The Unhinged World of Overpowered Characters

If there's one thing that I love about RPGs, it's being overpowered. There's just a certain level of satisfaction about breaking a game in half with what the developers give you. Sometimes it makes you wonder if the devs even know how busted they made some of these characters.

So today, I'm going to take a look at four overpowered characters and builds in RPGs. Of course there are countless overpowered characters. These are just the four that I thought were the most unique.

Velvet Crowe - Tales of Berseria

Image Source: Bandai Namco

Let's kick this list off with the character that spawned this idea. Velvet Crowe might just be the most OP protagonist I've used in a video game, and it made playing through Berseria a ton of fun.

At the very start of the game, Velvet comes armed with four Artes that you will never unequip. The combination of Swallow Dance, Gouging Spin, Harsh Rebuttal, and Rising Moon will carry you for 95% of the game. See, those four moves all build up the opponent's stun gauge very quickly. Pair that moveset with her demon claw attacks (Consuming Claw, Heaven’s Claw, and Hell’s Claw), and you can stunlock regular enemies, and even a majority of bosses, INCLUDING the final boss and all of its different phases.

There are two stats in particular that you want Velvet to have. First is her Attack stat. That should be a no brainer. Most of Velvet's attacks scale off of physical attack, so buff this to keep her damage competitive. Second is her Focus stat. Focus does quite a bit in this game. It buffs your critical hit rate, lowers your chances of being interrupted, but most important is that it increases your stun rate. Velvet gets a ton of equipment that increases her Focus stat, so be sure to hold onto them and upgrade them whenever you get the chance.

Beyond that, she also has a unique move called Consuming Claw. On hit, this move will heal Velvet’s HP, AND remove any negative statuses that she has. Her Mystic Artes don’t have any special utility outside of damage, but they can do some insane damage.

On the whole, Velvet is an absolute beast. She’s strong enough to pretty much invalidate every fight on her own. She's just a ton of fun, and the animations on her sword slashes and flippy kicks are very fluid. Pair her with the two mages in your party, and either Rokurou or Eleanor as sub-DPS, and you have a team that can shred everything.

Thunder God Cid - Final Fantasy Tactics

Image Credit: Square Enix

Final Fantasy Tactics is no stranger to overpowered builds. Summons act like screen nukes that can decimate entire maps. You can turn any unit into a teleporting punch Monk. You can leap over entire buildings if you invest in Dragoon. And the Calculator class by itself can trivialize anything if you want to do math. But of everything available to the player, only one character has been given the title of “God”.

If any character deserves to be the poster boy for overpowered characters, it would have to go to Count Cidolfus Orlandeau. He joins the party during the last chapter of the game, but he certainly makes his presence felt.

Cid’s default class is known as the Sword Saint. It’s a class that’s exclusive to him and comes with access to abilities from both Holy Knight and Fell Knight jobs. This gives him access to ranged sword skills that can break enemy weapons and armor, restore his HP, and can inflict statuses like Silence, Stop, Doom, and Instant KO.

But the real kicker is the equipment that he comes with. He has a full set of Crystal armor, and the Bracer accessory which gives him +3 to his attack. But the draw here is his sword: the Excalibur. This sword boosts the damage from his Holy elemental attacks, and it comes with permanent Haste that can’t be removed! Haste essentially doubles the user’s speed, and I shouldn’t need to explain why that’s a good thing in a game like FFT.

Cidolfus Orlandeau has left his legacy on the Final Fantasy series. He has shown up as a boss fight in Final Fantasy 14’s Ivalice 24-Man Raid (alongside appearances from other Tactics characters). And in Final Fantasy 16, he’s been spiritually carried on with Cidolfus Telamon, a powerful swordsman who inherited the power of Ramuh, Final Fantasy’s God of Lightning. It has to be worth something that a side character who had very little to do in Final Fantasy Tactics besides being hilariously overpowered can leave this much of an impact.

Castti Florenz - Octopath Traveler 2

Image Credit: Square Enix, Acquire Corp.

Now we’ve seen so far that it’s fun to use crazy strong characters and do a bazillion damage in one turn. But there’s also something to be said about support characters that power up the damage dealers. There were a lot of fun characters I could've put here, from games like Triangle Strategy or Unicorn Overlord. But I'm going to give the attention to Octopath 2's Apothecary: Castti Florenz.

Castti can act as a damage dealer, much like everyone in the Octopath group, but that’s not the best way to use her. Castti is the ultimate support party member, and was the backbone of my hyper-offense teams in this game when paired with DPS like Throné, Hikari, Ochette, or Osvald. 

What makes Castti worth using is her Concoct ability. This is a unique action that is exclusive to her and Alfyn from the first game. This ability lets her mix items together to get new items. These items can either deal small elemental damage to the enemies, inflict status conditions, or more importantly, support items for your party.

To get the most out of Castti’s Concoct ability, you’re going to want to load up on Purifying Dust, Essence of Plum, and especially Essence of Pomegranate. Purifying Dust will make it so that your concoctions will affect all of your party members, while the Essence of Pomegranate will refill your team’s BP, allowing for your damage dealers to pump out more damage. Then mix in an Essence of Plum to restore MP back to your party.

Now all of Castti’s Concoct items can be purchased from certain shops, but you aren’t at a total loss if you start running low on supplies. Castti’s Latent Power “Every Drop Counts” allows her to use her mix items without losing any of them. If you manipulate it correctly, you can survive on just a few items.

Finally, I want to give a special mention to her EX-Skill “Remedy”. This move applies 3-9 random buffs to an ally depending on how much Boost you use. That alone sounds crazy enough, but we can take this further. Have a Dancer in your party give Castti “Sealticge’s Seduction” which makes buffs affect the whole party, and Castti just became a drug dealer, omni-boosting the whole party. The only downside is that “Remedy” isn’t unlocked until you finish her story, so this is a very late-game strategy.

Now, all of that is just from Castti’s base job. As for a sub-job for her, I personally like Dancer as it plays into her support role by boosting stats for your allies, and letting your damage dealers deal more damage. But jobs like Cleric or Hunter aren’t bad options either.

Overall, Castti is just amazing. I’ve never seen a support character that can do their job so consistently and uninterrupted. The fact that her inherent job is an Apothecary is also a discrete buff for her, since Apothecarys have the highest base HP stat of all the jobs, meaning she can naturally tank more hits compared to everyone else.

Full Metal Jaguar - Xenoblade Chronicles X

Image Credit: Nintendo, Monolith Soft

Xenoblade as a whole is a series that is built on being overpowered once you get an understanding of the combat system. Whether it’s topple locking in Xenoblade 1, Corvin evasion art spam in Xenoblade 2, or Lucky Seven demolition in Xenoblade 3. Those are all fun, and using Lucky Seven is one hell of a powertrip. But in honor of Xenoblade X coming back, let’s look at one of the most overpowered builds in the game.

In order to become the most destructive force on all of Mira, you’re first going to need to grab a pair of dual swords and dual guns, as you’ll need to become a master with the Full Metal Jaguar class. FMJ gives you access to a bunch of busted support skills that can be used to make your Overdrive last forever. Overdrive is a mode that needs 3000 TP to activate, and while it’s active you gain a damage boost, and your Arts recharge faster.

As for the Arts that you need, it’s Ghost Walker, Primer, and Blood Sacrifice. Primer gives you 200 TP and gives you Crit Damage boost. Blood Sacrifice restores 1000 TP while cutting your HP in half. Finally, Ghost Walker gives you the Decoy status which lets you dodge every incoming attack for a short period of time. This will be your key to surviving while you’re cutting your HP with Blood Sacrifice. Combine all of that with skills like Hellhound (increase Overdrive duration) and Mindscape (Boost max TP) and those are all of the essential pieces to the build.

Beyond all of those, you’ll of course need some attack Arts like Electric Surge (boost damage with low HP), Sliding Slinger, Stream Edge, Executioner, and Side Slash for a spammable TP recovering move. Spam those moves, watch your Overdrive number skyrocket. Just be sure to keep an eye on your Overdrive timer and re-apply Ghost Walker every so often.

Now there are even more overpowered builds in this game, but this is the one that only requires you to follow one class’s path, rather than mixing and matching skills and Arts from every class like the Blossom Dance build requires. By just following the Full Metal Jaguar path, you can become crazy strong, and get an understanding of how the Overdrive mechanic works.

Closing

And that’s going to do it for this month’s article. Obviously there are countless overpowered builds in RPGs, and I can’t possibly talk about all of them here. I also specifically wanted to look at characters that were immediately powerful, rather than characters that get strong at the end of the game. 

One of my goals for this year is to write more articles. I had three of them last year, but my goal for this year is to put out a new article every month. Come back next month when I talk about Avatar Selection, and why I’m drawn to the characters that I pick.