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I've been thinking about the final 23 characters that Haseo ends up with in his "Friends list".

Alkaid (Twin Blade)
Antares (Blade Brandier)
Atoli (Harvest Cleric)
Asta (Temporary Edge Punisher)
The Azure's (Listed as ??? but Balmung and Orca are Blade Brandier's and Kite is a Twin Blade)
Bordeaux (Blade Brandier)
Endrance (Blade Brandier)
Gaspard (Shadow Warlock)
IYOTEN (Temporary Blade Brandier)
Kaede (Blade Brandier)
Kuhn (Steam Gunner)
Matsu (Adept Rogue with Steam Gunner and Edge Punisher chosen at Character Creation)
Natsume (Twin Blade)
Pi (Tribal Grappler)
Piros the 3rd (Lord Partizan)
Sakubo (Shadow Warlock)
Shino (Harvest Cleric)
Silabus (Blade Brandier)
Tabby (Tribal Grappler)
Yata (Macabre Dancer)
Zelkova (Flick Reaper)

Now, this list seem very unbalanced from a gameplay standpoint. 7 Blade Brandiers, 2 of each Harvest Cleric, Shadow Warlock, Tribal Grappler, and Twin Blades; and 1 of each Lord Partizan, Macabre Dancer, Steam Gunner, Flick Reaper, and Edge Punisher. Matsu being a special case where he plays as a Steam Gunner and chooses to not use his Edge Punisher part, due to being a plot point for this choice.

I then start thinking about it from another point. In MMORPG's, players usually play mostly physical classes while magician classes come in second, support classes in third, and other classes which are oddball types rarely played fourth.
In the .hack verse, players prefer anything but Adept Rogues, even though some people play them. It's even weirder that Haseo encounters many Edge Punisher's but never actually has one in his Friends List, aside from Asta, who is temporary, and Matsu, who chooses not to use it.

Could this be a reference to how MMORPG players choose classes? Just something that I was thinking about.
Discuss.

I think it's just CC2 preferring Blade Brandiers over everything else. Sometimes that happens. Like in KoF with Yamazaki. Apparently the game designers liked him so much they gave him more and more moves until he was broken.

Megidolaon: AKA why Alkaid stole the spotlight in Volume 2?

Oh,dear! I'm really happy to see someone has seen the same fault I have. I complained about it in the Vol 3 Flaws topics, but lemme go over it here, too.

You have 7 blade brandiers. Ok , given you get the Azures and nothing can be done about them , I believe this could still have been avoided and used to balance the choices more : Antares could have been an Edge Punisher and Kaede's class could've been changed to Lady Partisan.

The fact that Pi is the only Grappler in almost all the game is very sad, since I had no more use for Fists from the end of Volume 2 to the end of Vol 3. If Sirius joined you ( I believe he had enough reasons to ) , that could be avoided . Thankfully Tabby comes later, but I think of him as a worthy option ( unique PC , relevant to story , had reasons to join unlike your antagonists , and is the only one of a beast tribe you meet among the characters )

The Edge balance could be well kept if Gabi was added to the allies. An interesting addition, btw. Getting both guild masters in Vol.3 , and that would leave you with at least a player from each beast tribe.


I believe it's good if if you have at least two of each. That would make :

Shino/Atoli
Silabus/Endrance
Alkaid/Natsume
Gabi/Antares
Pi/Tabby(Sirius)
Kaede/Piros
Sakubo/Gaspard
Kunh/Matsu

Zelkova and Yata would be lonely . D: But you can wield a scythe, nonetheless. However, it's important to note that the Macabre Dancer class was left very unattended in this game. Only a few weapons , and not much time to explore him. At least on Zelkova's case, Haseo had plenty of time to spend using scythes. This brings up the point that Alkaid was absent most of the time, so you had to use your twin blades and got no other party member with them,too.
( But I still think that the most absurd of it all is having no Edge Punisher. It's a huge hole in all of it, imo. You've got at least one of all others. Why,Antares,why? He seemed quite the Edge P , I was surprised and disappointed in seeing a Blade Brandier there.)

I wish that Aina could've joined you after all that was over ( or even take up the role of Rebirth's Epitaph user ) , and maybe she could've been a third warlock/cleric ( to match /contrast Bo ) or a Macabre Dancer herself . But if so , getting two Macabre dancers in the same volume would repeat what happened to the Blade Brandiers, and they didn't have much fans to begin with. Maybe Yata should've joined sooner? Or having Hiiragi on Volume 2 develop some Endrance-Rivalry and desire to save Sakaki and tend after Atoli/ follow Matsu along ?

Maybe having Hetero join you after he came back to normal as Flick Reaper or Edge Punisher would've helped balance it out ?

I feel this game's huge flaw was that twas extremely unbalanced regarding jobs.