Tourney Review: Zest/Tidus vs. Ramza/Crowe

Hoo boy. Crowe took quite the beating here, Ramza didn't get off entirely scot-free either. But Ramza and Crowe were also working off of some crazy synergy, especially towards the end. Zest probably took the least amount of hits here, and Tidus probably got the worst of it before it was all said and done. Spell after spell was flying at him, and with Ramza deciding to place himself at risk to try and knock out one opponent and cover Crowe, I think they would have gotten the advantage here.

Zest is one of the highlights here, and I think he works well enough with Tidus. But I'm going to have to give the point to Ramza and Crowe again. Especially for the clutch maneuver toward the end, with Crowe placing herself at risk to heal Ramza, and Ramza returning the favor by healing her at the expense of some of his own health. And they capitalized on this moment to target down Tidus. I think they would pull it off before Zest could save him, too. Though Ramza might not be too well off after, I think this would be the deciding point for Ramza and Crowe. They really sold the weight of the opponent's strategies and attacks, and bounced off of it to work in their own. Sheer style definitely goes to them. And they were definitely starting to gain combat dominance before the match ended.

Zest had great detail and wrote distinctly and clearly. I wasn't confused by any of his posts. Tidus's could have used some improvement, however. In terms of sportsmanship, I also feel like Tidus was a bit lacking. I would say my major complaint against him is that he didn't seem to understand how Rock Throw was being used, and at least in my personal opinion, I think that reflects poorly. For Ramza and Crowe, they did a good job of detailing their posts, and working with what they were given. I will however admit that Zest had a good sense of sportsmanship, and overall it felt like everyone was pretty in character. It's a tough call, but I'm going to give the third and final point to Ramza and Crowe. Nothing personal to the other team!

As much as I love how much coordination and strategy Ramza and Crowe were displaying, Slowga tipped this category so far in Tidus and Zest's favor it's not even funny. It was dropped in one of the first combat posts and lasted until nearly the last one, plus with Delay Buster forcing Crowe's spells to take an extra post to go off, this is no contest.

This one is a little closer. Ramza and Crowe once again showed off a great deal of coordination and teamwork, buffing one another, attempting to focus down the bigger strategic target, and dealing with everything coming at them in creative and fair ways. On the other hand, Tidus was just as annoying to fight in this incarnation as I'd expect of trying to fight him in his source, drastically altering the flow of battle with a variety of supporting abilities that were in his wheelhouse in the original game. As mentioned in the previous point, Slowga, Hastega, and Delay Buster more or less decided that category. Not to be ignored is Zest making excellent use of his shield and the fact that he can sling and retrieve it more or less at will, it was with or protecting Tidus as often as Zest, and he used it offensively at least once.

So, this one is tougher. On the one hand we have Ramza and Crowe interpereting Slowga's effects to be more detrimental than strictly necessary and obeying the restriction in full, plus accounting for the fact that being slower means they'd be hit more often. On the other hand, Rush is still crazy good, and rock throw really versatile. I already mentioned that Slowga is frankly scary, and I imagine that in a raid environment it only gets more so. There is the question of Tidus missing a couple of Rock Throw effects, but I'm calling that a wash because I'm also not sure how sporting it is to explicitly call out that it's happened in-thread. =/ In the end, I'm calling this a draw. Both teams had strong and weak points in both categories, and it just feels like everything balanced out.