But then yet again, that's probably in part growing out of game mechanic reasons. But then again, part of how it's creepy is the things the game doesn't do: there's no option to permanently cure Rina of her zombification, for example. There's some observations I could make about how, for instance, Zombie Rina's behavior regarding the ring is evocative of Gollum, or I could talk some about how Rina's story is creepy, but then again it's pretty obvious that it's meant to be creepy.

something I struggle to really find something interesting to say about. As such, being able to switch modes, even if one of those modes is low-benefit, is pretty nice in context. She's really basically a 2-in-1 deal, which is particularly appreciated given that dismissing a Companion means never again having access to them in that run. The fact that Rina/Zombie Rina can be gotten at nearly the beginning of the game with minimal hoop-jumping helps endears her to me as well.Īlso worth noting is that you can switch between Rina's forms at will. mostly pretty mediocre) Regalia, Helmets, and Shields have some useful effects, but in my experience don't really have the same sort of stand-out options, and so her lacking them isn't necessarily a big deal. On the other hand, in my opinion these are all the most important and beneficial slot types other than Weapons -Artifact is where a lot of your exotic, powerful effects that are useful at any scale are, Armor is where you get a lot of your Resistance effects, Boots tend to provide even more Speed or other utility effects that are nice/amazing to have (If a bit specialized, quite often), and Belt is where you get your Concentration equipment. Her equipment slot list is serviceable, but she shares with Mirabella the dubious distinction of being the only Companion with no multi-purpose equipment slots, which can be a bit frustrating. Especially since Snake Boots bolster snakes in a similar way to Jackboots boosting criminals) (The fact that Royal Snakes still outclass them when they've got her boosts, unless you also stack on Jackboots, makes it difficult to actually justify using them. well, they have uses, but they're not great combat pieces, and Rina's boosts only somewhat help push them into being good combat pieces. Sea Dogs can be pretty awesome, and indeed I like to run them in the early game with Rina before I've gotten access to a good supply of Undead units, but Pirates are really just terrible and Robbers and Marauders are.

It's the same bonus, but on a smaller list, and the pseudo-race of outlaws isn't even a particularly great unit set. She has the added bonus that she will never, ever pester you about children. If you're going to all-in on Dark Commander and rule the world with the Undead, Zombie Rina is your gal-pal. Zombie Rina is amazing, with bar none the most useful innate effect of any of the Companions. +1 to the Speed and Initiative of Robbers, Marauders, Pirates, and Sea Dogs OR +1 to the Speed and Initiative of Undead.Įquipment slots: Armor, Artifact, Belt, Boots. The following list is ordered roughly in terms of when you can first acquire each Companion, for reference.

Thankfully, all the later games dump children as a game mechanic entirely. The only savescumming you can realistically do is to drop a save before marriage and then if you don't like the child load the save and marry someone else, which is a huge waste of time. My recommendation is ignore the entire thing, because it's actively detrimental to good play. It's not even practical to savescum the children, because the game actually rolls all the children for all the Companions at the very beginning of the game, where if your run gets Ambrella from Feanora and you don't like that result loading an earlier save and trying again will always result in Feanora giving birth to Ambrella. If you get Gandalf, good for you, your Mage is going to be a monster in the late-game, but otherwise you can almost certainly do better with an actual piece of equipment. I don't care, because which ones you get are entirely random (Removing any possibility of meaningful analysis), and anyway the children both eat equipment slots and for the most part their effects are dubious in their utility. If you really care, Gamebanshee has lists for which children can be gotten from whom as well as what those children do. Note that I'm not going to be covering the children you can get. I'm calling them 'Companions' and not 'wives' both because it makes this concept less of a headache to talk about across the games (Each game has different terminology for what's mostly basically the same mechanic) and because it feels less creepy that way.

Kings bounty the legend companions