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This post was inspired by the Gau thread. Even though I don't like Gau, I understand why his fans are so quick to jump to his defense because I'm just as defensive about Relm.

Relm and Gau are often considered the two worst characters in the game. Gau has his crew of dedicated defenders, but I felt Relm needed some backing up too. Her usefulness is misunderstood, IMO, because she is introduced so late in the game. The Floating Continent is the only stage left after you get her in the WOB, but most people don’t bother taking her or leveling her up because her attacks are so weak and the other characters have had more time to grow powerful. By the time you get her back in the WOR most people have lost interest.

However, if you use her properly she becomes a killing machine in the WOR. Her magic power is hands down the highest in the game, even higher than that of Terra and Celes. If you level her up and teach her spells, she will by far be the most lethal magic user, esp if you give her Gem Box and/or Economizer. And while “Sketch” may not be all that useful, I think that “Control” is one of the best skills in the game. Many a battle can be won by controlling the most powerful monster in the battle and using his attacks against the other monsters while your party uses magic (which doesn’t break Relm’s hold on the monster she controls). A great way of learning all of the spells is to take her to the forest north of the Veldt and control Brachosaur or Tyranosaur and cast Meteor (or if Tyranosaur comes as a pair control one and use its special on the other) while the rest of the party uses magic.

I love her story, too. The abandoned artist appeals to me, and you gotta love her relationship with Strago, Interceptor, and Shadow. All in all one of my favorite characters. How do the rest of you feel about her?

I've heard about Relm's higher magic power, but to be honest it doesn't hold a candle to Terra's once she's morphed. And... well... by the end of the game my entire party could do nearly 9999 with Ultima, and enough damage to kill anything with offering/genji glove.

I think Relm's usefulness is limited to the WoB, where she doesn't even match most of the characters. Her stats are too low to make her any useful, and sketch is not the most useful of attacks IMHO.

Storyline-wise, she serves a comical releif role that isn't abused of, which is great. Too many games just HAVE to have their comical characters say something amusing every possible time. Her relation to the other characters is mysterious and debatable (though generally agreed on by everyone) though her developement is terrible. She's stagnant. Unlike, say, Terra or Locke, nothing about her seems to change through the game. Which is pretty lame.

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"Judge not a man by his thoughts and words, but by
the quality and quantity of liquor in his possession
and the likelyhood of him sharing."

Normally, I just use Relm to cause extreme confusion for the enemies with control (when I'm attacking a Brachosaur, I always use only Locke & Mog). But she does provide comic relief, and is part of an important sidequest. Though in the WoR, the comic relief dies out a bit.

She's an okay character, she isn't in the top three list for this game, but she isn't at the bottom either.

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Could you repeat that?

I've personally got nothing against her, and she has two useful commands, but I find myself leaving her behind alot just because there are other, better characters.

Plot-wise, she's a nice character, and doesn't succumb to too many stereotypes. I especially like the 'how old are you?' scene with Edgar.

I'm not really a fan of relm. Sure, she has her uses (like getting all of strago's lores), but if you aren't trying to complete a full game (all lores, magic on all characters, all rages, all items, etc) then there's not very much she can do that can't be done 100% better by someone else.

I definitely enjoy Relm. Excellent magic attack power is a plus. I think the thing I like most about Relm is the backstory. I like her interactions with Shadow (and Interceptor). Also, her comic relief is good.

While Sketch might be one of the worst abilities I can think of and Controll not being worth a relic slot that could be used by other, better relics. Well, take a short look to your left and you'll see my avatar. I like Relm, she's a decent spell caster and definatly one of the more interesting characters storywise.
Think about that last part there now guys. The entire burning house scenerio was centered around rescuing Relm so you'd have never had entered the Burning House or have fought the Flame Eater without her. Sketch was an important part of Ultroses third defeat, seeing as it is probably the intended way to defeat Ultros as Pummel is the intended means of defeating Vargas. Relm was also the cherished granddaughter of Strago and due to the actions Strago took whenever she was in danger, a very important part of his life. Additionaly Relm maneged to be one of the top five comic relif roles in the entire game, competitors being Gau, Ultros, Mog and strangely enough, Kefka. (Even for people who have gone through the game once or twice, the following might be spoiler.)

Possible spoilers: highlight to view

Also noteworthy is her relationship with Shadow, which is more likely then not a family relationship. Although without a "blantent in game explination" I won't nessicarily go as far as others do. However, that's mainly because in Video Games, things that aren't blatent, can often be wrong or at least highly debatable. Who in the bloody hell is Gogo anyway?(Please don't answer that as it's supposed to be a rhetorical question.)

I also feel that I have plenty in common with her but I won't say what here as I have already done so before in at least two other topics. I don't want to repeat myself too much after all.

Well, all of that being said, Relm's not my favorite FF VI character. Yes I know, I just talked about how great she is but all of the characters in this game were developed extreamly well. Still, she ranks up in my FF VI top five list, which isn't the same as the comidic relief list by the way.

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Role reversal at its finest.

Relm is by far my personal favorite party member.

High magic, Control, and other useful abilites make her quite useful.

P.S. I thought Sketch was like the coolest ability : /

I have to laugh when Relm gets Strago's attention at the Fanatic's Tower. "You're as foul-mouthed as ever, bless your heart!"

Relm used to annoy the living daylights out of me. But I really like her story (particularly, her bond with Shadow and Interceptor) and her love of art.

My favorite character stories ...

1. Gau
2. Locke/Celes
3. Terra
4. Relm/Strago/Shadow
5. Brothers Figaro

I need to go find the Gau thread ...

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"I will create a monument to nonexistence!!"

"The end comes ... beyond chaos."
~ Kefka, Final Fantasy VI

Relm just isn't a very worthwhile character, in my opinion.

Sure, her high Mag.Pwr is nice, if you're willing to invest your time in teaching her a bunch of spells. But she joins so late that by that point you've already had access to many Espers (including ZoneSeek, quite likely) for a while, so many of your other characters already know quite a few spells and have had time to boost their own Mag.Pwr to fairly respectable levels, so Relm really doesn't have much of a head start. I suppose if you were playing a LLG or a NESBG (No Esper Stat Boosts Game) she would be more useful.

Sketch is sort of like a bizarro-world version of Rage. You don't have to spend time building it up, but you also have no advance control at all over what it will do - you're limited entirely by the enemy you're facing. Sure, sometimes it's useful, but all to often, you will Sketch an enemy only to perform an attack that it is immune to or healed by. Very useful.

Having to spend a relic slot to get Control is a pain, and it requiring a full round of battle to get any use of is annoying as well, but it's still better than Sketch. Getting to choose between up to 4 attacks is much nicer than picking randomly between two, though there's still the possibility of most of those attacks being useless to the battle at hand. Still, Control is fairly useful for random battles. BUT, pretty much every boss out there can't be Controlled, so it becomes almost completely useless in boss battles.

The only other special abilities that I can think of that become useless in a significant number of boss battles are Steal and Runic, and both Locke and Celes are at least fairly effective physical fighters. Relm doesn't even have that - if you haven't invested the time to boost her spellcasting ability, she's easily the poorest boss fighting character in the game.

Relm's speed and magic power are nifty, but sketch isn't the most useful ability.

She's a second-stringer for me not because I dislike her storyline or anything, but she has the worst equips in the game without an awesome ability (ie Lore) to offset that. The BehemothSuit is better spent on Strago.

EDIT: Oh, and Relm's learning spells is no problem, really. Just keep casting Doom on intangirs at the end of the WoB for a quick and easy 10 MP every time, and you can have every character on your team (which is everyone besides Shadow) learn all of the WoB spells without gaining a level. If you're willing to invest maybe forty minutes into that, Relm can be a valuable team member.

This post has been edited by laszlow on 6th February 2005 18:57

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this is a blog mostly about comics and videogames
END SPOILER

Save Umaro I really have nothing against any FF6 character, they are all very well balanced if people choose to exploit their skills so I alwalys set her with the Gem Box and Fake 'tche to do just that.

Her story was okay too, a nice lil' side story to all the crazyness.

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The Arcana are the means by which ALL is revealed.

Since my last post, I decided to give Relm a bit more of a shot, and like her quite a bit more now. Earlier in the game, she's a fantastic magical attacker. Though I dislike having her in my party for random battles, she can deal some nice magical damage against bosses with her superior magic attacks, and kick some ass with Sketch. Relm has definitely shot up into my top 6 characters to use, up there with Gau, Cyan, Strago, Mog and Setzer. They all make the game interesting.

Relm get's a thumbs up in my books.

See?

Quote (laszlow @ 6th February 2005 14:53)

The BehemothSuit is better spent on Strago.

In fairness to Relm, you know you can get more than one BehemothSuit quite easily, right?

Relm's Sketch technique is interesting, but inherently useless. You want lightning-based monsters to absorb Lightning and you want their sketches to attack with lightning (Examples of elemental monsters: Rhinotaur, Bomb, Grenade, all dragons, etc.). Also you want monsters based on status ailments to be immune to those status ailments, and you want their Sketches to try and inflict them (Examples: Apparite, Poppers, Lizard).

Besides all that, you've got some odd-ball suicial spells (Scullion, Muus), and because the damamge you do once you DO manage to get a decent move on a monster who isn't immune to it is based on the stats of the monster you sketched, it's bound to suck in all but a few fights. Finally, there are a lot of bosses who sport a Battle/Special Sketch move list, and that's just smells like unfinished business to me.


Sketch, like Runic, is only really useful in a couple of fights (Allo Ver, KatanaSoul, Ultros #3), but it's not worth your time in a normal fight.

Besides that, her equips are absolutely beautiful in the late WoR, and her high Magic Power make her a great spellcaster. Strip her ability to equip Espers and she becomes useless, though.

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The Collapse of Heaven and Earth

For me is an good character, but I hate equipping a behemoth suit on her all the time, and I like her because she seem to be a strong girl at her short age and I like her personality, but I never understands her sketch ability...she draw an enemy in the air and attacks with that? whatever...

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"Its no cheating if you don't get caught"

Sketch glitch is about the only thing I use her for. Then again, it doesn't work on the PSX version so she is useless to me.

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This is my world: (Got my second chapter up, 3rd Chapter about 80% complete)
http://www3.sympatico.ca/daniel876/homepage.html

This is the third time I've replied here, but I feel compelled to give a bit of a Relm update.

She rocks. In past games, I've levelled all characters to extremes, meaning high magic power is useless, being all characters can deal 9999 magical damage. So I figured I'd give her a whirl in a lower-levelled game.

Wow. Her magic is notably more damaging and effective. It's like... phwoar, Relm. You actually have some use.

I'm enjoying some Sketch and Control experimenting, too. While it's no Rage, I feel it's the second most interesting command going. Though, as Djibriel said, it has limited use when faced with elemental enemies, you can dish out some pretty damn powerful spell-type attacks and in some cases surpass the more melee inclined members of the team in damage.

Thus, Relm slides into place as my second favourite FFVI character.

Oh, and you have to love brushes. Though they're not the best things to be using, it's just pretty cool to see.

I love Relm-chan! I don't even have a good reason, she just appeals to me as a character.

Relm is alright...She is one of the greatest weak characters. Her Sketch and Control command are very useful in Kefka's tower... Especially if you do a low-level game. But most of all I prefer Locke, Celes, and Terra to be the best ever.