guardians_song | The first thing you need to know is that, past 20/20 promoted, stat gains essentially drop to null.

I suppose they didn't want to put a hard cap on the levels because it would harsh your buzz, but it essentially acts as one.

So here's the stats (with weapons, because weapons essentially remain constant at the endgame).

Shining Force Stats: Guardian's Song's Lineup
	Name	Class	Level	HP	MP	Attack	Defense	Agility
1	ZiegFeld	HERO	20/10	50	11	71	46	45
2	Arthur	~~DGOD~~ PLDN	20/25	80	30	67	62	72
3	Zylo	WFBN	20/19	66	0	77	55	59
4	Guntz	SBRN	20/18	53	0	65	79	38
5	Domingo	MGCR	31	56	50	34	50	43
6	Musashi	SMR	17	71	0	63	64	32
7	Kokichi	SKYL	20/13	49	0	62	37	41
8	Gort	GLDR	20/9	39	0	63	44	26
9	Bleu	GRDR	20/3	30	0	47	29	16
10	Khris	VICR	20/1	21	27	25	13	18
11	Alef	MAGE	17/0	18	32	23	11	21
12	Mae	~~FAIL~~ PLDN	20/5	56	0	42	25	27

...It's worth noting that ZiegFeld was 20/1, Khris was 16/0, and Bleu was 18/0 when I first ran into this battle. Assume that the other top-tier people have been jacked up similarly (no kill like overkill!).

Okay. Can you notice anything wrong here? Like, for instance, that Mae is supposed to be a FRONT-LINE unit, and has an attack significantly lower than anyone except for the mages? (Please don't ask about Bleu. He's... supposedly going to get good stats. Someday. I should have level-grinded him more when I had the chance.) She's not low-level because I haven't been using her, she's low-level because she's unable to damage anything!

Alef is low-level because, er, I didn't realize how good Bolt (her signature spell) was. Erm... fixed. So at least she has an excuse.

Khris, meanwhile, is ~~the singularly worst unit I have ever had the displeasure of knowing~~ a healer who had... much lower MP than I expected. Did I mention that Shining Force healers get 10 EXP per 3 MP dose of Heal? And that, as such, she was regularly gaining less than 90 EXP per battle? Well, that is - if she could actually get to the front lines. She has 5 Move and had the lowest Agility on the force. (And still does, if you ignore Bleu...) In other words, the other units had sprinted ahead of her by the time they actually got damaged - and let's not even talk about restricted-movement chapters. Good gad.
Meanwhile, fighting units were getting 48 EXP per kill... Yes. Well. Screw her - if I do another game, I'm going with Lowe and then Torasu. I don't care how bad Lowe is supposed to be - all I know is that he got some actual MP, WHICH IS A HEALER'S BLOODY JOB!!!
(/rant)

Anyway, I have no real complaints... except that, for a fighting unit, Kokichi sure has a bad tendency to keel over if you breathe on him too hard. To be fair, so does Gort. Zylo, Guntz, and Musashi are really the demigods here. Arthur is just unholy. You have not lived until you've seen a unit gain >20 points total in a single level, 10 of those in HP alone. *dreamy sigh* He was an awful unit until 15/0, but then...

Oh, yes - and ZiegFeld was really bad until I realized that the Chaos Breaker (his ultimate weapon) allows him to spam Freeze L3 at no cost. At that point, he graduated from 'mediocre fighter' to 'mage with strangely high HP'. That's fortunate, because Domingo took a crushing blow when the defense-ignoring enemies appeared, so I needed someone to fill his place.

Note: Checking out the Shining Force Central averages, Mae is stat-screwed - she should have had 45 Attack at 20/1. On the other hand, she probably got HP instead - she should have had 35 HP at 20/1, and I don't think she's gained 21 HP in four levels - but HP doesn't do *bleep* if you can't do any damage!
Meanwhile, Bleu should have had 30 HP two levels ago, and he should have had 50 Attack and 30 Defense at the same point... and his 2->3 level-up was actually pretty good... *facepalm* No wonder he's subpar. He just got stat-screwed.
(Yes, a few points of Attack are very important in Shining Force - not least because the amount of Exp you get is actually based on the amount of damage you do, so someone doing 1 damage per hit will get 3 Exp at the very most. As such, Mae and Bleu have been dead-weight for a battle or three, with Bleu just beginning to break out of that trap. It doesn't help that Mae has been given the GTFO notice via Chimera-doubling more than once (!), and Bleu had 25 HP for a long time, such that one hit was a GTFO notice... yeeeah...)
TL;DR: Ah, well, at least things are improving now! I'm giving thought to what sort of line-up I might want for my next run, if I do one. I propose significantly more mages... I ended up ditching Luke in the long run, so I could keep Anri rather than deciding too late that Luke wouldn't see endgame. Lemme think...