Birthday Cup Review: Alma/Lea vs. Ramza/Crowe

Almost from the start, Ramza and Crowe were on the offensive and landing major blows on Alma and Lea. Alma's use of stoneskin early on was definitely helpful, but she (the white mage) seemed to be the only one reliably landing hits as well. Through the entire thread, Crowe was dealing the majority of the actual damage, followed mostly by Alma. In part this is due to what I'll be talking about later, but for sheer damage (both given and taken, sorry Ramza) this goes to...

As mentioned, both Lea and Ramza were really, REALLY hard to pin down this fight. Ramza was mostly harrying and supporting Crowe, which fits of what I recall of his unique Squire class from Tactics. He landed not one, but several Rock Throws and successfully kept enough pressure on Lea to force the Flurry to focus on him instead of Crowe, which might have been a much more straightforward matchup. He also played to his chivalry rather well, I felt. Lea meanwhile was as slippery as a greased eel. Nearly every one of his offensive actions also included a dodge, and he was quick to put himself in the way of anything he thought he might be able to take better than Alma. He fought quite a bit like his own Assassin Nobodies did, which is fitting, and honestly it felt like the only real way to inflict lasting damage on him was going to be to use never-miss or AoE spells, which it felt like Ramza and Crowe just didn't have. Lea and Ramza were definitely running this show, even if Crowe and Alma were doing most of the damage. If the fight had continued another few posts it might've been anyone's game, but as it stands I have to give this one to...

Hoo boy. To start off, Crowe's writing style here is awesome. Just the right amount of description and enough clarity to see what's going down, without bogging it down with minutiae that may have confused more than helped. I feel like she could maybe use a smidge more description in the OOC areas of her posts to back up what some of her statuses do for those of us who might not be familiar with XV, but I was able to follow most of them easily enough. Crowe was left mostly alone, but took what hits she was given and justified the ones that she could safely ignore or counter. Alma, again, was very descriptive. All of her spells and actions were clearly described and we got a pretty decent peek behind the screen. She played up her lack of confidence until she realized her situation was too dire to hesitate, and after that her movements and attacks all seemed less coordinated and thought through, which fit the situation. She again took every hit that was aimed at her, and justified her being able to stand up afterward for the most part, and the only reason there was any confusion about her keystone ability here (Aeropool more or less forced the strategies the opponents were using) was that she probably could have stood to, again, give a reminder in the OOC section of the post as to what it did, exactly. Of note, her status indicators in that OOC area were a GODSEND for knowing who was under what status. I may shamelessly steal her format. Ramza...has a really strong defensive ability in Rush. I feel like he was maybe dodging more than attacking, but as previously mentioned his Squire class was support-focused in Tactics. He stuck to his guns about not attacking Alma, who reasonably reminded him enough of his sister to give him pause and even justify him defending her at one point from one of Lea's attacks gone rogue. His positional descriptions were a smidge puzzling, but I think part of that was him trying to react to Alma and Lea and not quite parsing what they were trying to accomplish. He clarified this in his posts with positional maps, but this category is more about the writing aspect. Lea was, as previously mentioned, slippery. His descriptions were true to form for the former Nobody, and it felt like the boss fight against him all over again. He was hard to pin down, hard to follow, and hard to hit. But I worry that that might not be the best sort of thing for PvP threads. That said, also like his KHII battle, none of his attacks (barring explosion) were particularly dangerous alone, even without their effects being suppressed for part of the thread, and they often hit ally and enemy alike. This category is harder than the other two because I feel all four did a good job here.

I noticed that most my co-reveiwers thus far largely discounted the contribution of healing and mitigation in the fight, which seems unfair to our resident white mage (if I’m mistaken and healing/mitigation is to be entirely discounted in this section, then my bad) I certainly agree that Crowe and Ramza largely dictated the flow of the battle, with Lea and Alma being kept largely on the defensive. Crowe and Alma had the most discernible impact on the battle (sorry wrestling-boys) though in different ways. One salient point that I see surprisingly unmentioned thus far is that Lea and Alma actually managed to knock one of their opponents out, which seems a rather telling indicator of damage dealt. Sure, it might’ve have been evened out later, but the battle ended before then. Therefore I give this section to Alma and Lea.

There seems to be some disagreement amongst my co-reviewers whether Lea’s strategy is or is not in character/ fits into abstract RPG vernacular. As I have major qualms about telling other people how to play their characters, I am opting out of that aspect of the discussion entirely.

Regardless, both Lea and Ramza kept to a very evasive style despite their efforts largely negating one another. Lea’s theme as described in narrative was dancing and his style kept to that well. Crowe gave a good warmage vibe, and used Wall in a manner that both strategically effective and fair. Alma used her limited arsenal very effectively and managed to influence the flow of battle in a terrain-altering fashion that i’ve rarely seen used on site. Even though heedlessly focus firing Alma was the right call strategically, Ramza kept in character and relentlessly harried Lea in stead. However, Ramza and Crowe overall had more cohesion in their strategy and coordinated more effectively, and thus my vote for this section does to them.

We had some pretty writers all around, albeit of different styles. I try not hold up one style above others, and see equal equal merit in Ramza’s quixotic narrative, Lea’s stream of conciseness, Alma’s very informative attention to detail, and Crowe’s efficacious middle-ground. The talent of all those involved is undeniable, especially when describing some maneuvers that got extremely complex at some points.

One area I definitely agree with my co-reviewers on is the dodge-spam getting out of control for a bit there. Just because something happens in the games doesn’t necessarily mean it’s suited to a PVP thread. Mogrid cogently brought this up already, so i won’t belabor the point. However I will point out that while Lea’s abilities at least had cooldowns, Rush at 0 cooldown is being interpreted rather generously to say the least. Sportsmanship moments of note where Lea keeping in character by being not as proficient with his keyblade and Ramza going all the way on Alma’s sister resemblance. Overall I found this section to be the closest. However Crowe tips it over the edge for me, as they took all but one hit aimed at them and didn’t assume they automatically knew what others attacks did, going so far as to test Alma’s spells to find out.