All Round Characters and Formation Strategies

[Vincent Vingerhut]

1/ I would like to ask which Characters are perfect all rounders, meaning that you can use them both for physical attacks as well as magical attacks and support.

2/ Also I would like to ask what kind of formation stategy you use. With this I mean, in what combination are you using the magicians, front row fighters, all rounders etc etc in a formation.

3/ How are do you combine the Short, Medium or Long range character, balanced or a preference for any range.

4/ And how important do you value the Unite attacks, do prefer multiple possible unites, single unite or none.

5/ How do you use the space to bring along extra characters. Do you use this space to tag along characters to add certain statics and skills, or do you have it free for reserve battle characters.
---------------------------------------------------------

For me:
1: Killey, Lorelai and Zweig were very usefull all rounders. Altough later on I didnt bring Zweig along anymore, as I found his skills lacking compared to Lorelai and Killey. Also Mathias is a good allrounder.

2: I Usally had 2 front row fighters (Richard and Hazuki or Isabelle), 2 All Rounders (Lorelai and Killey or Mathias) and 1 Magician (Levi)

3: I liked using Cathari, but later she had little to offer, since her magic wasnt any good. Her long range was the only advantage and I changed her in for an extra front row fighter. Since then I usually focused on Short and Medium ranges. I dont use any long range attackers, unless they are good with magic.

4: At first I tried to make a formation with which I would have both a single focussed hit Unite and all hit Unite. But it was difficult to make such formation because I lacked the space for it. I tried having both the Unite of Cathari, Isabel and Zerase and the Unite of Matias and Isabel. But with such formation I only had room for 1 extra character, which was unsatisfactory given that most of the members of the formation did not prove well to combine physical attacks and magics.
Overall I tried to make a formation that could always easily switch between physical attacks and magic.

5: I usually tagged along Eggbert for the potch and Babbage for the treasure hunt. The other two spaces I reserved either for mission characters, a reserve magician like Zerase and a reserve All rounder like Mathias/Zweig or an Attacker like Isabelle/Cathari.

[Justice Johnny]

1.) Perfect all-rounders who can be effective with both magical and physical attacks are the Prince, Lyon, Miakis, Kyle, Killey and Lorelai. Norma can get three rune slots, and can dish up to four attacks, but she only has one free skill slot, and I'm not sure about her physical attacks.

2.) I don't think I understand this part... Anyway, for me, obviously it's short-rangers in front, mid-rangers in the middle and long-rangers at the back. :|

3.) I don't really care for this. I usually have two short-rangers (Georg, Belcoot, Miakis, Isabel), three mid-rangers (Prince, Lyon, Zegai) and one long-ranger (Cathari or Killey).

4.) I didn't care for the unite attacks in the game. To be honest, they're quite weak in this installment. In previous Suikodens, single-target unites usually do 2x damage, but here, it's only like 1.2x damage. The only unite attack I cared about was Prince and Sialeeds' Royal Power, and that was only at the beginning of the game.

5.) At the start, it's always Babbage, Egbert, Marina and Murad. Once I get the Advanced Magic, I boost Norma's Potch Finder to SS and replace Egbert with her. Once I get Retso, I replace Babbage with him. Marina and Murad are must's, since the only healing I rely on in battle is using the Eyeball Rings.
_________________
"Oranges can't fit into circles because rectangles are made of cheese."

[Vincent Vingerhut]

[Elzamine]

1. The Prince is the obvious main all arounder. I find Kyle is pretty good for that as well, too. I use Lun and Rahal off and on as well. I tend to try out a lot of characters, but those are my basics. I'm also trying to find a way to make Ernst work well, not doing all that great though.

2. For strategy I'm more of a heavy hitter with some healing mages. I almost always use two long range people. Faylen is my favorite, but I make her all out attack and set her up with double damage runes. I like to use an all around long range sometimes, Sharmista a lot of the time, once in awhile I use Urda, but I'm sort of disappointed with her. If I bring a different healer though I'll take Saigiri as another just attacking long range. My short and medium ranges vary. I always take Belcoot and he's always jammed in the front. He's my basic tank anyway.. so tank in front, two long range in back, the prince somewhere and then my other two characters vary. I Take Nick and Axe sometimes, or boot a long range fighter and take Roy, Richard and and Nick. I use a physical attack based team mainly though. I don't like any of the mages really.. Kisara and Sharmista are the closest I get to mages.

3. I really like long range attack for some reason, but a lot of the characters I like are short range, so I have to work with what I can. I switch my parties around a lot. I end up taking Richard, Roy and Nick a lot because I get a double unite with the three of them and then the Prince and Roy also have a unite (Which I love for some reason haha) Most of the time it's based on who i like most at the time though, I'll admit.

4. I like unites, but I don't find I use them that much. Not many of them are that useful really. I use the Nick and Ax unite the most because it hits everyone and I just think it's cute. So by default I just tend to use single attacks.

5. I usually like to take two only support characters and then usually jam Lyon in one spot and an extra person I like at the time into another. I bring Marina as of late, as well as Egbert. Since I use Faylen her treasure hunt skill kicks in. Later in the game my need for potch goes down so I drop Egbert and just take Marina, Lyon and whoever I feel like for attack characters. I never used Marina in my first run through but this new game + I take her all the time.

So basically here's a rundown of who I usually take.. ideal anyway:

- Belcoot (tank in front)
- Richard (offensive main)
- Nick (att support - 3 slots weee)
- Roy (att support, unites)
- Prince (healer, attack otherwise)
- Faylen (long range attack, treasure hunt)

- Marina (healer)
- Ax (alternate unite)
- Sharmista (long range, healer)
- Lyon

I use the formation that ups all attributes by 10.. Belcoot, Nick and Richard up front, Faylen, Roy and Prince in the back half.
_________________

-My DeviantArt-

[Archy]

1. Prince, Rahal, Kyle, Lorelai, Killey, Miakis, Lyon.

2. I use any, but most of the time, I use 2S, 2M, 2L. Myt strategy? "Dish out pain without stupid Runes." I use the Tiger Formation, since Illusion is too good.

3. . . . . . . . . . .

4. The only unite attack worth talking about is Fate.

5. I used Egbert, til Norma comes along. And also Zweig and Lorelai for Treasure Hunt (lower than Babbage, but I use Sindar Surge once in awhile.)

My party would look like this:

Georg/Galleon/Isabel
Belcoot/Richard/Kyle/Rahal
Lyon/Miakis
Prince
Cathari/Bernadette
Killey

Once in awhile I also use this, in Hungry Wolf formation:

Georg Kyle Miakis
Prince Lyon Galleon (he's M)
_________________

[fuji]

1/ I came up with this list: Killey, Lyon, Miakis, Kyle, Hero, Bernadette, Ernst, Lorelai and Lun.


2/ My formation is dependant on who I bring with me. Usually in the Sorcery with a tank, mage, ranged and then fill out the rest with characters that have various uses. One particular group I have fun with is Belcoot, Lyon, Hero, Killey, Saigiri and Cathari in the Arrow Stance. I like to put together themed groups. A heavy magical group, a ranged group, physical groups.... I like to just decide how I want to play for a bit and choose characters and formation accordingly. Cathari is just about always in my party though (until I started a new game+)

3/ As mentioned above, if I want to go all-out ranged, I will load up a ranged group, stick someone like Richard, Belcoot or Hazuki up front and roll 3-4 L range characters. Or take another formation and exploit it another way. I have had a lot of fun using lots of the characters because the formation system allowed me so much freedom.

4/ I value unites differently depending on what I'm doing. For levelling or item hunting, I will favour unites that hit groups of enemies. If I'm in a story sequence, I will go with single-target unites. I will always have Miakis or Lyon in my party (even for that small time you can have neither) because of that unite. I guess you could say I value some unites.

5/ Again, it depends on what I'm doing. I always have room for Egbert and Norma in my entourage. If I'm going into a tough dungeon I will bring Murad. If it's a tough boss fight, I bring Maria. If I'm hunting for items, I bring Babbage and whomever else has Treasure Hunt. I rarely use it for reserve characters. Jeane, Norma and early on Lorelai being the only ones because they also have great support skills on top of being good characters.
_________________
______ "We're still flying"

___ "That's not much"

"It's enough"

[Fudozukushi]

1/ The Prince, Lyon, Kyle, Killey, Miakis, Norma, Lorelai, and Zweig to a small degree.

2/ I stick with Standard Formation for the most part. The Prince never leaves the first position and I have Lyon as either the second or fourth. Mages in back and Short range heavy hitters in front. I usually try to balance out my formation with two mages and at least one Short Range Heavy Hitter.

3/ Always have 2 Mediums at least, I try to keep 3 Long ranges and one short range, though I'll change randomly.

4/ I usually stick with the 1.2x damage Unites, they have no drawbacks and are easy to come accross.

5/ Marina always comes with me, I also try to bring at least one other fighter and someone who has the Combat Teacher Skill so I can improve skills on the fly.
_________________
Pizza Hut supports the rebellion!

[Falcon Critical]

My first time through I went for some extremes as apposed to my normal all rounder build. I dislike 'mage' characters so there were still some all rounders with me.

Formation/Strategy
I had Isabel out front with Firefly and Fury. I was using the arrow stance so she was out front on her own, which meant any spells attacking a row or AOE would hit her only, and with a lot of heavy armor adding fire resistance she was basically impervious to damage even without any of the silly runes like wall or steel.

All Rounders
The all rounders I used first off were mainly Killey, Hero5, Miakis and Lorelai. This left specialist spots for my tank ( Isabel ), and two dedicated physical hitters ( Mathias, Lyon ). In the times that Lyon and Miakis were not both available I had Lorelai in as an extra all rounder.

I'll sum each of them up:

Killey
Since he's not the phyiscal powerhouse he was in GS2 ( mainly due to his attack being one hit only ) I concentrated on his magic power with a rage rune and had him using the chain magic formation on bosses. With a fury rune also equipped he does up to 1000 damage per hit physically, and with a magic build he is good all round. Plus he looks stylish in red ;p He is hurt by having "treasure hunt" locked into one of his two skill slots, allowing less customisation.

Lorelai
I didn't really want to use her after I first got her but she kept jumping into my party. Her whip does multiple hits a lot and she's no slouch with magic, very useful with fast casts of kindness rain. Again she has a skill slot locked into "Treasure Hunt".

Lyon
Though she can be build in many ways I went with Fury/Violence on her early on. With this setup anyone would be a powerhouse and she hits more than once frequently. Her magic develops pretty slowly early in the game only picking up later on when she gets her Dusk rune. Therefore I rely on hero5 for magic more than her.

Miakis
Lots of hits and speed with sheild magic makes her a good all rounder. The main issue I had with Miakis was first the "she's not lyon" mentality, and secondly that the sheild rune gets worse and worse each game. I had to rush the end of the game because my PS2 is busted so didn't have much time to try other runes on her. With lots and lots of hits per round and higher magic than Lyon she is certainly an all rounder though.

Mathias
Can be classed as an all rounder since his magic power is decent and he has a Cyclone rune to start with. I actually found better use out of him by putting warrior and double-strike on him meaning his "Mow-Down" does insane damage. He is an all rounder but I personally think he's better suited to a physical build. Annoying thing is that he only has ONE finishing line, which gets a bit tedious.
_________________

[Justice Johnny]

[Vincent Vingerhut]