LogFAQs > #975527639

2- Olivier

Is clearly another character who didn't need to be in this game. I mean, I'd keep (almost) all the doors, but did we really need all those 16 people in Phantasma other than for pure fanservice? No, we needed Kevin, Ries, Estelle, Joshua and Renne. I'd add Tita and Richard for the gameplay novelty, and I guess Anelace to make it 8 (since she was barely playable before). Scrap the rest and keep them door-only characters.

But I digress. My point is that I really have nothing to say about Olivier in the main game, since he does nothing in it. But you don't make it to God Tier by being someone who needs to scrap for more character scenes in the epilogue game. No, Olivier has over 100 hours of amazing bardic comedy backing him up. He gets to keep the 2nd place just for that.

This game is not useless for him, though. There is the Osborne door. Where tbh I think Osborne won the encounter, but Olivier did perform really well. He showed more of his realpolitik skills we have recently learned of, and more important, some actual motivations, something he was really in need of. We now know he really has a bone to pick with the nobles, and maybe that was his original source of suffering, not necessarily Osborne. But the later came and Olivier was wise enough to recognize him for what he really is: a fascist. And our bard turned out to be anti-fascist to the bone, so he realized there are evils we cannot justify falling to, no matter how bad the current situation is. And Olivier decides to take the hard path, rejecting both factions currently fighting for power and become the third one.

Please Falcom, I want to know Olivier's actual backstory. Why does he feel this invested in the politics of Erebonia?

1- Estelle

Was there any doubt this would be the final name in this list? Estelle is just another standard of protagonist, someone who single-handedly makes the first 2 games of this series legendary. And while she doesn't do much here, damn if what she does isn't great too! There is the entire sequence with Renne at the end, where Estelle just goes and shows her big heart. For a while I her saying she loves Renne over and over was a little off-putting to me, since they barely know each other. But later, it dawned on me that Estelle just wants to help Renne because she feels bad for her and her past, and she wants Renne to be a normal girl. So she will do everything in her power to make Renne feel loved, even if originally she has no reason to care about Renne. She will love Renne because she knows Renne needs her love. Because that's just who Estelle is, someone who has a lot of love to give. How do I not love that character myself?

And that shows in the Kid Estelle door, where we see how she naturally slipped into wanting to befriend Josh. It seems Estelle is just oblivious about Joshua's suffering, but I think in a way, Estelle knew something was wrong with him, and decided to do everything she could to help him. And the entire door is just Estelle never, ever, giving up on trying to reach out to him, even at the cost of risking her life. But she didn't know much about people, so she just decided to bring bigger and bigger bugs, which ties with my previous write-up saying Estelle was always a shining sun, but lacked the wisdom to know how to channel that light into concrete results.

And that turns out to be the story of how Josh originally fell in love with her.

Is there a fictional couple better than those two? I don't remember.