Hinna should have been playable (Post Chapter 3 spoilers)

[Servant_HolyKnight]

It was just odd that you leave your first town, playing the Soul Guard, and your charge, the Alm of Fire, was a glorified healbot. On paper that makes sense, until you start getting the other Alms who not only can defend themselves but can use the relics like Val to class change. The story makes a plot point to say how Val can turn monsters into crystal, both as a gameplay element and what ulimately happens as a plot twist in the very short Chapter 3. Namely, in turning Hinna into one.

But I think we all saw that tragedy coming a mile away, as well as Eoren's descent to villainy after dooming his hometown just to save his waifu.

I mean, really. There's no given reason why Hinna doesn't also use the relics. Or how she's not adept in fighting when there are skill seeds that could bolster her fighting potential, even to reinforce a bit more on healing. Her spells feel like they come too slow, and while the buffs are great, she can't even seem to sling a fireball or enchant our weapons to deal elemental damage. She quickly loses relevance and agency.

Had she been playable, the players could have been attached more, learning a few high powered spells in her first relics and some more costume changes. Other games gave us characters that died because of story reasons even though they could provide more stat-growth wise. Aerith from FF7, Shinjiro from Persona 3, Vandham from Xenoblade Chronicles 2. If weapons and armor were a concern, she could have just stuck with one weapon type for all classes (as your fellow Alms shared one or two weapons from the first three relics) and her mana plot points could have been converted into Gold Clovers or something, like a final "gift" left in the pendant Val gave her.

It's not like the game could have made it work. In the prologue you played as Eoren, mostly to get a feel for the basic combat rules. Just seems weird to have only five playable characters and four of them only represent the eight elements.

Instead, we just had a character that we knew wasn't going to make it to the end so we were conditioned to not really pay attention to her. Which is saying something when your whole party is full of characters on a pilgrimage to die for the habitually evil Mana Tree.

[Rose]

Aesh should have been playable as well, but I guess they wanted to cut some cost somewhere lol I feel like all the repeat battles really made this game boring tbh. More content in general would have rounded out the game play imo.

[marsHm311oW]

Use the spoiler, instead of just writing, possible spoiler -.-

[Αη Ιnτellecτual Tsiραr]

I see your point but in some cases a playable character dying and being inaccessible can be annoying in its own right. If she was playable and then left permanently I would miss being able to use her. I didn't see her death coming and I liked having a party member that was just sort of supporting. Would have preferred that from Aesh but so far he keeps leaving the party on a whim. I'd say there are pro and cons to both. If a character dies, it can be annoying if you liked them or their play style and lose access. Although it does help make it feel less likely that they could die, for sure. I do think it's a bit weird because given the game's story it seems like most alms can't fight at all. So it's odd that Val's party has almost everyone capable of fighting. Morley I can understand as he was a mercenary, but how would Julei or Careena know how to fight.

Also, you spoiled 3 other unrelated games in your post without spoiler tags so I'd edit that out of consideration for others.

[the_atolm]

Hina, both in visual design and function as an NPC support character, is also clearly a reference to the heroine of Seiken Densetsu 1 (like Val's design is clearly intended to be reminiscent of Seiken Densetsu 1's main character), so having her tag along and occasionally fire off a heal is its own little callback/reference/bit of fan service.