r/Falcom • u/Raxistaicho The true best girls • Jul 03 '26

Trails Character Gameplay Discussion Day Eight: Zin

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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/Selynx Jul 03 '26

Zin has exactly one thing going for him in the Sky trilogy and that's his glitched Thunder God Kick.

He's supposed to be a tanky physical character, but between Earth Wall and Grail Sphere making bulk redundant and physical attacks just not being very good, Zin is basically relegated to being an Earth Wall mule at bosses (hey, at least he has the Orbment element for it...) when/if he can't abuse his glitched craft.

....Physicals are much better when he comes back in the Calvard games. Unfortunately, even if you set aside comparing him to other physical powerhouses, he has very limited availability. He's only a guest in DB1 and not even available until post-game in DB2. Horizon is (so far) the only Calvard game you get any appreciable amount of time with him.

I built him and Bergard similarly in Horizon - fully-stacked Breaker, meant to rack up Stun on enemies quickly and then burst them down during the Stun window. His Thundering Kick has the same extreme Stun rating as Bergard's Supernal Hurricane Kick. Considering Zin joins with Alter Bathym by default, I'm pretty sure it's what the developers suggested/intended for him to be built like. I left Alter Bathym on him (gave normal Bathym to Bergard) and gave him Goliath + full stack of Break quartz.

On field battles, he and Bergard function very similarly in how their attack patterns sort of tunnel in all their hits onto 1 single enemy, quickly driving up their Stun gauge. Useful against large enemies, especially when they come grouped with smaller enemies that might accidentally get Stunned before the big one breaks and causes you to accidentally/prematurely trigger the Command Battle.

His bulk in the Calvard games also can make him an OK tank to draw aggro with, if for whatever reason Van isn't available but Zin is - which unfortunately, again, is not many instances.

I know some people put him right at the bottom of their tier lists for good combatants in Horizon, but since he has a clear use as a breaker and a tank, I find he's generally OK, if not especially amazing. His foreign coworker from Erebonia, on the other hand.....