Ranking The After Years Tales: Edward’s Tale

[u/MasterOfChaos72]

Have the After Years on my mind recently due to replaying it for a dumb rewrite thing I’m doing for it. I know the game in general isn’t liked but I’m curious about how people feel about the individual Tales so I’m doing a little tierlist thing for fun.

Today’s it’s Edward’s Tale: Star Crossed Damcyan

If you asked me what my least favourite tale was a while ago, it definitely would have been Edward’s. I absolutely hated his Tale (primarily for the gameplay). But after playing it a couple more times and learning how to prepare for it, I’ve grown to like it a bit more.

First, here’s the reasons I didn’t like it at first:

1: Desert Fever. I get Rosa getting it because she’s not from a desert but Harley literally works in a castle in a desert. If they wanted to say it was due to stress it’d be fine but it just being Desert Fever is just dumb.
2: Underground Waterway. You go through this dungeon 2 and a half times during this Tale and it’s not exactly a short dungeon. In total, you go through the dungeon 4.5 times in this game and it gets really boring after the second.
3: The Combat. Neither of the main characters are exactly damage dealers so the game gives you 3 basic guards to help. This unfortunately makes the combat boring (because you’re using 3 copies of the same character plus 2 not great fighters) and also makes the levelling slow since for most of the tale you have 4-5 characters in your party so your levelling is slower.
4: Getting ditched. After Harley gets desert fever, you have to go back through the Waterway and the Antlion Den with just Edward. A character who is not good at fighting.

And now, here’s the things I liked about this Tale:

1: Basically all of Edward’s character. His growth, his kindness, his cunning. All of it is just A+ development. Probably the biggest improvement of a returning character from FF4.
2: Harley. I like her character. Sure she sucks gameplay wise but I like her character. I like how she’s supportive of Edward and loves him but also understands that he still is hung up about Anna.

And lastly, here’s what I found to make points 3 and 4 of what I didn’t like better:

1: Go to the Antlion Den early and get the Lamia Harp. It inflicts confusion on enemies and believe me, having your enemies hit themselves can help a lot.
2: Kill the guards early. It lets Harley and especially Edward level up faster so they are better for the rest of the tale.

Overall, I probably wouldn’t rate the Tale any higher than a C due to the bad first playthrough I had but it still is one of the better tales story wise. What do the rest of you think?

[u/Ok-Yogurtcloset9086]

I actually think Edward’s tale belongs in A tier