As promised, here is my explanation of the standard classes found in Yggdra Union. There are very few cases where you can simply throw one character at all your problems and be done with it, so knowing what each class can do is quite important.
It helps that the first chapter introduces all of the most common classes. There are, of course, more classes, but they generally aren't as common.
Sword Maiden
- Weapon: Sword
- Element: Holy
- Gender: Female
- Movement type: Walk
- Size: Small
- Abilities:
- Advantage against Golems
- Fort Advantage
- Void Holy
- Weak against Dark
Sword Maiden is Yggdra's special class. It's a customized version of the generic Valkyrie class, with the addition of Fort Advantage. Yggdra is effective in almost every way, only really lacking in Luk.
Of course, in the early game you have to worry about the fact that she uses swords. The game will shortly go out of its way to use that against her, too. You can't have everything, I guess.
Also, be sure not to have her go Aggressive when fighting Valkyries, because she'll do no damage.
Stray Thief
- Weapon: "Axe"
- Element: None
- Gender: Male
- Movement type: Walk
- Size: Small
- Abilities:
- Void Stone
- Wasteland Advantage
Milanor's special class is supposedly a variant Bandit, but he has a completely different ability set from the generic bandits. It's a good one, too.
Milanor's primary skill is his Wasteland advantage, which uses the single most common terrain type in the game and is generally very helpful. The other ability, meanwhile, is only useful on one map. In fact, I suspect that it may only be there because playtesters complained about that one map.
Milanor, again, has very high stats, with Gen being the only one he's not virtually guaranteed to max. Even that can be managed with food items, though.
Bandit
- Weapon: Axe
- Element: None
- Gender: Male
- Movement type: Walk
- Size: Small
- Abilities:
- Destroy Village
The Bandit is an enemy-only class, and for good reason: they're the very definition of cannon fodder. They typically have terrible stats apart from Atk, their weapon type is ineffective against the weapon wielded by the main character, and their sole ability is useless. They don't even know how to effectively use it to get rid of villages that have things you might want.
Valkyrie
- Weapon: Sword
- Gender: Female
- Movement type: Walk
- Size: Small
- Abilities:
- Advantage against Golems
- Void Holy
- Weak against Dark
The other enemy-exclusive normal class is much better than the Bandit. Valkyries do holy damage in Rage mode, which is only good against two classes, one of which you'd have to be out of your mind to use. They also have combat advantage against Golems, which you'd also be out of your mind to use.
Still, they're much more threatening than any Bandit will ever be. They tend to have balanced stats, which makes them much more credible threats than the generally weak Bandits.
Fencer
- Weapon: Sword
- Element: Lightning
- Gender: Male
- Movement type: Walk
- Size: Small
- Abilities:
- Void Lightning
The Fencer is the male alternative to the Valkyrie. They tend to be used as cannon fodder most of the time, which suits their lack of abilities. Most enemy Fencers are unimpressive statwise, too.
Now, why does a generic minion enemy do elemental damage? Well, I honestly believe that it's entirely due to the one that joins the Royal Army...
Knight
- Weapon: Spear
- Element: None
- Gender: Male
- Movement type: Horse
- Size: Large
- Abilities:
- Road Advantage
- Bridge Advantage
- Weakness against Griffon Riders
- Forest Disadvantage
The Knight is the most common of the large units, which have half as many members as normal units, but each member is twice as strong. Each member also counts for twice the normal Surviving Units bonus, so they can do more damage in close fights.
Knights also have Horse movement, which lets them move through enemy troops. This is a situational ability, but it can be quite useful at times. More valuable, though, are their two types of terrain advantage. Roads and bridges are quite common, so being able to gain an advantage on them is very useful indeed. Their forest weakness isn't much of an issue, simply because there aren't very many forest maps.
Knights typically have better stats than other troops, with especially high focus on Gen. This makes them more dangerous than the typical foot soldier, but they're still nothing Milanor can't handle.
The only real weakness of the Knight class is its inability to effectively fight Griffon Riders. Griffon Riders appear on a surprisingly large number of maps, but they're not common enough to warrant ignoring Durant.
Witch
- Weapon: Rod
- Element: Fire
- Gender: Female
- Movement type: Walk
- Size: Small
- Abilities:
- Void Fire
For whatever reason, the Witch class's mastery of the arcane arts translates to hitting their enemies in the face with brooms. Go figure.
Anyway, Witches are a cut above other classes commonly used as mooks, simply because they use rods. Rods are effective against all three melee weapon types, and you don't get any weapons effective against them for quite some time. Furthermore, Witches invariably have high Tec, which makes their charges quite dangerous and allows them to make good use of many card skills.
Fortunately, the Witch class is rather squishy, lacking Gen and Atk. This makes them easy targets for your own high-Atk units, who will often be able to take them on despite their weapon disadvantage.
Their one ability is a lot more useful than it looks, too. Fire is perhaps the most common element in the game, and being completely immune to it is a very useful ability to have.
Hunter
- Weapon: Bow
- Element: None
- Gender: Male
- Movement type: Walk
- Size: Small
- Abilities:
- Advantage against Griffon Riders
- Noon Advantage
- Forest Advantage
The Hunter is your basic male bow-using class. Bow users cannot counterattack, but they also can't be countered, so battles involving them tend to be very one-sided. They're also weak against all melee weapons, though melee weapons are not strong against them.
The strength of bow users tends to lie with their advantages. The Hunter becomes deadly at noon, transforming from a weak fighter that can't deal with melee combatants that aren't riding griffons to a warrior of unparalleled skill. Unfortunately, a significant number of endgame maps are locked to night, which makes the class much less effective in the endgame. Forest advantage is also quite worthless, for reasons mentioned in the Knight description.
Hunters tend to have high Tec, which improves their already-deadly charges beyond their normal form. They're average in every other stat.
Assassin
- Weapon: Bow
- Element: Dark
- Gender: Female
- Movement type: Walk
- Size: Small
- Abilities:
- Night Advantage
- Void Dark
Assassins are the female bow-using class, and they're frequently more dangerous than Hunters. They inflict dark damage in Rage mode, which as you already know, Yggdra is weak to. Furthermore, Assassins themselves are not weak against Yggdra's holy damage, which makes them quite capable against her.
Assassins are at their deadliest at night, which makes them quite effective in the endgame when every map is locked to night anyway. They also tend to have high non-Gen stats, which make them lethal even during the day. Assassins also have a powerful unique skill, which betrays the fact that the Royal Army will, in fact, be able to harness their awesome power in the future.
There you have it. All the classes introduced in chapter 1, which also happen to be the most common. I hope that I at the very least sounded informative there.
