any character that you think the community has underrated or otherwise misunderstood can be an answer, please back up your answer with facts about the character like what they can do better than some other characters. If it’s in a certain lp context(Iron man, substitute, no shop/vendor, 0%growths,etc) please state that it is in said context.
I might make some character guides if I like what I see and I know about the character.
A lot of people say that Roy is bad. Whether it’s to do with his middling stats, poor utility, or very late promotion. But he is incredibly useful for his main niche. He can seize chapters. Good luck doing that with anyone else.
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I’ve said it before, but I think Darros deserves more appreciation. His bases are actually solid on the higher difficulties.
The fe6 knight trio because armor triangle attack is basically a guaranteed crit, and when it’s big boy Barth who has a ton of strength it’s basically an easy kill, and if you’re clever you can pull it off multiple times in a single turn.
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FE1 Tomas.
Give him 2 levels and promote him, suddenly you have a second Jeorge.
The devil axe in 11, no seriously.
It’s not a character but it’s so good early on when you’re stuck with a bunch of lame units. Every enemy killed in H5 is a massive deal and when you’re very much unlikely to double if your name isn’t Caeda, high accurate single hit damage output is a good trait to have. Reason why it’s relevant to this is that it singlehandedly gives some real garbage units in an orthodox setting (i.e. Bord and Darros, rip Cord) a use. Even after you start getting some better units/exp on the good ones, it still sticks around as a very strong weapon. I also think this is the best devil axe in the series in the sense that they finally made it worth the risk.
Beyond that, 11 Bantu for similar reasons. Decent single-hit damage output for 2 or 3 chapters after he joins, higher than what many can do at the time.
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I think it’s fun that IS gave us a middling Lord unit to protect - wish we had more lords with this type of design vs. solo material / best unit in game.
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People downplay Hicks and Brighton. On outdoor maps they have access to all kinds of axes sans battle axe (the garbage one), silver axe (the first one takes like three hundred years to appear anyway), and master axe (brave axe access compensates for that). Of course they’re awful indoors but that goes for like every mount including Finn. They have the potential to oneround stuff with effective mount on a multitude of chapters, but people like to conveniently forget that in favour of anything they deem “more useful”. Not to mention Brighton has the potential to oneround anything on enemy phase, and Hicks is very bulky (more than you’d expect from a rand axe cav).
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Preach!
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Jaffar.
Part of why people don’t acknowledge his greatness is probably due to the recruitment shenanigans. And people seem to generally say that classes locked to one weapon type are undesirable.
But his stats are very good, and Silencer has a pretty generous activation rate IMO. You can even OHK the final boss with it, unlike in FE8.
EDIT: And right… he’s necessary for that gaiden chapter, I believe.
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Personally I think the main character should be a bit above average, or at least have some niche other than being required to seize chapters. I don’t really enjoy constant escort missions or benching a unit only to have to rescue carry them across the map to complete it.
I really like the ‘Call’ command I added to my own hack. When used at the start of your turn, all player units are summoned to the nearest free square beside you. Of course, it would need to be finessed if you were to have chapters where splitting up your party is necessary. I also don’t have any required units in my game - you can use whoever you want. But I still make your starter a little bit special for funsies.
Maaayybbee in a game with ‘Call’ and some special utility (say a thief lord) I could enjoy protecting a middling stats main char.
If anything, Jaffar is very overrated by casuals like me that thinks he looks friggin’ cool as heck.
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Depends overall on the design of your game. Roy’s hurt mostly by his late promo and the huge seize maps. His stats aren’t stellar but his rep would be better in a slightly different context imo.
I like the premise of the lord being like a chess king, but it’s certainly less popular and deviates from the meta that IS has followed for years now.
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I’m going to say Rebecca. No, please hear me out.
She has excellent growth rates (60% speed in GBAFE is pretty huge), and in fact her only weaknesses are her relatively low bases (Which are still higher than Wolt’s and Neimi’s, and with a 40% growth in STR all you need is an energy ring to fix her STR issue and she one-rounds a lot) and “her archer class”. I’m putting this in quotes because archers are not as terrible in FE7 as one may think.
After you’re done with Lyn’s story, the game basically has at least one ballista every 3 chapters, however the only ones who can use them are Rebecca and Louise.
I’m not saying she’s godlike, but she is very underrated IMO.
Boey. Boey and Mae are roughly equal as units, but lately I’ve actually come to believe Boey is outright better than Mae for a few reasons. His extra bulk makes him not die as fast in act 2, and the priory fountains can patch up his offenses. If he doesn’t ORKO, you just take an extra turn or two to clean stuff up, just like how Mae has to take an extra turn or two to hang back if she’s not bulky enough to kill everything at once. So pretty much the same in act 2, and in act 3 neither does a whole lot. Then in act 4 they get to promote and throw around Sagittae/Seraphim and have a good time. So overall, pretty equal.
Ah, but why do I think Boey is better now? Well, a buddy of mine introduced me to an interesting strat meant for a run without backtracking (that means no promoting Palla and Atlas before the desert). Give the sea shrine exp fountains and act 2 golden apple to Boey at the end of the act, and now you have a promoted Boey rolling into act 3. It’s awesome, and something that Mae explicitly cannot do because of her higher promotion level and the fact that priestess has 1 movement in sands for no good reason (also swords at 1 range on EP is bad too). Go, Big Boey!
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Valbar in echoes because he is just a beatstick and physical threats on celicas path exist. Not saying that he is one of the better units or anything, just that he is not irredeemably crappy as people say. His bigger weakness are witches because of their infinite range, but they rarely become a real issue until final map.
Good thing there literally isn’t one in Hector mode!
I’m more offended by the Wil erasure than the Rebecca defense, honestly.
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Knoll. Instant promotion to summoner gives him some great utility.
I think people are starting to come around on him recently, but I always advocated for him.
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A lot of people say that Serra isn’t a very good unit in FE7. After all, Priscilla exists, and she comes only a few chapters after Serra. Priscilla gets you Raven, she has a horse, and she has more movement. Plus, Anima magic (Thunder tome, specifically) tends to be better than light magic until the endgame when the final bosses have painful dark magic tomes.
All of those criticisms are fine, however, they don’t take into account the fact that Serra has cute pink pigtails, a sassy personality, and the funniest supports in the game. For those players who understand fine culture, they will more easily understand that Serra is the superior unit.
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Serra is clearly outclassed but it’s impossible to be an outright bad unit in GBAFE most of the time if you’re a staffer with availability.
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