Chie is worthless until she gets God hand. Her only half decent physical attacks for what is effectively 2/3rd of the game(level 30-70) is Black Spot....which gets outclassed once your party has access to -dyne spells. Chie is struggling to deal half the damage your spellcasters do, even when powercharged.
Kanji on the other hand, gets access to way more powerful skills. He can easily keep up with Yosuke/Yukiko/Teddie(and even outclass them in the damage department) because unlike Chie(who gets crap like High Counter), Kanji keeps getting a steady stream of powerful physicals. Kanji also has a much higher Strength/Endurance stat than Chie, because he doesn't have an absurdly balanced split of Magic/Strength points like Chie(Seriously, I have no idea why the character who gets -dyne spells gets a crap magic stat and super-high strength, while Chie keeps getting magic points she will never use)
I'll admit that Chie suffers big time in the mid-game, as everyone who's played the game will as well but she gets multi-targeting physicals whereas Kanji doesn't. I don't see much benefit in wasting HP to hit one guy with a physical. That was fine in P3 when enemies actually were weak to physicals sometimes but in this game it's a waste. Chie's single-target physicals are more useful in my experience even if not as damaging. Black Spot and Rainy Death have a high crit rate for instance and Skull Cracker confuses dudes on a weirdly regular basis. Having said that, I usually drop Chie in the Naoto and Heaven dungeons and level her up on the second run-throughs and then pick her up again in Magatsu Inaba.
@mutha3 said:
Teddie gets Kanji's buff spell too so that doesn't really work in his favour.
Having 2 people buff saves you an extra turn in every battle. Totally works in his favor. Chie, on the other hand, can't heal,buff, debuff or inflict status effects properly. She can't deal as much damage as Kanji, and she can't take a hit nearly as well. The only thing she's got going for her is galactic punt.
I knew that about buffs but that has never been an issue for me since I spent a fuck-off long time fusing a Norn with all the Auto-Ma skills and if I really need to have all buffs synched, I'll just have my MC cast Maraku/Mataru. If you must have buffs on party members and you must use Yukiko then Kanji is probably a better choice than Chie.
@mutha3 said:
Not true. Kanji gets amp+boost, and that+your character's level+the skill you're using is way more important than your magic stat. A Ziodyne from Kanji does about 4/5x times the damage of Chie's Mabufu and half the damage from Yosuke's mighty wind.
Fair enough but if you're rolling with Chie then you don't use Mabufu to deal damage, you do it to knock enemies down. If Kanji has all-targeting higher tiered spells to make up for his lack of all-targeting physicals then Chie has all-targeting physicals to make up for having weak spells. They're fairly well-balanced against each other. In a boss fight, this is more a point of contention but why would you use Chie or Kanji's magic in a boss fight?
@mutha3 said:
Chie gets an ultimate weapon, but she actually does lack an extra dungeon.
Oh, was that what he meant? Fair enough but who actually uses the secret weapons for longer than a dungeon or two anyway?
If you're taking both of them as they are at end-game with all skills, my point that they are interchangeable still stands. In fact, I would say that the same is true for Yukiko and Teddie. Yosuke and Naoto not so much but the game is nowhere near hard enough that you need to be weighing up every little thing like turns saved through having buffs on everyone or differences in stat growth or damage dealt. If it was then no-one would use Naoto in boss fights ever. I used Kanji against Adachi/Ame-no-Sagiri and Chie against Margaret and there was little difference in strategy and difficulty. If you want to minmax though... I haven't done the calculations myself but I read that Chie using Power Charge + God's Hand every two turns is less damage than Kanji using Primal Force every turn but not by a whole lot plus you won't have to heal Chie as often. On top of that there are many accessories you can use to give Chie an edge if you want. In my experience, Kanji's high Endurance stat has not counted for much, he takes slightly less damage than the rest of the party (when wearing the same armour) and while he has a lot more HP, if he's spamming Primal Force, that drains pretty quickly.
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