Double Dragon 1 (Arcade)
Jick
You knew when you heard this song, business was gonna pick up…
I want more posts in this classic thread. Let’s make it happen.
Here is my tier list for Final Fantasy X HD Remaster. Please keep in mind that I’m taking the entire game into account, not just the endgame or the story. I’m also taking into account the differences in characters’ stats and attack properties in the HD Remaster. The game changes significantly from the original PS2 release. Furthermore, I’m mostly thinking about these characters “as intended,” by which I mean I’m thinking of them in terms of them taking the paths on the Sphere Grid that the game suggests unless Sphere Grid deviation makes things significantly easier early on.
S: Rikku, Wakka
A: Yuna, Tidus
B: Lulu, Auron
C: Kimahri
Rikku is pretty much indispensable from the moment she joins the party. The items she can steal and use are overpowered as shit, and Mix is the best Overdrive type in the game. It is extremely plausible to get endgame items fairly early on with her, thus allowing for moves like Super Mighty G and single-use items like Supreme Gems to be on hand as early as Gagazet. In the endgame, the ease of farming items for Hyper Mighty G and Final Elixir makes her the most useful character in the game by far, and she’s the first character to learn Bribe on top of all that. She’s almost in a tier by herself.
Wakka is another character who could theoretically never leave your party from the moment he arrives because of his insane Strength and Accuracy allowing him to hit almost anything, and hit it really hard. Right away he has Dark Attack to make enemies miss, which is so underrated in the early game. As soon as you leave Luca, you gain access to Attack Reels, which is one of the deadliest Overdrives in the game. As the game goes on, he doesn’t gain any new gimmicks like other characters do, either. He just stays reliable. One of the more interesting things about him, also, is how easy it is for him to take a quick detour into Tidus’s section of the Sphere Grid and learn Cheer and Haste, which buff him immensely before he goes right back to his own path.
Yuna will forever be the only character who can summon, and that’s a huge plus point for the entire game. The HD Remaster buffs her aeons considerably, with Oblivion taking the title of ‘most damaging attack’ away from Attack Reels with the drawback being that it’s likely you’ll only get to use it once in any given fight. Zanmato is also on hand as a “skip fight” option for those of us who feel the need to use it. Besides offering the utility of summoned aeons, Yuna is your primary healer for much of the game, granting her a huge plus point that makes her a mainstay. The endgame sees her mostly sticking to that supporting role and occasionally summoning an aeon if she can find a good window to use a double whammy of Delta Attack or Oblivion, but that’s what edges her out over Tidus in endgame parties for me: there’s always that option, whereas with Tidus there’s no reason not to just Entrust his gauge to Wakka.
Tidus is the best character for a lot of the story thanks to his access to the overpowered Haste and Hastega spells as well as his high Agility and Strength. He’s often going to act first in any fight that features him until Rikku is recruited, and as time goes on he maintains a lot of his utility. It’s only in the endgame that he really drops off, unfortunately, as Blitz Ace is just a weaker, more difficult Overdrive than Attack Reels and I often find myself having Tidus just Entrust to get Wakka ready again that much faster. He, Wakka, and Rikku are also the only characters who can fight underwater, so it’s good that they’re three of the strongest characters because you’re going to need to use them.
Lulu is effectively mandatory in the early and middle parts of the game to efficiently kill specific enemy types. The more of the Sphere Grid everyone covers, the less utility Lulu has, with the final nail in her coffin coming when you can give attack spells to Yuna as the endgame kicks in. Yes, it’s cool that you can Doublecast Ultima for a bit, but Lulu isn’t the only character who can do that, honestly, and she never gains any other benefits to using her at the highest levels of play unless you’re that wedded to seeing those titties jiggle when you win.
Auron, like Lulu, is very useful early on after you acquire him with a huge dropoff later on. His Piercing weapons and obscene Strength have him mowing down early armored enemies in a way nobody else really can, and when coupled with his Break attacks and Threaten, he’s got surprising utility. Unfortunately, he requires at least one endgame boss kill (Dark Valefor) to gain access to all of his Overdrives, and the reward for doing that is… not really much. Banishing Blade has its moments in early parts of Monster Arena farming, I guess, but Tornado just sucks a fat one given what you have to go through to get it. Kind of a gimmick character, really.
Kimahri is the butt of many a FFX player’s cruel jokes and while he’s not as useless as a lot of people think he is, he’s not great and he’s never great. The biggest draw he has are that his Ronso Rage overdrives can trivialize otherwise difficult fights against certain mundane foes up through the fights inside of Sin. Doom and Stone Breath are both high-utility attacks and as characters are able to use Overdrives more frequently, Kimahri can be tagged in to do these moves and then pop back out again. For the majority of the game, though, from his arrival to the endgame, he’s a weaker version of whichever character whose Sphere Grid path you put him on. Maybe if you powerlevel him very early, you can teach him Steal and Use by the time you’re in Kilika, but that’s not really necessary or worth the effort when you can just as easily mow through the game up to Moonflow with no big loss.
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Oh yeah this thread. I like this thread.
Monster Train clan tiers
From the perspective of using them at Covenant 25, both as primary faction and support faction.
A - Awoken (Green), Stygian (Purple)
B+ - Hellhorned (Red)
B- - Remnant (Blue)
C - Umbra (Orange)
The main problems you want to solve in Monster Train are killing bosses, killing small damaging backrankers, killing tanky frontliners, and keeping your units alive. The Awoken champion does almost all of these things by itself. By being a naturally tanky unit she keeps the rest of the floor alive, letting big hitters behind her do the work. Spikes can completely trivialize backrankers, and her two other abilities are also very powerful, particularly her ability to draw cards. Easily the best champion in the game, which already takes the faction far as a primary faction.
However, without the champion the faction is extremely strong. Animus of Will scales absurdly well due to it being a Multistrike 2-unit, and can singlehandedly take care of the early game for you if you slap some upgrades and buffs on it. There’s also two Sweep-units available, and the Hollows are excellent walls that scale very well if you have healing and regen in your deck. Speaking of healing and regen, the basic card adds both of these things and remains useful throughout the game, and stacking regen is absurdly strong even against Purge-Seraph if you have enough damage behind whatever’s regenning. The faction also has access to excellent floor-manipulation. The only downsides of the faction are the lack of good damage spells (which you’ll probably get from your support faction) and how rubbish certain clan-specific relics are. Otherwise the faction is consistent and powerful, and probably the easiest faction to get wins with.
Stygian is all about damage spells and debuffs. You want AoE damage, damage-over-time-effects, massive single target nukes, or removing attack power from the target? Stygian does all of these things, and often with disgusting efficiency. Sap in particular can absolutely trivialize boss fights if you get enough stacks, and it’s entirely possible to stack so much frostbite on Seraph that you kill him before his combat phases, or so much Spell Weakness that he takes several thousand damage from a single nuke. It’s good.
Even without the spells the faction has notable strong points though. The champion only takes one floor slot and can get either sweep + spell weakness or frostbite, both extremely powerful if you can avoid getting killed by enemies with thorn or sweep. Speaking of sweep, the faction has two units with sweep and frostbite/spell weakness which is really strong, Titan Sentry is one of the best tanks in the game, and the totems the faction can put down are very powerful, particularly the one that adds sap. For weaknesses though: the faction lacks floor manipulation of any kind, Frozen Lance is probably the worst basic card in the game, the champion will occasionally randomly get killed (and you have to say no to challenges that involve spikes), and you can’t set up on the 3rd floor if you have spell weakness minions, but otherwise the faction is super strong.
Hellhorned are big and dumb and generally just punch things / get punched. The champion is probably the hardest one to use optimally, but if you get some slay triggers on him and a good wall, he can kill most of the things in the game by himself. The faction otherwise has a lot of units that just has really good stats and are good at punching things really hard. Imps are also useful on occasion, the faction has access to armor (really valuable since armor doesn’t get purged by Seraph like most buffs), there are two solid floor manipulation spells accessible, Torch is the best early game basic card (though it drops off unless you get spell power), several amazing scaling spells, probably the most powerful set of relics in the game, and purely by accident the faction works really really well with Volatile Gauge. The problem is just a matter of consistency: if you can’t keep everything alive, you die. And it’s often more problematic to keep the faction alive compared to other factions. The aforementioned champion can snowball really hard, but he can also just… not end up doing that much. It’s easier for things to go bad with this faction than the two above, which puts it a step below them.
Burnout is the main gimmick and main weakness of Remnant. The limits this puts on your deck building, and how it can literally just kill you if you draw things in the wrong order, bumps the faction down quite far. If you manage to get a decks that lets you play around it, and don’t end up drawing the cards in the wrong order, the faction gives you a very powerful champion, units that earn you loads of extra gold, a very powerful starting card in Dregs, an excellent floor manipulation spell, and Concealing Smoke which is one of the most broken cards in the game. There’s a lot of other gimmicks like Reform that are hard to use but work well if you set it up properly. But really, burnout is the limiting factor here. It will kill your runs on occasion, even if you try to account for it. A lot of the units don’t really end up as good late game damage dealer either (with some obvious exceptions), and there’s a distinct lack of great damage spells.
The cool looking Umbra has a very interesting gimmick and plays a lot with the floor space mechanics that set Monster Train apart as a deckbuilder-game. And this is a problem, because they use far too much energy on floor space and said gimmick. The champion is easily the worst in the game almost regardless of which mode you end up using, and Shadesplitter fuels the Morsel-gimmick but the reward for using it isn’t great, making it a very lackluster basic card. There’s also a fair amount of not-great units around, and the faction has access to a lot of damage shield cards, a buff that is surprisingly poor as a damage mitigation buff. There’s a floor manipulation spell present, but it’s also easily the worst one in the game, though better than nothing.
That’s not to say faction is all bad. Crucible Collector is one of the best tanking units in the game if you can feed it enough morsels, which you should be able to do easily if you put a Morselmaker / Morselmaster behind him (and then still have room for a good damage dealer, which is the hard part). Morsels give stat increases, not just buffs, so they can’t be purged. And speaking of stat increases, if you manage to get a big Overgorger (which takes work but is definitely doable), that thing can solo most of the mid- and late game, especially if you copy it. The faction struggles for floor space but does have cards to remedy this; you’d rather not use deck space on this admittedly, but it can still help quite a lot if used right. And finally, Umbra has very good damage spells of every variety, probably the best selling point of the clan if it’s a support clan even though Stygian is mostly better than them at it. So it can definitely do work, but, they have to work harder than the other clans for less reward (unless the aforementioned fed Overgorger comes into play, admittedly, those are insane if you get them).
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Magic: The Gathering
From highest tier to lowest tier:
Blue
Black
Red
Green
White
Fell Seal: Arbiter’s Mark Class Tiers
S: Gunner, Vampire, Princess
A: Sorcerer, Duelist, Gambler, War Mage, Assassin, Bounty Hunter, Ranger, Lord, Gadgeteer, Samurai, Lich, Lord
B: Knight, Templar, Mender, Peddler, Scoundrel, Druid, Werewolf, Wizard, Vessel, Exiled
C: Marked, Anatomist, Alchemystic, Mercenary, Spymaster, Fellblade
D: Plague Doctor, Demon Knight, Wrangler, Beastmaster
Been thinking about replaying Final Fantasy XIII lately and as such I’ve been going over my tier list. Just like with my FFX HD tiers, these are ranking the viability of the characters based on both story and endgame content.
S: Lightning
A: Vanille, Hope
B: Fang, Sazh
C: Snow
Lightning is the best character from the moment the game begins to the moment you get the platinum trophy. Her stats are obscene, her attack speed with weapons and magic is blistering fast, and Army of One is one of the best Full ATB skills in the game. She gets access to the most basic and essential Roles as well, meaning she has a place in any party. You spend more time with her than anyone else as well, which means you have the most opportunity to plan for the endgame in terms of weapon gathering. Lightning just rules.
Vanille is just really weird tbh. She starts out as a nuker/healer in the same vein as Hope, but later on she expands to be the best Saboteur. Her high Magic and improved healing with the Healer’s Staff makes her really useful from start to finish just like Lightning, but she lacks Lightning’s offensive power until the endgame. When farming materials and gil, she is utterly indispensable thanks to her unique Full ATB skill, Death, allowing her to instakill any enemy in the game other than maybe bosses. Farming Adamantoises is a massive pain in the ass without her. Vanille’s biggest drawbacks are an overall lack of offense and her abysmal attack speed. Chaining with Tri-disaster is very difficult with her unless you’ve got one of the quicker Ravagers backing her up. It’s generally a really bad idea to have her be a solo Ravager.
Hope has the highest Magic stat and that makes him the strongest Ravager. If it weren’t for the Healer’s Staff, he’d be the strongest Medic as well. Maybe the most straightforward character other than Lightning, he can attack very quickly and excels at buffs and heals as well. He is also a horrid leader with the lowest HP in the party, making him a typical “glass cannon” archetype. He is, however, one third of the best story party from chapters ten through thirteen, along with…
Fang. If we’re just going by overall stats, growth, and utility in endgame, Fang would be much higher on the tier list, somewhere between Lightning and Vanille. However, the fact is you don’t actually have access to her until the game’s almost over. The other five party members assemble, split apart, assemble, and split apart again before Fang is playable, and by then you might have already leveled up a ton of weapons and accessories. Her starting on the back foot the way she does hurts her immensely. Once she’s caught up, though, she’s borderline unstoppable. Great stats, excellent attack speed, and a solid trio of Roles. Fun fact: Fang is the only party member to not have access to the Ravager role until the endgame.
Sazh is always good, but unlike the four characters above him, he’s never great. A reliable Ravager and very strong Synergist, he doesn’t have quite the oomph of other characters at key points in the game. His abysmal attack speed doesn’t help.
Snow is pretty good for a little while, then you hit Chapter Ten and he starts to suck a fat one. The problem is that he is clearly designed for the Sentinel role, but during the back end of the story mode there’s little to no need for it. As endgame kicks in, Snow improves thanks to his good stats and quick attacks (maybe the fastest physical attacker?), but no other character suffers quite as hard as Chapter Ten through Thirteen Snow does, and that puts him at the bottom. Nobody is Kimahri levels of useless in Final Fantasy XIII, though.
Tiers on chess openings anyone?
Prime Adriana Lima
Other women