Install Steam
login
|
language
简体中文 (Simplified Chinese)
繁體中文 (Traditional Chinese)
日本語 (Japanese)
한국어 (Korean)
ไทย (Thai)
Български (Bulgarian)
Čeština (Czech)
Dansk (Danish)
Deutsch (German)
Español - España (Spanish - Spain)
Español - Latinoamérica (Spanish - Latin America)
Ελληνικά (Greek)
Français (French)
Italiano (Italian)
Bahasa Indonesia (Indonesian)
Magyar (Hungarian)
Nederlands (Dutch)
Norsk (Norwegian)
Polski (Polish)
Português (Portuguese - Portugal)
Português - Brasil (Portuguese - Brazil)
Română (Romanian)
Русский (Russian)
Suomi (Finnish)
Svenska (Swedish)
Türkçe (Turkish)
Tiếng Việt (Vietnamese)
Українська (Ukrainian)
Report a translation problem
Discussions Rules and Guidelines
36 
Report this post
You get a higher rank of that skill.
I dont recall what unique skills the heroines get, so dunno which ones are best.
Tho, its not like it matters that much. Narukana, Euphy, Nozomu are the powerhouses. Zetsu and I forgot his name, white guy, can carry a group. But the rest relies on a stronger group.
I dont remember if the route specific skills change that power dynamic.
I know the scene you are talking about, but I cant recall when it happens in the story and if this version should have it or not.
Btw, if you havent played them yet I'd go for Yumina the Ethereal as well. (https://vndb.org/v1155) It's made by the same core group that made these games. There's another game after that https://vndb.org/v6668 but that one was never translated.
Technically there's one more game.. but that one had a pretty poor story, imo.
Hard to believe its already been 11/14 years since those games were released..
That said, on normal difficulty at least, Satsuki, in her route is actually far more capable than Euphie, and even Nozomu, at least until the later part of it when nozomu gets special moves he doesn't get in the other 'normal' routes. like her attack does 900/1000 where nozomu's name breaker is only 1200/350 or something, her defense thing is like 1200/1000, AND it gives her mana when you use it, allowing her to spam her more expensive attack every turn. nozomu's best was only 750/450, and her special counterspell...uhh. costs 3 mana instead of 2 lol. not sure what t hey were thinking with that one. I was able to solo the first tree guardian (not the 2nd cuz bl ue immunity), and et ce repha with satsuki from full to dead alone.
But yeah, Katima wasn't nearly that level, and I forget what nozomi's was like (like 10 years ago), but I don't remember it being that exciting, certainly not like Esperia who gets an impossible wall defense (as if she wasn't that already), and a lolol I 1shot the final boss spell).
That said I didn't think Aselia was a very good 'main heroine' either. I thought Esperia was by far the better one, but her route storyline sucks, she goes from a super dependable, capable, good at multitasking gentle leader type to a boohoo I'm a hapless maiden in distress even when I'm not even distressed type when she becomes eternal, I hated it.
That said I haven't done Naya's route yet, but before the route-specific sequences, I like her the most because despite remembering her past relationship with Nozomu, she's the one that tries to push him away so he can live his current happy life against her own personal feelings. Makes me think she actually cares via the writing more than the other characters did in much less time spent with her.
It's weird too because I absolutely hate animal-girl anime girls normally.
I did in fact get Yumina, did all 3 routes too. IIRC there were only 3, I don't think there was a 4th secret one or whatever, but it's been years so I forget.
This 4th game you mention is a Xuse game I presume? I was wondering if I should follow xuse in general. Seems weird if EnA is their first, it seems kinda higher budget for a doujin vn compared to what I see based on a glance from others (I only played 3 other VNs, sengoku rance, which had fun gameplay, and the best ng+ system I've ever seen to date, but I can't bring myself to play it again, it's just way to sick for me and Rance is such a turd. kamidori alchemical meister or something? I think it was called? Pretty fun game, really long though, and I don't really think I can bear to play it again, and uhh.. some game I hated the story of about dueling princesses to become the one princess to rule them all or something, but it was like rance and a little bit too much h-content for my tastes, not to mention you romance the 'main' girl who is designed to look like a boy m ore than your 'chosen' girl, and even when you choose one they lose, unless you chose the red fire one I guess, I forget if she's even chooseable. I liked the dolphin pirate princess girl and was peeved she loses anyway.
But yeah I tried to focus on vns that have actual gameplay. But t he Xuse ones actually have stories I kinda enjoy too, the others were too raunchy and less deep for my tastes.
But I mean mainly during the regular route.
Her skills are mixed and typically the damage on it is not high enough to offset that. Most of the time its better to have higher material or force. I consider her as a strong attacker, but not quite on the same level as Euphy or Nozomu. I judge overall character strength by how good they are as allrounders, and Satsuki typically lacks the defenses and sustain for that. Its only at that point that her slightly lacking attack (sometimes) can be an issue.
After all, being able to defeat enemies faster is one way to reduce damage taken.
For you its different now that you have her best skills, but as you level up in the higher difficulties that advantage will become weaker.
By the way, when it comes to attack/defense stats, remember to keep in mind character stats too. Some attacks look deceptively strong or weak, but end up being the other way due to character stats. Like either Jatzieta or Naya has low Force attack skills but her Force stats is really high so it ends up dealing a lot more damage then you would think.
Nozomu for example also has stats buffs that make a lot of difference, and overall better stats scaling then most other characters have.
I forget if I ever played her route. I recall doing Aselia, Tokimi, the 2 friends and the black spirit. I know I didnt do Orpha, but cant recall if I did Esperia or not.
I think I got burned out from playing the game too much, hah. In the end I've played this game a lot more then Aselia. I think I played through it maybe 10 or more times over the years.
No, its "Eternal" like Yumina is. Same-ish staff as Xuse, but different people in charge of the company. Gameplay is pretty similar to Seinarukana, but story is a bit better. But yeah its not translated.
Doujin VN? None of the ones you mentioned would qualify as doujin. They are considered regular games. Rance games dont have voice acting, but they and Eushully games have a lot more effort put into their CGs and other art assets. Usually VN's with gameplay do have worse 3D stuff, and thats one element that this game did a lot better then most its peers.
Eushully, the company that made Kamidori made a lot of other VNs that have a lot of gameplay. However almost none of those are translated. A number of them do atleast have an interface translation, but yeah.
If you dont like Rance, thats too bad. The Rance games actually get translated. (over time.. many years, heh) Most VN's with gameplay unfortunately dont get translated.
Stuff like Aselia, Seinarukana, Yumina and the ones you mention are all from a bit over a decade ago when fan translators back then cared a lot.
Sounds like Princess Waltz. Havent played that one in a loooong time either.
But yeah, overall a shame that many great games arent translated. Even now.
Personally im very glad I used translation tools all those years ago, so I could play many of them regardless.
Oh the route-specific moves don't get rank 2s and 3s for higher difficulties too?
That said I started a hard mode run last night, and to answer my earlier question that you kinda forgot. The new moves you unlock during harder difficulties ARE actually shuffled up a bit out of order. For example, in normal, Katima doesn't get her 4%/200 damage spirit targeting divine-whatever it's called move until after you get narukana. But on Hard I got it right on the 3rd stage, and not because I WANTED it, it was kind of my 'get this one last' move for the associated artifact. I also was able to get ice banisher 3 on setsuki on stage 1, and remember it took forever for her to get ice banisher 2, and you had to make do with energy leak instead (and Energy leak 2 wasn't offered until a stage later on hard).
Yeah I know. You're thinking Naya. Her mag stat leave's even nozomu's attack stat in the dust. Another reason I'm looking forward to her route, if she gets a good all-targeting nuke, you can probably use it even if the enemy has a red spirit with a full-on mind defense all in the defend slot, and she'll still probably 1shot the whole team lol. She already does that with that laser move she has but 6mana cost, ugh. She just needs a 4 cost one and she can probably do that easily anyway. Or better yet, a super 2 cost single move like fireball that can target any. 1shot the red spirit defending then the others with that op stat and skill (if she gets one).
I liked Orpha's route. It's written pretty well and does a good job making things not weird due to her being a loli. She's broken good too. IIRC she gets a really good defend that works great on both P and F, and she gets a broken all-targeting nuke that... I don't remember what it does exactly, but IIRC it shuts down the enemy somehow. I think it sets all their mana to 0 so they sit there like a dumbass or something, and not only that, but it's not an encounter nuke, it's one she can cast every turn, so you can do an entire battle without them retaliating at all, not that anybody but a final boss will even live after 1 or 2.
My fave route was Lesteena's though, but you don't get any broken good moves or whatever for her route. I remember the guy who convinced me that Seinarukana was the best, Lesteena was his LEAST fave route lol. He said it was too sad or something, spoiler, they don't live happily ever after together since she doesn't become an eternal, and she forgets your @#%@ due to eternal magic. Though it has a last minute 'but mayybee', but yeah nothing conclusive.
Oh? Shame. I do think the whole Eternal IP idea is actually really neat, and it's a shame there is no western mainstream equivalent. Actually it's one of my gripes about this game. EnA built something really cool with the setting/lore, but Seinarukana kinda...doesn't really use it due to the whole stuck in the world tree with its own rules shenanigans. I would have loved to play as chaos eternals fighting law eternals and having a storylike built from stuff related to Tokimi and that Priest looking Eternal near the end of EnA and stuff.
Well I define 'doujin' pretty casually. Basically, if it's not a AAA game, it's an indie game mostly. Doujin is kinda the same deal, only for Japanese games. Though 'AA' game companies like Falcom exist, are you saying these games are about the same size as Falcom?
I was actually thinking of giving sengoku rance another go (give my brand new pc that can run cyberpunk at 165fps a workout =P ), it feels like a waste I didn't enjoy its NG+ features (though getting enough ng+ points to be able to 'buy' the 3 moves per turn instead of 2 thing would require guide-dang-it levels of efficiency for a new player I think, I was only able to afford a couple special units or something IIRC after my first game). But the H-scenes are no interest to me at all, actually kinda painful. I'm no SJW who shames people for liking t hat stuff, but I still personally don't like it myself and it's difficult enjoying the game for myself with how MUCH of it that game has. I wouldn't want to censor that game on principle, but if there was a censored version I'd be all over it lol. Not g raphical censorship, just summarizing all the nasty stuff's text as well. It'll never happen though, that's like trying to pluck a porcupine.
Yeah that's the one. The gameplay was pretty basic, and the story was pretty bad, and it seems like a sick joke with the name of the game, it having many heroine routes you can choose from, it not mattering at all, and the game shoving you into h-scenes with the person you thought was a boy over and over again. It's like they're trying to reverse conversion therapy you or something lol.
I agree it's a shame how many games there are untranslated. It doesn't help that the fanbase is so effing ungrateful whenever someone DOES translate. Like I get it, it's really bad when activists care more about inserting their own political messages into the script t h an they do translating like they do for Fire Emblem or whatever. But god do I hate it when 'fan's complain about how much the game was 'butchered' (they always use the word 'butcher', ALWAYS) because they named a character 'Lise' instead of 'Riesz', or 'Zane', instead of 'Zin'. Or how a game was 'butchered' because a western cultural reference was inserted because nobody who isn't living in Japan would know about the Japanese cultural reference that was in the original game.
When it came to fan translations people were a lot more forgiving of the worse ones because it was all done for free.
AAA games are only a small % of larger budget games. Most good budget games fall somewhere in between AAA and indie.
These games are Visual Novels first. They have different standards. For example Voice Acting and Art (especially Art) tend to be valued a lot more then in regular games.
Compare the Art (CG) quality in many VNs to that of say Falcom or Gust games. Its worlds apart. In case of Gust, some of their games (notably: Atelier Arland, the Ar/Ciel games) can compare to an extend but otherwise they fall short.VNs usually also have quite a lot more CGs. So its not just quality but quantity too.
Writing also tends to on average be a lot better. Seinarukana is considered to have 'weak' writing, but its still better written then Falcom games are. Falcom is good at worldbuilding, but not that good at dialogue and what not. That is also why they took 4 games to write the story of 2 games (Cold Steel). VN's by necesity tend to be a lot better at that. That is why something like Seinarukana is considered weak even at its level. Even if the story or dialogue of this game isn't amazing, its still a stronger narrative if you only look at the writing. Great VN writing is on par with the best of writing you can find in literature.
On the flipside, they rarely have gameplay and when they do it will usually be a lot less developed in terms of graphics then other games. Altho they might actually be a lot more complex then many other games in terms of gameplay depth. Some of the better strategy games around are VNs. (like Sengoku Rance) However outside of tactical/strategic gameplay elements, they tend to be pretty weak in gameplay. There's only a few companies making VN with gameplay and they tend to be as good as they are because they made a good number of games.
Alicesoft, Eushully, Xuse/Eternal, Gesen 18, Ninetail. Those are the main ones. Out of those, only Alicesoft and Xuse/Eternal games really get translated.
Giga, with Duel Savior (fighting game, good story, multiple different routes) and Baldry Sky (mecha isometric fighting game, one of the best stories).
Baldr Sky is on Steam too, so thats another option.
Yeah, its NG+ system is one of the best around. Plus there's a whole lot of different routes you can take so each playthrough feels different as well.
I assume part of the reason at this point is because many people just started using translation tools, or learning Japanese. I've been lazy myself, otherwise I could have mastered Japanese two times over in the time since I first started getting into VNs and now. ''just learn Japanese'' really is the best answer when it comes to VNs.
The couple of years of casually learning the language go by faster then you would think.
Originally there were supposed to be more games, but the staff had a fall out with the management (I think also regarding some stuff about this game) so they left and made Eternal. But since the IP was still owned by Xuse, they couldnt make more games and had to create a new IP with Yumina/Corona.
I forgot about that. Can agree with them that its too sad. She's the only one that can't become an eternal. Altho personally I think its somewhat sad the rest of the spirits dont become one either, since we learn they are related to a bunch of of Yuuto's sword's group.
You only get rank 2/3 if you do their route on that difficulty. So Satsuki wont be able to get them unless you do her route again. On the flipside if you do another heroine's route at second difficulty, she will learn rank 2, but not rank 1.
For skill progression, its not so much shuffled as a different (continueing) progression altogether. Iirc you get new skills too at some point. As you probably already noticed, having different skills means the same character might be better or worse on any particular stage. The same applies to enemies. Some enemy groups (or bosses) that were weak might now be strong, and others that were strong, weak.
Same as on normal, a lot of that will depend on who you choose to level, and who you give the good skills.
I would certainly agree with the sentiment for being more forgiving for free work. But given how damn UNDERSTAFFED (in terms of how many games go untranslated) the localization industry IS, I do think people should encourage more work rather than discourage them from working at all, and it IS a lot of work to be expect from someone to do for free.
I played dana before it got patched, and yeah sure names like 'big hole' were eyebrow raising, it probably hurt my enjoyment of the game by only like 1 or 2%. I probably would be happier overall if I had every game I wanted translated translated with that level of quality than I am having only 1 out of 10 being done. Though to be fair my gaming backlog probably is big enough to last me years at this point and it's growing more than it's shrinking over time.
I actually like games with good english voice acting, and don't just hate on them automatically and call it all trash, and I can't speak Japanese, so my ability to discern from VN's better Japanese VA with standard JRPG VA when I often set them to english anyway... y eah. As for the art, I honestly haven't noticed much of a difference either but the VNs I've played are getting quite old now and the modern JRPGs are well, modern. Not to say new art is better than old art, but when it comes to computer games, I imagine new does have advantages with higher resolutions, better computer tools to edit them, etc. For example. I'm not sure if they 'count' or not, but while the Neptunia games are kinda junk-food for gaming, I do think the character designs are actually really good, and wish really bad they were actually good games lol. Same with other IF games, that dragon star varnir game, and date a live, <3.
Honestly I think Trails games have much better writing than this game, or Rance, or Princess waltz, or even EnA. Cold steel DOES have issues though where half the cast is underdeveloped, and Rean never seems to grow except for a jump between cs2 and cs3 since his role changes from student to instructor, he's really a poor trails protagonist imo. But at the same time it has good writing with the other cast, and it has the best 'unimportant' npc dialogue in the towns and stuff in the series IMO. People overlook that even though everyone knows the random npc dialogue is special in trails, they never seem to acknowledge that it's CS's strong point over the other 2 arcs.
CS2 is, IMO the worst trails game, and it almost entirely feels like 'filler', but putting that one as the deviation, I really do think CS as a whole is still very good. People dunk on trails dialogue for wandering too much or something, but I honestly feel like it's good BECAUSE it feels more natural and real-conversation like rather than being laser-focused to moving forward. It helps you flesh out the characters as an individual and personality more too IMO, just not the ones named Gaius, Elliott, Laura (people like her but she's pretty 1 dimensional too), etc.
... I actually got Duel Savior awhile back but never got around to trying it. Feel pretty stupid about it too because I remember the translation patching and stuff was quite a process, especially figuring out what version I had or something. I don't remember, was years. But yeah I got it because I was enjoying elsword and It looked similar.
I was also wanting to try Baldr Sky back in the d ay, maybe I'll get around to it at some point.
Fighting games are pretty much the only game genre I don't like though. I like beatemups, but not fighting games, so when you say fighting game...
Honestly its effing nuts and a damn shame nobody has 'ripped off' their ng+ system. Seriously. If I ever make a game (prob never, too busy already), I know imma rip that @%@% off hard lol.
Well, I'm a fast learner with almost everything EXCEPT languages. They're just so arbitrary for my autistic brain to wrap around. I did learn hiragana and katakana, and started taking lessons at some cheap school thing where I passed beginner and 'intermediate' which I don't think qualifies since it still didn't teach us to read Kanji, but at the end we were able to go shopping in various places, order, pay for, etc speaking Japanese only. Was tested on that, but I quit after that because the other students were so annoying. They were all these effing weebs who LIVED in Japan for 5-15 years, and they were still clogging up the courses noobs like me were in, and then they would waste the instructors time asking questions well above what w e were supposed to learn just to show off their weebness. It got worse and worse the further I got and I felt like the learning was slower and slower.
I can't study alone at home either because my family has no respect for my free time at home and if I'm studying they will constantly distract me since I'm 'doing nothing and am not busy'.
I don't really remember the Yumina lore tbh, I just remember starting off as a debate club, then suddenly mechs, and then aliens. Something tells me Xuse didn't really build off that either like they were hoping to with the Eternal stuff. shame.
currently at the stage where you first get Naya on my hard run. I'm enjoying the out of order rank upgrades I'm getting. Thalia gets ice banisher 4 before anyone got even 3, able to counterspell anything, even boss magic (assuming it isn't anti-banish), on normal there's no way you can banish the red samurai guy's hydra move. Setsuki got arc impulse 3 even though she never even got 2 in all of normal, it has 1800 physical attack, Nozomu's cross-divider (normal mode's most op attack at this point in the game) 2 (which I got after in t his run) only has 1200. Her Aerial assault 2 is kinda dissapointing though, it's barely double the old one, which you got in like stage 4 of normal. I've seen normal difficulty giving you ones that double ones you also got on normal =/. Meanwhile Katima's pestilence blade QUADRUPLED in power (but only cuz it gave me rank 4 before 3 lol).
Got like 5 new spells for Naya since when you get new characters they get a bunch fast since you're collecting old artifacts you already distributed to everyone else. Unfortunately all of them were upgrades of her bad replaced moves to become sidegrades to the ones I'm already using on her, blah. Jatzieta had a few of HER attacks double in power already though, boo, hurry up Naya.
Kinda sucks getting them at level 30 though when everyone else is at 40. On normal new members are HIGHER level, not 10+ behind. It's gonna be weird when I get narukana, and then she's gonna be like my weakest character lol.
Here's a 10ish second summary for the lulz.
https://youtu.be/obxTBUegXtw
edit: Setsuki's support attack is trash too. Forgot about that, they are both forgettable for being terrible =P
On hard, she's strangely amazing. She gets impulse blade rank 4 right at like stage 2, with 1800 atk, and is by far the strongest attack you will probably have until like chapter 10 or 12 or something, it's nuts.
Euphoria on hard unfortunately is not as good as normal. She starts at level 30 when you get her instead of 45 or whatever the normal equivalent is, so she's already weak, and even if you grind her up, she's still less powerful because she just don't get higher rank abilities that are significant improvements over her normal-mode ones until really late. Plus she doesn't get stuff like holy 2 at all. Narunakana does in fact stay great, but again, starting at level 30 means you'll have some work to do before she can actually be useful, plus you need the rankups fast (she gets improvements fairly quickly at least). In that mission where Narunakana and Euphie start on a different island, you WILL have to send a carry-team over there to babysit them.
If you play hard and want someone who gets great stats, Setsuki may get them, not sure, but Naya definitely is broken good on hard,
Naya is broken good even on normal, hell, opening stage aoe attack. her flame shower is a god sent. Zetsu, Nozomi, Naya is one of my main combat groups on normal. enemies just melt before them.
Even on normal, Euphoria becomes weaker later on. He damage output lacks Force attack, if running into a team of 3 green units, she is in trouble. Nozomu is somewhat similar, but he has more force damage skills, which makes the situation better. Therefore, at end game, I grouped Euphoria with Luptana, and Subaro.
Another question, do AR unit need healing skill? I am aware that Sol is a very strong AR on higher difficulty. But he has no healing skill. The other reason why I no longer use Euphoria as AR at the end of the game is that she lacks regeneration skill. 20% heal at opening stage is not enough for me. AR Subaro has the same problem. Even with limited regeneration, these two cannot keep their HP at top condition as AR. For others who possess no healing skill. I could not even imagine the situation.
Euphie does actually have a round 2-10 self-heal. It's her mana regen thing. It doesn't say it heals but it does (albet not much, 10-20% I think). Kinda like Nozomu's which does say it heals a bit.
Euphie actually isn't that bad at dealing with green defenders because they generally only self-defend and not gorup defend, so you use her aoe attack where she snow-boards into the enemy party. It odesn't look that strong but it can often 1shot red units, and 2 shot most other non-greens. Then when you get rid of their attacker or whatever, the green one will generally try and replace them and then eat her regular attacks. I think it's so strong because it has both physical and force damage. Which normally doesn't neccesarily make a move stronger in of itself when the enemy has any kind of defense against them, but when it hits someone not being defended at all, their combination most definitely makes it stronger t han most single-element attack types.
Nozomu's attack stats on hard+ scales more than enemy green defenders's defense do, so you can kinda ignore trying to bypass their defense using force, and just overpower them physically. He'll actually probably do more physical damage to a green defender by using something mundane like his highest rank cross edge or whatever (let alone name breaker), than you will do to them using a black or blue hybrid attack (or a red force attack named not-naya).
I haven't used Sol as an all-rounder after like stage 8 normal. No self-healinlg, and he has no good aoe, so he'll just eat too many hits IMO. His single target %-based attacks are good as you scale in difficulty, but it'll take 2 turns to finish off 1 unit, I just don't see how he'll actually be good as a 1 man army without having someone babysit him, which would suck since you'll be wasting his speed waiting for his backup.
Back to Euphie though. I find her skills don't really make sense. Aselia had the best pure physical attacks in the game IIRC, and IIRC Eternity Remover was basically her ultimate. But It's euphie's weakest attack for physical, and only has a paltry amount of force added to it to make it only useful to avoid white-immune defenses more so than actually using the force damage to do anything significant. Plus, she gets no spell banishing, which is is the OTHER one thing blue sprites (mom) is good for. She basically inherited absolutely nothing from Aselia but water shield (her worst defense), and some imposter knock-off attack that has no value other than being not-white for white-immune enemies.
I wonder if they fixed her in that version of the game I was talking about early in the thread where it starts off with you AS Euphie the protagonist having lunch with Yuuto and Aselia or whstever. Really bummed we didn't get it. I pre-ordered this game and waited years and stopped playing that translated version because they announced making this shortly after I started that one but looks like I should have in the end after all. doh.
AR only needs healing if its required for them to survive groups. Otherwise its just a question of how many fights they can handle before having to recover in a base.
I dont know how you have the same problem with her as Subaru tho, as his healing is a lot lower even if his health is also much higher. 20% health per battle should be enough most of the time and as noted she does have another 10% per turn afterwards.
Healing is only part of your defensive capabilities. You can also lower damage by using interupt, mana reduction and the right defenses and by killing enemies faster.
If you take longer to clear a group (2 turns instead of 1) you can also use the weaker second fight to heal up more.
Yes, that is her biggest weakness. High physical defense. However if its normal greens it should not be a problem as her damage is huge: she will just deal damage through their guard. It is when the enemy is a dragon or something that it becomes a real problem.
However in this game the most important thing is looking at unit composition and based on that deciding who to send which path. Only Narukana and Nozumu* can really be expected to deal with any enemy unit composition and in Nozumu's case it still comes with some asterisks. He doesnt have an interupt and it takes some time before his massive force aoe unlocks and he doesnt have huge force damage single target skills like Narukana does.
For AR its not really the point to use someone that can fight anything. Its more about efficiency and being able to beat groups at all. If a single character can beat 2 groups as AR, then that makes them a good AR in that instance. It is then a question whether you have the slots to make them AR for that purpose, and whether another group might require that character to be able to survive/kill groups at all.
Reason Sol is very good AR on high difficulty is because his damage skills are %max HP that can oneshot (because it gets multiplied by attack stats, up to 500% or such so it just gets better the more he levels) and because he can reset IP. So he will just quickly kill enemies and wont take much damage as a result.
Hence he doesnt need much healing. Lack of healing still makes him weaker, but he can just recover for a bit at some base far ahead of the rest of the team. In fact if you use him to set up a forward teleport post he would naturally recover some of that just building the structure. On high difficulty you can use a strategy like that to keep many other units back at start base (with teleporter) so they can train.
The amount of time you save with the black IP reset is invaluable and makes many missions a lot easier to achieve with SS rank.