the game, but this isn't really an optimum plan for a 3H mage.

Sylvain: 7/10. Just quietly solid. See Ferdinand if his personal helped more early (extra str/def in some situations) and less late (due to not scaling), but he also gets Ruined Sky (35 might!) in Chapter 6 so that's a thing. Also has a very legit mage build if that's your thing.

Ingrid: 7/10. I've generally been convinced that Sylvain is slightly better, but they're close. A shaky start but she grows into "slightly worse Petra" nicely, and you can even quibble if she's worse midgame due to Burning Quake.

Claude: 9/10. He's perhaps easiest to compare with Felix: after factoring in his level boost he has basically the same speed and falls off in str late, but has way more charm and his skill/talent situation is amazing instead of bad: +authority, +axe, +flying, +riding (Move+1), gets handed great Advanced/Master tier jobs for free. It'd be nice if his str were a bit higher or he had pegasus but otherwise you can scarcely ask for more.

Lorenz: 3.5/10. Lorenz has the stat build to be an interesting if not overwhelming mage (solid bulk), but unfortunately his spell list is trash (outside getting Ragnarok a bit early) which means he's not really very good as one anyway. He's a vaguely okay Paladin with Frozen Lance but you can do better.

Hilda: 7/10. She's a lot like Sylvain. She gets access to pegasus/Darting Blow (and has marginally better stats), but has an authority bane and gets her delete-button relic six chapters later. It roughly balances.

Raphael: 3.5/10. In his favour: pretty good str and that's a very important stat in this game. Not in his favour: 6+15% speed is game-worst among students. That's a big weakness and I feel like his str needed to be better than Felix-level in order to justify it on someone who doesn't have much else to recommend him.

Lysithea: 7/10. She's possibly a bit better if you factor DLC since one of her problems is tier 3 kneecapping her magic advantage. Otherwise, she's the best mage at nuking things (both the stat and the spell list, particularly Luna) and Mastermind helps get her get some skills faster, but is light on utility (Warp's nice, I prefer Physic though) for the stronger mages in the game.

Ignatz: 3.5/10. Having 8+35% / 8+50% offence with no personal to boost it is pretty bad. His talent list makes him an awful wyvern (relatively) and as an archer I'm not impressed by his list of combat arts (at least Ashe has Deadeye).

Marianne: 7/10. Compared to other mages, her biggest problem is being only neutral Reason, which makes certifying for Warlock on time rough. Like Lys she's a bit better with DLC because she certifies for the DLC mage classes more easily. Otherwise, has Thoron and Physic, so is Dorothea with a bit more magic but worse talents and no Meteor, which is a losing trade but still leaves her a great unit.

Leonie: 7.5/10. Petra remix. She doesn't get Alert Stance as easily (+lance not as good as +axe/flying for the game both want to play) but in exchange she's got better def/charm (i.e. just an outstanding overall stat build) and a non-trash personal. This probably roughly balances.

From here on we hit the staff members. To avoid repeating myself: joining late in this game means missing out on a bunch of skills or needing to backtrack to get them, and that kinda sucks.

Seteth: 6/10. Is Sylvain with no Ruined Sky but generally better stats... except speed which is rough. This might be a winning trade except that he joins in Chapter 12, which means he either sucks for a few maps or loses Atk to Sylvain as well. So obviously worse than Sylvain, but still a respectable unit, the best of the later-joining (post-Chapter 6) PCs.

Flayn: 3/10. Her thing is Rescue, and later Fortify, but joining with E reason means her offence is wretched and her utility is too situational. Really needed to either auto-train Reason or have Physic.

Hanneman: 4/10. His reason kit could hardly be better with Meteor (at A+, admittedly) and Thoron, and hey there are other mages who can't double and have durability woes so his wretched speed is maybe... not as bad as it could be? Still bad though. Needing to wait until chapter 8 to start building faith and needing to wait on Warlock a bit while getting Fiendish Blow are both negatives he didn't need. Probably ends up around Annette level.

Manuela: 3.5/10. Honestly mage Manuela is problematic, though yes there's Warp (off bad magic) and Bolting (have fun training for it). As a fighter she's basically Ingrid (dat speed) except she joins in chapter 8 with questionable training. She can play a variety of roles but struggles to find much to excel in.

Gilbert: 1/10. You will notice that I haven't handed out any 2's, this is because Gilbert really is that much worse than the next worst unit in Three Houses. Seteth, if Seteth had way less speed/charm and had done way less training before he joined (E flying, D+ authority), oh and joins even later of course. Even his def isn't anything incredible. It'd be trivial to build an armour who is completely superior to base Gilbert by chapter 13, and you wouldn't because that character would be bad too.

Alois: 4/10. Joins a chapter earlier than Seteth (which probably also means 2 extra paralogues), so does have a bit more time to backtrack to Brigand and badly wants to because otherwise he's just a bulkier Caspar who hasn't trained flying yet. Once you do that his atk/def are solid at least (thanks to NPC Warrior growths), and his speed can be patched some by wyvern + the growth being okay instead of bad. Has a decent rally too, which is something. Still, needing catching up to be "decent" isn't a great place to be.

Catherine: 8/10. You want to recruit her ASAP, chapter 4 is possible but tricky; chapter 5 is easy if you know what you're doing though. I'm rating her based off that. Compared to Felix she misses out on early correction to her skill priorities, but her str/speed are even better (and she actually has good def), she gets pegasus, she doesn't have an authority bane, and if you do need her to earlygame nuke as a swordmaster she can. It adds up to the best non-lord physical character in the game, I think.

Shamir: 6/10. If you get her in Chapter 6 she has Felix-level str and average speed, and can nuke as a sniper if needed. She also gets Hunter's Volley early enough to have it for a notable length of time before everyone gets their hands on brave weapons. Unfortunately her good midgame is at odds with building her for later, and she's going to fall off in part 2. So similar to Dedue but she's more impressive at her best.

Cyril: 4.5/10. What if Petra/Leonie had trash bases and no pegasus knight access. He is saved somewhat by having Point-Blank Volley (and/or Vengeance) giving him some decent offence in part 1, and by part 2 his growths kick in so he's fine then, although always forever short of the characters I rate at 7 or higher who can do the same build better.

Jeritza: 7/10. Retribution means that the Death Knight mastery isn't as good as it sounds. But he has great stats (comparable to Catherine except he actually has res), gets Darting Blow in Chapter 14, and having a super version of the Paladin class gives you another canto badass without eating a flying battalion. Not really dominant because he does suffer from some usual latejoiner problems and is competing with Raging Storm, but he should slide into the team easily.

Yuri: 7/10. Great stats (Petra/Leonie trading HP for Res/Charm), authority boon, a decent personal (especially for a wyvern)... there's a lot to like here. Unfortunately his talent list is a bit of a mess and his stat build really does want Darting Blow to seal the deal.

Balthus: 5.5/10. Raphael with a few more points of speed (still sub-Caspar though), a relic (with an admittedly shaky combat art), and the big one, a rather potent personal. It doesn't add up to a great PC because speed's important (and flying bane doesn't help) but it's a respectable one.

Constance: 6/10. Her spell list is interesting with Rescue and Bolting, but no Physic or Thoron are downers. She invites comparison with Lysithea: same great magic and holes in her kit. She does get Bolting, which is definitely a big plus (lessened some by her short support list), but otherwise loses the comparison (Warp > Rescue, is only neutral faith, no Luna or Mastermind).

Hapi: 7/10. Nice spell list, with Physic, Warp (although faith neutral means she takes the longest to get it), and a range 3 spell (though at B). That said, just as Constance invites comparison to Lys, Hapi invites comparison to Dorothea, who has better stats (similar, but actually has charm), and an even better spell list (Meteor, Thoron is both better and earlier than Death).

Anna: unsure-but-bad/10. Manuela if she could start building relevant skills earlier but had worse stats and most importantly NO SUPPORTS which defeats part of the point of having Meteor, the most interesting thing about her. I've never used her and I can only guess at how much the "no supports" thing hurt. If she had a full support list she'd probably be around 4/10 though, which is not promising.

[Reiska]

Here I go with another Super Robot Wars!  This time it's SRW A Portable's turn.

The mechs are organized by series alphabetical order.  Mech ratings assume canon pilots.  Pilots who don’t have a default unit will also be discussed in their own section for each series.

For the purposes of this list, in some instances, I have grouped together multiple series under a single header as follows:

Universal Century Gundam: Mobile Suit Gundam (1979); Mobile Suit Gundam: The 08th MS Team, Mobile Suit Gundam 0083: Stardust Memory; Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam; Mobile Suit Gundam ZZ; Mobile Suit Gundam: Char’s Counterattack.
Mazinger Series: Mazinger, Great Mazinger, UFO Robo Grendizer.
Getter Robo Series: Getter Robo, Getter Robo G, Shin Getter Robo.

This is done because these series involve mechs that can be reassigned to other pilots within other shows from the same category.

The two battleships will be in their own section, rather than listed with their respective series.  You can never choose to not deploy them, so they’re DNR, but I did talk about them a bit regardless.

Last but not least, these ratings assume you don’t habitually gameover on purpose to farm additional money or kills.

Banpresto Originals

Soulgain is exclusive to Axel and Angelg is exclusive to Lamia.  The other three OG robots can be selected by either protagonist.  Both Axel and Lamia get Accel, Valor, Spirit, and Soul.  Axel’s unique spirits are Strike and Fortitude, while Lamia’s are Focus and Alert.  Axel is the better protagonist as such in this game.

All five OG units have to wait till the pilot reaches level 20 to unlock their finishers.  This will generally be about halfway through the game, and it holds them back significantly until they reach that point.  It hurts Soulgain and Angelg much worse than it does the other OG units, because it essentially leaves them to have all the disadvantages of a super while still only having the power of a real unless you heavily focus investment in them early.

I played with Aschenretter, the other originals are rated on an “on-paper” basis and by comparing them to the units to which they are most similar.

Soulgain (Axel Almer): 6.5/10.  Basically Daimos with HP regen and without the broken defensive ace bonus, which means it’ll have survival problems.  Losing trade IMO, but not a dramatic one.
Angelg (Lamia Loveless): 6.5/10.  Basically Great Mazinger with worse post-movement capability and no combos but with Double Image.  Double Image is super good so I’d call it a winning trade.
Vysaga: 8.5/10.  Basically God Gundam with slightly better range and slightly less power (and 2 more part slots) that has to wait till the protagonist reaches level 20 to use God Finger.  Probably the best original.
Aschenretter: 7.5/10.  Basically Nu Gundam without the availability problem and if the funnels were post-movement.  It’s really good.  Mostly ammo-based.
Razangriff: 6/10.  Basically Gundam Heavyarms without the availability problem, but with significantly worse post-movement options (range-1 locked) and no MAP weapon.  You’ll have to commit one of the game’s two Hit & Away parts to the protagonist.  Entirely ammo-based.  IMO the worst original for a first playthrough; it improves on NG+ because skill parts carry over.

Brave Leader Daimos

Daimos (Kazuya Ryuzaki): 7/10.  Glass cannon super with incredible power.  There are other units that have incredible power and aren’t as glassy, but not enough to fill a deployment.  Pretty much demands a Support Defense tank or Kazuya’s overpowered ace bonus to survive.  Getting Reppu Seikenzuki Kai probably bumps him to 8/10 and, unlike the secret finishers for Combattler or Voltes, you don’t lose Master Asia doing it.
Galva FX II (Kyoshiro Yuzuki/Nana Izumi): 6/10.  Generic resupply support unit.  Can become a second large EWAC for a huge money investment.  Good spirit set overall.

Combattler V

Combattler V (Hyoma Aoi/Juzo Naniwa/Daisaku Nishikawa/Chizuru Nanbara/Kosuke Kita): 8/10.  Standard 5-pilot super.  Not as much raw power as Daimos, but spirits for days is unquestionably good and you can squeeze like 4 Valor hits out of it in a map.  Also an okay support defender.  It’s like an 8.5 with Grandasher but that costs you Master Asia.
Kerot (Kinta Ichinoki/Chie Ichinoki): 1/10.  Only unit in the game with both Repair and Resupply on the same unit, but it’s weak and its support pool is built like a combat unit rather than a support one.  Dragonar-3 is the gold standard of repair mechs and Kerot doesn’t measure up.  Costs you Master Asia too.

Daitarn 3

Daitarn 3 (Banjo Haran): 5.5/10.  Tanky support defender.  Bad offense for a super relatively, and even worse accuracy that is further hampered by his Strike costing 20 SP.  So he doesn’t offer that much more than that and I’d rather just use Combattler or a battleship as a support defender, the battleship has more HP and Combattler has spirits for days. 

Mobile Fighter G Gundam

Shining Gundam/God Gundam (Domon Kasshu): 8.5/10.  All the power of Daimos in a unit that can dodge well and has a double image proc.  Notable flaws, however, are having Focus over Strike, so his accuracy might be suspect against Gundam bosses, and having only one part slot (which is almost locked to a Flight Module because none of his good attacks hit flying otherwise).
Gundam Maxter (Chibodee Crocket): 8/10.  Domon but a little worse, still very good.  Not flight module dependent.
Gundam Rose (George de Sand): 6/10.  Essentially no post-movement offense and doesn’t have Hit & Away.  Good if you give him that, but there are probably better candidates.
Dragon Gundam (Sai Saici): 8/10.  Domon but a little worse, still very good.  Not flight module dependent.
Bolt Gundam (Argo Gulskii): 7.5/10.  Domon but a little worse, still very good.  Flight module dependent.
Rising Gundam (Rain Mikamura): 6/10.  Miserably poor will gains make her combo attack with Domon essentially unusable, but she’s an okay unit in her own right.  But only okay.
Nobel Gundam (Allenby Beardsley): 6.5/10.  Brings a better and more usable combo for Domon than Rain, but is worse on her own merits.  Still isn’t bad on her own merits, so probably better than Rain overall.
Master Gundam (Master Asia): 8.5/10.  Domon but slightly worse, still great.  Flight module dependent.  Gives Domon more combos to exploit too.
Fuunsaiki (Fuunsaiki): 6.5/10.  Can be combined with Domon or Master Asia to give them more movement, flying, and a second spirit pool at the cost of being able to use combination attacks.  Worth it if not using Rain or Allenby because he lets you use something other than a flight unit on Domon.

Getter Robo Series

Getter 1/2/3, Getter Dragon/Liger/Poseidon, Shin Getter 1/2/3 (Ryoma Nagare/Hayato Jin/Musashi Tomoe or Benkei Kuruma): 7.5/10.  Very strong glass cannon super late game, but has an extremely slow start (which you still have to deal with if you want to keep its level up).  It is less glassy in the late game.
Texas Mack (Jack King/Mary King): 5/10.  Okay filler super.  Not much more than that.
Getter Q (Michiru Saotome): 4/10.  Original Getter 1 but worse that has Repair.  Meh.
Single Pilot Getter 1: 2/10.  Original Getter 1 without any of the things that make it redeemable.  Yuck.
Single Pilot Getter Dragon: 3/10.  Original Getter Dragon but worse and without any of the things that make it worth using.  Yuck.
Mecha Tekkoki (Tekkoki): 5/10.  Better unit than Texas Mack, but a worse spirit pool thanks to only one pilot.  Shrug?  Filler super.
Mecha Kochoki (Kochoki): 3/10?  Secret unit I didn’t get.  Doesn’t look great on paper and it costs you Master Asia.

As for the pilots without default units, all of whom can use either Single Pilot Getter 1, Single Pilot Getter Dragon, or Getter Q:
Musashi Tomoe: Keeping him alive past the midgame is a secret; he can’t pilot Getter 3 anymore if you do.  He’s not actually worth getting but it doesn’t cost you anything to do so.
Miyuki Saotome: She’s a secret and getting her costs you one of three Dual Sensors (+10 accuracy) in the game.  There’s a decent argument the part is better than her.
Risa: She’s also a secret, and you can only get her if you picked Soulgain, Vysaga, or Angelg.  Not really worth it but doesn’t cost you anything.

Gundam Wing: Endless Waltz

Wing Gundam Zero (Heero Yuy): 4.5/10.  Bad accuracy, bad power, bad availability.  I like Heero but he isn’t good in this game.
Gundam Deathscythe (Duo Maxwell): 5.5/10.  Filler Gundam that needs a flight module to perform well against flying enemies.  Bad availability.
Gundam Heavyarms Kai (Trowa Barton): 7.5/10.  High power, cheap Strike, lots of range, a strong MAP and support attack.  Only drawback is availability.
Gundam Sandrock Kai (Quatre Raberba Winner): 5/10.  Duo but worse.
Altron Gundam (Wufei Chang): 6/10.  Basically a second Duo without issues against flying enemies.
Tallgeese III (Zechs Merquise): 6/10.  Decent filler unit but with bad availability.  Probably sees action in the last route split though.
Taurus (Lucrezia Noin): 2/10.  Methuss but worse.  Just no.  Shame because Noin is good but you can’t reassign Wing pilots in this game.

Martian Successor Nadesico

Here we have a bunch of superficially similar units that differ only in their potential for combo attacks, so I’m going to list them in those combo attack groupings.  Absent the combos, they’re all passable filler, but only that.

Aestivalis (Akito Tenkawa/Gai Daigoji): 6/10.  Stronger combo than Ryoko’s trio, but it has a much higher level requirement (which makes it unlikely you’ll have the combo available when it’s most useful in the midgame) and it’s range-1 locked.  Also, you can’t get both Gai and Master Asia, and without Gai, Akito is merely decent filler.
Aestivalis (Ryoko Subaru/Hikaru Amano/Izumi Maki): 7/10.  Basically the best filler units in the game.  Their combo attack is respectable, barrier piercing, and ignores support defense like all combos, they can spam it forever thanks to the Nadesico, and it has a low level requirement so you’ll have it in time to fight Shadow Mirror’s annoying support defense Gespensts.  If you screw up and lose the combo they’re still decent filler.
Aestivalis (Nagare Akatsuki): 5.5/10.  The one with no combos.  However, he has a good ace bonus and he’s still on par with the midrange UC units.  So, he’s the worst of the Aestivalises, but he’s still okay filler.
Daitetsujin (Tsukumo Shiratori): 0/10.  Secret unit, minimal availability, and getting it makes you fight what is effectively a superboss.  Using him also actively makes replays harder because of a NG+ quirk involving enemies that are later recruitable.

Mazinger Series

Mazinger Z (Koji Kabuto): 5/10.  Mediocre filler super robot.  Koji deserves better., he’s good but this isn’t.
Diana A (Sayaka Yumi): 2/10.  Meh, it’s a really shitty Getter Q.  Next.
Boss Borot (Boss): 1/10.  Waste of a deployment slot.
Minerva X: 5.5/10.  It’s Mazinger Z, minus finisher and flying, but with better weapon upgrade progression.  Honestly I think this is a winning trade.
Great Mazinger (Tetsuya Tsurugi): 6.5/10.  Strong offense on par with Daimos and lots of good combos that rely on you fielding worse units.  Still, combo fodder is a useful niche throughout the game when facing Shadow Mirror.
Venus A (Jun Hono): 2.5/10.  Meh, it’s a slightly better Diana A.  Next.  Jun is a pretty good pilot but there’s no reason to field enough Mazingers to make her a serious consideration.
Mass Produced Great Mazinger: 5.5/10.  It’s Great Mazinger with worse stats, no finisher and no flying.  Still slightly better than Mazinger Z and it has better combo attack options than Minerva X, but less availability.
Grendizer (Duke Fleed): 6/10.  Decent filler super robot; if you’re fielding Great Mazinger for combos, this is the one to pair up with it.  Duke takes too long to learn Soul and it’s his only damage boost. 
Double Spazer (Rubina): 4/10.  If you’re running Grendizer by itself, you might as well field this to combine it and improve Duke’s spirit pool.  It’s not worth much else and the availability is tragic though.
Marine Spazer (Hikaru Makiba): 1/10.  There’s like one water stage after Grendizer joins.
Drill Spazer (Maria Grace Fleed): 2/10.  The unit is basically useless but Maria is a pretty decent pilot like Jun.

There’s one pilot without a default unit:
Kirika: She’s a secret.  Getting her costs you the only Giga Generator in the game (max EN +200).  The part is likely worth more.

Metal Armor Dragonar

Dragonar-1 (Kaine Wakaba): 7/10.  Basically a Gundam with better movement, better post-movement offense, and flight, but worse peak offense. 
Dragonar-2 (Tapp Oceano): 6.5/10.  Worst of the Dragonar units, still decent filler.  Enables ranged combo attacks for Kaine.  It’s inaccurate but Tapp has Strike.
Dragonar-3 (Light Newman): 9.5/10.  He gives every unit in the 8 squares around him +30% hit chance and evasion just by being on the map, for free.  And it stacks with Focus.  All other EWAC units only give +15%.  He’s better off using his turns on Repair rather than trying to attack things, since his own offense is hot garbage.
Falguen MAFFU (Meio Plato): 6.5/10.  Secret unit, but you don’t lose anything going for him, so why not?  He’s the weakest of the units from this series by himself, but he has the relative advantage of coming with 5 upgrades to everything for free (so he can be slotted into a squad with little investment) and enabling a combo move that plays more to Kaine’s strengths than the standard Dragonar combination attack.  All in all, this makes him respectable enough filler.

Universal Century Gundam

Gundam (Amuro Ray): 7.5/10.  Surprisingly good, you’d think later units would obsolete it but nope.  Has the most limited range of the main UC units without option parts though.  In space, can combine with the G-Fighter for more movement, flight, and a second pilot.  Alternatively, Full Armor Gundam patches the range hole.  The two are mutually exclusive on a first playthrough.
G-Fighter: 6/10.  Easy to get secret unit, mutually exclusive with the Full Armor Gundam.  Basically an alternative Galva FX II that trades the EWAC bonus for being able to combine with Gundam, which is its primary useful function.
Gelgoog Char Custom: 5/10.  Filler mobile suit.  There are better ones, but it has chunky base stats at least.
Elmeth (Lalah Sune): 5/10.  Plays like a dodgy super robot.  You can’t get Master Asia with this.  Also, it’s space-only without option parts.  Lalah is actually one of the better UC pilots in this game, too, presuming you put her in Not This.
Zakrello (Roux Louka): 1/10.  Filler mobile suit.  It’d actually be pretty good if it wasn’t the last unit you get in the entire game, but you should have your UC bases covered by then.  Roux is mediocre.
Gundam Ez-8 (Shiro Amada): 5.5/10.  A (significantly) worse Heavyarms.  Shiro has a great spirit pool and is a prime contender for GP03 or the G-Fighter..
Zaku II Prototype (Aina Sahalin): 4/10.  Filler mobile suit; fittingly, Gelgoog but worse.  Aina has good support spirits and is better suited for a support unit, not this.
Apsalus II (Aina Sahalin): 2/10.  Secret unit; Elmeth but worse (but it doesn’t lock out Master Asia).  The lack of post-movement offense is dire and getting it costs you the earliest of the four EWAC Modules in the game, which I would consider more valuable.
Gouf Custom (Norris Packard): 6/10.  Secret filler mobile suit.  Comes with 5 upgrades across the board, making it cheap to slot in as ready-to-use filler.  Norris is okay.
Gundam GP01Fb (Kou Uraki): 6.5/10.  Pretty good and has a strong upgrade track.  Unlikely to see heavy use unless you’re running a very UC-heavy team, but that doesn’t make it bad or anything.  Kou is similar to Shiro, with a cheaper Strike but a more expensive Valor.
Gundam GP03 (Kou Uraki): 7.5/10.  An excellent unit, and pretty much the strongest UC unit in this game, but if you use it you’re pretty much committing the game’s only Dustproof to it forever.  It turns into the Gundam Stamen if it’s somehow shot down, which is basically just another GP01.
GM Custom (South Burning): 7/10.  Filler mobile suit with the best full upgrade bonus in the game, allowing it to inflict a 10 will penalty on anything it hits.  This applies to support attacks too, so you can dunk a boss’ will by 50 a turn with an appropriate pilot.  It’s an expensive investment but good planning leaves plenty of room for it.
Super Gundam (Kamille Bidan): 6.5/10.  Basically GP01 that trades a little power for a second lifebar.  I’d tend toward this being a slightly losing trade, since
Methuss (Fa Yuiry): 4/10.  Probably Methuss’ best showing in all of SRW.  I still wouldn’t use it unless you want two repair units though.  Fa sucks bad.
Hyaku Shiki (Quattro Bajeena): 4/10.  Filler mobile suit.  Quattro is spectacular, one of the best UC pilots in this game, but he really wants a better machine than this.
Z Gundam (Kamille Bidan): 7.5/10.  An excellent mobile suit.  Its full potential requires a Newtype and ideally you have one of the good melee pilots in it (Kamille is one).  Can be the best UC unit in the game with its full upgrade bonus, but that’s a huge investment.  Even without that, it’s still great, though.
ZZ Gundam (Judau Ashta): 8/10.  Judau’s availability is garbage but his ace bonus is absolutely bonkers and worth feeding him for.  That’s basically his role: flying around and dumping MAPs on grunts in the endgame, and he does it better than anyone else.
Qubeley Mk-II (Elpeo Puru/Puru Two): 5.5/10.  You get two of these, and they’re Sazabi but worse.  Given the late arrival, investing in them is questionable, but they’re good units if invested.  Puru and Puru Two are good pilots that complement each other, but you give up one of the only two Hero’s Marks in the game to recruit them.
Nu Gundam (Amuro Ray): 4/10.  It’s a great unit but it just comes too late to really bother investing in, since unlike ZZ it doesn’t really do anything terribly special you couldn’t do with the other UC units with much better availability.  As such, its only real use is if you want to field huge numbers of UC characters.
Sazabi (Quattro Bajeena): 5/10.  It really just comes too late.  Having three S terrain ranks does give it something resembling a small niche though.  Like the Nu, its only real use is if you want to field huge numbers of UC characters.
Re-GZ (BWS) (Kayra Su): 5.5/10.  Super Gundam but worse.

That leaves the unassigned pilots:
Four Murasame: She’s a secret, and is mutually exclusive with Rosamia.  There’s no reason not to recruit one of the two.  Four’s spirit set is more support-oriented, with Attune and Enable.  Four makes a better G-Fighter pilot than Rosamia, but a worse main pilot IMO.
Rosamia Badam: She’s a secret, and is mutually exclusive with Four.  There’s no reason not to recruit one of the two.  Rosamia’s spirit set is more of an offensive support set than Four’s; she gets Confuse and Exhaust instead (and replaces Four’s Detonate with Assail).  Rosamia makes a better main pilot than Four, but a worse G-Fighter pilot IMO.
Sayla Mass: Not secret, but she’s a temp.  Using her is necessary to unlock the G-Fighter on a first playthrough (she has to have more kills than Amuro at an early checkpoint).  She’s very good while she’s around, but there’s no way to keep her past her plot departure.

Voltes V

Voltes V (Kenichi Go/Ippei Mine/Daijiro Go/Hiyoshi Go/Megumi Oka): 7.5/10.  Standard 5-pilot super.  Not as much raw power as Daimos, but spirits for days is unquestionably good and you can squeeze like 4 Valor hits out of it in a map.  It has better spirits but worse attacks compared to Combattler..  Super EM Ball costs you Master Asia and sucks, I wouldn’t bother.

Zambot 3

Zambot 3 (Kappei Jin/Uchuta Kamie/Keiko Kamikita): 6/10.  It’s basically just an Attune bank; its combat isn’t really worth much.  It’s pretty much the best Attune bank though.

Battleships

You can’t not bring these, so they don’t get a score.

Argama/Nahel Argama/Ra Cailum (Bright Noa): The better of the game’s two battleships.  Bright has a sick ace bonus if you can manage to get it, and his Strike is reasonably priced so he can actually be okay at offense.  Ra Cailum’s HP is absurd.
Nadesico/Nadesico (Y-Unit) (Yurika Misumaru): 25 SP Strike?  Really?  And Yurika can’t hit the broad side of a space colony.  So mostly it’s just a support defense tank.

[Luther Lansfeld]

Three Houses classes ratings

Hero [M]- 2/10. Move is too low. Assassin is just better.
Swordmaster - 2.5/10. Move is too low. Assassin is just better.
Assassin - 6.5/10. more move + terrain shit + stealth = why would you use the other tier 3 sword bitches
Fortress Knight- 2/10. Move and speed are too low. Just use Wyvern Rider Dedue, bitch.
Paladin - 7/10. Slow but stronk, especially for the bois with the strong lance arts         
Wyvern Rider -  9.5/10. Chibi wyvern lord
Warrior- 5/10. Decent but doesn’t compare well at all to Wyvern.
Sniper - 7/10. Low move but Bowfaire class is very cool, as is Hunter’s Volley   
Grappler [M] - 6/10. Fierce Iron Fist and terrain shenanigans
Warlock - 7/10. Generically solid mid-game magic class.   
Dark Bishop [M] - 3/10. free fiendish blow just in case you didn’t grab it on your mages??? i guess??
Bishop - 7/10 every team needs a good healbot

Falcon Knight [F] - 9/10. Almost as OP as wyvern lord     
Wyvern Lord- 10/10. Overpowered as fuck         
Mortal Savant - 6/10. Neat alternate option for some characters like Dorothea/Manuela if you decide to do the sword build for them, but kinda niche       
Great Knight - 2.5/10. Slow as piss like Fortress Knight and a pain in the ass to unlock. ok boomer    
Bow Knight - 8.5/10. Best non-flying class i think            
Dark Knight - 7/10. Decent lategame magic class with high move
Holy Knight - 3/10. White Magic sucks at offensive use due to high weight and the existence of Black Magic, and not getting either Usesx2 nor heal buffing makes it a hard sell for your dedicated healer. Pass.    
War Master [M]   - 4.5/10. Just use grappler or war monk?
Gremory [F] - 6/10. Interesting mixed magic user, although I find I prefer one of the other magic classes on average        

Trickster - 4/10. Interestingly, a good class on CS, but Foul Play is about the only thing they really have going for them since they don’t have any -faires.
War Monk/Cleric - 6/10. brawl avoid +20 is pretty legit as fuck
Dark Flier [F] - 8/10. Flying magic bitch, although held back by lack of flying mage battalions     
Valkyrie [F] - 8/10. Riding magic bitch, lowish power but uncanny blow is fucking lit and the range is great.

Enlightened One - 5/10, is fine
Emperor - 2/10. Fuck the police, bringing us down
Great Lord - 5/10. Is fine.
Barbarossa - 9/10. a flying bowfaire class? don’t mind if i do

[Tide]

Cold Steel 4 Rankings - Standard difficulty. Before we start, there are a few a couple of things to note here. The first is that there are tons of infinite turn loop set ups where you just stop enemies from acting. As such, late game dominance is less important because by then, there are tons of tools to basically never see an enemy take a turn. The second is that, because infinite turn loops exist, how well you can utilize an infinite turn loop is important. A character can have other fringe benefits or defensive options, but unless these are like Aura Rain/Remedy Oratorio, I tend to view it as not very important. You shouldn't be getting hit like at all after the mid-point in the game. Also because of this, handling randoms probably carries more weight since randoms have a greater chance of getting a turn and messing you up with status. That being said, SPOILER ALERT:

Juna: 7/10. CS4 reigns in Break in a few ways. The first is that instead of losing a full turn, you only lose a half turn. Second is that human boss enemies will auto-recover from Break after losing 1/2 their HP. This doesn't get into the fact that Sledgehammer itself has been nerfed (+1 BP cost and -50% Break), so Juna actually loses pretty notably. Her stats haven't really improved (still kind of meh for combat) but she still gets a 7 because she is easily the best user of the Musse-infinite turn loop. How this loop works is simple. Activate Musse's Brave Order (2 BP) to cut the casting cost of spells by 80%, then you just keep casting Chrono Burst for as long as your mana can hold out. When the Brave Order is initially activated, you recover 20% of your EP, so if your EP is high enough, at a certain point, the casts essentially become free. They key here is generating BP so you can re-activate the Brave Order. Usually this requires Breaking enemies, but Juna gets past this completely because she has a craft that adds +1 BP automatically. The kicker to this, is that this craft only costs 30 CP, which is just enough for 1 full cycle of Musse's Brave Order. Chrono Burst -> Attack gives you 10 CP and you can repeat this action set 6 times in one Brave Order, letting you generate the 2 BP without need for any unbalancing. In short, Juna makes this loop self sustaining on her own once you give her enough EP so she recovers all the mana spent while Musse's Order is active. It only stops when everything is dead. If this is as dumb as it sounds, that's because it is. She can even go to 5 range and void the possibility of eating counters - gross.

Kurt: 4/10. Kurt on the other hand, doesn't have a whole lot of reasons that you'll use him in the part this time around. His Brave Order also took a huge nerf (lol 4 BP cost for an already niche effect + universal Break nerf), and as discussed above, shoe horning him into pure evade hamstrings yourself a bit and he's not even the best person for it. Worse even now because Fie and Sara can join you as early as Act 1.2. He does however, have a couple of other viable builds that work - in particular, the delay build works great for him because his delay craft only costs 30 CP. Still delay's effectiveness is more limited here than in CS2 so Kurt ends up pretty meh.

Altina: 5.5/10. Altina on the other hand is subtly better. Part of this is mages being great and Altina is like your only mage for a while. The second though is that she's also one of the best characters using the Musse turn loop. 2 Silvers + 1 Time fixed means Altina gets a leg up on others without sacrificing free nodes. Plus, she's range 3, so missing here doesn't result in a counter. Some of her crafts have also improved as well - most notably - Argem Heal. It now heals not only HP, but also 30 CP and can self target, making it cost only a net 10 CP, which lets her work as a pseudo battery. She still has similar short comings as in 3 (bad speed + low HP) but definite improvement.

Randy: 5/10. It's hard to peg down where Randy is but I feel pretty safe in saying he's worse here than in Azure and Zero. Losing Power Smash, Salamander and Flash Bomb all weaken his utility and War Cry going down to 80 CP instead of 150 is a big deal too. However, he does get access to a solid Brave Order in Proud Warrior and at the time when he first joins, is the only person with a 4S+ S-craft. These things combined with his always solid HP means he'll be pretty solid hurting things. Regulus isn't a great Master Quartz to be locked to though and it shows when he rejoins since it hampers his effectiveness compared to other physical builds. I'll still use him over Kurt though.

Ash: 6.5/10. No real big changes. Ash is still good at what he does and he still wants you to twink for Move. The good news now is that there are more ways to that while keeping his attack high, so despite having the same sort of problems as in 3, they matter less here. Finding a position to hit multiple enemies isn't a big issue when you have like 19 Move without trying. He's also surprisingly a good candidate in the Musse infinite loop set up because he hits hard and can effectively self generate CP faster with Unbound Rage. With 2 Fire and 1 Silver, you can spec him such that his EP will be high enough for the loop, without sacrificing too much power. His Brave Order is better now, with the nerf to Sledgehammer and Breaking so I find that he's actually better than Laura most of time. Loses some steam at end game, but as I noted, it doesn't hurt that much.

Fie: 5/10. She's kind of average all things considered. Does primarily one build really well and the rest all kind of mehish. However, she's definitely the premier evade tanking PC, even with Sara in the mix due to her natural base of 25% Evade. It's invaluable early due to the numerous amounts of physicals but loses something in the end when you don't even want to see enemy turns at all. Sure, she can counter for massive damage, but that requires letting enemies try to hit you in the first place.

Elliot: 5.5/10. Elliot's a little weaker mainly due to a really weak late game (you'll basically never even touch his S-craft) and he loses in pure damage casting to Emma, but early on, he has all that goodness that came in the previous Trails. A full CP Elliot gives you a once per battle get-out-of-jail free card in the event you screwed up and eat a S-craft. That's great early on and you can make it even more ridiculous ala CS3 late, but like Fie, to see it, enemies have to actually get turns for that to happen.

Sara: 7/10. Like Juna, Sara loses her infinite turn loop due to the universal Break nerf but she's still one of the strongest PC due to good mixed offense stats, decent defensive stats, good crafts and good nodes. Does a variety of builds pretty well, although usually isn't the best at a particular one. However, since there are several times where the game makes you use all the PCs, Sara's ability to do any build makes her easy to work around. And she's great too in free time periods to use one of your PC slots for. Her major disadvantage is she doesn't do any of the turn loops well, although she can pseudo loop with her Brave Order. Is that worth more than a 2 point drop from CS3? Probably not given the strong early game performance I suspect.

Alisa: 7/10. Doesn't lose anything from 3 to 4. She's still the game's best battery and is a great caster thanks to having more speed than the others. Doesn't work that well with Musse's infinite loop (free space node at least means a free EP Cut), but if you're doing fast cast spamming, Gaius' turn loop or the OG turn loop, she works great in all those. Physical is once again terrible, but that rarely matters. Generally has a very solid early game, weakish mid-game but really strong end-game.

Jusis: 4/10. Got better...relatively kinda? On one hand, Jusis himself didn't get that much better. He's still a magic fencer but doesn't have the HP and needs the Move as well to get up close making him awkward to build around. On the other hand, his Brave Order, this time is well worth using. It's cheap relatively to a lot of others and last 12 turns is a large amount of time. It's excellent for random sweeping as a result and does decently on certain boss encounters too - although of course, has nothing on the turn loop set ups. Jusis doesn't do well with any of those sadly. Even though he has 2 Space for EP Cuts, the 1 range and lack of mobility and means there's usually better choices.

Machias: 6/10. Machias is still probably the king of cheap. Has his own infinite turn loop since CS1 (which now he shares with Juna), but even if you don't plan on doing that, swapping to him turn 1 and using Burst Drive to give everyone an instant turn is huge. His main attack craft - Dread Breaker is really good. At a low 30 CP cost, it has a ton of break damage on it and has infinite horizontal range, meaning he can poke enemies from anywhere. Other than creating his own loop, Machias also rules at using other people's loops. With Musse's loop, he has a Silver node for added max EP. With Gaius', he can boost everyone up the cue, getting you extra actions so Gaius can get to that 100 CP benchmark. If you look past the cheap set ups, Machias doesn't seem great since he lacks Laura and Ash's raw power or have the casting stats of Emma. However, he's an amazing cog piece for any type of engine you want to end up running. Also has Auto Charge 2 on his support list, which leads to some hilarity (more on this later).

Laura: 3/10. The clear cast loser IMO. Laura just has nothing really going for her. They scaled back her S-craft to only SSS in power originally which makes her only marginally better than Ash. Otherwise, he can both do loops better, hits just as hard and has a better Brave Order for everything else in-between. Lacks a serious reason to be used at all points of the game as a result since the one thing she had beforehand (great physical power) just gets taken over by another PC. She can be set up for pure HP tanking due to the 2 locked Water nodes but even then, she gets outshadowed.

Emma: 5/10. Dominant caster, but basically has no S-craft at all. The Absolute Guard looks nice but isn't useful at all against things you'd want it to (see CS3) and late game shouldn't ever see play at all. This leaves her at just spell slinging, which she at least does well! But it's about all she has and she still has speed issues compared to Alisa. Gains +1 over her CS3 form  because her Brave Order lets you completely cheese out certain fights while it's deployed.

Gaius: 5/10. Early on, Gaius doesn't have much going for him. The biggest difference now is that he's actually around for the entire game, and unlike 3, he has his S-craft from the get go. He's probably the best S-craft spammer thanks to the Absolute Delay attached to it. Thanks to that, anything that is hit and survives loses that many clockticks - starting at 8 and goes to 12 by end game. When end game kicks around, there's enough equips that you can functionally get Gaius to use his S-craft like every 3 turns without Wild Rage, resulting in enemies being delayed to death ala CS2. If you average out the performance, it probably ends up around average. An absolutely dominating end-game performance, but pretty unremarkable early. He does create his own infinite turn loop, although he doesn't use Musse's loop well at all. I'm feeling generous for him since he speeds up all the HP Sponge battles at end game, so I'll give him an average score.

Musse: 8.5/10. Most PCs have changed a little but nobody sees as big of a change as Musse IMO. This is owing due to 2 things. The first is the reduction of Chrono Burst's casting cost. It's actually the same as in CS3. However, because CS4 starts you at like level 50, they made everyone's stats start at what level 50 bases would be - including EP; a stat that normally isn't supposed to scale up other than from orbment improvements. As a result, the relative cost of Chrono Burst has actually reduced, meaning it's much easier to set up an infinite loop cast, despite her Brave Order losing 20% of its effectiveness. The second big change is just how much earlier she joins. Ash joins after 1.1, Musse joins at 1.2 - meaning you'll have access to her super early. As a result, you also have access to her infinite turn loop basically by about maybe 15% of the game. Needless to say, bosses DO NOT like this at all and it makes all the fights a complete joke and gives you a practically free bail out option. I haven't even gotten to the rest of the stuff on Musse yet, which are all varying degrees of good to great (2 Water means she can be set up to be a Magic dodge tank - something that is pretty unique to her, good healing craft which becomes excellent for those annoying Divine Knight battles, gains a craft that pulls all the enemies together...). It's pretty telling because the battles where she is absent due to plot are probably the hardest boss fights in the game. I basically had her on the team almost all the time when given a choice.

Rean: 7/10. Our main hero is still pretty solid, but he's definitively not cast MVP. Surprisingly a bad candidate for the Musse turn loop because Rean offers nothing to the table. About the best thing he does have for that set up is Speed. To start the loop, you still need to get a turn, so a PC with a fast speed is important to capture turn 1 and prevent enemies from moving at all. Rean's 2 Time nodes ensures he will be one of the fastest on the team, so there is that. Past that, he still has the Insta-cast Brave Order, which is amazing for random sweeping. Late game, Rean becomes extremely versatile due to the 9 unique powerful accessories that he can equip - letting you slot him into almost any role except being a battery. He also removes BP from being an issue at all when he's paired together with Gaius thanks to the extremely cheap Crimson Lotus Order that costs a measly 1 BP if you're using the Gaius infinite loop set up. 7 is probably right. Early on, I didn't have any real positive feelings with Rean in the positive. Mid to Late game, I never wanted to remove him.

Crow: 4.5/10. Actually has a use this time unlike in CS1! Like Rean, doesn't do the turn loop thing that well but two Time nodes means he'll be one of the fastest guys on the team, so that's cool. His crafts are weird. They all do damage, but like Juna's at varying ranges but unlike Juna's, he doesn't have a ton of variety between them. Still, they can be useful in different situations, build pending. His biggest thing is probably his Brave Order. It's the same as Rean's Crimson Lotus, but has doubled the duration and instead heals HP/EP instead of CP with a reasonable 2 BP price tag. So it's not as useful late game but sure is handy earlier.

Duvalie: 4.5/10. I have very mixed feelings regarding Duvalie. Swift Slash is great. Like Kurt, it's a low CP craft, but hers has infinite horizontal tolerance and it cancels charged actions. However, it's about all she has. Most of her other crafts are meh (the 3 elemental slashes) or too costly. Plus she's stuck with a really bad Main MQ (Dunamis is basically CS2 Thor) that you don't really have the ability to really work with at the time when she's available. She manages to stay at a 4.5 though because her stats are pretty solid in general (decent durability + natural 15% evade + good speed) and she has good locked nodes (2 Time, 1 Space) that lets her do the Musse turn loop decently.

Angelica: 6.5/10. Okay, Angelica is very glad CS4 exists because she's one of the best users of the Musse-turn loop. 2 Space + 1 Time is really great for it, meaning then you can load up on other stuff on her free nodes such as more EP or better yet, higher break damage. Why is this important? Because Angie has affixed Emblem as her Main Master Quartz. One of the benefits of Emblem as the main master quartz is that if you break an opponent with it, you can get a second copy of whatever drop the enemy gives you. This means that, not only is she efficient for farming, but she can get you a second copy of all the cool super rare quartz that would normally take a ton of resources to get. This lets you build even stronger party combinations and leads to part of why the end game is such a complete joke.

Tita: 6.5/10 - Has basically 3x the HP as everyone else at the cost of having a much larger hit box (so anything with a small AoE will also probably hit her) and slow speed. She is basically nigh unkillable and can be built as either a support battery or as a tank. Also not terrible for combat either - she basically would end up being a 7 if you either had more time with her OR she was available for the final dungeon. But the game's pretty broke either way, so...

Sharon: 4.5/10 - Pretty much what you'd expect. Same build as previous 2 games, only Sharon joins much later this time around. She's still good at what she does but nerfing the evade boosts on quartz kills her durability game a little (since she always relied on evade) and just as in CS3, she can't really battery like she can in 2. Still smashes up randoms pretty bad but that's likely what you're using her for. If you're still using the Musse loop by the time you get her, Sharon is also one of the best users of it due to 2 Time, 1 Mirage lock. Lower score than in 3 because of limited availability, but in practice, she's basically the same.

[Random Consonant]

So while I never did get around to finishing DQ11 postgame and my time is being occupied by other stuff (like Octopath Traveller) I might as well throw this up since I don't think there's anything left to see that would change my assessment of the cast significantly.

This is all assessed with Super Strong Enemies enabled, since that's what I played.

Luminary - Honestly mediocre during Act 1, since none of his stats are particularly great (and there's a non-trivial stretch where he's less durable than Erik) and the greatsword plan and being the sole source of lightning damage (outside of specific weapons), while ensuring that he'll never be actually bad, only goes so far to make up with that.  Picks up a fair bit of steam in the second half, at which point he picks up Quadra Slash, which is fantastic (if expensive), along with actually having an actual amount of skill points to play with.  Still, pretty rough Act 1 performance counts for a fair amount and I have a hard time justifying higher than a 6/10 because of it.

Erik - OF COURSE considering that he's stuck with this shameful idiot for entirely too long I could be blaming the wrong thing here.  About the only thing Erik brings to the table early are an assortment of Pep Powers and a knife plan that relies on being able to status things since boomerangs are too low on attack to be good for much against randoms (and the accuracy and damage falloff are just injury to insult).  Gains a lot in Act 2 but he's the second-to-last PC to rejoin so loud shrug.  2/10.

Veronica - Pretty great against randoms and noted important spells Sap and Oomphle make her pretty great to bring bosses (although the latter doesn't exist much for her in Act 1 and she spends Act 2 kind of dead) despite the tragic durability.  7/10.

Serena - Probably has more shelf life in the active party than I'd ever respect Erik for during Act 1 since she at least has some shaky GT status to use but not much more since her competition for healer duty has much more reason to be used than her.  Pretty much fantastic once she rejoins in Act 2 but she's the last person to do so and the main game doesn't go on much longer than that.  It evens out to a roughly below-average score, I think.  4/10.

Sylvando - Contributes basically nothing on offense, but Hustle Dance/Sobering Slap/Oomph are great enough perks that you'd autoslot him in until Serena rejoins in Act 2 at minimum, and are probably enough to vault him into the MVP spot.  8/10.

Jade - Hello, one-dimensional beatstick.  Honestly not really that amazing at it, outside of Multithrust being a better boss tool and being somewhat less prone to being critted out of existance than the Luminary during Act 1.  The self-buffing in Act 2 is cute but that's pretty much all she gains and even then there's the bosses that pack dispel so I can't really care that much.  5.5/10.

Rab - Far more upside to having him along than Serena in Act 1 due to him having Sap/Zing Stick/non-fail offense in randoms (though dark spells are a bad meme) and being the first to rejoin in Act 2 matters quite a bit.  Pretty much benched once Serena rejoins, but by then he's done his job.  6.5/10.

Hendrick - Does the Sylvando thing of being a durable support except he offers more offense/durability than he does support.  This is uh not a winning trade in the slightest and he'd be a fair bit better if he actually had his postgame tools but he's at not hopeless on the latter since he does at least bring his (less-reliable) version of defense debuffing along with his try-to-keep-the-party-from-dying-to-noncrit-damage spells.  5.5/10.

[Dark Holy Elf]

I don't really get Sylvando > Rab. Multiheal is roughly as good as Hustle Dance (you might have Hustle for one extra boss fight?), Sap is certainly better than Oomph and comparable to Oomphle (thanks to not going away when the PC dies or is dispelled), and the rest of his skillset (Zing Stick / Kazing, Blunt, Insulatle) has some nice perks too - Sylvando can definitely have turns with nothing useful to do if he laps a boss at an inopportune time, this doesn't happen to Rab. I mean don't get me wrong I used both in most boss fights, but Rab does feel better (also more useful in randoms once he gets Pearly Gates; agreed about Zam spells being garbage).

Definitely higher on Luminary than you. He's consistently one of the very best in randoms (like, usually behind only Act 1 Veronica and lategame Serena, and is the clear outright best during the substantial stretch midgame where neither exists), has your best damage in Act 1 bosses, and Omniheal when Erik (or Jade?) beats him out at this role late.

Erik and Jade are both fine IMO but quite replaceable. I got a bit more milage out of Act 1 boomerangs than you (Twomerang and Starburst Throw really are quite strong when you get each and your randomclearing options are pretty limited in Act 1, so boomerang Erik had an easy time making the party there over Rab or Sylvando or Serena).

I think I'd rank them Luminary ~= Act 2 Serena > Veronica > Rab > Sylvando > Erik ~= Jade > Hendrik > Act 1 Serena. No clue what Serena averages out to.

[SnowFire]

If I was doing a ranking that stopped at the end of Act II, Sylvando would definitely climb from 7/10 to 8/10 for me.  While Multiheal is certainly good, it also eats MP like crazy until late Act 2.  Granted, free party rotation so an MP-sapped character can just go hide in the back, it's not the end of the world, but still.  Sylvando can spam the cheaper Hustle Dances dang near forever.  Also, Beguile is just such a horrible you-lose status if ignored.  Did Panaceas cure it?  I definitely recall slotting Sylvando in vs. all the bosses that used Beguile, most infamously PC/PS4 Dora-in-Grey, but also Jinxed Jade and the like.

Also, Sap is certainly very good (I really like Veronica for having the Oomphle / Sap combo straight-up), but I wouldn't exactly call it strictly better than Oomph / Oomphle.  A lot of bosses like to take double or triple turns which causes Sap to wear off unnaturally fast, and Sap can also fail.  I think of Sap as something to use on turn 3 or 4 if everybody got buffed up and the situation is good, so time to go in for major damage.  Oomphle'ing is something that is done turns 1-2 as part of the setup that's always safe to do and never a wasted turn.  (It doesn't come up too much, but pretty sure you keep buffs in the backline, so you can even Oomphle a fighter then hide them in the backline with a party switch if you're under heavy pressure and can't afford to go on offense yet.)  That said, especially in most of Act 2 where Veronica/Serena isn't in play, running at least 2/3 of Rab / 8th / Sylvando is pretty dang useful to keep the buff & healz train up.

Finally, looking back at my old ranking, looks like I forgot to mention Quadraslash for Luminary.  Yeah, that's a totally rad ability for random-clearing, and is still useful vs. bosses if you want to do damage but you're debuffed or otherwise not buffed, or there's adds that require multitarget abilities.