Still, Kadabra and Alakazam, and even Mewtwo, pale in comparison to the REAL game-breakers, the weird glitch “Pokemon” that break the level cap and multiply your items several hundred-fold, when they don’t just crash your game of course!

You have some interesting ideas about game balance. I’ll advertise my blog about it here:
http://real-game-balance.blogspot.com/

(Rest assured that I do agree about Fox in Melee.)

Reyson pales in comparison to the Laguz Royals. Those things are beyond broken. They break the game by ignoring the counterbalance to the ridiculous transformation stats. The problem with stat doubling is that it’s easy to have Laguz be either walking targets when untransformed, or absolute Gods when transformed. And ALL of the LRs have enough transformation Speed to double EVERYTHING that isn’t on the last two maps. The only thing really holding them back is their availability being generally limited to the last part.

Elincia in the same game is an honorable mention. 45 Might Amiti on dragons, what? She’s held back by defense problems and lack of range with the Amiti, but when you can humiliate DRAGONS, there’s a problem.

Meanwhile, as for Geno, I can agree that Geno Boost has problems. But I think Toadstool is the REAL problem. Group Hug is spammable, allowing Toadstool to keep the party healthy with ease. Status effects? The only time you’ll ever care is if they stop Toadstool from using Specials, because otherwise, Group Hug will get rid of them in a jiffy. And most monsters don’t have any semblance of good enough Physical Defense to survive physical attacks well enough to force FP usage with attacks.

You make me want to try BoF III now, I’ve beat 1, 2, and 4. In 4 Ruy was a monster, but in III with unlimited transformations, yeah, that sound very gamebreaking to me.

Though sure, Lazy Shell Princess is probably better against Smithy.

I’ve got to ask though, why Geno? Lazy Shell princess is almost unkillable, and her abilities aren’t hindered much by the lazy shell, esp as timing\resurrect is HP based rather than stat based. She’s much more game-breaking than Geno, although her setup comes later.

Hahaha, my shinny alakazam is STILL nasty to this day. Though I never could get why they didn’t make any Ghost or Dragon moves that where actually affected by elemental weaknesses… It seemed like such an obvious oversight to me, even as a kid.

Pin missile wasn’t bad for a bug move, but BEEDRILL IS POISON (Doh). Similairly, making Ghastly, the only ghost, also poison just stunned me…

-Citan will generally be a point or two of strength behind Fei. It’s really not significant, but Fei tends to lead in damage for a lot of the game so Citan generally being right behind him is still good.

-Uh, oops~

-Well, since Yuri spends about three seconds in his default state in most battles, and I do mention he crushes the cast progressively harder at stats as he piles on better transformation bonuses, the idea probably stuck around. I put down forgetting his speed as having not played the game in a few years.

-Yeah, I remember meaning to mention saving overdrives as a potential tactic and seemingly forgot in the final push to get it written.

Some potential nitpicks:

-You twice mention Cid having notable move on Agrias, which feels like an exaggeration since the gap is only 1 point and Agrias has potentially had a fair bit of time to learn a movement ability. The real reason Cid looks so much better than all but the best-built Agriases has to do with the fact that he can wear clothes and hats (as well as having a large power lead to start with, which you already mention).

-Does Citan actually have less power than Fei before katanas? It’s been a while but that’s not what I remember. Still, I’ll generally defer to your XG expertise…

-Geno Boost only raises damage by 1.5x (still great, but not double great). On the other hand, you can’t time-block the damage from some enemy physicals and ANY enemy magic (including such memorable beatdowns as Yaridovich’s Water Blast and Smithy’s Sword Rain/Meteor Swarm) so Geno Boost halving these is a huge boon indeed.

-I’ve always been amused at how Yuri has the highest HP, SP (excepting just after you recruit Keith), attack, and speed, because it means he’d be a balanced, worthwhile character even if fusions didn’t exist. The stat dominance should probably be mentioned somewhere.

-With Yuna, it’s worth explicitly mentioning that the reason her aeons are so effective even against the bosses which “counter” them is because of their overdrives, which can either be saved up from randoms or Yuna herself can use Grand Summon, and deal crazy amounts of damage.

Don’t let these criticisms take away from the fact that I thought it was a fun read, though! :)