Dark Side Companion Analysis Part 2: Neoline the Demoness

Neoline's right breast drives me nuts, because my brain always wants to parse the image not as us seeing a little bit of the counterpart to the left bra/armor thing, but rather some weird little tail/finger thing that covers essentially nothing. Not that Neoline's actual clothing covers all that much, but the optical illusion is maddening.

Anyway, her Companions.

Martin the Archer

Equipment: Weapon, Regalia, Regalia, and Belt if Main. Regalia if Secondary.

Passives: +2/4/6 Defense and +2/4/6 Intellect if Main. +1/2/3 Defense and +1/2/3 Intellect if Secondary.

Level 2 Quest: Kill 100 Bowmen. Activating this Quest spawns a few battlegroups in Monteville.

Level 3 Quest: Obtain the Dragon Bow. This is achieved by defeating a Hero leading a bunch of dragons that spawns in Drokkentier after initiating the Quest.

Martin is a weird introduction to Neoline's Companions, pushing you to wizard harder toward the beginning of the game. Much like Bagyr can potentially pull off with Weapon stacking, Neoline can potentially be surprisingly competitive with Daert as a Spellslinger in the early to midgame thanks to Martin's Intellect boost. The Defense boost is also a bit disappointing in the early game where you're ideally trying to avoid taking hits at all so you can get Grand Strategy progress. 

The double Regalia is also a bit inconvenient, as Dark Side is, much like prior entries in the series, biased away from throwing Regalia at you and especially from throwing good Regalia at you. All of Neoline's Companions provide Regalia slots, but Martin's double Regalia slots in particular is quite likely to have you sitting on empty equipment slots for ages.

It's all a bit weird, but not too bad because truthfully Neoline is probably the strongest of the classes/characters in the first place. Having a bit of a sub-par Companion isn't enough to undermine that.

Narratively, Martin is Annette's boyfriend, super-devoted to her. He's not very interesting or memorable beyond that, but that's understandable. Frankly, it's impressive how well executed the narrative end of the Companions is in Dark Side, given the lackluster showing of prior games and considering that Dark Side has more Companions than any of the prior games.

Design-wise, Martin is a misleading start. You might think, looking at Martin, that Dark Side is engaging in a double-standard with highly sexualized female characters and male characters excluded from such, but Martin is the exception, not the rule. And he's still got the 'scantily clad beefcake' thing going on, just less blatantly than some.

Personally, I find his design boring, but I'm not exactly the intended audience.

Roin the Loyal

Equipment: Shield, Regalia, Armor, and Helmet if Main. Regalia if Secondary.

Passives: +2/4/6 Intellect and +100/200/400 Leadership if Main. +1/2/3 Intellect and +50/100/200 Leadership if Secondary.

Level 2 Quest: Kill 75 Dwarves. (The specific unit type) Activating this Quest spawns a few battlegroups in Baraz-Gund.

Level 3 Quest: Kill Conrad the Strong in Helvedia.

I don't get why Roin gives such tiny values of Leadership. By the time I got to him with my first Neoline run, I had over 20,000 Leadership, and I ended the game with over 50,000. 400 more Leadership is completely irrelevant by the time you can get him to Level 3, let alone in the long haul. If his Leadership boost was swapped with Martin's Defense boost, the Leadership boost would still be disappointing, but +100/200 Leadership would be showing up early enough to be relevant. Really, I think the Leadership boost should've been percentile. (eg +1/2/3% Leadership)

Narratively, Roin is interesting to me because he illustrates that Neoline stealing the loyal doesn't just mean people who are true to their spouses. Roin is loyal to his king, and the game never once suggests there's a homoerotic undertone to that particular relationship. It's a nice bit of nuance, and in particular it makes Neoline being a Demoness instead of eg a succubus feel more like it's a meaningful distinction rather than a weird word-games thing.

Design-wise, Roin is much more blatantly sexy beefcake than Martin was. It's also interesting to me that he's given only a mild beard, but an impressively long ponytail, particularly given Dwarven design in the King's Bounty games trends toward the opposite direction. The odd blade is also interesting to me, and I'm curious as to what kind it is. It doesn't match to anything we see Dwarves wield in-game, and it's distinctive-looking in a manner that suggests to me it's based on a real weapon, instead of being a Wacky Fantasy Blade.

Something that's more obvious when the images are put together on the title screen is that Roin is supposed to be holding the rest of Neoline's whip. It's actually a clever bit of handling on the part of the artist, in that Neoline's whip trails behind her throne in a manner that makes it completely natural that we don't see the rest of it until Roin joins you and is holding it. Kudos to the people behind that.

Amarimon the Elf

Equipment: Artifact, Regalia, Armor, and Helmet if Main. Regalia if Secondary.

Passives:  +2/4/6 Defense and +100/200/400 Leadership if Main. +1/2/3 Defense and +50/100/200 Leadership if Secondary.

Level 2 Quest: Kill 50 Elves. (Again, the specific unit type) Activating this Quest spawns a few battlegroups in Galenrim.

Level 3 Quest: Destroy the Light Elf rebellion in Galenrim. A new cave entrance opens in a little patch of land on the north once this Quest is activated.

Amarimon is another Companion whose final equipment list is not the same as what he has earlier, and in fact it changes twice; initially he has Armor and Shield slots, then those become Shield and Helmet slots, and then they become his final Armor and Helmet slots.

As with Roin, I really don't get these tiny Leadership values. Even considering Lord means they go further than they sound, this just doesn't really compare to the Defense and Intellect values Neoline gets alongside the Leadership.

Narratively, Amarimon comes across like a hybridization of Roin and Martin, a bodyguard fiercely loyal to his princess with ambiguous undertones that maybe his loyalty to her isn't merely that of a vassal to their lord. Nothing is explicitly spelled out, but enough attention is given to the princess' love life that I have to wonder if we're intended to assume something of the sort is going on, or perhaps more accurately that Amarimon would like for such to be going on.

Design-wise, Amarimon is a bit boring to me. He's a topless elf dude in tight-fitting pants with long flowing hair etc etc. Given how common the collage of imagery in question is in media aimed at heterosexual women I assume it's essentially effective, but I don't find him memorable. The only at all interesting element of his art for me is the part where he seems to be doing the kind of pose I'd expect of a knight reaching out to their lady so they may put a kiss on one hand. I'm not entirely sure I'm reading that correctly.

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Notice that all of Neoline's Companions have Regalia as their Secondary Item, and of course always have at least one Regalia slot as Main. Neoline is undisputed champion of stacking Regalia, just as Bagyr is undisputed champion of stacking Weapons. It's too bad Regalia isn't so full of amazing stuff as Weapons in Dark Side.

Notably, unlike Bagyr's Companions, Neoline's Companions have their title screen numbers match up to the in-game meetings with them, suggesting they were designed in more or less the order you meet them in-game.

One thing I'm curious about is why every one of Neoline's Companions has a sheathed knife prominently on display in their title screen art. It's quite odd for all of them from an in-character standpoint -Martin and Amarimon are both pure archers, while Roin is a dwarf and so King's Bounty tradition implies he wields a battleaxe or a hammer or something- so it seems unlikely to be a coincidence. My suspicion is it's some symbolism or innuendo that's going over my head and that I don't actually want to know, but it bugs me regardless.

In any event, next time we wrap up Companions with Daert's.