What advice is there for leveling him up? I've done all the side quests available at the start and even with two level ups and defense up in the 20's he still sucks. He doesn't hit, when he does, he doesn't do much damage, and he soaks damage like a sponge. May just be bad luck so far but he seems almost useless.

Gaulen is unique. He's not meant to be either a tank or a heavy hitter, but he is sturdy, so leans more toward tanking. He brings something to the party that nobody else can. Make absolutely sure his herb skill is maxed out by level 30. Knowledge of terrains comes next; max it out. Hunting is nice, but not so useful early on. Avoid Exploration: not worth it. As for combat skills, aim to max out Envenomed Strike. Because of his Jack-of-all-trades utility orientation, it's difficult to make him purely combat based. Pump points into Speed (Speed, Speed, Speed), Constitution and Agility, making him more caster-oriented.

I've heard that Envenomed Strike becomes good if you invest in it all the way. His unique utility skills eat a ton of skill points, unfortunately. If you want to be good on the front line, you might want to have a thief, bard, or mage pick up some of the non-unique utility skills. Thief in particular can cheaply max Shuriken for tons of damage in clutch situations.

One of the summons also stacks poison, so you have the option of doubling up. It probably isn't necessary, but it's neat to have a stacking DPS gimmick.

Appreciate the advice. I'm about Level 5 and a half. He's doing okay right now in my party of Barb/Paladin/Gaulen and Mage/Cleric/Thief. Thought I'd keep it simple. He still seems to soak up damage more then anyone else but through items I've gotten his health up respectably. I'm focusing everyone on specific tasks, so far I've been able to keep up with his skills.

It seems an odd design decision to force you to play as one character and then make that one character weaker then the other party members. Usually it's the exact opposite.

I especially dislike that they force the gender that is overused instead of the one that is underused.

Not really, there are many rpgs with preset protagonists and their classes.Often it is absolutely required for describing protagonists' position in the world. At least Gaulen isn't that bad looking. I'd even say this game did it well with portraits by not closely following crude western stereotypes of masculinity and femininity.

There are games with female main hero, it just so happens that a lot of them have strange attitude.. FF XIII comes to mind (though I didn't like it at all and Lightning was feeling like Mary Sue). Some argue that Ashe is main protagonist of FF XII, but she is so power-hungry and blood-thirsty for revenge at start of the game, so you might even doubt if Archadian Empire is really that bad at all; as potential main hero she makes bad guys look good. "Hey, Anastasis, Vayne has weapon of mass destruction, I require something far greater!"...

The problem with FF XII is that the game, to my understanding, has a "main character" slot, and that slot has a male character in it. (FFX has the same issue.) As a result, it feels like the developers are somehow afraid of making the main character female, even though that was done with FF6. (Yes, the "main character" of that game is ambiguous, but look at the first character you control, as well as the one the game follows after world destruction.)

There are a few other games I can think of that force male main characters when they shouldn't, including:

Dragon Quest series: 1 and 2 can be excused for being so old, 3 and 4 actually had female character options. Then you come to 5, where they made a storyline where only a male character would work. (On the other hand, I think that DQ5's story could work with a female character; you would just need more suspension of disbelief at a point of the game where suspension of disbelief is already strained. Then again, there is that old man...) While that may have been excusable, Dragon Quest's 6, 7, and 8 maintained that without a really good reason. It also doesn't help that the protagonist in Dragon Quest games is supposed to be the player's avatar, and that doesn't work so well when you have a female identified gamer who can't play a female character. (Forturnately, Dragon Quest 9 brought back the female character option.)

(As a side note, I have concluded that DQ5 is a big step back in the portrayal of female characters. Some of them seem to exist only as potential wives of the main character (and not interesting characters in their own right), and the main character's daughter is completely neglected (notice how she is less important than her brother plotwise and isn't even that good gameplay wise), DQ4, by contrast, had a tomboy princess, a fortuneteller, a dancer, and possibly even the legendary hero, all who function independently of any male character.)

Ultima series: Ultima 1-7 don't restrict your main character's gender, but then comes Ultima 8 and 9, where you are forced to play a male character. That creates a disconnect, where the Avatar is female throughout most of the series (because I made her so), but is suddenly forced to be male at the end of the series.

Eschalon Book 1: This game has a nasty tease. When creating your character, there is a spot for gender, which is initially set to male. If you try to change it, you get some BS message about the story "only works for a male character" (not a direct quote). Fortunately, Book 2 fixed this issue.

Bard's Tale 1 and 2: The games assume everyone you create is male and uses male pronouns to refer to them. Furthermore, the only female character in either game is a princess needing to be rescued (and she doesn't even look like one). Fortunately, Bard's Tale 3 lets you create female characters, and the character transfer routine even asks you if the character is Male or Female.

Oh I completely forgot about Terra. Yeah, she didn't have Mary Sue attitude, and she wasn't as power-hungry as Ashe.

FF X explicitly had Tidus as main hero, but FF X-2 had all female cast. I wasn't able to play FF X-2 though, it was feeling more like fanmade game and as such it was largely unpopular among FF fanbase. Some of those examples are games without preset main hero, but DQ had mostly male protagonist throughout the series. Gender-choice was more like after-thought. You also made me remember FF 1 and FF 3 (NES). Characters didn't have clearly defined gender. They got canon names, and thus gender (FF 1: 1st slot hero is Zest - male, FF3: 1st slot hero is Luneth - also male,) only much later (Dissidia still doesn't mention them by name, BUT Onion Knight and Warrior of Light are exclusively male in this game). So you could pretend you play all females.

They could have fit more personality into the game if the ten classes were all static with just one portrait/gender for each. Then they could have peppered the game with interactions. Most of them would be between Gaulen and one other character, but occasionally two other classes could have unique interactions. For the most part, they could randomly pick a class to say that class's flavored version of the same thing at any given point. (Arguably, the restriction to a single portrait or gender might not be necessary, but some portraits show personality in facial expressions and age that would fit some dialogues better than other)

I'm just thinking back to how much this is basically reverse Chrono Trigger. Remember how Crono never spoke, and everyone else talked constantly? This is the opposite. And yeah, he's 100% Mary Sue, which is really boring when his team is composed of nothing but silent hirelings.

For me, the gender doesn't matter (though I'm a guy). They have a storyline requiring Gaulen and you can see it as everyone else being his hired help. But the game would have worked exactly the same from a story department if it was just Gaulen with no party mechanic.

What bothers me about Gaulen is how useless he is. Maybe he becomes a killing machine later, but he's awful early and you really don't have a choice on how to make him work combat wise. Why can't Gaulen be a mage? Why is he locked on melee weapons? Why couldn't Gaulen be the main character with his skills and narration but be made by the player?

It's a very, very odd decision. If Gaulen was really good you could say, "Okay, I don't like being forced to use him but at least he's a strong party member"; instead he's basically deadweight until he gets a few levels. He's actually a detriment to the party often; if he dies in battle he gets no XP meaning every time he gets nuked you've gotta reload.. Everyone else has a role or specific talents. Gaulen just picks herbs.

He is actually quite ok (can't be compared to, say, paladin, but still holds his ground good). There is a common mistake made by people (especially those who don't take thief in party) - they try to raise all kinds of non-combat skills on him, thinking they are important. They also expect easy game at low levels (doesn't happen here) and neglect blessings.

Back row has higher chances to die at start of the game (all those ranged attacks, multi-attacks and area effects...) than Gaulen. When I am getting caught in some Cycle of Hurting (e.g., shrooms with their AoE Sleep and Poison), first people to die are usually mage and bard, while explorer dies among the last. Death penalties apply to anyone, so it is better to reload if anyone dies, not just Gaulen.

Also what I like about this game - good class synergy. Every class has its clear purpose, including Explorer (Knowledge of Herbs/Terrains, Envenomed Strike). Players tend to neglect using Bard Songs, Paladin buffs, healing capabilities, etc. Having good party, getting all blessings and some scrolls means getting through same Sporia Forest by killing shrooms instead of avoiding them (as was originally intended).

Don't even get me started on those Cycles of Hurting. God I hope they go away later in the game. It's cheap as all hell when you can't break yourself out of them. I had to beat the Tower Sentinel by unequiping all my weapons so confused wouldn't do anything and take it down by healing & spells exclusively. It felt so lame, but if I didn't then my entire party would be wiped in a few turns.

I don't want to upset you, but those Cycles of Hurting won't be really going away. You just need to work towards countering them - be it high Speed, Resist gear, debuffing enemies or some other inventive way.

That's a real shame. I know the game wants to be as hardcore and retro as it can, but things like that aren't fun and shouldn't be something in a game in 2015. It's not fun at all to have any and all agency taken from you as the game slowly beats you to death. A chance for the AI to pull off a combo? Sure that's cool. It being the only thing the enemy ever does? Bleh.

I think that's a major issue, the game has an identity crisis. It wants to be be uber hardcorz oldschool but at the same time, it wants to be accessible for newcomers. Things are done for story purposes (such as Gaulen) and gameplay purposes (character creation) to limit your ability to power game...but then the game itself forces you to power game and either A) look up what things to avoid/counter BS enemy strategies do or B) intentionally try to game the system as much as you can to achieve victory.

I didn't grow up with games like M&M even though I have a fondness for their designs which is probably why I'm still trying with Xulima. I've played many of the M&M through GOG, Xulima is like them with updated UI and modern conveniences. But I didn't find myself half as frustrated with say 6 and 7 from what I played compared to Xulima.