celebration of edwards harp

[feioncastor]

I've played FF2 on the SNES, FF4 on the PS1, and FF4A on the GBA, and I've never found Edward to be useful. He is good at disappearing during the sequence when you arrive at Fabul Castle, and because it's all scene where you don't control outside of the battles, you can't heal in between fights, rendering him totally useless from the moment he gets injured. If he gets killed, you can bring him back to life, but he'll hide immediately, and be hidden for the remainder of the sequence.

To me, Edward was just a pain. He didn't bring any real help to the table, and it was tough at first to keep him alive while trying to get him to level up a bit. His character was quite helpful against the Dark Elf, but that's a story related incident that will happen regardless of his value in a battle that you're fighting.

For physical damage, he sucks compared to Cecil, Kain or Edge. And he has no Black, White or Summon magic to compensate. His singing would be more valuble if you could choose which song he sings.

In FF4A, I used Edward enough to get his weapon from Mt. Ordeals, and then never again.

But that's just how I view Edward as a playable character. As a story character, he's super important and quite unique. He brings the an angle to the story and fills in the parts quite well. He is a well-developed character with a lot of personality and he interacts with the other story characters quite well, serving also to bring out another side of many other characters.