I know he was a good character in 4 and it's been mentioned that he's good in this one but I played a demo and he didn't seem that great - pretty much average stats at level 12, with appalling magic def - does he get better later on?
sigurds decent, his weapons pretty good, and the rune he can use is sweet.
he can also ride the kangacorns.
you just have to be careful, because he can actually die
The point about throwing knives that I never really saw mentioned is that he can fight close-ranged and long-ranged - but his long range isn't as much as an archer. Still, it makes him rather versatile.
the problem with sigurd is ,as some people have experienced, that he has a very high death rate for a fatal blow and people don't like losing characters for the rest of the game.
Otherwise, a good approach is to never allow anyone to take the risk of death. The game has plenty of mechanism to minimise the risk, so that's not much of a problem.
Masamune wrote:The point about throwing knives that I never really saw mentioned is that he can fight close-ranged and long-ranged - but his long range isn't as much as an archer. Still, it makes him rather versatile.
Actually, Clairvoyance allows him to attack at ranges farther than archers can reach (if I recall correctly.. havent played this game since last year).
Mitsuba is also an awesome killable character. Give her the ogre breath and beserker belt and then do everything possible to increase her accuracy and she is awesome. If you don't like killable characters then you can use Coop but he's not quite as good.
Sigurd is one of the most versatile characters in the game. he can mount Kangacorns, use elemental robes to change his element, use elemental swords to match his robe (or for other purposes), and the rune for knife users has great attacks. if you don't find him effective at low level, it's probably because you don't have his robes and rune slots to work with yet.. be patient! oh, and his PDF and MDF are close to being the highest in the game, oddly enough. he also has high skill... Sigurd stands out in almost every category.