Aegil has defense a mage wouldn't have. And her general state is far higher than Marie as well as better healing. Though, the best thing about her is the Protect Me! skill, that boost defense on all units next to her, which you'll really want for the end game. After some leveling, she makes Marie looks like shit, the only reason you want to keep Marie is to use her MP sharing spell. Though, in one of the routes, you might want to drop healers entirely and use a full offensive team.
As for Kay, a certain black knight would join later on if you meet the requirement. Hell be replacing for Kay for the end game, but end game only though, as he has inferior sates all around, but a very insane ultimate. Has like... 13 range with ridiculous damage. You'll be using that OHKO later bosses.
1) Defense on a mage matters? If they're getting hit, they're fucked anyways. >.>
2) Martyr is godly right now since I'm trying to use Igraine and she can only cast like two spells. MP pool of fail.
I think I'll hold out on Aegil for now, but I'll still keep that option in mind. Are you sure that skill increases the defense of the units around her and not just herself? Because if it's the latter (and I think that's what the description said), that'd be really useless.
13 range with ridiculous damage? That sounds pretty awesome if it's actually usable.
However, once you no longer need to double-check every movement range, the game starts to become addicting. The gameplay is pretty original and refreshing, though there are balance issues with the mages. The game is challenging, but the challenge never seems like a bad thing due to the way the restart options work. Like in Fire Emblem, there are severe penalties for a character dying, but they are permanent, so it's something you can fix. More importantly, if you DO screw-up on a map, you can retry the mission with all of the EXP you gained from that attempt. Now, even if you messed up and have to play the mission again, at least you haven't just spent the past 30 minutes (or longer) wasting your time (*cough*FE*cough*). You can still lose all that experience, though, so there's still that level of challenge - you have to pay attention to your situation, if you're losing, it's best to plan on restarting and keeping the experience rather than charging into certain death. The fact that restarting a mission also restores any items you used is just icing.
The mages do get better. Selmer is terrible at first, but Cotton is good, and Igraine does seem solid right now. Don't let the earlygame fool you like it did me. >.>
Also, there's the fact that RoS missions are much more fast paced than FE missions, so even if Serdic dies and you get a game over, it doesn't seem like as much time is lost (and often times the missions are just plain shorter).
Second try, now I'm fully-staffed and fully-stocked and have learned to abuse the restart option. On chapter 9, trying to get Cotton the secret Mage, and really enjoying myself.
Still abusing Margus' Zone of Control ability. Not really enjoying trying to level up Marie the Healer, and I despise my mage. Ansom might be the most surprisingly useful character ever and I don't think I'd ever be able to finish the game without such a good earlygame Archer. Serdic is decent though the whole "game ends if he dies" thing sucks, it makes him hard to level through restart abuse. Kay the Cavalier is beastly simply because his MOV allows him to rack up EXP like nobody's business. Unlike most SRPGs, this game doesn't throw Cavaliers at you like they're going out of style, so Kay actually feels pretty useful and unique.
Cotton's requirement is actually in mission 8. You have to make sure no civilians die. You then get her after mission 9 (which can only be accessed if you saved the civilians in mission 8).
Marie is insanely easy to level up, actually. She gets more EXP the more HP she heals, so just keep healing and you can get level ups in two turns sometimes. She's a good three levels higher than anyone but Cotton for me right now, I think.
Don't agree with Kay hype, but I bet that's just a difference in playstyles.
I try to round out my team with fast-moving dodgy sword-users, but those seem to be pretty plentiful in the earlygame, I've already got three (Serdic, Sasha, and Owl). Sasha's easy to level, but not very good, I traded her out for Owl (who's pretty amusing, if unimportant, storywise) and sent Sasha shopping (since she has the best affinity for it plus a skill which increases her chances at shopping well) and sent the Mage or Marie on Errands depending on who I wasn't using.
Screw the sword users. They have crap for defense and the evade doesn't make up for it. Unless that gets better if they level up? I dunno, I only levelled up Sasha a few times and it didn't save her.
In terms of how I think RoS characters are in the DL setting - the skills seem pretty hit-or-miss. Some skills would transfer over tremendously well (the ones that tend to be useless in-game), while the ones which are useful in-game (like Zone of Control or "Heals a Party Member who walks by you automatically") would be pretty useless in a DL-setting. The mix of the two makes me want to see a stat topic for this eventually.
Activated skills will suck a lot in the DL since they all last like one turn, and everyone is average speed. Passives will likely be pretty good though.
Also, Zone of Control reduces melee damage taken, so it's not useless in the DL by any means.
And I might do a stat topic for this, but the skill point distributions are going to be a pain in the ass to figure out optimally. At least the physical damage formula is easy~
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Rondo of Swords - Fuck mission 18. It's not hard to beat, but it is hard to get to the prisoners in time to recruit them. First time, I didn't think there was a time limit, so that obviously failed. Second time, I tried blitzing towards the doors, but then LOL REINFORCEMENTS happened and raped my mages. Well, just Igraine, I guess. Guess I'll just keep the mages moving forward even if they can attack until after the reinforcements show up. Other option is to swap Igraine out for Kay this mission.
The World Ends With You - I'm on Shiki Day 4. This game's seriously a mixed bag.
Gameplay is... unique, to say the least. The dual-screen usage is a good idea, and the variety in attacks is nice. The problem I have is that the stylus controls are way too fucking picky. Sometimes I'll do a slash or whatever the pin's attack is and nothing will happen. Apparently I'm not slashing in the exact right direction or what the fuck? The concept is nice, but there's some serious issues here.
Plot? Better than the average RPG quite easily so far. But since I'm not far in, let's leave it at that. Dialogue's got style, though.
Music - Meh. Fits the game, I suppose.
Graphics - Art style vaguely annoys me, but that's a minor complaint.
Interface - Terrible. The stats for items show up in this really tiny text that 90% of the time I can't even read. I went to a shop and looked at the items that they were selling. It shows you the stats, but doesn't show how they compare to what you're wearing. The game doesn't even warn you that you can't equip a piece of equipment due to low bravery. Well, shit, I CAN'T EVEN READ THE BRAVERY NUMBERS SO HOW THE FUCK AM I SUPPOSED TO KNOW WHETHER I CAN EQUIP IT OR NOT. It's 2008. This shit is inexcusable. A simple "Your bravery is too low to equip this item, do you still want to buy it?" would have sufficed, but nooo, can't do that. Fuck this.
Food system - Is cool. Way to raise stats outside of battle, but still limited while not screwing you over if you don't do things exactly the right way? Awesome.
Misc. stuff - Encounter control is awesome. No random encounters, but as many fights as you want. Level Up/Down option is something that needs to be in more RPGs, even if there is no benefit to lowering a level, it's still nice to be able to do that for challenge if you want. Flow of the game is also pretty solid. It keeps moving all the time, but doesn't rush you. Shop system... eh, I bet it'd be cool if the shop interface didn't fail at life.
The game's unique and has style, I'll give it that, but there's some serious issues here. We'll see what happens as the game goes on though.
