For vanilla fans, there is Wil. For lovers of stats, there is Crowe. For lovers of protracted arguments about tiering, there is Sam. But for me, there is only
Marcello (Temple of Ardesia)
Marcello is a man with a funny mustache. He talks constantly about his “peerless skillz”, which include his hundred-arrows technique. He is, in fact, full of himself. But is he wrong? His stats seem to indicate one arrow, really. He has high Strength and a decent Strength growth, and reasonable Speed but a middling Speed growth. Wherefore, then, does he speak of a hundred arrows?
That’s right, this guy has an in-story super technique that’s represented immediately in gameplay by his prf. At first blush, this is already a pretty fun prf. It has low Mt, but it’s brave with 50 crit, and comes with a chance of Astra. However, what the game does not immediately inform you is that a chance of Astra in this case means 100%.
As a reminder, Astra hits 5 times in a row at 1/2 displayed damage. Combined with brave, this means that each Blitz Bow attack fired off deals a minimum of 5x displayed damage (with some damage loss due to rounding errors), before factoring in the 50% base crit rate. Combined with his mighty might, Marcello is a delete button, plain and simple.
Now, a delete button is not particularly interesting on its own, but how does this play out in game? The Blitz Bow has massive 96 uses. If you ration carefully and get lucky with crits, you can usually spend 2-4 uses on on-par enemies that are just out of range of your shortbow or longbow and get an otherwise undeserved kill. However, you can also choose to blow 10-20 shots on a single target in order to kill a boss that is otherwise far outside of Marcello’s ORKO paygrade. Temple of Ardesia is a long hack, and although Marcello is not playable in Part 2, nobody in the cast has perfect availability, and the fact that he’s in your starting team means his availability is as high as it gets. In other words, the decision to nuke with the Blitz Bow becomes a genuinely meaningful one across Ardesia’s massive 33 chapters (+19 gaidens, the majority of which follow chapters where Marcello is available).
This resource management minigame even extends to individual chapters, rather than across an entire run. Siege warfare eventually becomes a core component of lategame Ardesia chapters, and many maps have ballista that can create an advantage. Generally, you have a good number of units that can attempt to double enemy siegers if they’re holding a ballista or bulky siege tome. However, Ardesia has no shortage of status staves too, and these enemies are not guaranteed to be weighed down by their weapons. That’s where a likely unintended side-effect of Marcello’s Blitz Bow comes in handy: Blitz Bow’s Astra is applied to ballistae that Marcello rides. At the cost of additional shots from a given ballista, you can secure a kill on targets otherwise outside of ballista ORKO range, making him a unique siege tool that can either help chip existing siege targets, or, if your action economy is already overextended, spend your chapter-limited siege ammunition to absolutely nuke some guy right now.
Marcello’s gameplay intricacies extend into his friendships as well. He’s part of a trio of buds with Sero and Nazir, your thief and pirate that both have the ability to steal. While other games have triangle attacks, Marcello, Sero, and Nazir have a different unique dynamic. You see, most lategame Ardesia bosses come with Hoplon Guards, but are not innately immune to crits via skill. As such, one potent strategy for dealing with bosses is to first rip off the Hoplon Guard with one of Marcello’s two buds, and then unload into the boss’s face with the Blitz Bow. You can also choose to simply fire into the boss for 5x damage, but, again, this costs a lot of uses.
“Does Hammerne break this guy in half?” You can actually buy Hammernes at one point, they cost 21k a pop and there are better targets, like the S-rank wind tome that has Galeforce attached. I still repaired the Blitz Bow once, though, and with careful management, that’s all you should need.
Narratively, Marcello is one of the more well-defined and funny units in Ardesia. He is every bit the braggart in his character description, up to the point where he speaks in the third person because “Marcello is too strong to use only one person to speak. He needs two more.” He has incredibly random battle quotes where he will just challenge bosses he has no relation to whatsoever to showdowns to prove his skillz are superior. At one point, the lords invite everyone into Marcello’s house and then one of the steeds shits on his floor.
Truly, the perfect romhack archer.
Also he spells skillz like that in-universe.
