Recruitable Unique Characters

Asagi

Base Stats

APTITUDES

Weapon Mastery

Skills

Evility

Never Give Up is a strong addition to a Combo Attack and Asagi’s unique Skills seriously have to be seen to be believed. Beyond that, Asagi is largely designed to occupy the same niche on your team as the Gunner, with similar stat growths and priorities, but the Gunner has the edge on raw numbers. Using Asagi is thus a bold personal choice and a show of support for her cause. Somebody ought to market I BELIEVE IN ASAGI buttons or something.

Porkmeister

Base Stats

APTITUDES

Skills

Evility

It’s important to realize, when looking at Porkmeister, that while his stats aren’t amazing, there’s no reason not to field him alongside Laharl (or, for that matter, any of the DLC Overlords) to activate his Loyalty Evility. He is thus about 30% more awesome than he looks like he should be. That, his souped-up versions of a standard Minotaur’s Skills, and his bizarrely high voice are what separate ol’ Porky from the pack.

Grosso

Base Stats

APTITUDES

Skills

Evility

For as much of a pain as he is throughout the main game and for as difficult as it is to recruit him, it’s a shame that Grosso isn’t much more than version 2.0 of a Gargoyle. He also manages to misplace half of his spell list and his second Evility while he transitions into a playable character, which is obnoxious. Most of the same benefits and drawbacks that apply to the Gargoyle also apply to Grosso, although Grosso has a much higher facility with magic, and by the time you recruit him, Monster Mastery means Grosso can drop spells on people from across the room.

Rainier

Base Stats

APTITUDES

Skills

Evility

When you finally get the chance to recruit her, you’ll find that Rainier is a more offensively oriented version of the Sea Angel, exchanging the Angel’s facility with Ice magic for Enfeeble and Mind Break. Unlike the Sea Angel, however, Rainier’s Artifact Collector Evility can be your best friend in the Item World, where it’s not at all uncommon to find four or more treasure chests on a given floor.

You can also take a tip from An Arrogant Betrayal and either give Rainier a Thief’s Treasure Sensor Evility or team her up with a Thief, so that dead enemies drop more treasure chests and provide more fuel for Artifact Collector. That does come with a caveat, however: as with all Evilities that contain the words “ally units,” Rainier herself does not benefit from the stat boost at all. While her HP and DEF are generally better than a standard-issue Sea Angel, she’s still fragile when compared to most other classes.

Garungun

Base Stats

APTITUDES

Skills

Evility

As with Golems, Garungun’s DEF and RES are lousy but his HP is hilariously high, so it’ll take most enemies a considerable amount of effort to take him down ... at which point Fabricated Setting pops him back up with 30% more stats for the next three turns. It’s hilarious once it stops happening to you.

Fabricated Setting is a powerful Evility in the right hands. What’s unfortunate for Garungun is that “the right hands” usually aren’t his. If you hand Fabricated Setting to a character that has more offensive potential than Garungun does, such as a Lady Samurai, it lets you play recklessly for the duration of the first “life” before Fabricated Setting kicks in. Garungun’s not a bad character by any means, but he plays like a Golem without the benefit of a Golem’s low-HP ATK boosts.

Axel

Base Stats

APTITUDES

Weapon Mastery

Skills

Evility

Despite the Guitar he’s waving around when he enters your group, Axel is better suited to using a Fist or Sword. Obvious Tendency is one of the more flexible stat-boosting Evilities in the game, as at any given time, it’s likely that half of your active roster and at least a few enemies are female.

Fenrich

Base Stats

APTITUDES

Weapon Mastery

Skills

Evility

Using Fenrich without Valvatorez is both inefficient and looks weird. Fenrich isn’t a bad character on his own merits, using either an Axe or Fist to bring the hurt, but Tyrant’s Slave turns him into a one-man army as long as he stays within one panel of Valvatorez. This opens them both up to area-of-effect attacks and spells from the enemy, but at double DEF and RES, Fenrich is likely to survive whatever they can do to him. Valvatorez, on the other hand, may be in trouble.

Emizel

Base Stats

APTITUDES

Weapon Mastery

Skills

Evility

Emizel comes standard with a full complement of Mega and Giga elemental spells, and Concentration makes him sort of the magical equivalent of the Lady Samurai. He shines when he’s allowed to walk up to a group and drop them one at a time, exploiting their vulnerabilities and Concentration to inflict spectacular amounts of damage. You can further back him up with a Magic Knight’s Anti- spells or an Ifrit, Shark Dragon, or Evil Dragon with the appropriate resistance-lowering Evility. If you shift one of the Magician’s Evilities over to Emizel, it’s hard not to use him as your primary offensive spellcaster in the late game.

Artina

Base Stats

APTITUDES

Weapon Mastery

Skills

Evility

To some extent, Artina has the same problem Lanzarote has: her stats and Weapon Masteries make her a solid ranged combatant, but to get the most out of her complement of debuffs, you’ll either need to grind her spells’ levels for a few hours each or she needs to enter melee range. A Staff is just too important to efficient spell use for a mixed archer/spellcaster to really get off the ground.

The difference is that Artina has Angel Glitter, which is a huge buff for any male character she happens to be standing next to. If you permanently affix her to any of the dudes that make up your front line, Artina’s a very strong force multiplier in much the same way as the Male Angel is. It’s just a shame that the two characters who’d get the most out of backup from a character like her—Barbara and the Armor Knight—are both women.

Petta

Base Stats

APTITUDES

Weapon Mastery

Skills

Evility

Sadly, when she’s recruited, Petta loses a lot of the spells she had when you fought her. She enters play with “only” Omega and Tera Star, plus her unique Skills. While Petta Beam isn’t the nuclear strike it was in Disgaea 4, it’s still a very potent single-target attack.

Petta’s Evility provides anyone standing next to her with a two-panel boost to their attack and casting range. This stacks with all other range modifications such as Weapon Mastery, Monster Mastery, and the Magic Extender spell.

Valvatorez

Base Stats

APTITUDES

Weapon Mastery

Skills

Evility

Without Absorption, Valvatorez is “just” a decent swordsman or spearman with respectable ATK and HIT scores. With it, Valvatorez becomes extremely dangerous as long as you keep feeding him kills. It helps that Tyrant Flughude does a ridiculous amount of damage for the area it covers, which lets Valvatorez wipe out weaker opponents and use the stats he gains to take out the rest.

Like Laharl, Valvatorez has a slight advantage in that his Evility does not actually require him to kill an enemy for it to function. He can easily absorb stats from an ally, although unlike Laharl, any ally that would actually provide a worthwhile stat gain through Absorption is also not likely to drop in one or two hits. You can potentially game the system by deliberately bringing in characters who are almost dead and letting Valvatorez finish them off, which may come in handy in the Item World if you’re still a few floors away from Innocent Island. Valvatorez’s stats gained through Absorption only last until the end of the present stage.