Most the special characters have been significantly rebalanced. Additionally all special characters can now do the special "Proposition" side missions. This gives player more freedom in their overall party as their is less emphasis on needing generic characters for these missions.
Here's a list of the biggest changes to each character:
- Agrias - Her Sword Skills have been nerfed as they now require MP but her Speed and Physical Attack statistics have been increased significantly. She has strength close to that of male characters while having the speed of faster classes such as Thief and Ninja.
- Mustadio - Mustadio has seen a significant increase to his Speed, an increase in his base Move distance and has a higher percent chance of his special shots working.
- Beowulf - Beowulf was probably more nerfed than any character with most of his skills being reworked. Break, Chicken, and other overpowered skills now have reduced range and cost much more MP. Underused skills such as the status effect ones - now work most of the time and hit a larger area while costing the same or less MP.
- Boco - All chocobos have a greatly increased move distance. Boco also has 100 Brave and 01 Faith.
- Byblos - Has seen almost no changes.
- Cloud - Has a new graphic, overhauled skill set, a better Materia Blade, and stats that put him in the top tier of heroes. Still not Orlandu, but certainly Ramza's equal.
- Malak and Rafa - The brother and sister pair now hit one square once 100% of the time. The abilities are divided into their respective elements now with similar damages. Overall they have become more like the skilled assassins they are described as in the storyline.
- Meliadoul - Her Sword Skills can not hit monsters, otherwise little changes to a character that is powerful but rarely used because of how late she enters the storyline.
- Orlandu - His Sword Skills have been nerfed by requiring MP but that in addition to a slight stat reduction was not enough to dethrone him as the most powerful character in the game.
- Reis - A new sprite and complete reworking of skills that include AoE mediate enemy dragons, leveling up friendly dragons, and the like. Certainly a specialized character, but one who is extremely powerful in the right encounters or with Dragons backing her up.
- Worker 8 - Very strong character with great Physical Attack and Speed, actually had to be toned down multiple times in order to get him down to Orlandu's level. Attacks that damaged him before now do a very small amount of damage to himself.
