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Beowulf for me, Holyn for you. Good luck dude. Didn't spend a very long time on this but eh.

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Both of Beowulf and Holyn come during Chapter 2 - Holyn joins after one unit cleared the 1~1 range arena, Beowulf is recruited from the storm of free knights after you seize Heirhein. This will happen fairly quickly, you gotta seize Heirhein before turn 11 or so to have a chance of obtaining the Bargain Ring. This means your mounted units (Sigurd and Cuan in the lead, with Fin, Lex, Alec, Mideel and possibly Noish close behind) will be doing most of the killing this chapter, taking out the immediate threats of Elliot's group first to guarantee the safety of Lachesis and the Knight Ring, then charging through Heirhein's field army and the castle guards.

This and FE4's tactics rating mean Holyn will remain behind for the first part of Chapter 2, missing out on major experience, probably only really starting to participate with the rest when you are attacking McKeily (I think that's the name of the castle with the Sleep Bishop). Beowulf has already been recruited by now and gained a level from beating up some of his mercenary friends. From here it is basically some stats versus mount - and mount is going to win. The 2 extra movement, compounded by the many roads this game gives you, lets Beowulf do hit-and-runs which not only allows you to advance quicker, but also gives Beowulf the opportunity to hide behind the other frontliners and get a heal fix before jumping back without having to putting your healer near the front.

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Holyn isn't mobile enough to make it to the first battle at Nodion, however, making use of roads, and that the fighting at Nodion takes some time, Holyn would have joined up with the main army by the time the fight against the Heirhein (sorry if I confuse castle names).

This, and dominating the arena, gets Holyn at least a couple of levels. Lets just say he gets 4 levels (two from arena, 1 from fighting at Heirhein, and 1 from fighting the army to get to Beowulf), by the time Beowulf joins. If he doesn't get there in time for Heirhein, he is definitely there in time to fight against Beowulf's group, and still getting a level there.

So, when you first have them both, lets see how they look:
Holyn, lvl 16:
HP: 44.4
STR: 15.2
MAG: 0.2
SKL: 20.2
SPD: 18.2
DEF: 12.2
RES: 1.2
LUK: 1.8

Skills: Pursuit, Moonlight Hit

Beowulf, level 9:
HP: 38
STR: 14
MAG: 0
SKL: 11
SPD: 11
DEF: 10
RES: 0
LUK: 3

Skills: Pursuit, Charge

Now, looking at them side by side here, ALL Beowulf has is mounted advantage.

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Holyn's offense is always insane. He has a base of 17 SPD. So Holyn will double virtually every enemy you run across. Holyn has decent STR as well. And finally, Holyn's skill, Moonlight Hit.

Beowulf's starting SPD isn't anything special. Unfortunately, I don't have any enemy samples for this game, but I think it would be fair to say that Beowulf won't double as much as Holyn will at this point.

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Holyn has a 17% chance of activating Moonlight hit, at base level. It is 20%~ here. Offensively, Holyn wins throughout the entire game. Doubles most things, and Moonlight hit.

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Charge/Duel extends the round of combat. While that is good for Beowulf, allowing him to hit again, the blade has another edge, allowing him to eat another counter. Moonlight hit has no such flaws.

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Defensively, they turn out more or less the same towards the end, however, Holyn still leads there, if just by a hair, due to a bit more HP. That is just the end, though. Earlier, Holyn wins HP, DEF, and Avoid. So Holyn has the edge defensively as well.

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Beowulf also has one other flaw that I want to bring up. You have to pay Beowulf 10,000 gold to get him. Gay.

And, finally, Holyn is alot better in the arena, meaning Holyn can better generate money to pay for his weapons, and levels up faster.

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So, yeah, what it comes down to is someone who is Mounted Advantage, against someone who has a much better offense throughout the game, and who consistantly has better stats.

Being able to move after attacking is great, but that isn't everything.

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I agree almost completely, except Beowulf will also be fighting his friends for a level. I wouldn't worry much about Holyn's level lead here - Beowulf will be hitting the arena pretty soon too and throughout the rest of the game be drawing first blood all the time to compensate.

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If Holyn's offense is insane, Beowulf's isn't shabby either. He catches up to Holyn at Str thanks to his higher growth - before promotion Beowulf even wins until the promotion bonus puts Holyn in a 2 str lead.

About the speed issue, here's the list of Chapter 2 enemies Holyn can double with his 12 AS (Iron Blade) that Beowulf can't with 8 (Steel Sword):

- Fury
- Troubadours in Zyne's army

Oh, and Beowulf cannot double himself obviously. The Troubadours are really, really insignificant, especially given Beowulf has had the time to level up some more by now (he needs 2 or 3 level-ups on average to get the 9 treshold and double them).

FE4 is basically a big fest of low speed enemies - people say FE7 enemies are slow and those don't even have negative AS. Holyn doesn't double significantly more than Beowulf. By the time you face somewhat fast enemies (Chapter 4 Wind Mages) Beowulf will be promoted and have closed in on Holyn (+6 vs +2 promotion bonus), with enough AS to double even the fastest Wind Mages.

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Beowulf is sturdy enough to take even another hit of combat most of the time, and unlike Holyn he can retreat and get a heal before the enemies target him because of low HP. Charge will trigger most often against enemies with axes which can hardly hit Beowulf anyway.

And while we're on the subject of skills, Beowulf also gets Continue upon promotion (unlike Holyn who gets nothing), and with his 17 (or 14 with a blade) AS he will be triggering that 37% or 34% out of every single of his hits as well. Pursuit/Continue/Charge is the same skill set Jamka employs so succesfully, and in the hands of Beowulf it is quite deadly as well.

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He's winning by 6HP and 2DEF at L16 while Beowulf is at his base level. And by about 13 avoid, which isn't much at all. Especially when you take into account that Beowulf is gaining more experience per kill.

Experience from defeating enemy = 30 + ( (enemy level - unit level) x 2 )

So if Beowulf kills, for example, one of these L8 Firemages from McKeily, he gains 28 EXP, whereas Holyn gets only 14, assuming the level you estimated Holyn at.

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The vast majority of your units (except Lachesis, maybe Jamka and (heh) Holyn) have had two arenas to exploit by now, plus the gold you get at the beginning of every chapter for keeping your castles in one piece. There is also a gazillion villages near where Beowulf is recruited. You have cash coming out of your ears. The cash you hand over to Beowulf gives him some starting money for repairing and stuff, which as you said, he cannot do as well as Holyn. At least not until he's promoted and gains Continue and a bunch of Spd and Skl, at which point I'd say Beowulf is about as good if not better than Holyn at arenawhoring.

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The stat gap is relatively small and almost invisible in the endgame of Generation 1. But being mounted makes or breaks a unit - 2 extra movement before and 3 after promoting means a lot when you got a tactics rating to fulfill and villages to save. Beowulf can always be in the heat of the action with his mounted friends, Holyn only gets to kill whatever they leave alive.

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He's still getting an extra hit in, which is good enough. Charge isn't going to kill you unless you are up against something with massive attacking power, because it cannot trigger unless you have over 25HP. Since Beowulf can retreat fairly easily and get a heal, Charge is much much more a good thing than a bad thing.

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Yep, Holyn getting Moonlight hit on a General would probably be quite beneficial, but if you really want Beowulf to stand up against those he can take up an Armor Cutter from Chapter 3, and with his multi-hit skills he'll do quite well anyway. On the downside of Moonlight Hit, if you're fighting an enemy with a ton of HP and little defense it is Charge that makes more of a difference in damage output.

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It does help your EXP rank as well as demonstrate that a level/stat gap isn't really a very big one especially if it's only 6 levels.

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And from there you'll want Holyn to stop stealing too many kills because you have some other units to promote, and a L20 Holyn is gaining shitty EXP. He gains only 10 EXP from a L10 enemy. Beowulf can probably promote around the time you are facing Elthsan, if not then he can rack up some more EXP on the pirates from Orgahil and promote before Chapter 4 begins. Then he can totally clear the arena's of Chapter 4 and 5, so Holyn only got to beat 2 more of them.

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The stat gap was never really big: very early on it is 6 HP, 1 Str, 9 Skl, 7 Spd, 2 def and 1 res over a point of Luk. It may look like a lot until you realize both are DAing everything and hardly ever missing, making both Holyn's Spd and Skl leads a lot less spectacular. The differences between the two will not be noticed nearly as much as the insane amount of utility being mounted gives Beowulf, and in the endgame Beowulf is actually even winning in combat thanks to a new skill and even more movement.

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Silesia has forests, but not so much that Beowulf won't be running circles around Holyn. You don't have to cross more than one forest square in a row ever in that chapter unless you specifically want to sneak through them, and during the second half of the chapter (going to Silesia castle and then to Zaxon) there are no forests at all. However, Beowulf is benefitting more from all the roads that go through the entire chapter, as well as every single other road so far (and Ch2 and Ch3 do have plenty of those) so yeah. Then you factor in that Holyn also has to cross the same forests and his move is cut as well - their netto movement through forests should be about the same, but Beowulf is winning everywhere else.

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Except the desert, but even your godly lord Sigurd is having trouble getting through that desert. But he does have to brand his Tyrfing on the Freege army or at least pass through the area even if you're letting Levin do all the work, because Sigurd has to talk to Ida (the Velthomer boss who gives the command to attack Reptor). So if you have to wait for Sigurd to cross the sand anyway, Beowulf isn't making your life any slower. Not all tiles are desert ones either: some are regular sand ones on which Beowulf is still outrunning Holyn.

Even if you were to insist that Beowulf is too big of a drag in the desert, he can afford to stay at Phinora or even Lubeck and finish up repairing weapons and trading rings so his son doesn't have to waste money.

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Finally, I'd like to address Holyn's biggest weakness: genes. These days, genetical substances simply cannot be ignored, what with all the ethical debates about them. I'd like to point out that, when Holyn is doing the horizontal tango with Ayra, his greatest flaw is exposed. Not then, but several years later. You, the tactician, will look at your cute lil kids as they come out of Tinalogue or whatever the hell that town is called. And you will gasp in horror: Skakasha has black hair! Holyn does not even pass his hair color to his child! What a weakling, he cannot even break through a girl's genetical construction!

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Before you say the same about Beowulf, note that Beowulf is sexing up Lachesis. Lachesis has access to not one but three males according to the canon of this game: our sexy mate Beowulf, Fin and :incest: Elthsan. The mix of four juices within Lachesis' pit of doom allows nobody to predict whatever happens to the genetical construction of the children. Therefore, Beowulf is not to blame for Delmud's odd hairdo or color.