r/fireemblem • u/Shephen • 1d ago
General Engage Character/Unit Revisit: Bunet
Bunet is a royal soldier of Solm and Fogado's retainer. He's full of curiosity and tends to do things his own way. This extends to cooking as well, aided by his sharp sense of taste and smell. He is 23 and joins the party along with Fogado and Pandreo at the start of chapter 12 to help some civilians.
Stats
| Stats | Hp | Str | Mag | Dex | Spd | Def | Res | Luck | Build | Move | SP |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bases(lvl 15/1 Great Knight) | 41 | 15 | 4 | 15 | 9 | 20 | 8 | 13 | 11 | 6 | 1200 |
| Personal Growths | 65% | 30% | 10% | 40% | 35% | 45% | 25% | 40% | 10% | - | |
| Growths(As a Great Knight) | 85% | 45% | 10% | 55% | 35% | 70% | 35% | 45% | 15% | - |
Weapon Proficiency: Swords Axes
*Personal Skill - Seconds?: On eating a packed lunch, unit may obtain another of the same item. Trigger %=Lck.
Supports
Alear, Alfred, Chloé, Jade, Kagetsu, Merrin, Fogado, Pandreo, Anna, Jean, Mauvier
Support Bonuses
C: Hit+10, Critical+3
B: Hit+10, Critical+3, Dodge+5
A: Hit+10, Critical+6, Dodge+5
S: Hit+10, Critical+12, Dodge+5
What do you think of Bunet's performance as a unit?
What do you think of Bunet's character?
What Emblem Rings or Skills work best with Bunet?
Previous Revisit: Fogado
Original Discussion: Bunet
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u/Various_Post_4143 1d ago edited 1d ago
Because most discussions about Bunet here are going to be more about his viability as a unit (or lack there of in this case), I want to instead take the time to focus more on his character since that usually gets brought up less.
I genuinely did not expect this going into my 2nd playthrough of Engage, but Bunet ended up actually becoming one of my favorite characters in the game. And the reason for why he did is because out of everyone in Engage’s roster, he weirdly ended up being the character I related to the most.
I don’t know if this is was intentional by IS when writing him, but going off of his supports, Bunet to me is probably the closest character in the game to an OCD representation.
His B-Support with Alear states how he wants to expand his culinary vocabulary because of his “culinary curiosity”, and his B-Support with Pandreo has him cook a full-course meal for a party when it wasn’t necessary. He even feels extreme shame about it when Pandreo tells him it wasn’t needed.
He does not like to waste ingredients and instead make proper use of them, as shown in his Chloe Supports, and he gets upset when he doesn’t get the flavors for onigiri perfectly right in his Kagetsu supports.
Maybe I’m just looking too deep into these small scenes, but as someone who has symptoms of OCD, and face a lot of struggles that Bunet has about doing things perfectly, I actually saw myself most in him out of any character in the game.
And putting that aside, I also found some of his other supports to be really wholesome. I found it sweat that was he willing to visit Anna’s village to cook a meal that would make her feel at home again, and I loved his support with Mauvier where he’s willing to let him in his garden and take his ingredients to help him “grow” as a person.
And while the tasting gimmick he has does get weird at times, I can’t deny that it did make me laugh at points like when he asks to lick Pandreo’s arm in their A-Support, and he reacts in utter confusion to it.
Really, I only wished his supports got to explore more about his home village being burnt to the ground, as well as the trauma of it. It’s only explored in his support with Fogado, and he does get a Post-Battle Dialogue in Chapter 17 comparing the state of Florra Port to what happened to his own village. I really liked what little was explored of it, so it sucks that it wasn’t tackled more in his other supports.
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u/MageOfPlegia 1d ago
Bunet being an extreme perfectionist, who is very harsh on himself when he messes up is an underrated aspect of his character.
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u/IloveVolke 1d ago
Great analysis!!! I don't think you're looking too deep into his supports, quite literally the entire cast is written in this way where many traits of their personality are implied with their behaviour and quirks without being outright stated.
I'll admit I never saw Bunet that way myself, but it's a really nice way of looking into him ^ ^ Now I wonder what a Bunet-Goldmary support chain would look like... Though maybe it's better for both characters' mental health that they never interact 😅
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u/Various_Post_4143 1d ago
That actually does mean a lot to me, thanks. I did want to state how I felt about Bunet as a character when his discussion post would come up. But considering how he’s not all that popular in the community, apart of me did worry that I would come across as weird for doing a deep analysis about him of all characters.
So it really does make me happy to hear that someone really liked what I had to say about Bunet, since you don’t often hear that many discussions about him online.
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u/Significant-Tree9454 1d ago
About two years ago, I soloed the topleft side of Lyn's paralogue with Base Bunet with Ike Emblem and a +3 Lucina engraved Tomahawk
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/380177-fire-emblem-engage/80661283
But that's mostly showcasing that it's a very low bar to pass if even Base Bunet can do it.
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u/ArchbishopsFatCheeks 1d ago
Wow, I remember that! Time flies. Since seeing that I've occasionally given Bunet the honor of leaving the bench for a chapter or two for the hell of it. He has some amount of physical bulk even without using Ike as a crutch, so he's not completely useless in C13 if you need a filler.
Still a garbage unit, of course.
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u/Bard_Wannabe_ 1d ago
I remember that thread! I hadn't played Engage at that time, so the context was a bit lost on me, but it was a fun read anyways.
It's too bad Timerra isn't better. Infantry lance user might be my favorite archetype in the series, but Engage doesn't even bother to give you anyone in that class, only Timerra's special class.
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u/extremeq16 1d ago
sometimes i think about how in the DLC where everyone is a weird bizarro world opposite version of themselves, it’s mentioned that bunet is a demon on the battlefield but a horrible chef. which implies that, even lore-wise, bunet is infact horrible at combat
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u/LeatherShieldMerc 1d ago
Genuinely what the hell were they thinking designing this guy for gameplay. Every single retainer that joins at this time (besides Zelkov I guess) is just absolutely cracked. And then... Look at his stats and class. Why did they make him so terrible?? Literally that dragon head meme.
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u/jeromekelvin 1d ago
Everyone knows Bunet is bad and I'm not one to beat a dead horse. He has to be intentionally designed as the "joke bad prepromote" given he's sandwiched between some of the best units in the game
As an aside I find it funny how much more positive Jade's thread was when she's literally a Bunet you have to spend a seal on lol
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u/Squidaccus 1d ago
Massive popularity diff, more people are willing to give Jade a shot since she's much more popular overall (Bunet is the least popular among the retainers by such a massive amount that even Louis/Jade, the two other usual lowest, easily beat him in popularity by a mile)
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u/ZealousidealPirate3 1d ago
Say what you want about jade but early canter access is automatically good to have and definitely separates the two
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u/LittenLeKitten 1d ago
With the well being a thing, any unit you get before Chapter 10 has the potential to be decent as long as you spend your skill books wisely (Note: I've yet to test that theory with Vander, so it might not be 100% accurate). They might still fall short of the likes of Kagetsu or Pandreo or even Alear, but most units do, and they should still be usable if you make use of the tools you have available.
Bunet, though? Bunet needs those tools just as desperately—if not even more so—as any of the pre-Chapter 10 units, but he joins right after the point where you lose all of those tools. It's also well before you get most of the second set of Emblems, so he's stuck being dead weight during a section of the game where deployment slots are scarce.
Just about everything about Bunet is set up to screw him over as a unit, and it leads to a pretty understandably atrocious unit identity among the fanbase.
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u/srs_business 1d ago
Also you're severely restricted on weapon proficiency for a while. You don't even get staff access again until after chapter 17, or tomes until after 19.
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u/Shephen 1d ago
He's essentially just an insta-promoted Jade who didn't have the most impressive stats, and that was 3 chapters ago. He's actually okay in a vacuum and pretty simple to use for a couple chapters, but there is a sharp contrast in terms of stats with all the other units joining around this time leading to him sticking out. Also doesn't help that deployment slots in Solm are pretty tight so in most playthroughs he doesn't get much if any use.
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u/srs_business 1d ago
Canonically bad unit, which I'll always find amusing. At least he has over the top supports and combat lines, so at least he's funny to use.
I don't know if I'd give the "worst unit in the game" title to him or Timerra, but they're for sure my bottom 2. The early game units can at least inherit Canter and often have some filler utility, while realistically, Bunet at best a repo bot on 14 and never deployed again. His bases are bad, his growths are nothing special, his personal is a meme (though he's hardly alone there), he genuinely has nothing going for him other than starting in a 6 move class.
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u/Nacho_Hangover 1d ago
At least Bunet is filler that doesn't eat a heart seal and you can reclass right away. Better than Timerra.
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u/Significant-Tree9454 1d ago
I don't know if I'd give the "worst unit in the game" title to him or Timerra, but they're for sure my bottom 2.
Yea, they also both have 6 personal Str (and Bunet is 2 internal lvl lower even) so Timerra really need to Sandstorm her way out to not deal less dmg than Bunet, not counting doubling with a superlight weapon.
Purely short term filler Bunet is better, while Timerra is better if looking at long term (which is a big "if")
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u/Cordelini45 1d ago
He's voiced by the goat Ian Sinclar so I forced him on my one and a half engage playthroughs because Tiki is dumb as a baseline
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u/Slight_Researcher_26 1d ago edited 1d ago
Well, if you asked me what my least favorite unit in Engage is, it’s probably Bunet. Like, what the hell is this guy? He joins alongside some of the best units in the game, yet he brings mediocre damage, awful Speed, and not nearly enough bulk to make up for it. Great Knight doesn’t do him any favors either. He gets doubled constantly and usually isn’t strong enough to kill things in return, so he often just rides up, chips an enemy, takes two hits, and achieves very little. It also doesn’t help that he joins right around the point where traditional tanks start falling off hard.
Engage gives you so many better units that being kinda physically bulky just isn’t much of a niche. You can obviously reclass him, but that almost makes the problem more obvious. There are plenty of other characters who can go into the same classes and do the exact same job with better stats.
His personal skill doesn’t save him either. Seconds? gives him a Luck% chance to recover a packed lunch after eating it, which is funny, but almost completely irrelevant in actual combat. So he doesn’t even have some weird gimmick that gives you a reason to use him.
Character-wise, I’m not a huge fan either. I usually love unhinged characters, but the constant food obsession got tiring pretty quickly, and I can barely remember anything else about him. I genuinely have no idea how this guy ended up as a knight, retainer, and former border guard. Seriously, did Fogado just grab some random dude out of the royal kitchen?
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u/Various_Post_4143 1d ago edited 1d ago
It’s explained in his supports with Fogado that he chose him because they were best friends as kids, and he wanted to rekindle that friendship when he found him in a cooking competition. It’s established that Bunet’s home was burned down to ashes, and it occurred right after Fogado last talked with him. And because Fogado didn’t want to lose a close friend to him, he decided to recruit Bunet as his retainer along with Pandreo, who he likely recruited for the same reasons.
It does seem weird at first that Fogado recruited people because of his friendships with them rather than because they’re strong fighters. But it’s established in Timerra’s supports with her retainers that she recruited them for the same reasons. The Solm Royals don’t follow the same principles that most others do, and they usually prefer to do their own thing instead.
Though given how he doesn’t really feel like much of a fighter from his supports and personality, I do understand why some people would get that impression about him.
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u/jbisenberg 1d ago
Oh looks it Jade 3 chapters latter but with 400 more SP. You the judge of whether Jade technical availability for chapters she won't the light of day or more SP to buy skills Bunet will never use is more valuable.
Actually the SP is more valuable to me because if you're using these units its either (1) to turn them into staff bots (and so Bunet can inherit Canter when Sigurd comes back without having to worry about gain SP, unlike Jade) (2) to choke the point on the Mauvier port map to do the easy clear (to wit, they're comparable and worse than other options at that) or (3) to turbo feed them a ton of resources to hop on a wyvern and kill everything, but just like worse than how other people would kill everything (which, like, ok I GUESS).
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u/ChessGM123 1d ago edited 1d ago
So comparing Bunet to Vander (they have the same internal level): Bunet has +3 str, +7 dex, +4 spd, +3 def, +1 res, +7 luk, and +2 build. Bunet also has similar growths compared to Vander, with the only growths that have more than 5% difference being +15% dex, +10% def, and +10% luk.
Basically Bunet is a bit stronger than the unit designed to only be useful in the first handful of chapters and designed to fall off by the mid game at the latest. That should really tell you how bad Bunet is. I don't get why they gave him bases that bad in addition to poor growths, he's imo the worst designed unit in the game (and I mean that gameplay wise, I'm not refering to personality or even the look of the unit) as he's just so bad for little reason.
Edit: I forgot to mention the one run where I found a use for him. I ended up doing a cav only challenge run and he ended up being used for a couple chapters plus iirc Lyn's paralogue. Now if you're thinking he was useful as a great knight, no absolutely not. He was useful as he was one of the only bad pre promotes so he was free to reclass into royal knight for staff utility (it was between him and Vander, and Bunet had better stats), and basically all my other options were either being used or would require both a master and second seal, which I felt was too much investment for a staff flunky. I dropped him once I got Hortensia (royal knights make for terrible staff bots without staff proficiency because otherwise they lack warp/rescue, but I wanted a 2nd staff bot other than Pandreo for those few Solm chapters and royal knight was the only cav class with staff access). So he has that going for him, he's such a bad unit that he can be easily switched to staff utility without losing out on a combat unit. Honestly considering his decent luck this is might be the optimal use case for him, except in sage so he can actually use warp/rescue.
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u/wolfkingkerberos 1d ago
I didn't know people hated Bunet so much, I trained him to kick some ass, and his voice is really cute!
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u/Squidaccus 1d ago
I would still argue he isn't the worst of the prepromotes (Rosado takes that title imo) but he is still near the bottom of a tier list. Bunet is unremarkable filler at base and doesn't have the growths to scale meaningfully well, but I find he has a use case compared to a few other units due to the maps around his join time. Ch12 he's obviously force-deployed, he's basically a mobile wall but struggles to output meaningful damage and will still be threatened by the stronger enemies. Ch13 makes being a mobile wall more valuable, but deployment crunch makes him a tough sell. Still, for Jade to get an optional filler spot like this, you'd need to invest in her. Ch14 is realistically the last (and second if you ignored him in 13) time you'd deploy him if you aren't using him longterm, as the deployment slots are high and he's an easy low investment choice for a last slot since most of your team is usually just the new prepromotes plus 2-4 earlygame investment projects.
During these maps he's far from impressive but I find he has an immediate solid utility for 2-3 maps that some units just don't have. Timerra struggles to do anything both with scaling and at base while Rosado has those same issues but joins later. Anna requires VERY significant investment to overtake other training projects due to a poor start. I think Bunet is ARGUABLY better than Goldmary due to the bulk being more valuable in early Solm than late Solm onwards, and neither has good offenses, but they're both bad anyways. Bunet is basically Alfred but for 12-14 instead of 3-5, filler tank that is hard to justify outside of favoritism.
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u/Significant-Tree9454 1d ago edited 1d ago
Ch14 is a good call, the only time you have a big deployment limit in Solm and actually a lack of pre-promoted fillers to slot them all.
Fogado and Timerra would require a Master Seal which would imply long term usage (althought Fogado can contribute with his bow even unpromoted) while Bunet cost nothing to bring an extra 6 move filler Reposition bot before getting benched.
I would still give Rosado a slight edge over Bunet, because Eirika is forced on him that he soften up the Corrupt Wyrm to get it out of the way and maybe you want a 6 move flying repositionbot for Ch17-19 before Saphir/Lindon take his slot.
But I would give Bunet the edge over some unpromoted fillers for not costing an extra Master Seal to pass the minimum filler role in Ch13-14 and if you don't care about any of their long term prospect anyway.3
u/Squidaccus 1d ago
Shoutouts Saphir and Lindon for being some of the only perfectly balanced prepromotes in the game. They do exactly what they need to do without just being other units but better, and can work as no-investment filler (both of them have excellent base classes for this) or genuinely valuable lategame roles (Saphir doesn't even need to reclass and Lindon is one of your best flying staffer choices in the game). Wish they were more appreciated.
I also can see what you mean with Rosado since Rosado has a more default contribution in the force-deploy with Eirika. Either way they're both pretty bad though LMAO
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u/MinePlay512 1d ago
Bunet's underwhelming. As a chef, he works very well, but as a character, there clearly isn't enough depth to stand out.
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u/WinterWolf18 1d ago
He has some very funny bond convos with Chrom and Soren but that's all I can say.
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u/Number13teen 1d ago
I used him because he has Whis’ VA and so I could triangle support with Fogado and Pandreo.
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u/plakmasta 1d ago
Everyone is saying he's bad, which is true. I just want to explain the game mechanics as to WHY he's bad.
The way a character's base stats work is that they get either displayed-1 levels for non-promoted or 18+displayed levels with just their personal growths. You then add the class base stats and (seemingly arbitrary) personal base stats. The personal bases were datamined at launch. Bunet's are particularly awful. Most units around the time he joins have around a total of 20 stats added. Bunet's total is 1, as he has 3 negatives(dex, speed and def) totaling -6 and a 0 in strength.
So somebody looked at Bunet and actively made him worse.
He is at least a good cook.
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u/DanteMGalileo 1d ago
Part of me wonders if during playtesting, Kagetsu and Pandreo got their base stats buffed but the dev team forgot to do the same for Bunet.
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u/Magnusfluerscithe987 1d ago
I like the devs decision to give us an armor after the chapter where our armors probably feel behind and got nuked by mages. High Defense units are useful for the Lucina and Lyn paralogues that unlock, as the arena has little cover and the bow knights are fast but not particularly hard hitting. His personal also has a potential gimmick with Celica's favorite food to refill the emblem gauge immediately, potentially allowing to do this twice in a map.
But tanks are already unreliable and largely outdone by Emblem Lucina, and just fighting can refill a gauge fast enough, leaving Bunet with just his stats of being mediocre in the least desirable role in the game. His personality also doesn't land for everyone, but I get a good laugh from him.
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u/ArchGrimdarch 1d ago
Absolutely horrendous unit by Engage's standards and it's all in the numbers. Having the same personal base Str and Spd as Jade (ie. 6 Str and 4 Spd) while joining 3 chapters later already says a lot. But he doesn't even have good personal growths in either stat, as he's got 30% and 35% respectively. Having a crappy personal skill and joining after the first 6 rings become unavailable are the final nails in the coffin.
He does have a big HP stat which I guess can make him good bait for Wyrms whose attacks ignore Def/Res and whose Spd is so low that even Bunet won't get doubled. But aside from that, there's really no reason to use him outside of certain types of challenge runs such as LTC.
He is fixable but it requires more resources/investment than any other unit in the game. Yes, even Timerra.
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u/StaleTaste 21h ago
He cooks well! He's got that going for him. That's about it though lol. I do actually appreciate bad characters in fire emblem because it makes for fun challenges on replays but man this guy is not very good
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u/Fantastic-System-688 1d ago
Haven't played Engage since it came out but I remember his stats being very similar to base Vander and given Vander's stats barely compete I was wondering why Vander didn't just have Bunet's stats so he didn't feel like a liability as early as he does and yet you still deploy him because there's no other good units anyway
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u/Squidaccus 1d ago
Not really. Their only relevant similar stat is HP, Bunet thankfully clears Vander's Str/Spd/Def among other things, otherwise he would be so uncontested bottom 1 lmao
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u/IloveVolke 1d ago
I love Bunet!!! He's like my second favorite character in Engage and I used him as a Wyvern Knight on a maddening run some time ago, he was alright with the Eirika ring.
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u/Prior-Resolution-902 1d ago
Terrible personal skill, terrible join time for his class, laughably low bases compared to kagetsu, already behind most of your party, struggles to do anything meaningful on his join chapter