Part 118: Characters - Cid

Name: Cid Pollendina
Job: Engineer

Description:

Cid serves as the chief engineer of Baron, responsible for creating and maintaining airships for the Red Wings, Baron's royal fleet. While loyal to Baron, he becomes wary of his ships being used for war, and when he questions the king's motives, he is locked up until Cecil and company rescue him. He then joins Cecil and utilizes his greatest creation, the airship Enterprise, to let the party gain control of the skies.

He leaves the party in the underworld to repair the Enterprise, and saves the party from danger at the last possible minute. Faced with a pursuing fleet, Cid does the most badass thing in the history of this series and jumps off the airship with a bomb strapped to himself, blowing himself up and sealing the underworld. He then shakes off those injuries and proceeds to build a giant fucking drill on another airship. He sits out for the rest of the game, but still, that's fucking awesome.

In The After Years, Cid's still the chief engineer, but he's much older, and his daughter's now married with a son. When Baron is under attack, he helps out with Cecil and Rosa, only to take Rosa away to safety on the Enterprise, eventually taking her to Damcyan. Of course, Kain proceeds to come and kidnap her again, so (slight spoilers for next update)  Cid joins Ceodore and the Hooded Man to rescue Rosa .

Abilities:

Analyze - Displays an enemy's HP, MP, and weaknesses. Identical to the spell Libra.

Risk Strike - Low-accuracy attack that deals an automatic critical hit when it hits.

Equipment: Axes, Hammers, Bows
Best Stats: Strength, Stamina

Tactics:

Cid is a pure tank. Analyze is completely useless, though Risk Strike has its uses if you have a bad moon and have the room to gamble. But all Cid's going to do is Attack.

The good thing about Cid is that his Strength stat is insane, and his Stamina isn't far behind. His speed, however, is so incredibly horrendous that many characters will get two turns to his one. To put things in perspective, Ceodore's speed at L40 is only three points less than Cid's speed at L99. This really cuts down Cid's usefulness in a huge way, as all the strength in the world won't help if you rarely get hits in.

Just missing one would be forgivable, but it's the combination of no variety and horrible speed that really makes Cid useless. Many characters can hit hard, take a hit, have decent speed, and do many things. Even though Cid can hurt and take a beating, his proficiencies in the former two aren't even close to making up his flaws. It's really hard to recommend Cid when so many characters can do the same thing he can do and much more while getting at least three actions to his two.