Wake up people, I replayed shadows of Valentia.
Did it on Hard/Classic too, this time, so for once I have the 'hardest difficulty' experience. I was overusing the 'I've been defeated but I can't fall here'(/retreat) mechanic to be honest but if I didn't I wouldn't have been able to do it without casualties soo...
Now, the obligatory character tier list, but only based on gameplay and not on how much I like them (except for the yellow tier ig)
I honestly can't say too much about the characters I barely used. Like, I tried to train the Pegasus sisters but Palla and Catria did not make any impression because their damage output was pretty bad. The rest was just higher level than the rest of my units but still somehow worse so I didn't even bother.
Leon, Valbar and Clive honestly just make me feel bad because I tried to make them work but Leon and Clive kept getting one-rounded without being able to do substantial amoubts of damage and Valbar was not at all doing the tanking he should have done.
I honestly liked to use all the units in the middle tier but if I sent all of them together to defeat an enemy squad half their size they wouldn't be able to defeat them in one turn so it's really just a shame. They're still relatively good units and either deal somewhat high damage or have somewhat high defense. So they're, in one word, passable.
The orange tier consists of units that are really good as long as I don't accidentally trade away the weapon or ring they have. The mages in this tier tend to be too fragile to be in enemy range too often, Faye is too slow to consistently Nosferatu tank despite her high defense and Jesse would not do as much damage if he didn't have his 60%crit Brave sword. I could go on but to put it short, these characters are able to defeat a few enemies on their own when the situation is in their favour.
The babygurls are most accurately characterized by saying that I've put each of them into a group of enemies on their own and they have held their own, thrived even. Claire is a very consistent Mogall killer, with high enough speed to double them. Lukas has not had any encounter with a physical enemy that dealt more than 1 damage exactly to him since act one and, additionally to that, he also has high speed and attack. So really, he's good for any physical confrontation. Tobin, as my favourite character in this game (although my phone just autocorrected his name to Robin) has enjoyed a lot of training as an archer and was so much better than Python on the same level it's not even funny. He's got somewhat high defense and very high skill, reaching respectable crit chances without any support. I honestly know his crit quotes by heart so that's got to tell you how good he is. Silque is a pretty good Nosferatu tank and her invoke soldiers are good mage killers and distractions to boot.
Lastly, Alm and Celica. They got to their max level very fast and when I started using them less, I really felt their absence. They have both accomplished several solos when my other characters were too fragile to fight and are still just as crucial in gameplay even when you ignore their status as the main characters.
