Top 10 Broken RPG Protagonist 

Damn dude congrats for your Atlus sponsorship! thats quite a helluva feat.

I do agree Byleth is great but like...when Robin exists nobody will ever top him in terms of unit tiering. Robin and Chrom is the ideal pairing in the higher difficulties to beat the game...jusy those two Byleth solo is much more challenging and there are units who definitely have better uses in 3Hs

That's the Wild Card protagonists, specifically, so 3, 4, and 5. With access to skills like Life Aid(restore 8% of max HP/SP at the end of every battle), Survival Trick(Endure any insta-kill spell with 1HP once per battle), Enduring Soul(fully recover HP if KO'd, once per battle), and Victory Cry(Fully recover HP/SP at the end of battle), it doesn't really matter what kind of build you choose to go with for each persona that has any of the skills I listed above. Add on top of that the fact that in P5R you can engage in activities that permanently boost the protagonist's HP/SP, meaning it's possible to have a level 1 Joker with 999 in both HP and SP, AND his ultimate equipment from previous cycles, it's pretty difficult to say that P5R isn't an easy title.

Worth noting that Velvet's Consuming Claw also heals her and removes all status ailments on her with every use.

Man, Rean just manages to be good no matter which game the man's in. I think somebody at Falcom got tired of the protag being a sucky unit after Estelle and kept cranking it up with Lloyd and we're at Rean and his busted ass setups. Something that was kinda overlooked is his silly Arcane Gale setups that completely gut the game in CS3 and Reverie. The strat was nerfed a bit in 4 but in 3 and Reverie...good god. It hits ridiculously hard and with enough Cp regen, man can flat just wipe out encounter after encounter with little trouble. It's at its most crazy in 3 when break was incredibly overpowered.

"such a small channel" I was honestly chocked to see your sub count after you said that. Your content is great and consistent, you deserve a lot more recognition. If Atlus thinks so you must be doing something right 😊

What really makes Velvet busted is that she has like unlimited super armor while comboing and cant die while she is comboing. She also gets stronger at low HP which synergizes with it lol.

So your 62nd tier list in this video comes after your 78th tier list 2 months ago. I see what you're doing |-) Also gz on the sponsorship and face reveal!

I remember you doing a community poll on this about 6 months ago. Really thought TG Cid would make the list

Other Broken MCs if you are interested are Denim Powell of Classic Tactics Ogre in SNES, PS! and Saturn as if you prioritize his Agi which can only be increased at Level up he will have 99% chance of evading Most Attacks letting a level 50 MC Solo 4 Level 50 Guardians in Hell Gate. Ogami in Sakura Taisen Atsuki Chishio Ni/In Hot Blood (ST1 Remake in PS2) and ST3 Dream Cast as During his turn you can change focus anytime which changes the action point need for each action Plus select to cover one of the heroines that nullifies damage directed at them for 3x each time 8x in the original ST1 Dream Cast. Then there is Vayne n Mana Khemia who has 2 moves which can increase his number of turns for the 1st while the later let's him act 3 times straight which you can make infinite as long as you have enough MP and right sequence of turns provided you have enough MP Restoring Items which can be easily be done with the Game's Task Sharing once you make the 1st One.

I'm a big fan of Nocturne and the Demifiend for sure, but I think Flynn in SMT4 is just as nuts. Dump all your points in Magic and then Concentrate > Almighty skill like Antichthon and it's GG EZ no re. And Demon Whisper makes it so easy to make him overpowered and efficient, as well as tailor his moveset in all kinds of absurd combinations. Nanashi from SMT4A is similar but without Magic being quite as busted of a build.

Byleth is not the strongest protagonist in Fire Emblem nor are they the strongest unit in the Three Houses. Robin from Awakening is a stronger avatar unit and if they don't count because Chrom is the protagonist then the strongest FE protagonist would be Sigurd from FE 4. Dude can pretty much solo the game the chapters he is available.

I’m surprised Claude from _Star Ocean 2_ didn’t make the list. His best weapon can be procured very early and has a ranged normal attack that stun locks. Clause also has only 3 core special moves that are worth training, so he doesn’t require as much time wasted in spamming moves to improve their efficacy. Claude technically got buffed in the remake, since his previous core moves in the original were nerfed in the remake, but learned late. Claude’s best moves in the remake are learned early.

I remember playing through Trails games and Rean just absolutely destroying Cold Steel 1 and 2 by himself. I didn't even really need other party members. One time I ended up even trying nightmare mode Rean solo and i didn't get super far cause early game is rough without ng+ but I feel like if I spent more time on it I could have beaten it. He's so broken that its fun.

Honorable mention. Cray in Shining Force CD on Sega CD. He is an absolute tank. He is a monk who has extreme attack and defense plus has healing magic. I would send him alone and he was nearly unstoppable.

Where's the Wrath of the Righteous Crusade Commander ? As soon as mythic paths are unlocked, they become more powerfull than the other 5 members of the party combined. A trickster protagonist can have ennemies kill themselves on sight (which more than trivialises the whole game)

Unlike Lloyd and Estelle, whose climb to greatness felt believable Rean needing to overcome his reliance on Valimar wasn't conveyed well enough in my opinion: from the jump his character builds negated the need to have his divine knight join battles

Great video, but I can't believe you didn't mention any of the Disgaea characters. In terms of quantifiable damage, it's difficult to find anyone else that can perform that sort of damage output.

My man Loclo looking like Seth Green lol. Thanks for another top 10 video!

I played breath of fire 3 when I am still in elementary and still not really understand English so I play whatever. Knowing that you can break the game by using the right master is just mind blowing for me

A very interesting list to say the least. Protagonist are usually great or broken. Hey, can you try making list for indie RPGs? There are quite a few I think are up your alley.

Busted characters lists are cool but I'd rather see a busty characters list.

Yoo man, first time i see your face. Looking good! Haha. I really like your videos, and yeah Byleth is very good.

07:05 a man of culture I see. And thanks for the major TOCS IV spoiler. Still had to play that game.

The Hunter from Marvel Midnight Suns is pretty busted compared to the rest of the cast. He/She can basically fill any role because their deck is 3 times the size of anyone else and probably has the biggest single target DPS in that game.

To go into joker in more detail cause i know too much about persona t: a) get caroline and justine to rank 5 to get special treatment (royal moved it to 5 from 10 cause they are insane) b) reach dungeon 4 c) get into mementos on any day you want congrats you are now in a state where you can make almost any persona in the game with any build you want. i say almost cause social link logs exist. but things you can just have: multiple buffing personas that repel everything except almighty the most specialised personas you want for every element. heck if you are goofy like me you can turn your bargin bin jack frost into a max stat monster with the strongest ice spell in the game boosted and amped and casting it FOR FREE cause that works in this game too. and dungeon 4 is midgame. also you can do all your persona prep in one ingame day. cause money is no object when you instant kill shadows and take their stuff

Virginia from wild arms 3. Lower the weight of her gun and give her up to 12 shots. She will demolish enemies with the all out attack command. Ludger from tales of xillia. Where do i begin? 3 weapon types you can switch to on the fly, all with 16 arts you can equipt, giving him up to 48 art attacks. Add that he has the most link and mystic arts in the game. Not to mention the additional arts he can learn by befriending all characters. And on top of all that he has chromatis mode which does insane amounts of damage, all while taking damage yourself. The guys a one man army and busted as hell.

Shocked that Squall from Final Fantasy 8 didn't make it here. Despite how tedious and repetitive the drawing & junction system can be, you can give every one of those to Squall, get the ultimate weapon in the first halve & all the abilities to him and combined with the rewards you get in Triple Trial, he literally breaks the rest of the game.

Squall Leonhart should be on this list. Not only does he come with 255% accuracy base (meaning he never misses, even when blinded), but he can Junction various status effects to his physical attack. Lots of endgame monsters become pushovers when attacking them puts them to sleep

I vote Robin from Fire Emblem Awakening for being ahead of the listed ones for a simple reason. All those protags you mentioned? You need to either hold out for a long time before getting your busted build or understand the game to bring out the most for them. Robin is broken from the get go with his bonus exp for pairing up, on top of having stellar stat growths and the ability to rotate classes just like Byleth can. Who needs strategy or build preparation if your stats are so much higher than anything else in the game that you can just run through all enemies without a thought and still win?

When it comes to CS4 what made Rean broken was the accessories from max bonding emma and elliot. You could make this build called miracle rean where you can infinitely spam arts because CS4 has an arts spam bug so basicaly you get 0 delay on spells like crescent mirror and albion wolf so rean was the best caster in the game then crow second best then Musse and then Emma. Also delay Rean still worked in CS3 and synergized really well with a break ash and Juna build allowing you to break enemies with 3 infernal gales and delay during it while getting infinite turns on bosses practically. As for Xenoblade i think Cross should be higher than Noah and also as good as lucky seven is the best class in the game is Seraph and seraph can almost play every role and it outdamages lucky seven with ease. awakening buff is so absurd honestly but gotta love it. The reason to make cross higher is Augments in X and overdrive is the strongest thing in the series still to this day. No blade protag comes close to being as broken as Cross in gameplay that is. As for tales of Velvet making the list makes sense to me because she was an immortal vampire once you got certain artes unlocked and skills from weapons along with higher level mystics letting you loop every boss and enemy just using her therion mode and you could never die as once you get low hp you heal it back up and then do it all again and even moves that would normally kill cannot as therion mode always leave you with at least 1 hp and this strat worked even on chaos mode. Another thing worth mentioning about berseria though is it probably has the best perfect block in the whole series allowing you to perfect guard all attacks and take like 1 damage for every attack with multi only hitting 1's on you once you learned the boss attacks. Not at all surprised about Joker being number one as Joker made a move like Myriad of truths from P4 which was only good in the final fight into a boss killing move. considering the Personatags have been getting stronger every game i am willing to bet P6 protag will give insane whiplash considering how Joker was so close to being a godmode character at the beginning and i only imagine P6 protag will be even more busted than Joker ever was with access to a better santaniel sinfull shell if the trend on persona with protags and dlc follows into 6.

Another way Lucky Seven is broken in Xenoblade 3 is if you are an attacker you can spam Tachyon Slash, a frontal AOE that hits 7 times, with each hit having a chance to proc Doom (instant death) on any enemy that isn't a boss or unique. Additionally, the class Flash Fencer has a skill that instantly fills the Talent Art gauge by 60-100 percent at the start of a battle, so you have the chance to open with Lucky Seven and instantly end fights. Trivializes every random fight in the game

Please please please do a full synopsis going through each Trails of Cold Steel game. I’d love to hear you talk about them all in depth

Going to be a broken record because I said the same in the other video but when it comes to Trails, Reverie is the most broken game where you get to have all the fun in the world because not just Rean, but everyone gets to become a monstrous machine if you wish them to be. With the True Reverie corridor it's ludicrous what setups you can build on your characters that you can take even the bottom of the barrel and get some value. But when talking of broken busted in Reverie, I give it to Altina and Tita. Altina with main quartz Erda and Sub Caliburn and just a semi-decent CP regen accessory can become a win button in every fight. Just cast Ebon Shade on turn one then alternate between an art cast and ebon shade and no enemy will ever be able to hit you because you never leave stealth. The quartz and accessory are enough to sustain your CP and EP to keep on ripping into the enemy so much that even if everyone else is dead she'll still win the fight because the enemy is stuck in a loop of doing nothing for lack of target to hit. It takes advantage of the fact that casting an art only counts as 1 turn when the art is fully cast, giving yourself more turn to regen CP and EP. In fact, the slower she is the easier it is to sustain. With Tita it's main quartz Andvari and Sub quartz Aegis with all the defensive quartz. Even on nightmare she can stack defense and health so high that bosses will still do 0 damage while she has a 5% health regen every turn with a 40K-100K HP pool depending on how far in the game you are. She just never dies. And then she has vital cannon to restore everyone's HP by 60% in a large AoE and feed them 30 CP too, AND it can also affect herself to add salt to the wound. She was tanking McBurn in the early game before she barely had a setup running so damn hard, freakin McBurn! Once she had everything she needed though, the only difficulty I had with her is that one Reverie boss when it decides to take over Tita...then I had to deal with the monster I created...

Personally i would put fe awakening robin here instead of falcon knight byleth because armsthrift nosferatu robin literally sweeps ENTIRE MAPS. and yes robin counts just as much as a protag as chrom does which is why i count him. like my robin was so strong that by midgame it was so tedious to move other units that i just didnt, didnt even deploy em at that point. why use other units if you have one that never dies due to nosferatus healing effect, never has the weapon break due to armsthrift, and is therefore unkillable unless they get 1 shot, which aint happening

I think Robin from Awakening is probably a bit stronger than Byleth, but cool list either way

I saw the title and instantly thought of persona 3/4/5 protag. The once more mechanic makes them ultra busted.

7:03 "and it'samazing" *proceeds to show Emma in bikini* :D

I immediately thought of Squall from Final Fantasy 8.

Noctis from ffxv is pretty broken too. Ace from type 0 too since you can basically just spam his teleport and never get hit.

I'll never forget playing Trails of Cold Steel and in one of the "supposed to lose" boss fights I ended up stunlocking the boss with Rean and Fie until they were almost dead and the game just skipped into the "oh no we can't win" cutscene... I was pretty salty. For as much as I love that series it had some painfully annoying mechanics and plot contrivances.

dragon quarters protag was so overpowered he killed himself

Worst party members list when 😂

Aaaaaactuwally, wyvern lord is the strongest three houses class to the point it is best to change just everyone into that class who is not magic focussed..

Of course Velvet is broken. Stun is the best ailment in Berseria due to how to soul system works. The most important stat for her is Tech, since that's what makes her stun even MOAR!

I'm pretty sure the most OP protag is Noctis from FFXV, he's the most powerful FF protag anyway.

I love Persona 5 but I do think they never should have added the confidant ability to fuse higher lvl persona's. You get it even sooner in P5R and then there's just like 1/3 of the persona's you would never use since you jump from lvl 40/50 to lvl 70/80 Persona's

My man Joker getting top spot. Hell yeah!

I'm not sure if this was the first face reveal but it's my first time seeing you. Very handsome man. All that I really learned from this is that Atlus makes some INCREDIBLY overpowered main characters, which I already knew from a lot of your other videos. Another fun ranking would be to rank the top tanks and healers in JRPGs. Maybe make it a combined top 5 list for each? Like do a tank then a healer alternating? I usually don't like being the big sword boy running into the midst of it and play healers so maybe a video for best support party members would be fun.

For Tales the only real option is Yuri Lowell. I don't think there's any other protagonist that can not only do infinite combos from very early in the game, but also one shot a lot of bosses once he gets his second hi-ougi. But you just need the skill to activate his own personal OL gauge at 25 hits and a few arts to rack up hits quickly and he's set.

No Serge from Chrono Cross? Dude was completely busted.

Tales of xillia jude. He's fast. Can heal. Do quick damage and drop foes. And he's the protagonist Tales of graces asbel. That guy is so powerful when he gets his final skill and attack. Love that system Fire emblem awakening robin. Dude is so broken he actually solos the lunatic modes himself. Ike can too. Shulk is pretty broken if you can break spam the foe. Xenoblade wise 3 was more fun to play Dual blade roxas Shining refrain resonance yuma when you get his speed tuning up. Super broken especially with type advantages

So this is going sound weird but these seem to be only JRPG and no other type of RPGs. Where is the Bhaalspawn(Baldur's Gate CRPG), Zane(Borderlands 3 Shooter RPG), Diablo protagonists(Diablo Action RPG), ect.....

Female byleth is indeed hot lol and yeah byleth is pretty damn good in the game

Wandering sword(a wuxia tactical rpg) early on your main character is a bit mid but middle to late game he destroys the game if you are doing it right.

Shoot, Karn in his best Fuse is very powerful and broken.

I might have thrown in Ramza into this list. In a game of broken abilities and kits, Shout stands apart. Self buffing Brave, speed, Phys and Magic Attack, lets him KO tougher bosses with ease even if he is vastly under leveled and under geared. Also since he starts the game at lvl 1, you can customize his stats growths if you wanna go crazy, unlike someone like Cid who is basically locked into a physical DPS/Fighter build since he joins late in the game, thus at a higher level. I personally like him more than Cid, because honestly, by the time I get to Cid, my party is already so broken that the old dude can be moved into a nursing home and not be missed. Im not sure if Id pick Byleth, because I feel like this comes largely down to DLC or no DLC? Like without the Dark Flier class, I think Claude is more busted and is also basically a MC. I can see the argument that he isnt available in all routes, but he is a cut above in his own route. Hes got excellent stats to both KO enemies in a round, and evade consistently, 3 range, can 2x anything, can fly, has a special weapon that is better than Byleth's (whose going to use that free day to rest when you have classes to teach!). With the Dark Flier class, though I think they are comparable. Also I always heard that Sigurd was the consensus most OP lord since he was a statistical beast. I havent played that game though.

Velvet my Favorites character in berseria 😂if I remember I use her 8k matches

Great list! Seeing BoF3 Ryu is just so true. Just busted in all the right ways. Kinda suprised not seeing Opera from So2 here though :) Her end game skills with healing star snd bloody armor makes her a one man army Sure there are recovery weapons. Bur Opera has so much damage potensial that she just breakes the game.

a few things 1. Lol no Robin is better than byleth 2. Pegasus Knight is the reason to pick F!Byleth, to get darting blow. After shat she goes in Wyvern like 90% of the cast. 3. Mystic Artes!? dude do you even know what you're talking about, her combos use regular Artes and technically her claw share similarities with the Burst Artes in some games but it's sure as hell not the massive cinematic not unlocked till 2/3 of the way through the game Mystic Arte. And she's not even the most broken Tales protag! Alphen literally has a burst arte that knocks down 90% of enemies AND BOSSES for free damage, even more spammable combos and the blazing sword for harder hits on tougher enemies.

In Phantasy Star II we also have a broken protagonist

oh noo he's hotttt

Where is ash from vandal heart? The vandalier is broken, op

Not gonna lie i saw broken in the title and saw velvet crowe and went Broken in a game sence or emotionally broken cause rhe anwser is yes

Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but Joker can only buy persona that he's seen

From the thumbnail i thought it was about emotionally broken protags w rean and velvet 😂

I have Tales of xillia 2 Ludger has the most broken character in the tales series mos def

I think everyone agrees Rean should be called Harem King lol

Love it dude! Shout out to atlas!!! Keep up the good work!

ZIGLUDO-CHAN-SAN-SAMA-SENPAI-SAN-SAMA-SAN-CHAN-SAN-SEMPAI-CHAN is better than Byleth. Like a lot better. Also Falcon Knight is not really that important as Wyvern Lord is generally better. What is important is Pegasus Knight so you can level flying earlier and easier and get access to Darting Blow.

Oh... didn't know you were hot, anyway great list

I can forgive no Ramza. Kudos for BOF protagonist...but c'mon no Fei from Xenogears? Dude is absolutely broken for a protag...

4:34 gender locked classes WITH GENDER LOCKED CHARACTERS *is insulting!*

Shout out to Cidolfus Orlandeau from final fantasy tactics he solos the game busted busted busted 💪 broken side characters edition 😂

Just want to say that cross xenoblade X is the single most broken rpg character of all time and way more broken than Noah if you know what you're doing (I have played all the xenoblade games A LOT) He has like 5 ways to make himself basically invincible, can one shot EVERY ENEMY in the game with MULTIPLE different arts, and is generally all around ridiculous to an absurd degree. Def wouldn't put joker above him either.

Why am I not surprised that Lelouch AKA joker is the number 1 broken lol. I mean I wasn't really trying when I played through P5 because I was just busy trying to beat the I'm saying but wow he's more broken than the previous protagonist........ And apparently Altus knows this considering how many times I've been seeing persona 5 popup everywhere. Speaking of persona I had a feeling you were gonna bring up that you were gonna be sponsored by the company due to the tactics game being out but yeah it also doesn't surprise me that mister broken AKA mister generic AKA Kirito 2.0 AKA Rean was busted. I mean the guy Gets a whole lot of women to like him and he gets a robot and he got to be a teacher and he has super saiyan powers........ Guys come on that's a bit too much. But on the bright side at least velvet is on this list which I'm totally cool with considering even I knew that she was broken and Beleth( The female version of Byleth) Being here because that she gets to be all the female classes does make more perfect sense, And yeah I agree she is smoking hot but that kind of comes with the territory when it comes to fire emblem female avatars....... And she is still better than the Avatar that we get in disengage a.k.a. Engage. In any case not a bad top broken protagonist list and now I may want to give Noah a shot with that particular build.

This is a pretty tough list cause all of them could just be fully customizable ones, but that also wouldn’t be very interesting. Just list every Disgaea game lmao. Ryu was always broken in the BoF games but still fun. Even in the first game, I soloed the final boss 😂

I’d probably pick CS2 Rean just because they buffed the hell out of Gale to where it and Arc Slash are all you will ever need to trivialize nightmare. Also this is a consequence of the criteria but there are plenty of FE protagonists better than Byleth. Especially Sigurd who is nearly perfect from the start. You could probably put an Atelier protagonist here because *technically* speaking all the broken gear is their contribution but I’d probably go Ryza 3 because of how little effort it takes to break the game wide open.

I was expecting a little more with the list. The best ones are just you can make them however you want, then they're broken.

I used to think Squall from final fantasy viii was broken. I just liked seeing big numbers. I think your standard of breaking their own game is a more fair standard.

Shadow hearts!!!!!

Velvet is a good pick, she's buttery smooth in battle. However, my pick for most broken Tales protag goes to Ludger. Access to three different playstyles to always be relevant, and also his amazing chromatus. Its insane power output, ability to cut off dangerous enemy attacks, and how you can try and stall to regain its meter makes it one of the more busted things in the series. Ive legit have won fights thanks to it, running circles on the battlefield to wait for the meter to come back and launch another slew of a simple two arte combo.

4:01 I do disagree with this slightly, Byleth is good and one of the best units however there are a few characters that are actually better in houses like Edelgard, claude he is really solid but he is actually restrained due to having less opportunities to increase ranks in weapons or mobility compared to everyone else but they are both up there especially female with a free sylvain (also pretty solid unit) and having acess to pegasus . The most notable MCs that I think are kind of busted is the avatr from mystery of the emblem, robin and sigurd. before corrin the avatars were really busted and can basically shift to whatever class you wanted them to be usually in this case the mages and due to dark mage being very good in awakening's base game it's a really solid pick for robin to reclass into with healing with Nosferatu (sol is also a meta skill to think about it in lunatic) and more enemy phase play style can make it work wonders

Velvet is uber, BUT top Tales MCs come from both Tales of Xillias. In ToX 1, Jude's backstep is the most broken move ever in action/based combat RPG history. And in ToX 2, Ludger can hit EVERY SINGLE weapon or elemental weakness (which is the main mechanic of the game's combat system), not to mention having a god mode nobody else has in the game.

“Harem king himself” 🤢 man i love the trails series but the fans are just focused on the girls and this dumb harem

There is no real difference between Joker and any previous MC protagonist, the Bias on this list shows.

bruh male byleth is a sigma 🗿

Came here expecting Ryu from BOF3 and Joker from P5. Was not dissapointed. Fei from Xenogears should get a nod. Xenogears and his ultimate combo on foot both trivialize the endgame.

Orlandu Cid? He's not the main protagonist, but I can't think of a more broken character in an RPG.

I never used Rean as much as possible because I alway go for a full-female team. Rean usually sit on the bench.

female Byleth can't marry Hilda, joke's on you weeb (just kidding, Falcon Knight Bylet is broken asf, even on Maddening)

Demifiend is the second weakest megaten protagonist though

byleth is def not the strongest

No dragonborn on this list? He can be invincible if you use the enhancement loop which is easy to do

This video is an Atlus pander.

Yuri from Shadow Heart 👍🏼👏🏼

Gaea rage 😩

Velvet over Yuri 😮