Example Tier List

[Admin Alto]

This is a tier list I decided to compose to help explain a way to show how tier lists are in this game! First off, I will put a SPOILER warning here because this tier list will contain SPOILERS about characters and (possible) plot points!

S Tier:
Alto: Alto is one of the best characters in the game! And rightfully so! He has great overall stats, possessing an above average Physical Attack, and decent Physical Defense and slightly lower than average Magic Defense. His weaknesses are overshadowed late game by his overwhelming abilities! Follow up is a great ability that allows Alto to take another turn when he kills an enemy. Very many times you'll see yourself using a high MP skill to kill one enemy just so you can use this ability. It's an extremely powerful ability in swarm fights. The only downside is it's nearly completely useless in most boss fights. Other abilities include Gale Slash which has a reach of 4 blocks forward! This allows Alto to hit Far enemies very easily with little effort! Also he has the compose ability, which makes him extremely vital to playing with any of the 5 witches!

Nonoka: Nonoka is probably the most core speedrun character in the game. This character (assuming affinity is maxed) has the highest proc rate for orbs, being somewhere around 80% on most orbs, which is just absolutely ridiculous. Couple this with delay orbs, and you have the easiest gameplay for bosses you've ever seen! Of course a few other funny tactics are stack Death orbs and Chase orbs onto her so she can proc Death orbs with about a 40% proc rate! This is just insane for a instant kill move. Also her high Jump and Speed allow her to travel MOST terrains. This coupled with a Movement + Ring makes her one of the most mobile characters in the game! Also being a Water Type gives her very limited downsides.

A Tier:
Rusty: Rusty is a character that is relatively controversial in terms of team builds. He is a very speed oriented character, but you have to build your team around him, because of how unique his play style works. He has high burst damage in small radiuses, but can do low-medium damage to larger radiuses with skills like Beehive and his Dagger Throw. Also Backstab allows him to deal insane damage to enemies on their side or backs, although having Sakuya use her fiery night sort of negates the need for this (Stab would be an alternative) Also Double Clutch allows him to attack again directly after he uses it! This allows him to kill very tanky enemies that he could not normally kill, since he could use double clutch and then use another attack to kill the enemy! It's similar to Follow Up, but doesn't require that you kill an enemy, but you can't move after it activates.

Hilda: Hilda is a core character in most builds. The reason why is her extreme utility. Hilda is probably the most versatile character in the game, being able to do just about anything you need! From teleporting, to giving a teammate another turn for extra burst damage! She is also extremely powerful on underleveled Boss Fights, because of her Iconic ability, Upstream Waltz! This delays the enemies in range, and is a useful skill for killing off hordes of enemies without taking damage! If you are building a team, I highly suggest putting Hilda on it, due to her extreme versatility!

B Tier:
Sakuya: Sakuya is a character with very high damage output, but relatively low range and defense. This CAN be overlooked by her ability to change between stances. Sword-Drawing Stance is a more defensive-counter based stance that revolves around taking damage and outputting very high damage, while Unsheathed Stance is more of a movement-defense based stance. Parry can protect her in most situations, but until the end of the game, she lacks any real high damage output moves until she learns Terminal Strike, which is close to the end of the game (Depending on level habits) overall she is a decent front DPS character, but lacks in any real consistent defensive-range options.

Lisette/Risette: Lisette is a character that really lacks in 1 fatal aspect, and that's movement. Her damage is negligible as she is a healer, but she does have Hip Drop and Ice Coffin which deal considerable damage, and her healing is really good, and boosts her own defense alongside her Water Veil. The only major downside she has is that she just lacks the Speed to keep up with most DPS characters, such as Nonoka or Rusty. This is a fatal flaw, as it limits the movement options of your DPS characters, otherwise they would be killed as Lisette would not be able to heal them in time! If you give her Movement + items or the Portal Ring, she can overlook much of her issues, but it is a major downside nonetheless.

Giselle: Giselle is a very good late-game character, as her damage output is very high, which complements the end game enemies having higher HP and Defense towards the end. This works in your favor as you can still clear very effectively with her skills and she cannot take damage from arrows and cannot be hit with debuffs! This gives her an ASTOUNDING defense against most enemies. The only major downside is most later enemies can ignore the Arrow defensive effect (Not many enemies late game use arrows) and while her anti-debuffs is good, her Physical-Defense is below average. This makes her an easy target for physical attackers to come in and kill her effectively in a few hits. Another downside comes from the fact that while her skills are very good, they have the fatal flaw of MP cost, which she has a very hard time managing. With her high MP costs she can only use her most powerful skills up to a couple of times a game!

Commander Claus: Early in the game, Claus is a overall decent character to have on your team. He is a little overshadowed as you get closer to the Anthem, as most characters become obsolete aside from the ones the story focuses on for that quest. He lacks a bit in mobility, as shown by his 4 movement speed, and while he may be a Jack-Of-All-Trades, he is a master of none. His HP regen ability becomes completely obsolete almost 5 levels after obtaining it, and most of his skills are relatively weak throughout the game, until you lose him. He is a good early game character, but is a below average character as you progress.

C Rank:
Ewan: Now I know this will be controversial "Ewan is much better than this", "He's super powerful you just don't use him right". I rate him this low for the sole fact that while his burst damage is decent at best, and his money skills such as his healing skill and such, they just are too weak. He is a character that has all the right tools, but they just didn't put enough power behind them. His snipe would be one of the best skills in the game if it just had a little more damage. As it stands its just a slightly higher power attack with +2 Range. His skills are all useful, but their effects are just slightly too mediocre. His abilities could've possibly fixed it, but they were wasted on "upgrading" his skills. His HP gain skill which gets "upgraded" as an affinity bonus, is completely useless as Lisette and Popo do exactly the same thing, but much cheaper and more efficiently! He would be a character that has to be chosen specifically to a certain stage.

Popo: Popo is a character that was designed in all the right ways, but for all the wrong purposes. Her character seems to be designed to be able to go onto higher ledges and take out foes through there and then support her comrades through the higher archs. This works well in theory, but not in practice. Her stats are extremely mediocre at best, and while her most powerful skills (Heart Shot, KABOOM) are quite powerful indeed, they lack enough power to one shot enemies (average level required for story quests) This effectively makes her too weak to run as a powerful support character, and while her high jump and FLY mechanics work to go to high ledges, more often than not its just used to fly over a poisoned lake or water without losing movement. Her tools are designed very well, but they just work better in other situations, that make her intended character design just overall obsolete. Sadly her tools, while being well designed, just lack the oomph to make her a good character. Even her song is mediocre at best! Sure, anti-action and defense lower is good and all, but almost all later enemies have at least a 50% resistance to debuffs, and even if it does land, you would've been better off just using Levia and securing a 2-turn win by spamming field clearing skills.

D Rank:
Dante: Dante is a character that I personally enjoy using, but he just lacks too much. His only real benefit is his high tanking. The sad part is, he had the potential to be a good character. Just give him some buffs that occur depending on the amount of damage he takes, similar to Hrodulf's skill that increases his turn speed. This would've made Dante a relatively decent character! Sadly all he is now, is just a meatshield, and even then, he's not really too great at it as while his defense and HP are high, he doesn't have any way to really defend himself through skills. If Dante gets swarmed, its almost guaranteed he will die. And his damage output is absolutely atrocious so he can't protect himself either.

Archibald: I would say a whole thing about him being a tank and all, but that's just what I said about Dante, so now I'll explain why Archibald specifically is D rank. For one thing, unless his affinity is maxed (Chances are, it's not on a first run through, nobody goes full affinity with Archibald >.> his movement speed is a mere 3???? This is even slower than Claus! His ability as a tank is formidable though, as evidenced by his Guardian ability, Defender passive, and his several passives that grant HP regen, increased defense to allies, and so forth. Luckily, Archibald was designed with a powerful 1 shot move (THANK EVE) being Zephyr's Siege. This is a powerful skill that honestly outclasses some DPS characters. However his major downsides include TERRIBLE movement, very bad MP management (High MP costs, no way to gain MP) and just a overall mediocre character outside of a few high aspects. This just puts him too low as while his abilities are great and all, tanks are not fundamentally designed to be good. They are designed to be shields for enemies to punch at so other allies can attack. While Archibald does this well, he doesn't do anything else really effectively.

Mordimort: Ok so before I start a storm (The clouds are turning dark....) Let me say this first. To all you Mordimort lovers out there. If you think Mordimort is a good character, that's cool, if you think she's a core character to any team, GET YOUR HEAD OUT OF THE CLOUDS. Ok so let me start off. Mordimort does a few things effectively. She is essentially the "utility" character in the game, doing a lot of odd job skills that are necessary in 1 or 2 situations. Other than that she can do mediocre buffs and has a decent proc rate and can't be debuffed. Ok so what else does she have? Well.... She can put a doll on the ground that can agro enemies for 1 hit before it dies? Sure its... OK... in boss fights. But to be honest she just doesn't really have anything outstanding about her. Just everything she has is below average. The only time Mordimort is really essential on a team is when you're doing a super low level run against bosses. Her Butterfly Dream effect can actually help as it aggros bosses to attack the doll instead of your allies, allowing you to complete your objective. Other than that, Mordimort is almost entirely useless. There's only 1 or two cases where I would prefer Mordimort over another character (Such as in water enemy quests and such) but she just lacks way too hard in way too many fields to make it higher on the tier list.

Dorothy: So, Dorothy is a very interesting character to put on a tier list, because her play style is probably the most customizable out of any character in the game. But why is she so low you ask if she's so versatile? Because the different "playstyles" I was talking about, is more how you want to screw yourself over. Dorothy is a character that is supposed to be "over the top powerful but has super massive drawbacks" this would be a totally viable 1 shot kill character, except that Sakuya has a higher attack than Dorothy????? Dorothy's skills have such massive drawbacks, it practically invalidates her whole point of being, over the top broken. The only real powerful skills she has that are WORTH IT, are Suicide Samurai (Assuming a healer is near) and Pain Pain Pain, BECAUSE ITS LITERALLY FREE. All of her skills have such huge drawbacks, she's honestly almost F tier. She just barely avoided it because of her stat line-up being better than average, along with having pretty good mobility.

THE FORBIDDEN F TIER
Keith: Ok so I just want to point this out, I actually like Keith, I like using him and Popo and just sitting back firing arrows for days as I find it pretty funny. But this is on my overleveled (Level 99) file where every attack is a 1 shot anyways. Keith is just.... a REALLY... REALLY bad character. The only things he has going for him are his high accuracy and his high attack range. Or, y'know, you could just put Popo on your team and Whirlwind to victory. Keith is completely outclasses RIGHT. WHEN. YOU. GET. HIM. He's just wayyyyy too lacking as a character, and anything he can do, another character can do way better. It's just a safer bet to keep him off your team. Unless you're doing a challenge or just want to do something ridiculous, then, all power to you man.

And the WORST CHARACTER IN THE GAME TITLE GOES TOOOOOOOO.....
Veronica!: Veronica is just SUCH. A BAD DESIGN. I don't know who decided for her to be a playable character. It would've been perfectly fine to have her as a side character that you never play (like Anastasia) but NOOOOOO gotta make her a character. And SHE DOESN'T EVEN HELP. By the time you actually GET her, all of your other characters are already leveled to perfection, you have all your stats lined up perfectly, and Veronica literally adds NOTHING to the plate. The ONLY thing she even has is an attack for every element! But screw that just play the witches if you want that, they do a MUCH better job at covering weaknesses. Veronica's stat line is quite bad as well, her magic attack is only average, while her HP is awkwardly higher than average? But nothing else she has is even decent. She just lacks in almost every subject, and honestly I'm a bit disappointed in her as a character. Even leveling her to 99 was disappointing, because she was so weak, I couldn't have her solo a small quest because the enemies would just swarm and kill her. So her entire point is to be a support DPS, and she can't DPS?????? OK. Even the buffs she gives are sooooooo mediocre. In my opinion Protect is probably the WORST debuff in the game. And her only really relevant things are Angel Killer and MAGIC SHIELD. But her defense is so crap, even a weak magic attack would hit over 20, so that makes it practically irrelevant.