That being said, however, I may not have time to finish my LLG at the moment (i swear ill get it finished before 2.0 guys), but I will most certainly have the spare time to take a little bit out of my weeks in order to do some more write-ups on the Brave New World roster. Why? Well, aside from the fact that I love making big walls of text about BNW almost as much as some of you love reading my big walls of text, I feel like I've put enough time, blood, sweat, and tears into enjoying BNW that I could have a bit of fun with weighing each character by their overall value to a party at varying points in the game and how they synergize with other teammates' abilities, what encounters/dungeons they have the most value in, what bosses they are the most effective against, and overall how much fun they are to use.
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So anyway, I will be doing in-depth for each permanent roster character (apologies to any diehard fans of Biggs, Wedge, moogles not named Mog, Banon, Ghost(s), or the big man Leo) and I'll be looking at a handful of things throughout the course of the game. In no particular order:
•Availability
basically, how often the character is able to be used, how early or far into the story that they get initially recruited, which game arcs they can be used for and for how long, and how much effort/time is needed to rerecruit them in the WoR
•Advantages
what that character is good at, what skills they have available to them, what spells they get and when they get them, how useful those spells are and how effective their skills are in both mandatory parties and parties where they are available to be selected
•Disadvantages
the opposite of above, what they struggle with, what kinds of enemies/encounters that give them trouble, what dungeons/arcs/bosses they aren't the most optimal for, and any otherwise unmentioned points in the game where it would be more preferable for the average player to have another character instead of them
•Combat Synergy
how well the character functions relative to the rest of their party in sections where they are required or where team customization is limited, who they function the best with in a given party and what makes the pair/team work, how their role in battle affects and influences the roles of the rest of the party, and so on
•Versatility
how many overall distinct options/builds an individual has available to them, which builds are available when during the game, how easy or difficult it is for them to switch roles between or even during combat, and how well the character can perform under emergency situations where they have to weave back and forth between several roles in the event that something like a Total Party Wipe or Game Over is rapidly approaching
•Individuality
what makes the character stand out from the rest of the roster, what makes them unique and what roles can be performed by them better than any other character, what roles are unique to them, how they stand out compared to the rest of the roster, and overall what makes a player decide to pick them over someone else who could perform a similar role in combat
It should be noted that, while I will try and make these as objective as possible, I am only human and there may be personal biases in play. In order to keep the two as separate as possible, I will devote an entire section to how I personally liked or disliked using the character and my overall subjective opinion on them. Yes, expect a good deal of ego-stroking over Strago and shitting on Locke. In addition, for shits and giggles, I'll be adding an extra line at the end of each of my subjective analyses that captures the character's overall value and feel in exactly ten words. Fuck it, right?
It should also be noted that there won't be any kind of numerical scale or x/10 scale for this. To try and rank the BNW roster would feel like trying to push even more subjective opinions into the write-ups, and I don't want to have to pick a single character that stands out above the rest. Additionally, there really isn't a single "best" character in BNW, and to try and select one out of the fourteen would defeat the purpose of looking at them all to see what they are and aren't effective at. Yes, some characters have more options than others, but BNW's biggest strength is that every character feels like their own individual self, and not some named Ultima cannon like in vanilla. Each unit has their own individual values and merits, and I want to show those off instead of just making a list from worst to best.
Good? Good. I'll be going in the order of when each character appears in the ending escape sequence for no reason other than why not, so first up will be Cyan Garamonde.
