Poor neglected Steiner (spoilers)

Does anyone else think Steiner should have been made more use of early in the game? His character is a little trying but in terms of gameplay he's amazing. Also, inactive characters gain zero experience. On my early playthroughs I had Zidane and Vivi coasting on levels 9 - 10 whereas in early disc 2 Steiner was languishing down at level 3. It takes some ingenious grinding to get used to this game and thank god for that fight for Alexandria him and Beatrix partake in. I put him on Level Up straight away these days. What do you guys think?

He is brokenly strong gamewise and a funny and enjoyable character storywise.

Steiner, Vivi, Zidane and Garnet were always my first choice party for this game. The best combination of healing spells and offensive might there is. That made it particularly hard to enjoy using other characters such as Quina and Freya even when forced to use them. Though Quina does actually become useful early on if you grind the absolute living hell out of the marshes for frog catching and get 9999 damage on frog drop (though I personally always found it too time consuming to do this before I had other characters who were able to do this much damage regardless). When the Steam version drops, I will actually attempt to play a game where I don't use any of my usual suspects in terms of characters. I'm thinking to try and use Amarant, Freya, Quina and Zidane and go (aside from blue magic) mageless.

I love Steiner both gameplay and story-wise. So he's always in my party. :)

Yeah, Steiner does get the short end of the stick in terms of being usable in the first two discs. Course he makes up for it by being pretty powerful once his levels catch up. I had a playthrough where I actually purposely grinded him to be the same level as Zidane no matter what. Trading the Stellazio coins to get the Blood Sword early is super useful as well.

In terms overall, Steiner keeps gaining my love with each playthrough, being a close second behind Vivi for me. As a player character, he's pretty badass with a good skill selection despite most people ignoring most of them for Beatrix's skills.

What good skills does Steiner have other than Stock Break, Shock, and Climhazzard? I barely use Minus Strike and it's only during the beginning of the game when I do, the Breaks, seem like they almost never work in this game in X they're among the most used Charge? LOL, Thunder Strike is glitched so it always misses.

I give it to his Swd Magic with Vivi, but his Swd Art is mostly useless until the end of the game.

The Break skills do work when they land and are great for boss battles. Minus Strike may be situational but brings the hurt when it does work. Darkside is almost my default move for Steiner and Iai Strike is actually a great move because it's glitched. Steiner's biggest issue is that he's not available very often in the early parts of the game and getting his gear can be troublesome since it's pretty sparse in the early sections besides stealing from Beatrix.

Charge! is absolutely insane if you know how to use it... easily can deal like 30k dmg in one turn.

Yes. I agree that he was neglected.

I also agree he is immensely powerful and enjoyed his comedic effect throughout the game.