who to start?

[PatrickDJ]

I am gonna start a playthrough later today but I was wondering who do you guys suggest to start with? I have been thinking Therion because of chest you would otherwise miss if you don't have him with you

[Kerobe]

- Therion for chests / steal
- Tressa for negotiation
- Cyrus for analyse

That the "best" 3 starter for me, even if that doesn't matter that much i guess

[StevO]

Therion seems pretty much like a no-brainer instant pick. For a first playthrough, I would suggest Alfyn.

[mars50120056666]

I started with the dancer chick and was very unprepared for how dark it was. Do not recommend.

[tankanidis]

Therion the thief

Can steal stuff but more importantly all the purple/red chests are locked unless you have him in your party to open them. To avoid backtracking half the map, pick him to start and work to the others (go south to healer for 2nd and then your choice, either hunter north or warrior east to challenge peeps) and go from there

[Jamesworkshop]

therion or tressa are very easy picks, don't neglect to purchase from her parents, free SP restoring is very unique in the early game.

cyrus if you want the strategist achievement easily but is not required to be your main but its orth mentioning as he is someone to get early regardless

[marcv666]

The absolute best starter if you know what you're doing is:
#1 Tressa, she's the absolute best starter, no one can argue that
#2 Cyrus, alsmost as good as Tressa to start with
#3 Therion, nowhere near as good as Tressa or Cyrus but he's still the 3rd best
after that it really doesn't make much of a difference.

[Mr_Zayder]

Originally posted by marcv666:

The absolute best starter if you know what you're doing is:
#1 Tressa, she's the absolute best starter, no one can argue that
#2 Cyrus, alsmost as good as Tressa to start with
#3 Therion, nowhere near as good as Tressa or Cyrus but he's still the 3rd best
after that it really doesn't make much of a difference.

Therion is a better starter.

[marcv666]

Originally posted by Mr_Zayder:

Originally posted by marcv666:

The absolute best starter if you know what you're doing is:
#1 Tressa, she's the absolute best starter, no one can argue that
#2 Cyrus, alsmost as good as Tressa to start with
#3 Therion, nowhere near as good as Tressa or Cyrus but he's still the 3rd best
after that it really doesn't make much of a difference.

Therion is a better starter.

yeah, that's probably why no speedrunner ever start with Therion unless they go for a solo run. Every speed run starts with either Tressa or Cyrus cause they're the best at abusing the game's mechanics

[Melodia]

Speedrunning is a different beast. I for one am a firm believer in Therion as the best starter for normal play, mainly so you pretty much never have to deal with the chest issue, but also because he'll always have the highest level and thus easier steals.

[marcv666]

Well normal play is kind of subjective.

while i understand why people would want to play the game without abusing some of the mechanics (without evasive maneuvers etc) it doesn't change the fact that evasive maneuvers is part of the game, and is a perfectly valid and legit way to play the game "normally".

People speedrun the game as a challenge to find out what is the optimal way of beating the game. As long as your not cheating everything in the game you can exploit cannot be dissmissed just because you don't like the playstyle. Speedrunners found out that Tressa is the actual best starter followed by Cyrus. That until someone else can beat the world record with another character.

Now if you ask which is the best character with a self imposed random rule such as not using an ability or restricting yourself by any means, it's perfectly fine but that is what I would call a "different beast".

[Melodia]

They are optimal if you want to play fast, yes. But that doesn't make them the best in general. After all, no one playing normally is going to spend 30k on Vets against a chapter 2 boss, but that's what speedruns do. Nor are they going to recruit 4/5 characters and then do all of Ophilia's chapters and go beat up Dreisang (spending something like 360k along the way on Vets).

When talking about someone playing the game the way 95% of people are going to play in their first and only playthrough, my opinion is that Therion is best. But in the end it's not even a huge difference anyway, anyone as a starter is fine given the way the game works.

The reason why evasive manuvers is used in speedruns is that it lets you go fast. Theoretically you can do anything else a speedrun does without it, it'd just take a while (including a lot of dying from failed escapes).
Not to mention you hardly need Cyrus for it. Anyone can be a scholar after all. His utiltity is that he gets it easier/quicker in you don't want to grind for a Cait (or use the mod) -- in reality he's usually recruited more for Scrutinize than EM.

And even when Tressa is used as a starter she's hardly the 'star' of the run -- Galdera runs these days use Ophilia as the main damage dealer, and all main stories will use Primrose when not Cyrus.

[marcv666]

I clearly understand your point, I just don't agree with the semantics of what you define as normal. Sure it's not obvious at first that Hired Help is broken, so not many players will abuse it however it's not because players lack knowledge that the ability suddenly doesn't exist anymore. Sure if you strip away her best ability on Tressa she won't be the best starter anymore... It's the same thing with Alfyn, Alfyn is one the most broken character with his mix. Everyone agrees he's the best healer compared to Ophilia, however most players won't use his concoct ability so by your standard you would say Ophilia is the best healer, but you just can't ignore Alfyn main talent just cause it's complicated to understand how strong it is for the casual gamer...

[marcv666]

Originally posted by Melodia:

And even when Tressa is used as a starter she's hardly the 'star' of the run

yeah but the question is who's the best starter, not who's the strongest character...

[Melodia]

I'm talking about a person playing the game as they see it, without guides and knowledge of ways to break the game. Again, the 95% of playing who would play the game once and move on -- and the OP probably hadn't played before if you look by their hour count (less than 15 NOW, and this thread started six days ago).
I'm absolutely not disagreeing that Tressa/Cyrus are the best starters if you want to squeeze the best way of breaking the game, but this thread isn't about that.

[marcv666]

Her talent to find leaves makes Tressa the best starter anyway for a new player in my opinion. The ability to open locked chest gives absolutely nothing good in Tier 1. Steal also doesn't provide any real way to upgrade your gear easily unless you over level. Tressa has access to AOE damage even without a job, Therion is limited only to single target damage. The only thing I like about Therion in a casual playthrough in the opening is his steal HP/MP and share SP with other characters.

But at this point it all entails on our playstyle since we all value things differently.

I would even argue Cyrus talent to discover weakness is way better than what Therion has to offer in the opening. However for a newbie Cyrus is a bit annoying having limited access to refills his SP compared to Tressa or Cyrus. But this is from my perspective when I was a noob at this game.

In a casual run, I would still start with Tressa, then go pick Cyrus, then get Ophilia for easy and cheap way of healing, otherwise you need to use items by the time you hit 3rd boss (i'm more a hoarder, so i don't like to spend item when you can heal for free), and get Therion as my 4th character. I wouldn't have encounter any locked chest at this point except in Therion town, so I wouldn't miss anything anyway.

It's all good if some people prefer starting with Therion, but I really don't value him as a good starter, I'd still get him cause at one point you want to level him up and use his steal path action but that's hardly a priority and at around level 10-15 he has already catch up in levels. Therion only becomes really good mid game once you unlock a few jobs so he has access to aoe damage.