Opinion on "Tides of the Foscari" new characters.

[Caz]

This is my opinion of the characters as of the second day of the DLC "Tides of the Foscari" being out. It contains possible spoilers so if you don't like being spoiled and read anyway, that's on you. I think this DLC easily outshines the first one and I really enjoyed the first DLC. This only covers the characters (minus two) and doesn't have anything about the two new maps.

Note: I ran each of the new characters as 1 Weapon Challege (1WC for the rest of the post) on my first run with each of them. I also categorize them into two groups. Base and Unlocks. The Base group are the ones that feel like you "start with these" and the Unlocks are the ones that you use the Base to unlock.

If you agree, cool. If you don't agree, cool. If you can't disagreeing without being rude, seek professional help from your local bakery, you're not yourself when you're hungry.

---Base Characters---

Eleanor (the Mage). This was a very fun addition. The Spell weapon set is just plain fun. SpellString is the most fun of the three visually and how it works. SpellStream felt more like a gimped version of Santa Water, and it actually took me about three minutes before I even noticed its visual effect (and that was with me actually looking for it); it just didn't stand out much. SpellStrike doesn't have much of a visual aspect (especially compared to SpellStream), but it's undeniably fun watching it roombroom an area around you. All three start off pretty weak, but quickly ramp up in power, as is the case with most weapons in the game. The way it spawns each one as a pickup as you level is also a neat uniqueness. The evolution (SpellStorm) is a visual feast. And like a storm, it washes away the enemies. Only two complaints about it, though. One, need more info about this "singularity". What triggers it, how often, what does it do, how much does it increase the power of SpellStorm... None of this is in the game (that I can find). Two, if you're going to add something with camera shake, provide an option to turn that nonsense off. For some of us, that creates eye strain or other issues (i know some people with motion sickness issues that even minor shake can make a game unplayable). Easily the best of the additions in this DLC.

Maruto (the Warrior). Eksizzibur (im not typing that out again, it's Esk from here on) is OK. It never becomes OP-powerful as a single weapon, tho. Certainly not like Eleanor's (the Mage) weapon. Kinda like Whip, it's lackluster at the start. And, like Whip, it becomes better as it levels up. The combo was an amusing surprise, with the "HULKSMASH" crater it does. But the evolution is... well, "meh" would be generous. Legionnaire was cool for about five seconds until it was obvious how underwhelming it is. Still, Maruto is definitely better than Keitha.

Keitha (the Thief). Flash Arrow. This one as a 1WC is painful. The weapon, pre-evo, is just pathetic on its own, making it torture for the 1WC. It's certainly doable (far more easy than Genevieve was pre-evo), but it was a struggle for many levels. You'll spend most of your time chicken hunting since you essentially end up running through hordes of baddies to grab gems. Millionaire, though, was a nice change to the limited area Keitha has pre-evo. The way the AOE works, only triggering in the area where you're hitting the enemies added an interesting strategical level for the later minutes (25-30). Though I will say that the coin aspect wasn't noticeable. I had a bunch of coins in an area and picked them all up in a short time and didn't notice anything different.

For all three Base characters, their charcter passive wasn't really noticeable. Eleanor I suppose is the exception, but only because it's how the Spell set spawns.

Now for the unlocks...
---Unlock Characters---

Luminaire (the Angel?). The first half of her passive I found endlessly amusing. Having a Rosary on every level up? I'm sure it will stop being amusing at some point, but it hasn't yet. The temp boost after reviving, tho... Well, you have to die for that to matter. Since that's a rare occurrence that part of her passive becomes inconsequential. Prismatic Missile, Lumi's weapon, is odd. I say that because the hitbox isn't clear. I saw baddies dying well outside the visual effect toward the bottom of the screen, but not above it. The visual part is certainly nice, however. The spiral effect and the way it bends as it follows you is oddly calming. It does take some getting used to at its lower levels. This works well in the 1WC. But the evolution. I wasn't sure how well this Spinning Doily from Heaven was going to work since I didn't really notice it doing much when I ran it with other weapons. Luminaire (the evo), the Spinning Doily from Heaven, basically let me AFK from the moment I got it. It absolutely decimates everything. It hits fast and hard and pretty much anything in existence. About two minutes after getting the Spinning Doily from Heaven, nothing but elites/bosses made it on to the screen. And some of them didn't even make that far. I don't know how much it increases the value of gems and gold by, so I can't really say if this is something valuable or not. An increase is an increase, though, so worth it if you like having this Spinning Doily from Heaven in your build. Lumi was a fun 1WC.

Je-Ne-Viv (the Amalgamation). It will literally eat the world. It will literally eat the world, which is very amusing when you don't know what it's going to to. Still amusing even when you do. Shadow Servant I will talk about below. Je-Ne-Viv's actual weapon is the Bubble of Can't-Touch-This, performed by MC Hammer of Death. Pretty much nothing gets past it. And it scales with Magnet size. Like REALLY scales with it. I think it may also scale with Area, but I'd have to test more to be sure. I know it scales with the Limit Break area, it eventually covered the entire screen. This is a fun "Queen Sigma" type of character. Je-Ne-Viv also procs Genevieve's World Eater passive. I couldn't tell what triggered it, whether it was levels of time, and since I only did one run with this character I can't be certain. When I ran this character, though, I'm not sure if it's intended or not, but here's briefly what happened. I got the weapon evo'd and reached Limit Break. That was around the 16 minute mark. I laid down to pet my cat and accidentally fell asleep. A few hours later, it was still goihng. 230 minutes in, multiple Red Deaths doing their "stop touching me" dance around me and an empty HP bar. Not sure if this is part of this character or if the game bugged out. Bug or feature, I found it amusing.

Did you think I forgot about the most tortuous 1WC character in this DLC? I wish I could...
Genevieve (the .... purple glowy girl that levitates?). uuggghhh.... I thought Keitha was painful when I did her first run. Before I get into that, Genevieve's two part passive is solid. Vaccuum on level up? Yes please. Very useful early on (especially considering her weapon). The other half of her passive, World Eater, triggers on "receiving fatal damage". This seemed misleading since I died, revived, and then it went off. After I revived. Knowing what World Eater does, I'm pretty sure it's meant to happen BEFORE you die. I could be wrong, but again, knowing what it does, that seems like the intent. World Eater kills pretty much every non-elite on the screen and heals you for a crazy amount for every enemy that died (kinda hard to be sure with a hundred green numbers popping up all at once and my HP bar going from half to full instantly cuz of the healing).
So, why was Genevieve the hardest (by far) for this 1WC? Shadow Servant. This weapon... Pre-evo, this is by far the worst weapon to experience in a 1WC run. I've attempted Christine using only Pentagram and that didn't feel as frustrating as Shadow Servant. It's not a bad weapon, it's just feels horrible on its own. The sneks do their own thing. It's completely random. You cannot know where they will spawn in from, the direction they'll go, or who they will hit. This was levels of frustration I haven't had in this game previously. I legitimately started thinking it was not doable as a 1WC. But it is. It's definitely hard, though. You're constantly having to move to avoid being hit and you have no reliable way of breaking objects to get chickens. I had to restart four times before I got a run that was successful. Christine is the only other 1WC I've had a similar experience with. But it IS doable. The slowing mechanic of the sneks makes this manageable. Not sure when I crested the hill of "i can do this", but once I did, the run was still a struggle and stayed tight until.... Ophion. I had no idea what to expect from this evolution. But what I got was awesome. Huge orbs on the ground of literal death. Each tick of damage has a small chance of insta-killing the enemy. I can't say for certain if this works on the Atlanteans or not, but I think may have on one of them. He died a lot faster than it seemed he should have. Unlike Shadow Servant, Ophion scales very well with Area. By the time I hit Limit Break, I was able to sit still. Genevieve has been the hardest, most frustrating, and most potent "i did it!" 1WC I've experienced to date in this game.

I haven't bothered to play Sammy or Rottin'Ghoul yet so I can't really comment on either. I cleared everything in less than half a day so by the time I fell asleep with Je-Ne-Viv running, I was pretty much done for a couple days. After Genevieve, I need a few days to recover. lol

Shadow Servant is easily the most horrible feeling weapon I've experienced when using it on its own. I am in no way saying it's a bad weapon or poorly designed. It's certainly neither of those. It just feels horrendous on its own due to how unpredictable it is. And that's fine. Not every weapon should be amazing on its own (Spell set...). I actually love that Shadow Servant is so crappy by itself. It was a damn good challenge because of how the weapon behaves. It pairs exceptionally well some other weapons.

If you bothered to read all of this random stranger on the interweb's opinion of (most of) the new characters in the DLC, cheers mate. If not, meh, not everyone likes to read that much stuff, no problems with that.

TLDR - Eleanor is fun, Luminaire is lol, Shadow Servant made me cry. "10/10 would cry again. Someday." -IGN

[Okhu]

Hate Keitha. Like the Warrior (the only one to make it the full 30 minutes) Mage is alright too. Haven't unlocked the others yet.

[ICountFrom0]

I'm looking forward to trying the rest, so far I've only done spell and sword.

[Draconic Creature]

One thing to keep in mind regarding Maruto is that his weapon's evolution has its new attack doing RETALIATION DAMAGE on top of already retaliating in its base form, it is absolutely bonkers strong if you combine it with the divine bloodline arcana because of that.
This and his temporary armour bonus whenever he's hit means he is an absolute BEAST with retaliation damage. You might die once to start with while playing with them eventually, but after that you should have so much HP and power that you shouldn't have any issues at all.

[Caz]

Originally posted by Draconic Creature:

One thing to keep in mind regarding Maruto is that his weapon's evolution has its new attack doing RETALIATION DAMAGE on top of already retaliating in its base form, it is absolutely bonkers strong if you combine it with the divine bloodline arcana because of that.
This and his temporary armour bonus whenever he's hit means he is an absolute BEAST with retaliation damage. You might die once to start with while playing with them eventually, but after that you should have so much HP and power that you shouldn't have any issues at all.

I thought I noticed him hitting faster when I ran through mobs, but I thought that was due to the Arcana since I was running with it. Good to know the weapon itself does that, too.

[Lexyvil]

I love Keitha. I'm a sucker for the weakest of weapons slowly becoming the strongest of weapons at the end. The arrow really does major most damage with high luck, especially when bouncing.

[Powerful Pygmy]

The characters having something to do is the best part of the DLC for me, while borespell had nice characters and gear, that small change between the DLC's makes the Foscari characters more enjoyable to play.

I hope they do something with the world eater ability, sadly you cant break out of boss rash.

[Aristocratic Cthulhu]

Sammy: Quite an easy 1WC actually, just make sure to pick up Disco of Gold quickly, it might even be worth using Inverse to buy a second Arcana just to get it for the challenge if you're not playing on one of the two new DLC maps.

Rottin' Ghoul: I only played him once so far and that was a 1WC. Started with Silent Old Sanctuary and then picked up Gemini at the 11 minute mark. The weapon killed both the 20 minute and 25 minute bosses before they were halfway across the screen. And yes, that was with me standing around with my thumb up my ass.

[なかの31]

For Keitha to get a bit more bearable, you need to get the arcana of making her arrows bounce as one of the first arcanas. That made her somewhat more bearable to play with.

As for Genevieve, she's probably the worst character in the dlc.
Not only because of her weapon, but she seems to make all the monsters slower, so playing as her is really boring.
She gets a bit better once you get to upgrade her weapon, which makes her turn into literally a nuke.

[Aristocratic Cthulhu]

Originally posted by Nakano29:

For Keitha to get a bit more bearable, you need to get the arcana of making her arrows bounce as one of the first arcanas. That made her somewhat more bearable to play with.

As for Genevieve, she's probably the worst character in the dlc.
Not only because of her weapon, but she seems to make all the monsters slower, so playing as her is really boring.
She gets a bit better once you get to upgrade her weapon, which makes her turn into literally a nuke.

Her slowing effect seems to be bugged. In the beta branch it slows all monsters down to a crawl. In the main branch it doesn't seem to do anything at all.

[Tuskai]

Ge-Ne-Viv's World Eater triggers every 6 levels, because... Six is the DEVIL. She also summons Elanor's spells at level 10/20/30 and gets the Vaccum effect I think every level after she World Eaters.

Also, if it wasn't obvious by the name, Ge-ne-viv is literally just Genevieve crossed with a red reaper, you can easily make out Genevieve's dress and long blonde hair if you look at the sprite at a 90 degree angle, which is cool XD

[なかの31]

Ge-Ne-Viv is also fused with Eleanor, for some reason.

[Caz]

Originally posted by Nakano29:

For Keitha to get a bit more bearable, you need to get the arcana of making her arrows bounce as one of the first arcanas. That made her somewhat more bearable to play with.

I kinda figured that would make her less of a struggle, but as it was my first run with her, I took Silent Old Sanctuary (out of habit for 1WC). I'll be trying this next time I run a 1WC with her.

Originally posted by Tuskai:

Ge-Ne-Viv's World Eater triggers every 6 levels, because... Six is the DEVIL. She also summons Elanor's spells at level 10/20/30 and gets the Vaccum effect I think every level after she World Eaters.

I thought it might be every six levels, but I was so tired by the time I got to her run I barely paid attention to details like that. lol

[Desolate Pond]

I had no trouble at all at the start of my Genevieve's 1WC; the extra attacks from Gemini (which I took at the start instead of SoS) seemed to do fine in keeping the hoards away until the point where the evolved weapon turned the entire screen into a black void of death. Only 'died' (hit 0 hp and triggered her passive, which saved her) one time, by walking in an Atlantean by accident.

[Outsider]

Basic trio are meh and boring.
Secret characters are all great with some cool implied lore in them.

[Syphael]

For Keitha, use Iron Blue Will for your arcana and it makes the character shine in closed spaces.

For Maruto, use Divine Bloodline and all the defense releated accessories... Armor, Hollow Heart, etc. I got to 15,000 health and about 9000% might by the end of my run. Without evolution the character can be a bit tough like Keitha for the 1WC.