Deciding on the best Metaphor ReFantazio Archetypes might seem like a vain endeavor, after Atlus said each of the RPG’s classes is balanced to work in any circumstance, but some Archetypes are, without a doubt, more useful than others. Metaphor ReFantazio’s Royal Archetypes are the best. That’s unsurprising, considering they’re the ultimate forms of each party member’s Archetype lineage, so we’re not even going to bother listing them. Instead, we’ve laid out just over half a dozen Archetypes and their advanced lineages that have something special to offer, either particularly strong skills, an impressive range of ability types that free up your party’s Inherited Skill slots, or essential moves that exploit important weaknesses.
The Knight might seem like a dud, since it has almost no offensive skills and relies entirely on self-buffs and support in battle. That’s the point, though. Knights increase their defense and draw enemy attention so the rest of the party can stay safe. These ploys don’t always work, since some foes are determined to use multi-target spells, but having a character who can mitigate most kinds of damage – except lightning – with resistance to the very common slash damage type is almost always useful, especially if you pair them with the right Inherited Skills.
You also get Shield Arts, which is brilliant against bosses and single-target foes, since it reduces their hit and evasion rate by one level. It works on any enemy who doesn’t absorb or reflect strike attacks.
The Magic Knight is, admittedly, rather unimpressive. Not only do you lose all your Knight skills on transitioning, but the ones you get instead aren’t that great. Still, you need to max out Magic Knight to unlock the much better Dark Knight and the support-focused Paladin, so it’s worth sticking with it.
Spend as much time with Barton as you can, since you’ll want to unlock Commander and its extra Inherited Skill slots quickly. Well, as much as you can, anyway, seeing as he throws a high-level quest your way pretty early. Anyhow, the Commander line has some of the strongest skills in Metaphor ReFantazio, a mix of party-wide support, strong elemental skills, and Almighty-aligned skills that deserve a spot in any party lineup. Almighty is an extra-elemental skill that doesn’t follow the usual resistance-or-weakness system, so Almighty skills always hit hard.
Some of these skills aren’t just nice to have, either. A few of Metaphor ReFantazio’s later and optional bosses have skills that can instantly kill an ally if you don’t have the right buff on them.
The Mage line is the only way to get fire, ice, and lightning spells all under the same Archetype, and if you slap it on a character with high magic – the protagonist if you invest in magic, until you unlock Junah – you can land some heavy damage even just by using these “weak” skills. Wizard grants you higher-level versions of this attacks, but the real draw comes from the Warlock’s and Elemental Master’s passive skills. These restore MP when you defeat enemies, reduce MP cost of Synthesis skills, and buff your magic power. Leveling these on multiple characters is a bit of a hassle, but if you’re running magic or MP-heavy Archetypes on non-Mages, it’s worth getting at least a few of these to help with managing resources.
Gunner is a bit of a weird one, but its lineage has some must-have skills. Gunner itself comes with two of the most useful abilities early on, Sleep Shot and Poison Shot. Almost every enemy is weak to either or both of those. Sleep makes dealing with large enemy mobs less stressful, and poison whittles the target’s HP down every time they act – especially useful against bosses with multiple turns.
The Sniper’s Smashing Salvo deals heavy damage and lowers the target’s defense, and the Dragoon has access to fire, lightning, and ice-aligned shots, making them a useful Mage complement or replacement.
There’s a reason Summoner only unlocks after Metaphor ReFantazio’s halfway point: It’s broken in the best possible way. Summoner’s ability kit includes one of the most useful support spells in the game, along with attacks that deal heavy physical damage and some medium-strength elemental skills. The real fun starts when you unlock Devil Summoner, though, which has fire, ice, and lightning skills, debuff moves, and a healing ability that fully restores one ally’s HP.
The downside is that you have to gather materials to craft the summons with More, but it’s worth the hassle.
Seeker might be a little too balanced, as it excels in neither magic nor offense, and most of its support skills are single-target only. There’s certainly a use for single-target support skills, but mult-target ones like the Commander gets are much more convenient to use. The good thing about the Seeker is its wind magic – a spell type unique to this Archetype – and whether you like it or not, you do need to max out Seeker and Magic Seeker to access other advanced Archetypes, including the protagonist’s Royal Archetype, the Prince. Best? Not really. Essential? Definitely.
Thief and its advanced lineages are generally just okay and not much more, but it has some strong points. If you have a high speed character – Heismay, in other words – you have a better chance to have Steal work, thanks to the Archetype’s inherently high agility. That high evasion opens opportunities for more advanced planning, such as Knight skills that draw enemy attention in the hopes of getting a miss, and you'll have a better chance of landing risky skills that hit hard but often miss.
For more help, check out our Metaphor ReFantazio Royal Virtues guide and our explainer for how to get more inherited skill slots for each Archetype.
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