This set of reviews is gonna be done in two sets, one for the heroes and one for the villains. The traditional banner set up is for the villains, with the new box system (more on that later) for the Heroes. First up is the Villains, Jasper Unbound and Mordegon. Potential Spoilers ahead for DQXI S.

Introduction - Jasper

We got the secondary antagonist in his Demon form this time around, which is an odd thing for Square to implement mainly because it spoils the World of Darkness transformation for this guy for those who haven't played DQ11 prior to the Switch release. Jasper is a TDH mainly fist based user, and has an absolutely dreadful equipment set. He only can use Spears, Fists and Swords, along with hats and Light armor only, so no Madam STM for this guy. His best weapon is gonna be Aigaion's Cross, which luckily is pretty easy to obtain if you embrace the cheese. He has incredible modifiers and fits comfortably in the meta, sporting moderate lightning and high dark resist along with decent stats.

TM, STM, TMP and LB - Jasper

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Fairly generic TM and STM for Jasper, his TM is great for Edel if you have her, but otherwise you won't be pulling moogles for him (or anyone else for that matter) during this wave battle for whatever reason so no prisms. His STM is great for all the human SBB out there, and it gives an equal boost to both magic and physical damage dealers if you're unfortunate enough to pull 4 of him. Not STM mog material imo. Jasper has fist passives anyways, so theres no real reason not to use his TM. Even if you're not using Fists for whatever reason, he can still use the extra TM stuff and only lose 30% Atk from it.

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WHEW! This is a nuke, at 13 hits it will chain fully with a duplicate, and hits HARD. He's TDH based as well so he gets the variance from that as a bonus. In addition to having a 44x at base and 50x at top end, he has 50% LB Dmg as a passive thus making his base mod 75x! Add on the Asura 2 star materia and/or Kyanos and you have some crazy LB dmg being pumped out. At 3200 cost he's a little difficult to fill and won't be spamming this nearly as much as King Rain Noctis or Regina do, but he has chaining damage off LB turns as well. He can also imbue himself and grant himself 3-6 LS so it flows pretty easily. If you're looking to ONLY spam this, he can use Dark/Thunder CD skills every other turn and fill himself 3200, but this gets really heavy on the mana costs and his offturn mod is only 52x.

Passives - Jasper

Jasper is very well rounded when it comes to passives. He has semi decent base stats, with 70% HP, 50% Def, 80% Spr, with only 50% MP and 7% Refresh he's going to need some help with MP costs, he tends to eat up a lot. Atk wise, with fist's and excluding TM numbers, he has 160% Atk and 150% TDH. This is kind of bad, especially for a TDH based unit because he's going to be hungry for Atk materia which means less survivability. As stated earlier, Jasper also comes with 30% Thunder and 80% Dark resist making him a little friendlier for Dark resist trials which there's surprisingly quite a few of. Interestingly, Jasper can give himself 1 stack Mirage as a counter, and has a permanent 200%/250% Atk buff after surviving for 3/5 Turns respectively. These skills only trigger once (which is less important for him, but more important for others) per life, It's kind of a running theme for DQ units (reference to Pep-Up I think?)

Actives - Jasper

So Jasper has a TON of fluff in his kit, as most of his skills probably won't be used due to being Single hit or just not strong at all. He's got one strong chaining skill outside his cooldowns, and while 9x mod doesn't look good on paper, when all mod boosts are stacked (which he can maintain 100% Uptime on) he has 31x on this skill, which gives him 93x for total chaining, or 99x with CD use, which isn't bad at all. It's just a shame we are in a place currently where its 110x on nearly every DD. Good news is that Jasper has incredibly stable DPS, so if there's thresholds and hard locks, you can control his damage very easily. He does mostly the same amount of damage every turn. His CD's being separate elements are not really an issue as his CD gives 100% Dark and Thunder imperil to enemies. Where this comes into play is that he's reliant on both elements when LB bursting, and thusly if an enemy is immune or worse, absorbs one of these it heavily nerfs his damage. Overall a very mid-line Damage dealer, about on par with Riku, slightly less damage on average due to his reliance on TDH variance

Introduction - Mordegon

Mordegon, our central Big Bad Evil Guy, is your baseline Magic damage dealer, but what's this? Absolute Zero frames?! IN MY JP?! How dare they.^/s Oh well at least it only does meme worthy levels of damage. WAIT, You're saying it doesn't? Whoa. Mordegon is Fire, Ice and Dark based, with CW Mystic Cross and AZ frames. His major frame of use is Mystic Cross, but he can deal decent damage using his AZ frame move. He has permanent access to T-Cast, but no access to Quad cast which seems to be the norm for these new fancy age Mystic Cross users. Mordegon's only real problem is dropping his damage massively to use imperils, and he has to unlock his top end skills, but that's an 11 turn duration unlock so it doesn't cause a drop too often.

TM, STM, TMP, and LB - Mordegon

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Mordegons TM and STM are ultimately luxury items. They're just slightly higher numbers than previously, that being said, He always wants at least one of them, because his damage tanks hard without his T-Cast. As for others who would want them, pretty much any mage that isn't STM D-Fina want's the staff, and if you have an open accessory slot that isn't being filled by a Sol STM or the respective unit's TM, his accessory is never a bad choice offering a fair amount of defense in addition to the 50 Flat mag.

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OOF. Big OOF. 50x on a baseline maxed LB?! Jesus they aint messin around with these Villains. Mordegon does a ton of damage with his LB, and at base with his 100% LB dmg passive this will deal similar damage to his in kit stuff, which maxes at 132x, with his LB base doing 100x. The extra imperil comes into play if you're using his dark skill instead of the ice skill. Most of the time you'll probably be chaining with Dark anyways, as there's no Ice MC users currently. You may want to pass Asura's materia his way for the extra mag / LB damage as well, so you squeeze a little bit extra to help even the odds of his LB dmg mod vs his Mystic Cross ones. Level it up if you plan on using it, otherwise the Imperil doesn't change, just the dmg.

Passives - Mordegon

Mordegon can be either TDH or a TDW Mage, neither of which doesn't exactly have a lot of support equipment wise. That being said, he does have HUGE eqMAG at 150% for both types, so its not a huge deal for him. He also has 180% base mag, so he's in good condition there. Survival wise, he struggles a bit. At 50% HP, 30% Def and Spr, he's fairly fragile as far as mages usually go. His MP cost isnt too unbearable and he has 70% MP and 7% Refresh so he can manage himself well. His unique passive causes him to automatically remove every *buff* from the enemy at turn 3, and increase power of his major skills on turns 6 and 9, by 2 and 4 respectively, if trials last that long. the overall damage gain is about 24x, so without either buff his mod per turn is at 118x. The mod boosts don't stack unfortunately, not that he needs it. Having the free buff only dispel can be used in emergencies by killing and reraising him so it starts the counter over, but you'll have to plan ahead of time to do so. It's also a free action and doesn't consume his turn to do so.

Actives - Mordegon

As stated earlier, Mordegon has AZ, CW, and MC frames. His major frames of use are from his unlock, which are Dark MC frames and Ice MC frames. His AZ frames have a max mod of 13x x3, with his unlocked Mystic Cross having a maximum of (3x 25x) x3x, with 8x from mod boosts for 11 33x, x3 for 132x. His CD Imperil has 5 turns worth of use so basically permanent uptime on it, meaning Mordegon maintains the burst for 4 turns, with decently high mod on the first of the five. As bonus, Mordegon also comes with a 5T emergency break that recasts each turn, and a CD for on demand Buff removal, just like his Free Action one. Ultimately a very good mage kit, and can chain with Yunalesca and her Mystic frames so those of you who pulled after Tidus and ended up with her, you can end up with more partners for her! Mordegon is also a good unit to use for Tower with his breaks being able to free up a slot, as most of those floors can be cleared in 5-6 turns.

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Conclusion - Villains

Both of these guys are REALLY good, but ultimately stepping stones on the road to getting your heroes. If you're chasing the heroes, and are bat shit crazy, you'll probably end up with a few of these guys. Unlike the heroes these guys are not guaranteed and you'll probably end up pulling them randomly as you go after the keys for the Heroes boxes. More on that in the Pt2 review for the 4 heroes. Should you pull? Unless you have a ton of lapis reserves or a DQ nostalgia boner, probably not. These guys are great top tier DPS, but thats pretty much all this banner is, a DPS stop.