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back by popular demand it's the writeup that got lost to time


Arjuna
Archer
5*
Debuts in Fate/Grand Order
Originates from the Mahabharata

Cards: Quick/Arts/Arts/Arts/Buster

ATK: 1907/12342
HP: 1940/13230

Skills
1. Clairvoyance C+/Clairvoyance (Bowman) B+: Buff self stargen rate by 18/36%. After second interlude the skill becomes Clairvoyance (Bowman) B+ and the stargen buff becomes 30/50% and gains debuff immunity for 5 turns. (Cooldown: 8/6 Turns)
2. Hero of the Endowed A: Charges np by 25%. Regens HP by 1000/2000hp and gains 4/8 stars per turn for 5 Turns (Cooldown: 12/10 Turns)
3. Mana Burst (Flame): Buff own buster cards by 20/30% and NP damage by 10/20% for 1 turn (Cooldown: 7/5 Turns)

Passive Skills
1. Independent Action A: Buff crit damage by 10%
2. Magic Resistance C: Increase debuff resistance by 15%
3. Divinity B: Buff damage dealt by 175

Noble Phantasm
Pashupata (Buster): Deal damage to all enemies, 30% chance to instantly kill enemies, extra 50% chance if any of those enemies are divine, and decreases defense of all enemies. (Overcharge: Defense debuff is 20/40%) (After interlude the damage multiplier on the NP increases by 100%, the first death chance becomes 50%, and the extra death chance buff becomes 80%)

PROS
+Triple Arts card gives Arjuna a pretty consistent way to gain NP per turn and allows for more arts chains
+AOE instant-death NP makes him good for wave clearing even against types he's not strong against, becomes even more reliable after interlude upgrade
+Thanks to Divine buff on NP he's good at dealing with Sphinx waves which are really fucking irritating
+Second skill is generally pretty good. 5-Turn for a regen that can heal 2000 per turn and grant 8 stars is pretty consistent sustain and helps him get stars on top of what he's already getting from what's dropping. NP charge helps him out pretty massively too.
+Third skill is a pretty decent buster and NP strength buff for when you're ready to go in.
+Final ascension art is one of the best in the game, so yes pako is still a plus
+Nobunaga Shimazaki is always good

CONS
-Damage is incredibly mediocre outside of crits. Triple Arts cards and one buster with a buster NP means this character cannot self-chain his NP for more damage and on top of that his only self-buff to help with damage is his last one. Needs a lot of help to output significant damage.
-Prior to interlude the instant death on his NP is massively unreliable against non-Divine enemies, hell 50% still isn't that great, but it's at least a 1/2 chance instead of a 1/3 and the extra chance on divine enemies is significant enough to at least make him able to deal with Sphinxes if nothing else.
-Skills are all incredibly selfish. It's rather fitting, I suppose, the hero who only took never understood how to help out others, but holy shit even the second skill only heals himself where it would be a lot better if it were at least a full team regen.
-Burns out after a whole turn on damage due to his third skill lasting only one turn.
-Despite triple Arts cards, his NP gain leaves something to be desired and makes getting NP with him something of a chore. He desperately needs the 25% gain from his second skill or he'd be even worse at it.

Overall Opinion: Arjuna is a very confused character. While having a DPS focus, he does not have the cards or skillset to actually be a solid DPS character. He is missing an entire buster card needed to chain his NP with his buster cards, his own damage buffs only last a single turn, and he's stocked up more on cards that do things other than damage to even be consistent. He's actually pretty okay at making stars with his first and second skills combined with being archer class, so he theoretically could do good damage off of crits. His instant death gimmick on the NP is fine, but sphinxes while obnoxious are not particularly common and servants are already pretty hard to instant kill, so while his NP makes that more doable against divine servants it's only gonna matter so much. It honestly feels like he was made more as an enemy unit first before a playable character.
Score: 5/10


Karna
Lancer
5*
Debuts in Fate/Apocrypha, the cancelled online game not the light novel
Originates from the Mahabharata

Cards: Quick/Quick/Arts/Buster/Buster

ATK: 1850/11976
HP: 1999/13632

Skills
1. Knowledge of the Deprived A: Reduce an enemy's debuff resistance by 30/50% and applies NP seal for 1 turn (Cooldown: 8/6 Turns)
2. Mana Burst (Flame): Buffs own buster cards by 20/30% and NP damage by 10/20% for 1-turn (Cooldown: 7/5 Turns)
3. Uncrowned Arms Mastership: Buff stargen rate by 30/50% and crit damage by 20/40% for 3 turns and charge NP by 25% (Cooldown: 8/6 Turns)

Passive Skills
1. Magic Resistance C: Increase debuff resistance by 15%
2. Divinity A: Buff damage by 200
3. Riding A: Buff quick cards by 10%

Noble Phantasm
Vasavi Shakti (Buster): Damage to all enemies and deals extra damage to divine enemies (Overcharge: Extra damage to Divine enemies is 150%/200%) (After strengthening the NP damage multiplier is increased by 100% and the NP applies a 20% buster resistance debuff for 3 turns after damage)

PROS
+Incredible damage output between skills, NP interlude, and divine enemy specialization
+Third skill buffs damage output on crits and even stargen, combined with two quick cards he's actually pretty okay at generating some stars
+1st Skill is actually pretty damn amazing. It applies a debuff resistance reduction and then applies the NP seal, which already has a 100% chance of hitting. So anything that inherently would reduce the NP seal's chance of hitting gets beaten and then the NP seal is guaranteed against whoever you use it on. It makes even characters like Euryale and Stheno (Who have 50% debuff resistance inherently) have to deal with it.
+There are 50 divine servants in the game (A pretty good amount) and 9 of those servants already take double damage from lancers, so the extra divine damage pretty handily destroys them.
+Can self-buster chain if NP is active
+AQQ with extra attack is a pretty good way of racking up NP charge for him
+This dude can be surprisingly goofy at times.
+Also has a surprising amount of fashion sense when he's drawn in CEs.
+I swear to god, by the time these reviews are done and this game is out of service you will know, pako is good

CONS
-NP gain outside of the specific instance I mentioned is middling. Karna can struggle with building it sometimes and while third skill helps that a bit, he needs his one arts card to even continue at a decent rate. His one arts card also makes opportunities to arts chain with teammates incredibly limited.
-Star absorption is not good enough to consistently gain him stars. He either needs a ton of stars to offset his absorb rate or CEs/skills that can help him along the way.
-No defensive capabilities at all, he will need help to survive big damage in a lot of places.
-The specification to Divine servants limits his damage potential against others. While the divine pool makes up almost 1/4 of the overall roster including bosses and whatnot, it's still a niche compared to something like Gilgamesh who encapsulates the entire roster sans 12 characters.
-His one turn buster and NP buff is the same as Arjuna's and like Arjuna's it is a one turn buff. That being said, he is able to do more with it than Arjuna is.
-Fate/Apocrypha is terrible and Karna being in it hurts him a lot, especially when you compare him to CCC where he is allowed to interact with others and his goofy ass master in that game. Also thankfully the cut scene from above has made its way into the character through other stuff, because that is an amazing gag.
-Pako is good, but Arjuna won out on the final ascension art here.
-This game gave me NP4 Karna at some point and I don't know why.

Overall Opinion: I've gone back and forth on Karna a lot since I was introduced to the character in 2013 through youtube vids of CCC. At first I thought he was a little lame back when I had a very limited understanding of who he was and what he did like everything else in CCC, but I've come to like him a lot since I began to get what he was about more to the point where I'd prob put him in a top 20 list. He's a seemingly morose character at first, but is actually quite a friendly and nice dude with strong personal values and dedication. As a playable character he was also very weird in the growing pains of this game, back when people didn't value AOE servants a lot and thought his skillset was mostly just okay. As time has gone on and he's gotten some buffs, Karna's been proven as an incredibly strong AOE-based buster servant with disruption, multipliers on top of his existing ones, and big ass crit damage. He's incredibly useful during the Apocrypha event thanks to the damage multiplier some of the characters get there and two of the featured servants being Divine servants. It was honestly pretty tough to make negatives for him outside of generic ones, because he's actually pretty solid. The fact that I needed to use Gilgamesh being absurdly strong to undercut him should tel you how strong he is.
Score: 8/10


Mysterious Heroine X
Assassin
5*/Limited servant only on Saber Wars rate-up and lucky bag banners
Debuts in Back Alley Satsuki - Chapter Heroine Sanctuary
Originates from Arthurian Mythology, Star Wars, and an incredibly tiresome gag

Cards: Quick/Quick/Arts/Arts/Buster

ATK: 1817/11761
HP: 1862/12696

Skills
1. Fire Support EX: 60/80% chance to stun all enemies the turn after this skill is activated (Cooldown: 10/8 Turns)
2. Intuition C+/Star of Saber C++: Gain 4/14 crit stars, rank up quest changes this to Star of Saber C++ which increases the stars to 10/20 and gives a turn of invincibility (Cooldown: 7/5 Turns)
3. Galactic Meteor Sword C: Increase crit star drop rate against saber enemies by 50/100% and attack against saber enemies by 30/50% for 3 turns (Cooldown: 8/6 Turns)

Passive Skills
1. Riding EX: Buff quick cards by 12%
2. Cosmo Reactor A: Buff critgen by 10%

Noble Phantasm
Secret Calibur (Quick): Big damage to a single enemy and deals extra damage to Saberface enemies (Overcharge: Extra damage to saberfaces is 150%/200%) (After her third interlude the NP receives a 400% buff to damage multiplier)

PROS
+Stargen on this character is pretty good, she hits a lot, can quick chain, and her np does an absurd amount of hits
+NP is really strong after interlude, especially against saberfaces and riders
+Can gain np pretty well with double arts cards and crits
+After rank up quest she gets an invincibility which helps her longevity in fights and it stays at its same cooldown, so a 5-turn cooldown is actually pretty good for it
+I guess she is really good at dumping damage on seven characters in the game
+She is very good during Saber Wars
+The gag is still occasionally funny
+Ponytail saber was very powerful in the UBW anime and that is still the case here
+Her ramen eating skill animation is also very good
+This is still a very good design and the Star Wars gag was a good direction to go with the character, I feel

CONS
-Holy shit dude
-1st skill is incredibly wonky and inconsistent. While a full enemy team stun is very good, the stun chance can vary so heavily depending on who you're trying to hit it with and if it should fail it is a long ass cooldown before you get another shot with it. There is also no reason for it to have a delay, it does not balance out the skill at all and if anything makes it more obnoxious to use.
-Intuition is a bad skill and it's good that they changed it. The problem is though, it's just an invincibility in a game where a lot of characters have other skills that are worthwhile attached to their defense mechanics, so it's very generic and lame. I guess you could argue 20 stars at max is pretty okay, but this character already drops stars pretty decently, so if you want to guarantee the max amount of stars it's fine, but you're giving up your invincibility to do that which sucks.
-3rd skill is unbelievably specific, especially in conjunction with NP. The skill only works on Saber class enemies so you already need to be using her against a class she has no advantages or benefits on naturally. Then you get more stars against them, something she already drops pretty well so it's just comically excessive at that point, which is probably the joke. Then you use NP against them, but her NP only gains its secondary benefit against Saberfaces and there only seven saberfaces of Saber-class in the game, as of this writing July 15th, 2018. You know what else does all of this sans the saberface thing on their NP? ARCHERS!!! THEY EVEN GAIN DAMAGE RESISTANCE.
-Quick typing also means her damage cap is limited to her NP being super strong and her underperforming in a lot of other places, especially since she is an assassin and has a lower average damage multipier than most other classes. So she hits very badly outside of NP.
-0 crit damage buff skills, why
-Is on the squishier side of the health pool for golds
-Went almost 2 years without a second rateup

Overall Opinion: It's really weird writing this review right after Karna, because I have an inverse relationship with this character where I thought they were funny at first and got very tired of them as time went on, mostly because the saberface gag got very old. Anyways, on her as a uh... playable character; in this game she is incredibly subpar. She creates a lot of stars, which is good, but... See? The thing is most assassins that are considered decent or good at least have some way of buffing their own damage or have some gimmick that allows them to offload a shitton of it in one go. MHX... does not have that. Instead she has incredibly specialized skills that limit her overall usefulness and even against classes she naturally has advantage over, she only has her natural advantages, none of her skills enhance her damage on its own. I can't see a lot of reason you would use this character outside of liking the gag a lot. Hell, if you like a character who hates Saberfaces, gets a lot of stars, and yells their name a lot, just fucking use Zerkerlot. He's the original Saberface hater and he even has crit damage buffs to beat them up with, you can put the cap on him and have him yell SABERRRRRRRRRR instead of ARTHURRRRRRR too.
Score: 5/10


Fionn mac Cumhaill
Lancer
4*
Debuts in Fate/Zero
Originates from Celtic Mythology

Cards: Quick/Quick/Arts/Arts/Buster

ATK: 1488/8930
HP: 2040/12750

Skills
1. Clairvoyance B/Clairvoyance (Beauty) B++: Buff crit drop rate by 19/38% for 3 turns, after Rank Up Quest the skill becomes Clairvoyance (Beauty) B++ and the buff crit drop rate becomes an increase for all allies by 30/50% for 3 turns and gains a secondary effect of buffing all allies NP gain by 10/30% for 3 turns (Cooldown: 8/6 Turns)
2. Trouble with Women A: 60%/100% Chance to apply Evade to yourself for each attack & a taunt for 1 turn, and reduces charm resist by female enemies by 80% for 3 turns (Cooldown: 12/10)
3. Magecraft B: Buff own arts cards by 24/40% for 1 turn (Cooldown: 7/5 Turns)

Passive Skills
1. Magic Resistance B: Increase debuff resistance by 17.5%
2. Divinity D: Buff damage by 125

Noble Phantasm
Mac an Luin (Arts): He sprays water at the enemies and gives them a nice cool refreshing bath that applies immunity to mental debuffs to himself for 3 turns and decreases all of his enemies attacks for 3 turns (Overcharge: Increases potency of attack debuff by 10/30%) (After interlude Fionn receives a damage buff to his NP by 150%)

PROS
+The buff to his NP actually made it somewhat strong
+After buff, first skill is actually decent as a support skill
+When max levelled second skill is good
+Third skill is okay when max levelled
+I became a fan of Fionn Mac Cumhaill over the course of writing this review

CONS
-Hit counts are super low and his numbers on NP charge and stars are average which makes him very not great at generating either.
-Damage is bad, with no way to really absorb crits or do decent damage with them
-Second skill is incredibly weird. Basically everytime Fionn is attacked it will proc a chance to have him take no damage, so it effectively combines a negate with a taunt which is good. The problem is... it's a chance to get hit so it's not until max level where it becomes actually consistently good and even then it's uhhh... a fucking 10-turn cooldown on the skill which really ruins his longevity in a fight as even a support character.
-In general he requires a massive investment to make passable. An interlude, a rank up quest, all of his skills need to be max levelled to be remotely effective and even then a lot of what he does is better achieved by other characters.
-Is basically the lancer version of Siegfried except Siegfried eventually became good

Overall Opinion: Holy shit, this guy. I love Fionn, been a big Fionn fan for at least an hour now and it's changed me a lot, maybe, idk. Fionn's a badly made character. There are so many places where I can see this character being decent yet they fucked him up. His first skill took a buff to be good, his second skill could've just been a flat 1-turn dodge with a taunt attached to it but they decided to macguyver this stupid horseshit I guess to balance it out and give it an absurd cooldown, and his last skill is just... it's so generic and simple but it does nothing because Fionn gets fuck all from an arts buff since his np gain and damage both already suck, if it was targetable it'd actually be okay, but rip. It's very obvious to me they wanted this guy to be some sort of arts support with decent defensive capabilities, but between his NP being AOE damage with no team benefiting skills and all of his skills being either very selfish naturally or being poorly balanced he's so underwhelming and poor. If you put the investment into him he's maybe okay, but unless you wanna live the dream of playing Fionn at not a subpar level it's probably not worth it.
Score: 4/10


Beowulf
Berserker
4*
Debuts in Fate/Grand Order
Originates from Beowulf

Cards: Quick/Arts/Buster/Buster/Buster

ATK: 1707/10247
HP: 1652/10327

Skills
1. Berserk A: Buff own attack by 20/30 and 10/20% for 1 turn (Cooldown: 7/5 Turns)
2. Intuition B: Gain 4/14 critical stars (Cooldown: 7/5 Turns)
3. Battle Continuation B: Apply a 4-turn guts that heals for 750/2000hp upon resurrection (Cooldown: 9/7 Turns)

Passive Skills
1. Madness Enhancement E-: Buff buster cards by 1%

Noble Phantasm
Grendel Buster (Buster): Apply sure hit on self, hit the enemy really hard, and reduce enemy crit rate for 3 turns (Overcharge: Enemy crit chance debuff reduces by 30/50%) (After interlude np damage increases by 100%

PROS
+NP is actually pretty good allowing Beowulf to punch through enemies who spam evade and prevent random crits which matters a lot to him
+Third skill allows a second chance to do something should he randomly get run over by something
+First skill decently supports damage and burst potential
+Triple Buster card gives decent damage output and lets him gorilla so that's something
+Those jeans tho

CONS
-He's beyond generic... there is nothing special about this character's toolkit at all
-First skill while helping support his damage only lasts for a turn which limits longevity in damage severely
-Second skill is one of the most worthless skills in this game especially on a fucking berserker with a shitty absorption rate
-I've said this before on something else, but while guts does help longevity if the character that uses it to survive doesn't really do anything... it's kind of wasted on them
-NP is actually really good but his np gain and star gen are such ass that him gaining any gauge is a damn trial
-Increases own buster performance by 1% lmfao
-As I said before, he is so generic. This would be good in some cases if his skills actually did anything worthwhile, but they are all also generic and don't do anything to make him meaningful

Overall Opinion: I'm just sitting here laughing at how like... mediocre some of these characters are in the first year of this game. In a world with Kintoki and Zerkerlot, this dude was actually somewhat okay at the time but as the game has progressed man has this dude fallen off. They don't even really buff him either outside of the random interlude on his NP too. I don't really know what to say about Beowulf, he just doesn't really do much. He punches stuff really hard if he gets NP and he struggles to even get there so like... yeah.
Score: 5/10


Brynhild
Lancer
5*/Limited to a dl celebration rateup and Nerofest 3
Debuts in Fate/Prototype: Fragments of Blue and Silver
Originates from the Saga of the Volsungs

Cards: Quick/Quick/Arts/Buster/Buster

ATK: 1766/11432
HP: 2174/14825

Skills
1. Mana Burst (Flame) B: Buff own buster cards by 15/25% and NP damage by 8/15% for 1-turn (Cooldown: 7/5 Turns)
2. Primordial Rune (Brynhild): Reduce one enemy's crit rate for 3-turns by 30/50% and NP strength by 15/30% for 1-turn (Cooldown: 8/6 Turns)
3. Hero's Assistant C/Hero's Assistant C++: Buff one ally's crit star absorb by 300/600% and heal for 1000/3000hp, after second interlude the skill becomes Hero's Assistant C++ which buffs star absorb by 1000/3000% and crit damage by 20/40% for 3-turns and heals for 1000/3000hp (Cooldown: 7/5 Turns)

Passive Skills
1. Magic Resistance B: Increase debuff resistance by 17.5%
2. Riding A: Buff own quick cards by 10%
3. Divinity E: Buff damage by 100

Noble Phantasm
Brynhild Romantia (Buster): Deal big damage to one enemy, buff all allies crit gen by 30% for 3 turns, and deals extra damage against Loved One enemies (Overcharge: Increases extra damage by 150/200%) (After first interlude the NP gains a 200% damage buff and the crit gen buff increases from 30 to 50%)

PROS
+NP is pretty damaging and being buster based gives her good support if she ever needs to run DPS
+Third skill after buff is amazing, not only allowing her to give teammates a significant amount of crit damage potential, but even herself potentially and at max level the heal is very good
+NP increasing all allies drop rate is a genuinely beneficial skill to build more stars which helps out whoever she would select with third skill whether it be herself or not and the buff to the NP to 50% made it even better
+Her damage against Loved One enemies is pretty significant and makes her kind of a monster at DPS especially when combined with her third skill for big crit damage
+NP gain with AQQ is pretty good especially with her 5-hit extra attack and her quick cards have 3 hits on them which is pretty nice
+1st skill despite being so short is still a damage buff in two different ways so it's good for that alone
+Is in love with Jalter so she is an audience surrogate

CONS
-Loved Ones incorporates a little over 40 servants in the game as of this writing and about 10 of them are sabers which means even with the extra damage only about 30 servants are gonna be susceptible to getting significantly hurt by the full brunt of her NP
-Second skill is kinda mediocre. Crit reduction is an okay skill, but it's only used to minimize randomness against specific enemies where that is an actual concern and NP reduction by 30% could matter in situations where you've got support that can throw some more defensive measures, but without those it's pretty mediocre.
-Stargen is pretty average pre-NP, post NP it gets a lot better but you're gonna want to probably NP buster chain with this character so you might need a CE or another servant to help with that prior to the point you're trying to get to
-Makes me think of a less good Lusamine even if she predates her
-Apparently it's really fucking hard to find solid info on like five characters in the Loved Ones category, go figure
-Does not show very often on rateup, the second rarest limited servant behind MHX

Overall Opinion: Brynhild is a pretty good lancer unit. She's got solid support capabilities that extend even to herself which allows for big ass crit damage and NP damage. Most of her skills are on pretty short cooldowns which make her okay in extended fights and she even got an interlude that increased the damage of her NP. It's really hard to say anything bad about a lot of these 5* lancer units, they all tend to be pretty DPS focused and Bryn is no different, but her having the twist with that really good third skill makes her a little bit more special.
Score: 8/10