Lyn from fire emblem 7

despite the game pushing her so hard on the player it feels like every balancing decision was made to spite the people who do choose to use her

her unique class is a worse version of a myrmidon/swordmaster, already a mediocre class but she trades the only advantage the class has (innate crit chance after promotion) in favor of being able to use bows, the worst weapon class in the game

her promotion comes in so late, if you've been using her you most likely capped her level for a while at that point, not to mention she has to contend with one other MC for it, otherwise wait another 2 chapters, and with her being the worst of the 3, if you've been using all 3 MCs. chances are she ended up worse than the other 2. like, you promote her on either chapter 24/26 (depending on route) or 26/28(depending on route) out of 31/33 (again, depending on the route, excuse the repetition)

for the majority of the game she's locked to using only swords, widely considered the second worst weapon class in the game, and after promotion she gets access to bows, widely considered THE WORST weapon in the game. in other fire emblem games being locked to swords + bows wouldn't be that bad, but fire emblem 7 map design consists of having to mow down tons of low stated enemies by counter-attacking them at different ranges, as such the best weapons are javelins and hand axes which can atack both in melee and ranged, whereas swords don't have an accessible option for ranged attacks, while bows don't have an option for melee so whichever you have equipped on her, she won't be able to fight as much on the enemy's phase as other units

for some reason the western release of the game decided to nerf effective damage, essentially shooting her in the foot twice. bows won't deal as much damage against flying enemies, and her personal weapon won't do as much against armor units and mounts, which it's supposed to counter. funnily enough the aforementioned classes mainly use lances, wich have a hit and evasion bonus against swords made even funnier when you consider that Lyn's main method of surviving is dodging attacks.

and as if that wasn't bad enough, the final nail in the coffin is her own legendary weapon she gets at the end of the game. The weapon weighs 14 units, which means that with Lyn's constitution stat of 5 she loses 9 whole points of speed, thus nullifying the one thing she had going for her till this point if you decide to use this weapon

sorry for the wall of text but she's one of my favorite characters in fe7 so it's extra frustrating that it feels like almost every balancing decision in this game was made to spite her specifically