Rabbit’s Reviews #356: Draco (5* Beast) (2024)

For the first time in nearly two years, we have a new playable Servant class—but unlike the past few, this is one we’ve actually seen in the game before, as an enemy class. Enemy Beasts have all had different properties and class advantage rules, but for the purpose of this review, I’m going to assume that the things that are true about Draco will also be true of all future playable Beasts. If this turns out to not be true, I’ll address it in a later review.

With that said, what is a Beast? Beasts are a nifty variation on Berserkers, getting a 1.5x damage multiplier against knights and cavalry and 2x against berserkers, while dealing half damage to and taking double damage from all extra classes. They also don’t have any flat bonuses or penalties to attack (unlike Berserkers and Assassins and the like), which means what you see is what you get, as far as their stats are concerned. Based on the data we have available, it looks like they will tend to have very high stats, which should keep them roughly on-par with Berserkers and Avengers in effective attack, despite lacking their innate multiplier. As a whole, they’re sort of a Berserker-minus, packing many of the same strengths, without the squishiness, but with a slightly narrower use-case. The one catch to this is that Ordeal Call’s ostensible focus on extra classes might make a main-class-killing class less valuable in the long-run. I personally expect Beasts to be roughly as useful moving forward as Alter Egos were at the time they debuted—which is to say, pretty good, about half the time. We’ll see whether that prediction holds up.

Draco herself is one of the best ST Arts units we’ve seen, provided you’re fighting a main-class unit. An NP1 Draco roughly matches an NP2 Vlad, which is a testament to her raw strength. Kriemhild is probably better overall—her anti-Dragon damage is comparable and she has a 50% battery—but Draco is less reliant on cards to loop and doesn’t have the usual defensive issues Berserkers do. She’s a great unit, and if you don’t have a favored ST Arts unit, she’s a good pull. That said, there’s no shortage of acceptable-to-great substitutes, and if you have any of Vlad, Galatea, Kriem—or, heck, even Hephaestion in many cases—you probably don’t need her.

Draco is a fantastic unit and one of the best ST Arts Servants we’ve seen, provided you’re not fighting extra classes. There’s not a lot else to say about her beyond that: she’s a generically good Servant, and while she is very good, she isn’t standout enough to be a necessity for players with established bosses.

As a whole, Draco feels to me like something of a catch-up unit. If you’re a relatively new player, or you don’t have all your main-class ST needs covered, Draco is a one-stop-shop. Even an NP1 Draco probably covers most of your non-extra-class ST needs, and at higher NP levels she definitely does. There’s still a place for characters with niche damage or large batteries—again, Kriem and Hephaestion have proven their value over and over in the age of super recollections and 90++ nodes—but for the most part, Draco does everything you need. With Ordeal Call likely to focus mostly on extra-class enemies and characters, Draco is here to ensure you don’t have to worry about any of the old stuff. It is not a coincidence, I think, that she only asks for old mats. She’ll get you through most of the tough ST stuff to-date, so you can be caught-up and ready for the new story content.

This is contingent on pulling her, of course, and if you’re already caught up and have a good box, you don’t need her. But it’s nice that she’s there for the people she can help.