Heyo, played Reverse Recruitment recently and thought to share my opinions. I mentioned in one of your streams that I haven’t done it yet, and I guess I’m rectifying it now.
Disorganized thoughts
I think the earlygame is harder, because I think the early cast is overall worse. The primary “culprit” is Octavia – she is a really shitty lord at base level, with only 1 base Magic, 4 base Speed, and 0 base Luck. She isn’t even capable of doubling Knights, and mine was stat-screwed, which didn’t help (she didn’t level Magic for ~5 consecutive levels despite having an enormous Magic growth). She also can’t even begin to double Knights for quite a while, because her Speed base is really low and her growth there is a coinflip. She is saved a little by having the anti-cav personal weapon, but there aren’t too many enemy cavs for her to kill in the early chapters; I ended up using it as a regular weapon for her, because she only has 5 base Attack with Lightning tomes, and that isn’t killing anything. The brave prf that she receives later certainly helped her, but at that point, I had multiple combat carries that did not include her, so she just did filler combat.
Janna in place of Callahan is also a huge downgrade, because I think her combat contributions are much lesser. I also see Adelhart in place of Sera as a downgrade, and Hildegard instead of Ashe as a sidegrade (same with Cassandra instead of Clement). Vera and Zace really benefit from being available early, though; Vera gets to actually take advantage of her relatively high Speed growth (she joins a bit underleveled in vanilla, in my opinion), while Zace gets to promote into Assassin and combine his good growths (including Magic) with Assassin’s Critical Force skill and buyable Light Brands to become a genuine 1-2 Range juggernaut (I killed the final boss with him in one round with the S-rank sword).
I see Aubrey in place of Lydia as a sidegrade, and I think Flynn instead of Marina is just as mid as vanilla Flynn. Sven and Otto replacing… themselves is quite funny, though that just means their performance doesn’t change much. Oberon joining earlier just makes him Crow 2, while Crow joining a lot later than Oberon joins in vanilla makes him comparatively worse. Early Vivian is pretty awesome to have, I will say that much, although it would be more useful if the units around her were better. My Zace took a while to get rolling, in spite of me praising him earlier, because he was getting Speed screwed (and his Speed growth is massive, just like Octavia’s Magic growth! I have no idea what was going on…), so I didn’t have any units who REALLY benefitted from getting danced (as in, they didn’t really make the maps go by faster).
Not really having an early bow user meant that my bows were lying around unused for quite a while, until I started promoting people. Speaking of bows, Farran joins with 20 base Magic for some reason (this is almost certainly a bug), but he can’t really take advantage of the Mystic Bow, because it’s B rank and he only gets D rank upon promotion, without enough time to reasonably reach B rank without extreme grinding. At least there is Sera to use bows of all ranks in the lategame, although if you’re relying on her for your bow needs, you might as well sell all your bows until the lategame comes, as you’ll be getting excellent bows such as Great Bow and Brave Bow at that point, anyway.
I didn’t end up using any of the armors, including Wilbert, who I know has the Cassandra promotion event that makes him a King. However, who I did end up using a lot was Alanna, who I think is the best unit in the RR version of Blessed Heart, bar none. She joins with amazing base stats, at a point of the game when you have multiple stat boosters to give her, and she has a B rank in light magic + B rank in staves. The Rescue staff is B rank, and you can buy it from a vendor just after she joins – go figure. Of course, she also retains her excellent growth rates from vanilla, but since she can fight enemies immediately instead of relying on staves until her promotion, she can take advantage of these growth rates far more quickly. She ended up being my primary combat carry as soon as I realized she one-rounds enemies at base level with Lightning tomes, and she never really stopped – even in the late-game chapters, I was one-rounding enemies with Lightning, which I thought was pretty ridiculous (and Lightning is obviously not the best weapon she can use at that point, since you have the S-rank light tome). She might just be the best romhack Valkyrie in existence, to be honest, and I’m not exaggerating. She carried immensely.
Rune was also useful, and I liked Aerin as the Gotoh; I think she’s a better Gotoh than Octavia in vanilla, because while Octavia definitely has a place on any endgame team, Aerin just rolls in with her personal weapons and high Movement and kills things with her huge stats. Her offense is stellar, her bulk is solid, her mobility is high, and she has two unique weapons that nobody else can use, anyway. Moreover, I liked Ruby as a mid-game pre-promote; I really like her in vanilla, as well, but Ruby fits the “solid pre-promote with pretty good physical combat” mold quite well. I think her growth version in vanilla is better than her RR version, but her RR version is still a free, solid unit that I couldn’t complain about. I think RR Marina is worse than vanilla Marina, though; in both versions of Blessed Heart, I would classify her as “Myrmidon with severe Strength problems,” but in RR, she joins later and has to compete with Zace, who I think destroys her in every conceivable area. The closest thing to her competition in vanilla is Ruby, but Ruby can’t promote into Assassin, while Marina can, so Marina at least has that over her.
Oh, and I guess I need to say something about Ashe. Worst unit in the RR version of the hack. Vera is arguably a candidate for this title in vanilla, but in RR, Ashe has pretty bad stats and doesn’t fly, while you already had Hildegard and Alistair if you wanted to use cavs. (I didn’t end up using either of them long-term, but Ashe’s bases are so bad that I didn’t even consider using her, either.) At least in vanilla, Ashe has an early join time to her name, but in RR, she doesn’t even have that. Very cringe. At least she joins with a useful anti-wyvern weapon (that I immediately yoinked from her inventory to use with someone more powerful).
All in all, I’d say I enjoyed RR, though it was surprisingly difficult at the beginning and I felt like I didn’t have a lot of good units until the midgame joiners in Alanna/Rune/Ruby started rolling in (and until Zace started actually doubling; I still can’t believe he had this problem with his massive Speed base and growth). I’d definitely recommend playing it once as an alternate experience to whoever wants to play Blessed Heart again.
