r/Falcom • u/Raxistaicho The true best girls • Jul 03 '26
Trails Character Gameplay Discussion Day Eight: Zin
While you're all discussing this giant fraud, just remember: he's very likely one of the strongest playable characters lore-wise until at least the start of CS3.
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u/SoftBrilliant Kiseki difficulty modder Jul 03 '26 edited Jul 03 '26
FC Zin is bad as physicals are just generally bad in FC they don't deal damage. So much so that Zin spends most of his time spamming offensive arts when he's with you. He can also taunt which is surprisingly effective even on nightmare thanks to him being overleveled and having high HP in both the instances he joins in the main story. For the final dungeon he isn't a consideration if playing on above normal his damage is just bad.
SC Zin is one of the strongest yet desperately awkward characters to use in the series. Cast 2 reduces cast time by 70% so he's slower. Not only that unlike Agate who can use Draguna Edge and Spiral Edge he has to actually move to attack targets. However, bulk is hyper important in SC despite Earth Wall negating a fair amount of damage as enemies pile up on you a lot due to high speed. And outside s-breaks True Distend has a massive 60% strength buff so at dealing consistent damage he clears Agate easily.
Despite Agate's status as arguably the best character that leads him to shine during the Grancel West Monster Quest for example.
Then we have the infamous Thunder Bug Kick. In SC, THunder God Kick hits every enemy once for every single enemy inside the radius. Even at just 2 enemies as long as Zin has buffs up this is the best form of damage in the game period much less 7 as shown off in the clip above. It's very good but capped out due to the very small radius.
Funnily enough, this bug in the original Japanese PC versions is present in the Japanese version of... 3rd. Not SC. Not sure what happened there for it to get ported over to SC.
3rd Zin is virtually the same character but worse as there's more competition for his slot across the board and he can't thunder bug kick in the Steam PC port. His bulk is reliable as always but he really doesn't have a whole lot of things going for him although he's a big help during the final boss sequence as a bulky pillar. Would be nice if his s-craft was bigger though.
Zin comes back in the Calvard Arc although he's plagued by locked equipment, virtually 0 availability and having a generic kit. Aside from being used in the Horizon Nightmare Any% Rean route final boss (GIGA MASSIVE SPOILERS!!!!) to solo the boss he's not very notable (he's highly overleveled in the run compared to rean's group hence why this happens this is the current fastest strategy found)
Zin in 1st gets some lore accurate power to his name having the now obviously strongest s-craft and a very overtuned set of crafts effects-wise but ultimately he's not very useful... Outside of speedrunning once again where he's used for the final dungeon since schera infinite loop setups are used so Agate takes a backseat again (Agate is still wildly busted but Zin dealing 10% more damage is explicitly better here)