QUOTE(Jan Akiyama @ Jul 3 2006, 08:07 PM)
In terms of Cool, I gotta say its Cierra. The runes won me over. But My friend liked Lina's. He said it was cute. Serene's was a bit bland but it still did crazy phys damage. But Fia's is overated. Useless attack on one foe.
I must disagree on that last statement. While I'm not too certain of your initial impression of Fia based on other opinions, Fia is quite a good character. Firstly, Fia's rapier overskills do more damage than Serene's by chapter 6. With stats considered, they should break just about even, not certain though. She does do more damage than Serene in chapter 8. Not that this'll be much use if Cierra or Lina's around, but still.
Secondly, Fia's rapier attack can also raise your Overdrive meter and your opponent's RAGE meter greatly, which is very useful if you need a large Overdrive boost to use a high-level finisher, once the opponent does his/her MAX/RAGE move. Though that means you should be leery of assualting certain bosses with rapiers.
Thirdly, Fia's main role is a healer. Useful for challenges, but she's not going to be your main offensive tank. Although with ATT-boosting items, she should have decent damage. Overall, Fia's usefulness depends on your strategy, but she should never be useless, unless your strategy is a non-stop barrage, in which case the point of Riviera as a strategy game goes out the window.
But that's all off-topic. On-topic, Ledah is...painful as an ally past chapter 1. Disregarding the obvious story damage, unless you're allowed to choose a few alternate weapons and leave him out of battles, he's more of a hinderance than a help. If STING goes to all the trouble of redesigning the plot, adding a skill with Ledah for every item in the game, he's probably going to be excellent. Meanwhile, in reality, while he has good REC (20% healing each turn), and he also has a 4-hit attack that pierces on the last strike, he's worthless, quite possibly even worse than worthless, against fire-based monsters, plus the fact that his overskill is the weakest in the game by chapter 6, and shatters the overdrive bar despite it's weakness, and that he doesn't have a single use besides attacking, he's weak. As an enemy, though, he can be a little tricky to get Lorelei off. Malice is considerably easier for me, since you can walk all over her with Cierra. So, I'm pretty happy with it as it is, although if STING actually redesigned Riviera to fit Ledah in throughout the storyline, that would be wonderful. Not going to happen, though.
Off-topic again, I'll make this quick: Anyone feel that Riviera feels...incomplete? Several things are left unexplained, such as why the gods shared the demons fate after Ragnarok, why Ursula died, why Grim Angels had to sacrifice something, and so on. Almost as though the plot designer realised everything couldn't fit into the wonderswan's memory, and couldn't be bothered to complete it for the PSP or GBA.