And here's to our one (and probably only) dark horse candidate: Karin, from Thracia 776. Karin is what happens when you take every stereotypical aspect of a Pegasus Knight and amp it up by 11. This applies just as much to the bad stuff as it does to the good stuff and boy does Karin have a lot of flaws.
Low defense and HP? Check. 18 HP and 4 defense is not good if you want to be able to take more than 2 hits. Low strength? Check. In fact, Karin has the worst combat ability of every Pegasus Knight on this list. Karin also has to deal with the fact that Dean exists. Who the heck is Dean you might ask? Well, Dean is a wyvern knight that's super durable, in addition to having base stats that are pretty good. When he shows up he completely outclasses Karin, doing whatever she does better than she can. Karin also has to deal with the fact that dismounting exists in indoor maps. If you recall from my Asvel post, whenever a map takes place indoors high movement characters have to dismount which limits them to 5 movement. They also have to use swords instead of their primary weapon (although she has a higher starting sword rank than a lance rank which is odd). Karin also has a measly Pursuit Critical Coefficient of 1, so she's not going to be landing crits on her second attack, which is sad considering the fact that as a pegasus knight she's going to be doing a lot of double attacking. Speaking of double attacking, Karin's constitution is not that good so be careful what weapon you give her lest she lose too much attack speed to double attack with.
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| Credit to the original artist / person who took this screencap: http://lparchive.org/Fire-Emblem-Thracia-776/Update%2053/ |
So if Karin has all these weaknesses, then why in the heck is she # 7 on this list? Well, like many Pegasus Knights in the series, Karin joins your army really early in the game. She's your only flier for 10 chapters until Dean and Eda crash the party. This is Karin's saving grace since she has A LOT of useful utility between chapters 6 to 13. Whether she's para dropping Leif (Thracia 776 invented the rescue mechanic fyi), visiting villages or, as the above picture shows, eliminating enemy ballistae, Karin will be put to use by the player and is very important to beating the early chapters quickly. The enemies in Thracia 776 have a love affair with ballista so being able to eliminate them quickly is a huge plus in her favor. Even dondon151 has admitted that Chapter 9 gave him trouble until he learned that Karin made it possible to beat that level in 2 turns. (This is where he said it: http://serenesforest.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=33043) ). Karin also has great magic, which in this game also counts as resistance, so she can deal with enemy magic users while also ignoring the legion of status staff users that dominate the later chapters of the game. There are a lot of magic swords in this game so should the player choose to bump up Karin's sword rank she could make fine usage of these weapons.
Overall, Karin has a lot of flaws that are made up for by her amazing utility. Out of all the candidates on this list, Karin's utility is what ultimately sets her apart. It's rare for a character to be on a list like this because of things that they do that aren't combat related, but hey I'm down for uniqueness and Karin is definitely unique.
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