Enrhyn (Fire Emblem Advance: Homecoming)
Ests kinda suck shit. I think they rock and will use them at every conceivable opportunity and then send screenshots of their green numbers to my friends to shill whatever hack they’re in, but objectively they’re a bit shit. Because of the opportunity cost of letting them steal experience and the time cost of getting them to catch up, yeah, but most of the time they never offer anything you don’t already have. Nino one-rounds everything a few chapters after she joins, but Pent one-rounds everything zero chapters after he joins and also has a cooler sprite.
The obvious solution I’ve been seeing a lot of hacks doing lately is to give ests some sorta niche other units can’t fill, whether through giving them a gonzo PRF or nutso stats in a setting where that actually matters. Most ests get both.
Enrhyn gets both, but unlike most situations, both factors actually matter.
Without getting into anything spoilery, Enrhyn already has it pretty bad in her first appearance. She shows up at the start of lategame in an interlude where you can choose from 2 of 5 units to recruit. There’s some good units in that pile! There’s Eskuldur from the last post! Enrhyn looks like this!
She’s very obviously off her ass on something!
She’s even getting dissed in the tutorial box!
I honestly took this completely at face value and thought she was a fallback monk in case you needed another one for some reason. I brought her along because I thought it would be funny if her growths were massive, and they actually were. I definitely would have used her to endgame regardless because ests are fun, but she’s got two things going for her because of some Homecoming-specific quirks.
The First Thing: Her PRF really is that good.
Every mage in Homecoming gets a PRF, and they’re all really good. However, most of them fall off, and a lot don’t really do anything new. Elionwy’s 85 crit tome does a lot of boss killing early on, but she has enough speed to kill low resistance enemies with normal tomes regardless, and her low magic combined with the low might of her PRF doesn’t do much to the exceptions. Trefor’s 1-3 high crit luna is incredible, but with his low speed, he’ll start running out of things to one-round with it. Enrhyn’s PRF instantly slaughters problem targets and never stops.
Enrhyn promotes into a Hexe, a mage with 6 movement who uses occult [dark] and arcana [anima] magic. Hexes are one of the most obnoxious enemy classes to fight, as most units have dogshit resistance except for mages and pegasi. Homecoming’s magic weapon triangle is a magic weapon line, where occult is effective against arcana and no light magic exists, so mages have a hard time pushing against the combined weapon triangle disadvantage and existent resistance stat. Hexes also have just enough bulk to get an incredibly powerful counterattack off most of the time, which is made extremely apparent when one of them has this hack’s version of Nosferatu, and may double slower units that have enough strength to take them out immediately. Ignoring the possibility that they may have a 1-3 range tome equipped, the only safe options for taking Hexes out are Warriors with expensive weapons, Paladins with expensive weapons, and Brilliant Aurora.
Brilliant Aurora has a bunch of secondary effects that seem like a parody of overtuned est PRFs at first, at least to me, but they end up being the best argument for bringing Enrhyn with you. Reaving occult magic is exclusively an upside, and the +50 avoid she gets from doing so makes her the best answer to it on enemy phase. The tome is also effective against occult users, even when they aren’t actually using occult, giving it 39 might against them while also targeting their weak defense stat. Brilliant Aurora is also effective against undead enemies, which make up a large chunk of the enemy forces during her first few available maps.
Just as an example, here’s a 23 strength paladin with a silver lance VS base Enrhyn.
get fucked lorcan
Enrhyn would be great if all she did was kill Hexes and monsters. She does more, which leads into my next point.
The Second Thing: Her stats really are that good.
Enrhyn has a niche already, but it doesn’t take long for her to usurp every other mage’s niche. As I was saying earlier, most mages in Homecoming have iffy stats. The only non-prepromote mage with good magic and speed is Quistan, who sucks ass. The prepromotes have passable statlines that are rapidly eclipsed by your physical fighters, and while the healers have great offenses [albeit low skill], they don’t get PRFs. Enrhyn takes two chapters at most to reach promotion level, at which point she’ll probably have higher stats than most of your magical units, ‘probably’ becoming ‘definitely’ if you keep using her. This would be good regardless, but her growths become really noticeable when they turn her into one of the only units that can one-round consistently in the latter half of Act 3. Stat leads don’t matter in a setting where everyone has massive stats, but in Homecoming, she’s the only realistic option for killing endgame minibosses with Bolting.
i also drew fanart of her because i got bored
