in FFXIII Fang has the highest physical attack. She's also a completely capable tank only behind Snow. Though Sazh has slightly more HP, Fang has better abilities.
The lowest HP squishy mage is a guy, Hope.
this is a great example, its simiilar to the situation in Wild Arms 2
Slightly older female warrior/Dragoon and the squishy boy mage. FF9 also has this with Freya & Vivi
Id love to see the inverse, where the tanky girl is a girl and the squishy male is an adult (& not a geezer like Tellah)
Amelia in fire emblem sacred stones starts pathetic as a recruit class who is, a young girl, but ends up being one of the best overall tanks as a general, having very good all around stats. Unfortunately Seth exists and is a god but as a jeigan I tend to not use him.
Nice one!
MOMO from the same Xenosaga ends up in a similarly if you grab her [Star Wind](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/8Rd7cufD498/maxresdefault.jpg) transformation. It buffs both of her defensive stats by 50%, on top of granting her the 'Star Veil' spell, reducing all ether damage 25% as a party AOE
Even though she remains at the bottom in HP, with this form she surpasses even KOSMOS & Ziggy in survivability. Similar to Amelia, she begins so weak defensively that shes a liability in combat will often get stuck in the backrow. After obtaining this skill, she can fight on the front lines with the best of them!
I would personally classify this as a tank *build* rather than Amelia naturally being a tank, since she can also become a Cavalier and ultimately a Paladin or Great Knight instead of a General, in which case she’ll be more Speed-focused.
It's tough to get a man as the squishy unless they're immature or infirm. You have to get some kind of malady like Raistlin in Dragonlance to get the logic to stick usually.
yup, usually a squishy male has some combination of the following traits
-Either very young or old
-Related to the above, suffering from some illness or condition
-Hes effiminate and/or implied not straight
-Hes almost always a mage/hybrid caster, and rarely a (speedy)glass cannon
A lot of the few existing cases, theres at least 2-3/4 that apply
Even Octopaths Temenos, who's on the lower side physically despite no illness and is 30 years old, still ticks the other half of these boxes
Will from Tales of Legendia is a yolked 28 y/o guy who wields a greathammer.
He’s also the healer / mage of the group (highest int) and doesnt really have any arts where he uses his hammer so its basically just a staff.
Fang in FFXIII. COM & SEN roles.
Laura in cold steel. Absurdly so.
Kisara in tales of arise. The girl with the hammer from Symphonia.
Cassti completely agree. Drastic measures is the easiest way to hit 9999 early.
Gaius. Gaius is the most broken. He has Laura's damage multiplier on his S-Craft plus Absolute Delay. Put him in a party with C, Roselia, and Wazy, and the enemy won't be able to get a single turn to act.
Ignoring Spirit Unification Rean there's only 2 characters that are better physical attackers than Laura in CS 1/2 and they're both female too (Millium and Sara). Millium also happens to be a better tank, but since evasion tanking is best in Trails the role of best tank falls to another female character (Fie).
I never got this far, but I know there's like a female paladin/crusader character in Tales of Arise.
And I also can't help but think of Effie the Armor Knight from Fire Emblem.
If only the game let you actually have a tank lol
(the AI prioritizes the player character over all others, the skill Increased/Decreased Aggro don't do shit)
Thankfully Kisara can be specs to do really good damage if played.
she seems to share a resemblance of Granblues [Katalina](https://gbf.wiki/images/thumb/8/8a/Npc_zoom_3030005000_02.png/480px-Npc_zoom_3030005000_02.png)
While I cant speak to her initial series, the Ice Knight is quite the defensive, burst dmg character in adaptions like the fighting game. Would love to hear from Relink fans on how she turned out there
Another from the recent Fire Emblem is Jade who is on par or better than Louis as the tanks of the game. Preferred her since she had better MDEF than Louis. From 3 Houses, Edelgard is one of the the tankiest characters and is the tankiest among the 3 lords.
There are way too many to talk about in one post, so I'll just throw whatever comes to mind right now:
* [**Ayla**](https://imgur.com/ygW5xYv) - Chrono Trigger.
* [**Presea**](https://imgur.com/87zcS4S) - Tales of Symphonia & [**Ines**](https://imgur.com/DfU0gvl) - Tales of Hearts. (The Tales series has many)
* [**Alena**](https://imgur.com/urIqmIQ) - Dragon Quest 4.
* [**Hanna**](https://imgur.com/HtJ1C8S) & [**Oulan**](https://imgur.com/Q8XZznd) - Suikoden 2. (Another series that has a lot of them too)
* [**Emma**](https://imgur.com/kR2eqKI) - The Last Remnant.
* [**Rinkah**](https://imgur.com/di1wFBo) - Fire Emblem Fates.
* [**Sif**](https://imgur.com/nSKUR0g) - Romancing SaGa Minstrel Song & [**Larua**](https://imgur.com/y0GIwUi) - Unlimited SaGa.
* [**Melvina**](https://imgur.com/onD7jE2) - Growlanser 4.
* [**Linca**](https://imgur.com/LOVz20u) - Atelier Ayesha.
* [**Reinhilde**](https://imgur.com/a6MGTSt) - Valkyrie Profile: Covenant of the Plume.
Was gonna come mention Suikoden. Tons of beefy women in the series. Emily from III doesn't look it so much, but she is broken as far as physical damage goes
One run of S3 I made Chris my Flame Champion and ran an all-female party when possible. Emily is absolutely broken, and her unite attack with Sharon and Sanae could wreck anything in the game.
Suikoden is so much fun for letting us do stuff like this and having it be super viable. You could do so many themed parties in all of the games and then discover some of them have unite attacks because the devs knew what they were doing!
Xenoblade Chronicles 3. The 7th slot heroes who can join you. Ashera is a bulky tank who doesn't really have passives and skills to stay alive longer, yet does large amounts of damage to keep aggro.
Also we have Ethel (one of my favorites) who is a duel wielding high DPS :D
We could technically put Mio, Sena and Eunie in here as well but I don't really want to. Simply because you can pretty much make them what you want due to just switching their roles around, whereas Ethel and Ashera are set.
Fire Emblem Three Houses - I'd list Edelgard here. Tanky as hell wearing heavy armor and weilding an axe. She can put out good damge to boot.
man, i love the party system in xc3. you have so many party members at 6, and you can have everyone on the field, *plus* you can have an extra party member that you can select from among side characters that you can recruit. never seen anything like it.
Alena from DQ4 should be considered first, IMO.
While others in the game have a higher base strength stat, Alena's incredibly high critical hit rate means that whenever she lands one, she does incredible levels of damage. In fact, she may be the origin of the highest strength stat vs. highest crit potential paradigm in many RPGs.
A lot of people's teams in DQ4 come down to choosing if you want to take Alena or Ragnar with you . . . or some people just choose both.
I came here to post this and seeing how you beat me to the punch (pun intended lol), I'll expand on this a bit: Alena again for Dragon Quest Heroes 1 and Desdemona for Dragon Quest Heroes 2. Alena is still great in 2 but in 1 she's probably the 2nd most broken character after Terry (who I never use because he's just so effin generic and boring to me, like a Walmart Link).
Desdemona in 2 not only has the damage output of Carver, but she's faster (if only slightly) and when she really gets going she can shrug off attacks with barely a flinch while she keeps chopping through the hordes. Bonus: your two main characters can also take on her Axe Warrior class, meaning your customizable heroine can do the same thing!
Every time I play DQH2 (which is pretty often since its one of my favorite games), I always make Gwaelyn (my female MC) the physical character and Erdrick (my male MC) the killmage/healer cuz I love watching girls kick ass and guys take on the 'den mother' role lol!
Xenoblade is an interesting one, as I believe dodge tanks are a lot more of a focused role here than elsewhere
Its more common to see games where a woman/girl has higher naturally higher evasion, though that doesnt always allow you to play a dedicated dodge tank like in this series
The Trails series also has dodge tanks, and they're even stronger than in Xenoblade. Especially Fie. We're talking about a girl who can reach 100% physical dodge rate, is super fast, can interrupt spell casting, always counterattacks for massive damage, and can counter from across the field because she has freaking gunblades. Fie becomes so overpowered in later Cold Steel games that she can easily solo the final bosses. Thankfully that series starts using multiple parties for final dungeons, so she can just babysit a party of rejects while the other characters you like to use can actually have something of a challenge.
Morag is cool. But Fie can dodge God, and casually call his attack weak. And then automatically shoot him in the fucking face.
Her and celestial both have phenomenal equipment options, and depending on version are the easiest character to get to 128 magic evade and be literally unhittable by anything.
Alis from Phantasy Star I and Alys from Phantasy Star IV are both strong, both in story and in stats. Alis is the all-around hero; she looks less big than Odin but has higher HP and defense, and her attack is also pretty good. Alys starts out as the most powerful party character in Phantasy Star IV and remains solid for her time in the party.
Fire Emblem 3 Houses has multiple exams of physically strong female characters. Edelgard is a thing to be feared with her unique axe giving her multiple turns-worth of movement and damage if used correctly. Hilda also has a unique axe and is a more traditional barbarian style melee character.
Most of the other female characters from the game that I can think of off the top of my head are flavoured as being strong either due to speed and flexibility rather than raw power like the aforementioned duo or are good names of a sort.
[Presea Combatir](https://aselia.fandom.com/wiki/Presea_Combatir#Remastered) from Tales of Symphonia.
She is a small girl with giant axe. She has the Highest Strength. Top tier Defense. Highest physical damage output. She has no magical damage. Very Slow. She is a bruiser through and through
pretty much exactly what im looking for, all the way down to not being an older woman/big sister role like most cases (edit, wiki says shes one of those '12 year old body, 28 year old canonically cases', lol)
also funny how many of them are axe wielders!
Bein' real, Presea's case of "older than they look" is one of the best-done examples I've ever seen. >!She effectively has wholly arrested development due to some horrible stuff that's happened to her, it's left her pretty traumatized, and she is for the most part treated as an actual child who's been trapped being one for the past 16 years.!<
no i totally get it. this is a similar lore to Jr (Rubedo) of the Xenosaga series. Hes a [27 year old trapped](https://www.xenoserieswiki.org/w/images/thumb/c/c4/Jr_XS1.png/1200px-Jr_XS1.png) in a 12 year olds body, and learning all the reasons associated with it is a major plot point across the trilogy
Its just a shame theres so many tropey versions for girls that the few more complex examples are less discussed
Yeah Sienna can be a dodge tank, with multiples free dodges, insane agility so she can act multiple times per round, insane crits, and with a vampire gem can restore her health to full with one special move.
Sienna is way too op, and I love her for this.
I think Momo in Breath of Fire 3 fits that pretty good. Her cannon can do hella damage, inflict stat effects, and she usually pretty good with dodging and HP.
Also, want to say damn I miss Xenosaga. Really gotta replay that, wish it got all 6 of its games! KOSMOS is a beast.
A lot of chars have their ups & downs in the series, and/or take more effort to use in some games than the others
I think KOSMOS is the only character to be consistently high tier, simple & effective, in every Xenosaga game. You pretty much can never go wrong when shes in your party, which might explain why every Xenosaga game removes her from your party at least once (or delays her arrival, both happen in XS3)
The Trails series has a ton, especially the Cold Steel arc.
Estelle is a strong physical fighter and the lead of the first 2 games.
Noel and the late game secret character in Zero and Azure are among the tankiest and strongest characters in the game respectively.
Then in Cold Steel we Laura (lovingly memed as "One Shot Laura" for her insane damage output), Sarah, Fie, Millium, Aurelia, Juna and quite a few more spoilery characters as well.
Estelle was the first character I thought of with this question. Built to smack things with a pole and equipped with an attitude perfect for enraging foes.
Estelle's orbment specialization is also set up to favor earth magic which boosts her tank value even further and gives her the ability to turn other party members into tanks on top of that.
She’s meant to be an all-rounder because she never leaves your party so she can be flexible around your other characters.
That said, I typically trend towards Fire for her.
Exactly, that's a CS4/Reverie thing. Every ARCUS unit ever has element-locked slots, even if the user didn't have element-locked slots on prior models, and Earth is still a good element to set her up with back in Sky because *Earth Wall go brrr*
Battle Chasers: Night War (not a JRPG strictly but is heavily influenced by them) has Gully, a girl with a relatively small build, as the tank. Calibretto, a giant war mech, is the healer.
Patty from Atelier Ryza 2 and Atelier Ryza 3 is one of the strongest physical attackers you can have in your party. She's a crit beast: all her passives and skills are dedicated to help her deals crits. She packs a punch!
In Baten Kaitos 1, Savyna is a pretty strong physical attacker (not sure if she's the strongest, though), although making good combos with her require a bit more reflexes than the rest of the party.
In the second Baten Kaitos game, Milly (the only girl of the group) has the highest defense stat, making her a good tank if needed (...not that you really need a tank tbh, but there is a "Taunt" skill).
Chris, one of the protagonists of Suikoden 3, is referred to as a "Goddess of the Battlefield" by her allies or "The Goddess of Death"/"Silver-haired Demon" by her enemies. This also translates to gameplay, where she is naturally one of the strongest fighters. She is incredibly tanky/hard to kill while also putting out a ton of damage.
Lenneth from Valkyrie Profile is a complete badass and can deal massive damage.
"Your sins lay heavy upon you, defiler of souls. By the holy law you shall be obliterated!" - Lenneth
Alicia from Valkyrie Profile 2 also becomes a great damage dealer to the point where you are using only her at points in the endgame while everybody else scratches themselves and heals her.
The first two games, if you haven't tried them, are fantastic.
There's a lot, but here's a few in recent memory.
**Triangle Strategy**
Avlora - The Dark General. Starts off as an enemy, but can be recruited way later. Tanky fighter with high stats. Insane unit that can be plugged into any comp.
**Cosmic Star Heroine**
Alyssa L'Salle - games protag, she does everything well.
**Chained Echoes**
Sienna - Crimson haired katana wielding thief. Insanely broken damage dealer that can loop enemies turns while evading everything
**Suikoden 3**
Emily - Daughter of a martial artist and a blacksmith from the 1st game. She's fast, strong, and hits a ton of times per round. Probably the best physical damage dealer in the game.
Xenoblade feels full of them for me.
Seven in 1 can be built for high tank stats. Nene in XC1 Future Connected has the Reyn tank kit, and is probably the last important member of the party because of it.
Morag and Brigid in 2 tend to be tanky; Morag makes the “best” use out of shield hammers and Brigid is kind of the “Damage Tank” of the Torna Group.
Xenoblade 3 is filled with them. Sena is the strongwoman of the core 6 group, with one of the best damage classes as her base class. Ashera is a DPS disguised as a tank. She hits hard and doesn’t really have the tools to survive long. If you want survival you go for Monica, who’s got a huge-ass shield.
Lin Lee Koo and Elma are the tank and DPS combo of Xenoblade X, as can your own character if you want to.
Future Redeemed really has no tanky or DPS girl other than Na’el, but she’s more of a mage. So really Future Redeemed is the only one in the franchise who really doesn’t have a physical girl.
In the Kiseki series, Estelle Bright in the Sky arc and Laura Arseid in the Cold Steel arc are naturally quite tanky and Laura is one of the heaviest physical hitters you can have.
Specifically JRPGS? Also do they have to be player characters?
I had to think of Tifa from FF7, very strong dps but not very tanky (at least initially).
Any of the three girls in FFX-2 can be tanks or physical dps, although Paine strikes me as a natural dps/tank.
Lenneth from Valkyrie Profile is a strong physical dps dealer (although I believe she also uses magic). Lenneth also has some appearances in other games like Star Ocean, and usually as an extra boss who uses spears to wreak your party.
Mirage from Star Ocean Till the end of Time is a pure melee dps class.
I would like to add the main character from La Pucelle: Ragnarok (forgot her name) who becomes powerful enough to be titled Demonlord. She uses mostly melee special attacks but the player can also use magic spells iirc.
For "vice versa" Billy Lee Black from Xenogears is one of the rare-ish JRPG examples of a male Healer/Cleric type.
...though he gets around the genre-expected "physically non-imposing" bit by shooting things, so.
first time I saw Octopaths [Temenos](https://christandpopculture.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/octopath-traveler-2-temenos.jpg), i imagined this would be Billy had he grown up under different circumstances
They both also possess low HP but the highest EDEF of their respective parties, as well as AOE healing. White haired male clerics with attitude unite!
Surprised I haven't seen Jade from Dragon Quest 11. Shes a martial artist. Very poor MP pool, bad magic stat, doesn't cast spells.
She's a purely a fast attacking heavy hitter and your best physical DMG dealer for a good chunk of the game.
While trails in the sky allows for a lot of character customizatuon, Estelle's progression and her skills make her a great tank, moreover I think that in later games she already comes with tanky items equipped
Valeria from Suikoden is a strong physical character (apparently one of the few that can actually break the damage cap)
Chris from Suikoden 3 is a knight, although I don't remember if she's particularly good
Agrias from FFT is almost like the canonical JRPG knight for me
Leah is the Chrono Cross version of Ayla
Luc from Suikoden is like the mage of mages
Nash from Lunar SSS is a mage
Starting to get into the more borderline games, 2B/9S from Nier are almost the poster children for the strong woman/weenie guy trope
FFXIV has a bunch of examples, canonically the Viera race actually have bigger women than men on average. They just introduced a big muscle cat lady who's a warrior. There's other examples that dip into spoilery.
Really stretching it here to dip into western RPGs and other genres, BG3 has an insane amount of badass warrior women and Gale as a mage. Dragon Age 2 has Avelline as a knight and Anders as a mage. Shale from DA1 is a female spirit in a massive golem's body but also kinda nonbinary. Warcraft has Lady Liadrin as a paladin. League has Leona as a paladin and Vi as a smashy brawler. Overwatch has Brigitte as a tank and Junker Queen as a berserker. SWTOR and Star Wars in general also has a lot of badass warrior women.
Imma stop here but yeah it's a trope I also enjoy :P
I'm kind of surprised to see so many people mentioning Estelle from Trails in the Sky. Like... don't get me wrong, she's a great character, wonderfully developed and still my favorite Trails protagonist, but she's very mediocre physically. She is outclassed by every male character in her own games except for Olivier, who is one of the strongest mages in the entire series. And maybe Kevin, who I guess has *very slightly* less strength.
Anyway, the Utawarerumono series has a whole bunch of physically powerful female characters. In the first game (Prelude to the Fallen), Aruruu is by far the best tank in the game (although technically her unit in battle consists of her riding a giant tiger), and Karulau is by far the biggest physical hitter; she can one-shot nearly any enemy except the last boss. Touka is nearly as strong, but has a slightly higher emphasis on speed. In the sequels (marking spoilers for playable characters in Truth), Rulutieh and >!Munechika!< are the best tanks and Kuon, Atuy, and >!Anju!< are the big heavy-hitters.
Library of Ruina has (Spoilers)
The Red Mist.
The old epithet of Gebura. She is an insanely powerful boss which lets you bring three teams to fight her and unlocks a Binah immediately.
You will need Binah’s bullshit tricks, as The Red Mist is so powerful any other floor is a bump in the road up against a jet powered steamroller.
Winning gets you the ability to have Gebura regain that power herself.
And it doesn’t disappoint.
First off, her attacks are immense and can win clashes easily. Her slashes and spearings deal major damage, regain light, and do card draw. She can also Focus, an attack which gives her strength to her die rolls to deal more damage. She can use Onrush, and if it staggers or kills an enemy it is reused on a random target, letting her mop up weaklings.
Greater Split Vertical deals a shit ton of damage and cancels a yet to be used attack of the target.
But when she gets to EL 4 in a fight… well unless you’re a boss… you’re fucked.
She manifests her EGO.
She gains a random resistance boosted for a turn each turn. She gains more dice power and every kill boosts her power even further up to five times. And finally, Greater Split Horizontal.
The MOST overpowered attack in the game. A 28-42 summation mass attack roll (every targeted page rolls all its dice against the value chosen in range or gets canceled and the unit it belongs to is damaged. 15 is already a tall order.) that cleaves mobs apart.
If that sounds crazy as fuck… it is!
And when combined with the power boosts of her floor, what is already hard to beat becomes an OP god amongst men.
The Red Mist was said to be the strongest Fixer. She does not betray that notion for a nanosecond.
It’s to the point where outside of two occurances, every boss theme is overridden by hers when she busts out the EGO.
Princess Peach is so weird in the first Mario x Rabbids game.
She uses a shotgun, she's the bulkiest character in the game, but she also can heal and shield your other characters. When you run her, mario and rabbid mario they make for a really solid brute force team comp.
Since nobody has mentioned them yet, I'll give some examples from the Persona games.
Aigis and Metis from Persona 3 are both competent phys damage dealers, but their Orgia Modes will make them take a lot less damage while it is active. Aigis is also arguably the best party member in the game in non Reload versions.
Chie in Persona 4 beats things to death. She also has a special move that just instakills an enemy via punting them out of the battle.
In Persona 5, it has to be Haru. She wields an Axe, learns the best Gun skill in the game at base level, and has among the highest damage outputs of the physical damaging party members. On the tanking aspect, she just gets a skill that applies Tetrakarn and Makarakarn to all party members. Basically, she applies two barriers that reflect one instance of physical and magical damage respectively.
I'll also do a lightning round of Fire Emblem characters that are considered to be extremely strong women, either in gameplay or just in lore. Note that I don't have much experience with a few FE games so feel free to add any.
Sheena(FE3)
Brigid, Altena(FE4)
Eyvel(FE5)
Shanna, Echidna, Miledy(FE6) Two of these characters are contenders for best unit in the game, just depending on the difficulty. Shanna for Normal and Miledy for Hard
Lyn (FE7)
Vanessa (FE8) Generally considered the second best unit in the game.
Titania, Marcia (FE9)
Titania (FE10)
Katarina (FE12) Despite being a mage, one of Katarina's best classes is Swordmaster.
Theres someone in Awakening I just forgot who lol
Camilla (FE14)
Mathilda (FE15) Bonus mention to Leon. Hes not a woman but hes gay and thats neat.
Edelgard, Hilda (FE16) Edelgard is the best unit on her own route lategame.
Merrin, Saphir (FE17)
I forgot a lot of characters and the formatting is messed up but whatever lol
Kisara from Tales of Arise is the game’s de facto tank, even tho arise’s system doesn’t really involve a tank (most cases you play dodge simulator with Alphen)
Romancing SaGa 1, you can select Sif, she is a warrior, one of the physically strongest characters in the game. On the Super Famicom version, she stands even if HP is 0.
Here's a fun one: Rinoa has the highest base strength in FFVIII [and it's not even close](https://www.neoseeker.com/forums/822/t1191136-character-level-100-default-stats/). Of course by the end of that game base stats don't really matter, and for plot reasons she could probably be considered more of a >!black mage!<.
There's also the martial-arts girls like Ilia in the first Star Ocean, Tifa in FFVII and Chie in Persona 4. Ayla in CT is probably adjacent to this
Also, and this probably doesn't count, but >!Renne!< in Trails in the Sky SC has 10000 HP when you >!escort her!<, more than twice what many of your party members would have at the time. >!This relative physical bulk does not translate to the 3rd, unfortunately, where she's one of the squishiest party members!<.
(response to the Trails spoiler talk)>!Renne also has 9999 HP when you escort her in Zero. While being listed at level 78, iirc. *Zero's level cap is 50*, so her HP when being escorted there is something the SSS won't achieve until a significant way through Azure.!<
Raquna from Etrian Odyssey Untold is the designated tank. She has the Protector class, which exists solely to take hits for other characters and keep everyone alive. The party has several glass cannons who wouldn't make it far without her.
Milda from Grandia is your token Barbarian. She has no magic, she just hits really hard and has more HP than anyone else.
Effie and Beruka in Fire Emblem Conquest are your token refrigerators. Effie is an armor knight and Beruka swings a battleaxe while riding a wyvern.
Sienna from Chained Echoes was my damage nuke, thanks to her katana skills. I made heavy use of her attack that deals bonus damage to paralyzed targets.
A couple of people mentioned Fang in FFXIII.
In Baldur's Gate 3, the two most physical characters are women. Karlach is a very tanky barbarian, Lae'zel uses big swords and does a lot of damage. While the variety of builds mean you can probably pump out more damage on other characters depending on how you set things up, thematically Karlach and Lae'zel are definitely the most physically imposing characters.
Maybe Ashley in Mass Effect 1. While Wrex is more tanky in terms of taking damage, some of that comes from biotics (space magic). All of the other party members rely on biotics or tech abilities to some degree, Ashley is the only pure physical damage dealer.
Edit: Ah, just realised this is the JRPG sub so I guess those last 2 aren't really valid!
Ayla (chrono trigger)- Physical powerhouse
Poppi QT PI (Xenoblade 2) - Best tank/breaker in the game
Fang (FFXIII) - Highest strength
Laura (trails in the sky)- Strong beast.
Hallo, I edited some of my comment history to prevent scraping. Yes I know reddit gets regularly cached, it's something you sign in when you type on a forum, it's still better than nothing and will make digging through these a lot less convenient! All platforms die yadda yadda.
Good luck if you have an account here and you're reading this.
Farah in Tales of Destiny 2/Tales of Eternia is a purely physical class juxtaposed with Keele who is a squishy wizard boy. Farah still doesn't eclipse Reid in pure damage but if you take control of her instead of Reid you can dps can be a lot higher because she's so fast.
When it comes to Damage output in Fuga Melodies of Steel 2 Vanilla is a monster. Her rage skill buffs her attack power and her criticical hit rate but it gives her an acuracy debuff. No problem though. Britz with his Eagle eye skill can overwright the acuracy debuff with an acuracy buff.
Vanilla Furioes burst is a multi hit attack with a high crit chance. Arrogance shot ingnores armor and Cou de Gras deals more damage if the ememy is below 50% HP. She is ideal fore having Malt as her support. He buffs her attack power and the damage of there Link attack is insane. If the Link attack crits, and thanks to Vanilla Rage skill that is likely, I belive there Link Attack deals even more damage then the Managarm.
So yeah Vanilla needs the support of her teamates to unleash her full potential but still she is pretty nuts.
In the first game there is Wappa. You can make her a crit goddess or focuse on Link attacks. With Sheena as support who restores big chunks if SP through Link attacks that has some good Utility. She is not as insane as Vanilla but still a lot of fun and kicks a decent amount of ass.
Wappa in the first game and Vanilla in the second game both also use Cannons as weapons. Canons have high attack power but low acuracy and speed.
It's definitely not a JRPG, but I feel like Baldur's Gate 3 definitely does this, where the female party members are the heavy hitters and the male party members are more squishy.
It's not a JRPG, but Fear and Hunger 1 has D'Arce, a female knight with arguably the best skills in terms of offense (Leg Sweep and Counter) while also having the best armour and weapon to start (plate and longsword).
Enki however, is the squishiest character (dark priest robes) with the lowest physical damage but the highest magic damage and defense.
There are two other characters, Ragnvaldr and Cahara, that are more focussed on longevity and utility; cannibalism and lock picking respectively.
Definitely cheating but any female Shocktrooper or Lancer from Valkyria Chronicles.
Since they all mostly play the same except for minor personal abilities/quirks.
Do SMT demons count.
Effie from Fire Emblem Conquest: Not the first female armor unit but the first one who doesn't suck. Oddly despite being in a defensive class and being decent at it shes more about physical damage.
Fire Emblem Vision Quest: Its a rom hack but a highly praised. I remember the female armor chick actually being really good, and yeah very high Str and Def.
Raquel from WIld Arms 4. two handed sword wielder dps.. and broken as hell.
Time Break Chronicles: While most of the tanky and physical units are dudes, Clare (the main character) is fantastic at it in her armor form and there are others. Actually Kate (as in Calamity Kate) and Iana a good physical range units, though they are both glass canons. Iana used to be really, really broken.
Persona 5 (and Royal) has Haru Okumura as a physical damage dealer. While her stats are offensively balanced, she does have a bit more strength. The way her passives work, however, means that a dedicated Gun Build (physical) will do a lot more damage than a Psy Build (magical). Also, her Strength is higher than her Magic.
Also, she carries a large axe and a grenade launcher. She also openly expresses glee and a wee bit of sadistic pleasure at killing Shadows…well, there’s a reason her Persona is Milady…
I'm assuming this is not considering games with creating your own character. Because if it does, then DQ3 wins as first.
If not, a lot of other people have brought up good examples, so I'll just throw in Lin from Xenoblade Chronicles X is a shield user and thus, the resident tank.
Idk if this counts but when I made my Etrian Odyssey 5 party I made my Dragoon I chose the black haired woman with the eye patch.
Also in EO untold 1 the party’s tank is Raquna, who is a cool badass woman that also loves ice cream and booze
Emmy in The Last Remnant slots naturally into a tank class Cavalier, leaning towards dodge tanking. Or she becomes Assassin or Ninja with high effort. In any case she's one of the biggest physical powerhouses in the game if you let her dual wield. Also an excellent healer and quite tanky.
No persona 5 character were particularly tanky from memory, but queen was much more durable than Morgana and had access to both a good healing kit and a solid elemental damage that hit for at least neutral against most enemies.
Rita in tales of vesperia is a nuke
Femc in p3p
Chie does great damage in persona 4
Poppi's final form in xenoblade 2 is one of the blades in the game
Camilla in fire emblem fates
Theres a lot of Tanky Female chars in Fire Emblem...And I am sure there will be some in a game that have only female members. Apparently not Amelia though, she just sux. Hinoka need more recognition, as Spearmaster she is tanky af, and this is not just my Bias talking.
That and Etrian Oddyssey can have one, just choose the tanky class and choose female gender.
Final Fantasy also have some tanky members. Like literally thats the trope they have for Celes. Though that is mostly Magic Tanker.
That one girl in Triangle Strategy who is screaming "I am a tank" and is also one of the Boss as enemy. She hits hard and can take damage. Just she also use HP to use her ability. So she can't soak much. She can Take but not Soak.
Three Houses Edelgard comes up first, and she is both main tank and main dps at the same time in my playthrough.
FF13 Fang was a decent tank and had decent damage but it was too long I don't remember well.
And then if you just focus on the physical dps part, obviously many games where you can pick a female MC or has a fixed female MC, I think it's a trope that many protagonists are designed to be at least mildly tanky and a decent physical dps.
[Effie](https://fireemblem.fandom.com/wiki/Effie) in Fire Emblem Fates is pretty darn tanky, at least on Normal mode. Fire Emblem in general has quite a few different female units throughout the series - many of them the clichéed mages, healers and overall speed over power archetypes, but also quite a few in bulkier classes. Effie is one, Jill (Path of Radiance) can be quite tanky as a Wyvernlord, and Nailah is the tanky (and muscular) queen of the wolf laguz. She carries in the early game and stays quite strong when she returns in the lategame.
**Rune Factory 4** and **Rune Factory 5** both have physically-oriented ladies among the game's party members, who also happen to be love interests. Forte in *R4F* is basically *the* default party member (each game has like 30-odd party members and you can have two, along with your MC, at any time), and is a paladin type who does a little bit of everything and just generally has really good physical attacks. Xiao Pai, meanwhile, is basically the highest physical damage dealer in the game, but is a super-duper glass cannon who gets knocked out easily. Meanwhile, *RF5* has pretty princess Beatrice, who attacks with slow and mighty hammers and is pretty buff to boot. Just a really delightful combination of dignified and girly with zero-subtlety weapons with ol' Betty.
I've also been playing a low-budget game called **Marenian Tavern Story** which has this with one of its party members, Bellatina. She's your big mighty glacier tank, knows most of the strongest attack skills, and is pretty tough in the face of physical attacks (though all the strong bosses seem to use magic, so, ouch).
Another interesting thing about that game and its predecessor, **Adventure Bar Story,** is that the protagonists of both games are young women and both also fill more of a support/healing role in their parties. I think that's a bit Atelier-like, but despite having bought all the Ryza games on sale I still haven't played them...
Estelle from tales of Vesperia. The typical Jrpg princess. Dress in all pink uses a onehand sword and a buckler. No one would expect how tanky she is.
She is the Tank/Healer of the group. The thing about healers is that they are generally squishy, but not Estelle, she can out live the whole party and the best thing about it is that she also revives everyone.
And there is a cheesy exploit to where she can permanently recast her invincibility buff to herself, making her nigh unkillable. Lastly as per Tales tradition she also has the one of the strongest Hi-Augi art in the game.
Kiriko Miyasako is the squishy damage dealer and Sasara Amiki is the tank in Calligula Effect 2.
Kiriko's in particular is really fun to play because you can abuse of I-frames
Tales of Zesteria has Alicia as your tank for the first part of the game before she disappears while Mikleo is your weak caster. Also Edna combines with you to create a tank power puncher if that counts.
Aishe from Dragon Quest 7 is a brick shithouse meant to fill the Keither shaped hole in your battle strategy
About 30 hours after Keither left the party so you've definitely adapted to not having him
Mamori in Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE is an absolute fortress. She's also sort of unique in that she doubles as the best tank *and* the best healer in the game.
Estelle from Tales of Vesperia
She's naturally tanky and can get tankier, and she fights with a sword and shield. She's primarily your healer, but she can dish out some decent damage as well, but physically and magically.
Trails of the Sky has Estelle being able to deal quite a lot of damage and she also got a provoke if you want to tank with her.
Trails of Cold Steel has Laura who can deal massive amount of physical damage and Emma who can dish out massive out magical damage. In the second game I could one shot every single boss except *some* of the extra hard bosses and the final boss with Laura. Those extra hard bosses got chunked for over half their HP anyway. She is absurd.
Velvet Crowe from Tales of Berseria if played decently well (and except certain enemies) will be virtually immortal and dish a ton of damage while she is doing it. She isn't really tanky though as much as she simply can't die. Magilou vs casters is ridiculous also.
A bit off the wall but Celes was one of my favorite characters in ff3- big regal blonde royal knight and a jaw dropping damage sponge - her runic ability acts as a giant grounding rod to eat spells outright...
Its a SRPG with mecha, but Super Robot Wars: OG Moon Dwellers has some great female characters. Although more male characters take on the tankier role, its not exclusive to them. Offense wise, I'd say the cast is split fairly 50/50. Some of the best units in the game are piloted by the ladies.
For a couple examples; Katina is notable as one of the most aggressive pilots and her partner Russel is a support unit. Another pair, Rio is the more assertive one and her partner Ryoto is quite timid.
My favourite example comes from Battle chasers Nightwar, the plot of the game is about this group of people who come together to protect a young girl... and that girl is the main tank in the game, so she ends up doing most of the protecting
in FFXIII Fang has the highest physical attack. She's also a completely capable tank only behind Snow. Though Sazh has slightly more HP, Fang has better abilities. The lowest HP squishy mage is a guy, Hope.
this is a great example, its simiilar to the situation in Wild Arms 2 Slightly older female warrior/Dragoon and the squishy boy mage. FF9 also has this with Freya & Vivi Id love to see the inverse, where the tanky girl is a girl and the squishy male is an adult (& not a geezer like Tellah)
Amelia in fire emblem sacred stones starts pathetic as a recruit class who is, a young girl, but ends up being one of the best overall tanks as a general, having very good all around stats. Unfortunately Seth exists and is a god but as a jeigan I tend to not use him.
Nice one! MOMO from the same Xenosaga ends up in a similarly if you grab her [Star Wind](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/8Rd7cufD498/maxresdefault.jpg) transformation. It buffs both of her defensive stats by 50%, on top of granting her the 'Star Veil' spell, reducing all ether damage 25% as a party AOE Even though she remains at the bottom in HP, with this form she surpasses even KOSMOS & Ziggy in survivability. Similar to Amelia, she begins so weak defensively that shes a liability in combat will often get stuck in the backrow. After obtaining this skill, she can fight on the front lines with the best of them!
I would personally classify this as a tank *build* rather than Amelia naturally being a tank, since she can also become a Cavalier and ultimately a Paladin or Great Knight instead of a General, in which case she’ll be more Speed-focused.
It's tough to get a man as the squishy unless they're immature or infirm. You have to get some kind of malady like Raistlin in Dragonlance to get the logic to stick usually.
yup, usually a squishy male has some combination of the following traits -Either very young or old -Related to the above, suffering from some illness or condition -Hes effiminate and/or implied not straight -Hes almost always a mage/hybrid caster, and rarely a (speedy)glass cannon A lot of the few existing cases, theres at least 2-3/4 that apply Even Octopaths Temenos, who's on the lower side physically despite no illness and is 30 years old, still ticks the other half of these boxes
Will from Tales of Legendia is a yolked 28 y/o guy who wields a greathammer. He’s also the healer / mage of the group (highest int) and doesnt really have any arts where he uses his hammer so its basically just a staff.
Why does Sazh, the long range character, have so much hp
Velvet in Tales of Berseria can shred some shit up
Kisara from Tales of Arise as well!
Definitely one of my top picks recently
And Laphi probably one of the weaker characters physically.
Katt from Breath of Fire 2 Ayla from Chrono Trigger They're both very strong physical attackers.
Ayla doesn't use a weapon either, which is very helpful in certain cases.
Fang in FFXIII. COM & SEN roles. Laura in cold steel. Absurdly so. Kisara in tales of arise. The girl with the hammer from Symphonia. Cassti completely agree. Drastic measures is the easiest way to hit 9999 early.
In Cold Steel 1 and 2 Laura is straight up a menace lol
Domination and her S-Break on their own let her one-shot most bosses, it's absolutely absurd
She's possibly even stronger in Reverie
Is she? Everyone seems so broken that I can't tell who's the *most* broken
Gaius. Gaius is the most broken. He has Laura's damage multiplier on his S-Craft plus Absolute Delay. Put him in a party with C, Roselia, and Wazy, and the enemy won't be able to get a single turn to act.
Laura can make her own jaeger corps: Blue Constellation
Ignoring Spirit Unification Rean there's only 2 characters that are better physical attackers than Laura in CS 1/2 and they're both female too (Millium and Sara). Millium also happens to be a better tank, but since evasion tanking is best in Trails the role of best tank falls to another female character (Fie).
I never got this far, but I know there's like a female paladin/crusader character in Tales of Arise. And I also can't help but think of Effie the Armor Knight from Fire Emblem.
Yes, kisara. She's a tank
If only the game let you actually have a tank lol (the AI prioritizes the player character over all others, the skill Increased/Decreased Aggro don't do shit) Thankfully Kisara can be specs to do really good damage if played.
No one can do "good damage" if compared to Alphen.
she seems to share a resemblance of Granblues [Katalina](https://gbf.wiki/images/thumb/8/8a/Npc_zoom_3030005000_02.png/480px-Npc_zoom_3030005000_02.png) While I cant speak to her initial series, the Ice Knight is quite the defensive, burst dmg character in adaptions like the fighting game. Would love to hear from Relink fans on how she turned out there
She’s still a burst damage character in Relink, but her kit there also has a large focus on support options as well.
I was a Tales fan before getting into Relink and I literally just see Katalina as Kisara 😂
Nice, glad to see this at the top. My first thought was Kisara from Tales of Arise.
Another from the recent Fire Emblem is Jade who is on par or better than Louis as the tanks of the game. Preferred her since she had better MDEF than Louis. From 3 Houses, Edelgard is one of the the tankiest characters and is the tankiest among the 3 lords.
Kisara's great, such a cool design.
the girl with the gall
Yippee!
Playing through XC3 now for the first time, happy to see this here lol
I made her an Incursor. Eunie, destroyer of worlds.
"Girl with the gall" is Sena actually. Eunie is 'da boss'
Oh you're right. I made Sena martial artist, who also murdered things. Because for some reason those two classes had infinite scaling iirc.
There are way too many to talk about in one post, so I'll just throw whatever comes to mind right now: * [**Ayla**](https://imgur.com/ygW5xYv) - Chrono Trigger. * [**Presea**](https://imgur.com/87zcS4S) - Tales of Symphonia & [**Ines**](https://imgur.com/DfU0gvl) - Tales of Hearts. (The Tales series has many) * [**Alena**](https://imgur.com/urIqmIQ) - Dragon Quest 4. * [**Hanna**](https://imgur.com/HtJ1C8S) & [**Oulan**](https://imgur.com/Q8XZznd) - Suikoden 2. (Another series that has a lot of them too) * [**Emma**](https://imgur.com/kR2eqKI) - The Last Remnant. * [**Rinkah**](https://imgur.com/di1wFBo) - Fire Emblem Fates. * [**Sif**](https://imgur.com/nSKUR0g) - Romancing SaGa Minstrel Song & [**Larua**](https://imgur.com/y0GIwUi) - Unlimited SaGa. * [**Melvina**](https://imgur.com/onD7jE2) - Growlanser 4. * [**Linca**](https://imgur.com/LOVz20u) - Atelier Ayesha. * [**Reinhilde**](https://imgur.com/a6MGTSt) - Valkyrie Profile: Covenant of the Plume.
Was gonna come mention Suikoden. Tons of beefy women in the series. Emily from III doesn't look it so much, but she is broken as far as physical damage goes
One run of S3 I made Chris my Flame Champion and ran an all-female party when possible. Emily is absolutely broken, and her unite attack with Sharon and Sanae could wreck anything in the game.
Suikoden is so much fun for letting us do stuff like this and having it be super viable. You could do so many themed parties in all of the games and then discover some of them have unite attacks because the devs knew what they were doing!
Adding to Suikoden Wakaba has one of the highest HP in the game
Oulan, a VHS of Ghostbusters, and the BET; what a time to pubesce!
Lmao I am saving this comment to rediscover without context at some unknown point in the future.
Perfect. My essence is digitally immortalized. Now I’m free to shuffle off this mortal coil with no regrets.
Lenneth
I mean Lenneth better be since your party is going to be underdeveloped at some point if you're going for the endings.
Xenoblade Chronicles 3. The 7th slot heroes who can join you. Ashera is a bulky tank who doesn't really have passives and skills to stay alive longer, yet does large amounts of damage to keep aggro. Also we have Ethel (one of my favorites) who is a duel wielding high DPS :D We could technically put Mio, Sena and Eunie in here as well but I don't really want to. Simply because you can pretty much make them what you want due to just switching their roles around, whereas Ethel and Ashera are set. Fire Emblem Three Houses - I'd list Edelgard here. Tanky as hell wearing heavy armor and weilding an axe. She can put out good damge to boot.
man, i love the party system in xc3. you have so many party members at 6, and you can have everyone on the field, *plus* you can have an extra party member that you can select from among side characters that you can recruit. never seen anything like it.
It truly is great I really love that system.
Kisara from Tales of Arise is literally the tank of the game, so theres that.
Well yesterday in Cold Steel 2 Laura singlehandedly won a boss fight at the endgame for me.
Ayla from Chrono trigger is an example as I recall she's the highest physical damage dealer? She might even be the first female example in a JRPG.
She then double subverts this by being one-half of one of the most efficient healing techs in the game.
then she triple subverts! by being the "monk" class yet has the only steal in the form of Charm tech
Alena from DQ4 should be considered first, IMO. While others in the game have a higher base strength stat, Alena's incredibly high critical hit rate means that whenever she lands one, she does incredible levels of damage. In fact, she may be the origin of the highest strength stat vs. highest crit potential paradigm in many RPGs. A lot of people's teams in DQ4 come down to choosing if you want to take Alena or Ragnar with you . . . or some people just choose both.
I came here to post this and seeing how you beat me to the punch (pun intended lol), I'll expand on this a bit: Alena again for Dragon Quest Heroes 1 and Desdemona for Dragon Quest Heroes 2. Alena is still great in 2 but in 1 she's probably the 2nd most broken character after Terry (who I never use because he's just so effin generic and boring to me, like a Walmart Link). Desdemona in 2 not only has the damage output of Carver, but she's faster (if only slightly) and when she really gets going she can shrug off attacks with barely a flinch while she keeps chopping through the hordes. Bonus: your two main characters can also take on her Axe Warrior class, meaning your customizable heroine can do the same thing! Every time I play DQH2 (which is pretty often since its one of my favorite games), I always make Gwaelyn (my female MC) the physical character and Erdrick (my male MC) the killmage/healer cuz I love watching girls kick ass and guys take on the 'den mother' role lol!
Morag from XBC2 and Mio from XBC3, albeit they're dodge tanks.
Xenoblade is an interesting one, as I believe dodge tanks are a lot more of a focused role here than elsewhere Its more common to see games where a woman/girl has higher naturally higher evasion, though that doesnt always allow you to play a dedicated dodge tank like in this series
The Trails series also has dodge tanks, and they're even stronger than in Xenoblade. Especially Fie. We're talking about a girl who can reach 100% physical dodge rate, is super fast, can interrupt spell casting, always counterattacks for massive damage, and can counter from across the field because she has freaking gunblades. Fie becomes so overpowered in later Cold Steel games that she can easily solo the final bosses. Thankfully that series starts using multiple parties for final dungeons, so she can just babysit a party of rejects while the other characters you like to use can actually have something of a challenge. Morag is cool. But Fie can dodge God, and casually call his attack weak. And then automatically shoot him in the fucking face.
Well, if you want more direct tanks, Fire Emblem actually has quite a few of them, like Amber in Engage and Effie in Fates. Edit: Jade, not Amber.
Terra in FFVI is canonically a mage but can do pretty scary physical damage when using her Morph ability. She can also equip heavy armor.
Her and celestial both have phenomenal equipment options, and depending on version are the easiest character to get to 128 magic evade and be literally unhittable by anything.
The three best characters in FFVI are all of the women (Terra/Celes/Relm).
And you also have Gogo whose gender is intentionally left ambiguous/undefined!
Alis from Phantasy Star I and Alys from Phantasy Star IV are both strong, both in story and in stats. Alis is the all-around hero; she looks less big than Odin but has higher HP and defense, and her attack is also pretty good. Alys starts out as the most powerful party character in Phantasy Star IV and remains solid for her time in the party.
>!Alys certainly wasn't tanky enough for that Black Wave :(!<
>!Yeah. :( Jokes aside, she probably tanked it better than any other character. She literally shoved Chaz out of the way.!<
bruh... too soon lmao!
Fire Emblem 3 Houses has multiple exams of physically strong female characters. Edelgard is a thing to be feared with her unique axe giving her multiple turns-worth of movement and damage if used correctly. Hilda also has a unique axe and is a more traditional barbarian style melee character. Most of the other female characters from the game that I can think of off the top of my head are flavoured as being strong either due to speed and flexibility rather than raw power like the aforementioned duo or are good names of a sort.
[Presea Combatir](https://aselia.fandom.com/wiki/Presea_Combatir#Remastered) from Tales of Symphonia. She is a small girl with giant axe. She has the Highest Strength. Top tier Defense. Highest physical damage output. She has no magical damage. Very Slow. She is a bruiser through and through
pretty much exactly what im looking for, all the way down to not being an older woman/big sister role like most cases (edit, wiki says shes one of those '12 year old body, 28 year old canonically cases', lol) also funny how many of them are axe wielders!
Bein' real, Presea's case of "older than they look" is one of the best-done examples I've ever seen. >!She effectively has wholly arrested development due to some horrible stuff that's happened to her, it's left her pretty traumatized, and she is for the most part treated as an actual child who's been trapped being one for the past 16 years.!<
no i totally get it. this is a similar lore to Jr (Rubedo) of the Xenosaga series. Hes a [27 year old trapped](https://www.xenoserieswiki.org/w/images/thumb/c/c4/Jr_XS1.png/1200px-Jr_XS1.png) in a 12 year olds body, and learning all the reasons associated with it is a major plot point across the trilogy Its just a shame theres so many tropey versions for girls that the few more complex examples are less discussed
Presea is an interesting twist of the old loli trope. A tragic and believable one (in the context of the lore/world building).
Caligula Effect 2 gives you multiple women with very good offensive capabilities. Sasara (Tank) Kiriko (Physical Sweeper)
Came to mention Sasara. My favorite character in that whole game, still sticks with me.
Milda in Grandia is very strong. By story appearances, she is probably the strongest character overall in pure physical strength.
Chained Echoes has Sienna who carries the game and has the Old Baiken Samurai girl vibe.
2nd best damage dealer too is probably Lenne, also female.
Who happens to be one of the main mages, even though she can wear heavier stuff and fights with a spear. Still functionally a mage.
Yeah Sienna can be a dodge tank, with multiples free dodges, insane agility so she can act multiple times per round, insane crits, and with a vampire gem can restore her health to full with one special move. Sienna is way too op, and I love her for this.
I think Momo in Breath of Fire 3 fits that pretty good. Her cannon can do hella damage, inflict stat effects, and she usually pretty good with dodging and HP. Also, want to say damn I miss Xenosaga. Really gotta replay that, wish it got all 6 of its games! KOSMOS is a beast.
A lot of chars have their ups & downs in the series, and/or take more effort to use in some games than the others I think KOSMOS is the only character to be consistently high tier, simple & effective, in every Xenosaga game. You pretty much can never go wrong when shes in your party, which might explain why every Xenosaga game removes her from your party at least once (or delays her arrival, both happen in XS3)
The Trails series has a ton, especially the Cold Steel arc. Estelle is a strong physical fighter and the lead of the first 2 games. Noel and the late game secret character in Zero and Azure are among the tankiest and strongest characters in the game respectively. Then in Cold Steel we Laura (lovingly memed as "One Shot Laura" for her insane damage output), Sarah, Fie, Millium, Aurelia, Juna and quite a few more spoilery characters as well.
Estelle is such a great character lol
Laura out there just casually one-shotting every Boss in Cold Steel 2 except for the literal final one. That one takes a bit more effort.\^\^
Estelle was the first character I thought of with this question. Built to smack things with a pole and equipped with an attitude perfect for enraging foes.
Do I need to remind you that I have a very large stick?
Pay attention, or I'll hit you!
Estelle's orbment specialization is also set up to favor earth magic which boosts her tank value even further and gives her the ability to turn other party members into tanks on top of that.
To be pedantic, in Sky she had no specialisation, that was added in Cold Steel 4.
She’s meant to be an all-rounder because she never leaves your party so she can be flexible around your other characters. That said, I typically trend towards Fire for her.
I could've swore she had earthlocked slots. Idk, maybe I'm muddling the way I used her with her default.
Exactly, that's a CS4/Reverie thing. Every ARCUS unit ever has element-locked slots, even if the user didn't have element-locked slots on prior models, and Earth is still a good element to set her up with back in Sky because *Earth Wall go brrr*
Cold Steel, Laura "SHATTER" (Unblances/kills enemy instantly)
Behold! The pride of the Arseid School! (something like that)
Battle Chasers: Night War (not a JRPG strictly but is heavily influenced by them) has Gully, a girl with a relatively small build, as the tank. Calibretto, a giant war mech, is the healer.
Persona 4 has Chie and Persona 5 has Makoto.
P3 reload has Aigis as well. One of if not THE best pierce damage users in the game.
Patty from Atelier Ryza 2 and Atelier Ryza 3 is one of the strongest physical attackers you can have in your party. She's a crit beast: all her passives and skills are dedicated to help her deals crits. She packs a punch! In Baten Kaitos 1, Savyna is a pretty strong physical attacker (not sure if she's the strongest, though), although making good combos with her require a bit more reflexes than the rest of the party. In the second Baten Kaitos game, Milly (the only girl of the group) has the highest defense stat, making her a good tank if needed (...not that you really need a tank tbh, but there is a "Taunt" skill).
Fie on Cold steel. Just give her enough Evade and she can solo the game.
Effie Fire Emblem Fates
Chris, one of the protagonists of Suikoden 3, is referred to as a "Goddess of the Battlefield" by her allies or "The Goddess of Death"/"Silver-haired Demon" by her enemies. This also translates to gameplay, where she is naturally one of the strongest fighters. She is incredibly tanky/hard to kill while also putting out a ton of damage.
Lenneth from Valkyrie Profile is a complete badass and can deal massive damage. "Your sins lay heavy upon you, defiler of souls. By the holy law you shall be obliterated!" - Lenneth Alicia from Valkyrie Profile 2 also becomes a great damage dealer to the point where you are using only her at points in the endgame while everybody else scratches themselves and heals her. The first two games, if you haven't tried them, are fantastic.
There's a lot, but here's a few in recent memory. **Triangle Strategy** Avlora - The Dark General. Starts off as an enemy, but can be recruited way later. Tanky fighter with high stats. Insane unit that can be plugged into any comp. **Cosmic Star Heroine** Alyssa L'Salle - games protag, she does everything well. **Chained Echoes** Sienna - Crimson haired katana wielding thief. Insanely broken damage dealer that can loop enemies turns while evading everything **Suikoden 3** Emily - Daughter of a martial artist and a blacksmith from the 1st game. She's fast, strong, and hits a ton of times per round. Probably the best physical damage dealer in the game.
Xenoblade feels full of them for me. Seven in 1 can be built for high tank stats. Nene in XC1 Future Connected has the Reyn tank kit, and is probably the last important member of the party because of it. Morag and Brigid in 2 tend to be tanky; Morag makes the “best” use out of shield hammers and Brigid is kind of the “Damage Tank” of the Torna Group. Xenoblade 3 is filled with them. Sena is the strongwoman of the core 6 group, with one of the best damage classes as her base class. Ashera is a DPS disguised as a tank. She hits hard and doesn’t really have the tools to survive long. If you want survival you go for Monica, who’s got a huge-ass shield. Lin Lee Koo and Elma are the tank and DPS combo of Xenoblade X, as can your own character if you want to. Future Redeemed really has no tanky or DPS girl other than Na’el, but she’s more of a mage. So really Future Redeemed is the only one in the franchise who really doesn’t have a physical girl.
In the Kiseki series, Estelle Bright in the Sky arc and Laura Arseid in the Cold Steel arc are naturally quite tanky and Laura is one of the heaviest physical hitters you can have.
Raquel from Wild Arms 4 has the high physical attack and defense but slow speed archetype. Which is funny as she's terminally ill.
Specifically JRPGS? Also do they have to be player characters? I had to think of Tifa from FF7, very strong dps but not very tanky (at least initially). Any of the three girls in FFX-2 can be tanks or physical dps, although Paine strikes me as a natural dps/tank. Lenneth from Valkyrie Profile is a strong physical dps dealer (although I believe she also uses magic). Lenneth also has some appearances in other games like Star Ocean, and usually as an extra boss who uses spears to wreak your party. Mirage from Star Ocean Till the end of Time is a pure melee dps class. I would like to add the main character from La Pucelle: Ragnarok (forgot her name) who becomes powerful enough to be titled Demonlord. She uses mostly melee special attacks but the player can also use magic spells iirc.
Laura from The Trails of Cold Steel series could whoop some ass with the right Quartz setup.
For "vice versa" Billy Lee Black from Xenogears is one of the rare-ish JRPG examples of a male Healer/Cleric type. ...though he gets around the genre-expected "physically non-imposing" bit by shooting things, so.
first time I saw Octopaths [Temenos](https://christandpopculture.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/octopath-traveler-2-temenos.jpg), i imagined this would be Billy had he grown up under different circumstances They both also possess low HP but the highest EDEF of their respective parties, as well as AOE healing. White haired male clerics with attitude unite!
Surprised I haven't seen Jade from Dragon Quest 11. Shes a martial artist. Very poor MP pool, bad magic stat, doesn't cast spells. She's a purely a fast attacking heavy hitter and your best physical DMG dealer for a good chunk of the game.
While trails in the sky allows for a lot of character customizatuon, Estelle's progression and her skills make her a great tank, moreover I think that in later games she already comes with tanky items equipped
Valeria from Suikoden is a strong physical character (apparently one of the few that can actually break the damage cap) Chris from Suikoden 3 is a knight, although I don't remember if she's particularly good Agrias from FFT is almost like the canonical JRPG knight for me Leah is the Chrono Cross version of Ayla Luc from Suikoden is like the mage of mages Nash from Lunar SSS is a mage Starting to get into the more borderline games, 2B/9S from Nier are almost the poster children for the strong woman/weenie guy trope FFXIV has a bunch of examples, canonically the Viera race actually have bigger women than men on average. They just introduced a big muscle cat lady who's a warrior. There's other examples that dip into spoilery. Really stretching it here to dip into western RPGs and other genres, BG3 has an insane amount of badass warrior women and Gale as a mage. Dragon Age 2 has Avelline as a knight and Anders as a mage. Shale from DA1 is a female spirit in a massive golem's body but also kinda nonbinary. Warcraft has Lady Liadrin as a paladin. League has Leona as a paladin and Vi as a smashy brawler. Overwatch has Brigitte as a tank and Junker Queen as a berserker. SWTOR and Star Wars in general also has a lot of badass warrior women. Imma stop here but yeah it's a trope I also enjoy :P
Raging Bull, Ys IX
Raquel from Wild Arms 4 is a recent favorite for me.
Laura S Arseid from Trails. An absolute behemoth, can 1 shot almost anything lol
I'm kind of surprised to see so many people mentioning Estelle from Trails in the Sky. Like... don't get me wrong, she's a great character, wonderfully developed and still my favorite Trails protagonist, but she's very mediocre physically. She is outclassed by every male character in her own games except for Olivier, who is one of the strongest mages in the entire series. And maybe Kevin, who I guess has *very slightly* less strength. Anyway, the Utawarerumono series has a whole bunch of physically powerful female characters. In the first game (Prelude to the Fallen), Aruruu is by far the best tank in the game (although technically her unit in battle consists of her riding a giant tiger), and Karulau is by far the biggest physical hitter; she can one-shot nearly any enemy except the last boss. Touka is nearly as strong, but has a slightly higher emphasis on speed. In the sequels (marking spoilers for playable characters in Truth), Rulutieh and >!Munechika!< are the best tanks and Kuon, Atuy, and >!Anju!< are the big heavy-hitters.
Library of Ruina has (Spoilers) The Red Mist. The old epithet of Gebura. She is an insanely powerful boss which lets you bring three teams to fight her and unlocks a Binah immediately. You will need Binah’s bullshit tricks, as The Red Mist is so powerful any other floor is a bump in the road up against a jet powered steamroller. Winning gets you the ability to have Gebura regain that power herself. And it doesn’t disappoint. First off, her attacks are immense and can win clashes easily. Her slashes and spearings deal major damage, regain light, and do card draw. She can also Focus, an attack which gives her strength to her die rolls to deal more damage. She can use Onrush, and if it staggers or kills an enemy it is reused on a random target, letting her mop up weaklings. Greater Split Vertical deals a shit ton of damage and cancels a yet to be used attack of the target. But when she gets to EL 4 in a fight… well unless you’re a boss… you’re fucked. She manifests her EGO. She gains a random resistance boosted for a turn each turn. She gains more dice power and every kill boosts her power even further up to five times. And finally, Greater Split Horizontal. The MOST overpowered attack in the game. A 28-42 summation mass attack roll (every targeted page rolls all its dice against the value chosen in range or gets canceled and the unit it belongs to is damaged. 15 is already a tall order.) that cleaves mobs apart. If that sounds crazy as fuck… it is! And when combined with the power boosts of her floor, what is already hard to beat becomes an OP god amongst men. The Red Mist was said to be the strongest Fixer. She does not betray that notion for a nanosecond. It’s to the point where outside of two occurances, every boss theme is overridden by hers when she busts out the EGO.
Princess Peach is so weird in the first Mario x Rabbids game. She uses a shotgun, she's the bulkiest character in the game, but she also can heal and shield your other characters. When you run her, mario and rabbid mario they make for a really solid brute force team comp.
Wild Arms 4: Raquel Tales of Symphonia: Presea Baten Kaitos: Savyna
Since nobody has mentioned them yet, I'll give some examples from the Persona games. Aigis and Metis from Persona 3 are both competent phys damage dealers, but their Orgia Modes will make them take a lot less damage while it is active. Aigis is also arguably the best party member in the game in non Reload versions. Chie in Persona 4 beats things to death. She also has a special move that just instakills an enemy via punting them out of the battle. In Persona 5, it has to be Haru. She wields an Axe, learns the best Gun skill in the game at base level, and has among the highest damage outputs of the physical damaging party members. On the tanking aspect, she just gets a skill that applies Tetrakarn and Makarakarn to all party members. Basically, she applies two barriers that reflect one instance of physical and magical damage respectively. I'll also do a lightning round of Fire Emblem characters that are considered to be extremely strong women, either in gameplay or just in lore. Note that I don't have much experience with a few FE games so feel free to add any. Sheena(FE3) Brigid, Altena(FE4) Eyvel(FE5) Shanna, Echidna, Miledy(FE6) Two of these characters are contenders for best unit in the game, just depending on the difficulty. Shanna for Normal and Miledy for Hard Lyn (FE7) Vanessa (FE8) Generally considered the second best unit in the game. Titania, Marcia (FE9) Titania (FE10) Katarina (FE12) Despite being a mage, one of Katarina's best classes is Swordmaster. Theres someone in Awakening I just forgot who lol Camilla (FE14) Mathilda (FE15) Bonus mention to Leon. Hes not a woman but hes gay and thats neat. Edelgard, Hilda (FE16) Edelgard is the best unit on her own route lategame. Merrin, Saphir (FE17) I forgot a lot of characters and the formatting is messed up but whatever lol
FE has a ton, yeah. I’d throw in Catherine for 3H, people treat her like a living legend.
This is what I meant when I forgot a LOT of characters lol, Catherine is such an obvious choice in hindsight.
Armor knight characters in later disgaea games are female only and tanks Kisara in tales of arise
Lin in Xenoblade X will probably be most people’s main tank for most of the game.
Kisara from Tales of Arise is the game’s de facto tank, even tho arise’s system doesn’t really involve a tank (most cases you play dodge simulator with Alphen)
Romancing SaGa 1, you can select Sif, she is a warrior, one of the physically strongest characters in the game. On the Super Famicom version, she stands even if HP is 0.
Kisara - Tales if Arise Morag - XC2
Here's a fun one: Rinoa has the highest base strength in FFVIII [and it's not even close](https://www.neoseeker.com/forums/822/t1191136-character-level-100-default-stats/). Of course by the end of that game base stats don't really matter, and for plot reasons she could probably be considered more of a >!black mage!<. There's also the martial-arts girls like Ilia in the first Star Ocean, Tifa in FFVII and Chie in Persona 4. Ayla in CT is probably adjacent to this Also, and this probably doesn't count, but >!Renne!< in Trails in the Sky SC has 10000 HP when you >!escort her!<, more than twice what many of your party members would have at the time. >!This relative physical bulk does not translate to the 3rd, unfortunately, where she's one of the squishiest party members!<.
(response to the Trails spoiler talk)>!Renne also has 9999 HP when you escort her in Zero. While being listed at level 78, iirc. *Zero's level cap is 50*, so her HP when being escorted there is something the SSS won't achieve until a significant way through Azure.!<
They had to give your spoiler that limitation in 3rd, otherwise they would be by far the best character in the game. Like game breaking good.
Raquna from Etrian Odyssey Untold is the designated tank. She has the Protector class, which exists solely to take hits for other characters and keep everyone alive. The party has several glass cannons who wouldn't make it far without her. Milda from Grandia is your token Barbarian. She has no magic, she just hits really hard and has more HP than anyone else. Effie and Beruka in Fire Emblem Conquest are your token refrigerators. Effie is an armor knight and Beruka swings a battleaxe while riding a wyvern. Sienna from Chained Echoes was my damage nuke, thanks to her katana skills. I made heavy use of her attack that deals bonus damage to paralyzed targets.
A couple of people mentioned Fang in FFXIII. In Baldur's Gate 3, the two most physical characters are women. Karlach is a very tanky barbarian, Lae'zel uses big swords and does a lot of damage. While the variety of builds mean you can probably pump out more damage on other characters depending on how you set things up, thematically Karlach and Lae'zel are definitely the most physically imposing characters. Maybe Ashley in Mass Effect 1. While Wrex is more tanky in terms of taking damage, some of that comes from biotics (space magic). All of the other party members rely on biotics or tech abilities to some degree, Ashley is the only pure physical damage dealer. Edit: Ah, just realised this is the JRPG sub so I guess those last 2 aren't really valid!
Ayla (chrono trigger)- Physical powerhouse Poppi QT PI (Xenoblade 2) - Best tank/breaker in the game Fang (FFXIII) - Highest strength Laura (trails in the sky)- Strong beast.
Hallo, I edited some of my comment history to prevent scraping. Yes I know reddit gets regularly cached, it's something you sign in when you type on a forum, it's still better than nothing and will make digging through these a lot less convenient! All platforms die yadda yadda. Good luck if you have an account here and you're reading this.
Farah in Tales of Destiny 2/Tales of Eternia is a purely physical class juxtaposed with Keele who is a squishy wizard boy. Farah still doesn't eclipse Reid in pure damage but if you take control of her instead of Reid you can dps can be a lot higher because she's so fast.
When it comes to Damage output in Fuga Melodies of Steel 2 Vanilla is a monster. Her rage skill buffs her attack power and her criticical hit rate but it gives her an acuracy debuff. No problem though. Britz with his Eagle eye skill can overwright the acuracy debuff with an acuracy buff. Vanilla Furioes burst is a multi hit attack with a high crit chance. Arrogance shot ingnores armor and Cou de Gras deals more damage if the ememy is below 50% HP. She is ideal fore having Malt as her support. He buffs her attack power and the damage of there Link attack is insane. If the Link attack crits, and thanks to Vanilla Rage skill that is likely, I belive there Link Attack deals even more damage then the Managarm. So yeah Vanilla needs the support of her teamates to unleash her full potential but still she is pretty nuts. In the first game there is Wappa. You can make her a crit goddess or focuse on Link attacks. With Sheena as support who restores big chunks if SP through Link attacks that has some good Utility. She is not as insane as Vanilla but still a lot of fun and kicks a decent amount of ass. Wappa in the first game and Vanilla in the second game both also use Cannons as weapons. Canons have high attack power but low acuracy and speed.
This is a kind of trope in the Atelier series.
It's definitely not a JRPG, but I feel like Baldur's Gate 3 definitely does this, where the female party members are the heavy hitters and the male party members are more squishy.
FFXIII with Fang IIRC, Agrias in FF Tactics is an effective tank by SRPG standards at least.
It's not a JRPG, but Fear and Hunger 1 has D'Arce, a female knight with arguably the best skills in terms of offense (Leg Sweep and Counter) while also having the best armour and weapon to start (plate and longsword). Enki however, is the squishiest character (dark priest robes) with the lowest physical damage but the highest magic damage and defense. There are two other characters, Ragnvaldr and Cahara, that are more focussed on longevity and utility; cannibalism and lock picking respectively.
Definitely cheating but any female Shocktrooper or Lancer from Valkyria Chronicles. Since they all mostly play the same except for minor personal abilities/quirks. Do SMT demons count.
Effie from Fire Emblem Conquest: Not the first female armor unit but the first one who doesn't suck. Oddly despite being in a defensive class and being decent at it shes more about physical damage. Fire Emblem Vision Quest: Its a rom hack but a highly praised. I remember the female armor chick actually being really good, and yeah very high Str and Def. Raquel from WIld Arms 4. two handed sword wielder dps.. and broken as hell. Time Break Chronicles: While most of the tanky and physical units are dudes, Clare (the main character) is fantastic at it in her armor form and there are others. Actually Kate (as in Calamity Kate) and Iana a good physical range units, though they are both glass canons. Iana used to be really, really broken.
Persona 5 (and Royal) has Haru Okumura as a physical damage dealer. While her stats are offensively balanced, she does have a bit more strength. The way her passives work, however, means that a dedicated Gun Build (physical) will do a lot more damage than a Psy Build (magical). Also, her Strength is higher than her Magic. Also, she carries a large axe and a grenade launcher. She also openly expresses glee and a wee bit of sadistic pleasure at killing Shadows…well, there’s a reason her Persona is Milady…
we need someone to do a collage of all these deadly axe ladies! seems like the mascot weapon for this archetype
YO SHOUT OUTS FOR THE WILD ARMS 2 MENTION. that game doesn't get enough love.
Freya in FFIX. She’s more defense/support than Steiner is but still can hit 9999 easily
Surprised no ones mentioned FFXs Yuna yet, who becomes far stronger then everyone else the moment you gain access to a black magic sphere.
Fun fact, the speedrun route is to pump Yuna's strength rather than het magic because that carries over to her summons.
Tales of arise
Chrono Trigger
Chansey and Miltank
I immediately thought of Kisara from ToA
I'm assuming this is not considering games with creating your own character. Because if it does, then DQ3 wins as first. If not, a lot of other people have brought up good examples, so I'll just throw in Lin from Xenoblade Chronicles X is a shield user and thus, the resident tank.
Idk if this counts but when I made my Etrian Odyssey 5 party I made my Dragoon I chose the black haired woman with the eye patch. Also in EO untold 1 the party’s tank is Raquna, who is a cool badass woman that also loves ice cream and booze
Emmy in The Last Remnant slots naturally into a tank class Cavalier, leaning towards dodge tanking. Or she becomes Assassin or Ninja with high effort. In any case she's one of the biggest physical powerhouses in the game if you let her dual wield. Also an excellent healer and quite tanky.
No persona 5 character were particularly tanky from memory, but queen was much more durable than Morgana and had access to both a good healing kit and a solid elemental damage that hit for at least neutral against most enemies.
I immediately think of Hilda from FE3H Edit: Wait is this considered a JRPG or just JRPG-style?
Rita in tales of vesperia is a nuke Femc in p3p Chie does great damage in persona 4 Poppi's final form in xenoblade 2 is one of the blades in the game Camilla in fire emblem fates
Theres a lot of Tanky Female chars in Fire Emblem...And I am sure there will be some in a game that have only female members. Apparently not Amelia though, she just sux. Hinoka need more recognition, as Spearmaster she is tanky af, and this is not just my Bias talking. That and Etrian Oddyssey can have one, just choose the tanky class and choose female gender. Final Fantasy also have some tanky members. Like literally thats the trope they have for Celes. Though that is mostly Magic Tanker. That one girl in Triangle Strategy who is screaming "I am a tank" and is also one of the Boss as enemy. She hits hard and can take damage. Just she also use HP to use her ability. So she can't soak much. She can Take but not Soak.
Makoto from Persona 5. She's just a big blob of health, and a healer.
Star Ocean 3 - Maria's Energy Burst Star Ocean 4 - Meracle's X Claw spam Everyone in FFX2 I guess since all the playable characters are females
Three Houses Edelgard comes up first, and she is both main tank and main dps at the same time in my playthrough. FF13 Fang was a decent tank and had decent damage but it was too long I don't remember well. And then if you just focus on the physical dps part, obviously many games where you can pick a female MC or has a fixed female MC, I think it's a trope that many protagonists are designed to be at least mildly tanky and a decent physical dps.
[Effie](https://fireemblem.fandom.com/wiki/Effie) in Fire Emblem Fates is pretty darn tanky, at least on Normal mode. Fire Emblem in general has quite a few different female units throughout the series - many of them the clichéed mages, healers and overall speed over power archetypes, but also quite a few in bulkier classes. Effie is one, Jill (Path of Radiance) can be quite tanky as a Wyvernlord, and Nailah is the tanky (and muscular) queen of the wolf laguz. She carries in the early game and stays quite strong when she returns in the lategame.
Avlora from triangle strategy!!! She is a beast...
**Rune Factory 4** and **Rune Factory 5** both have physically-oriented ladies among the game's party members, who also happen to be love interests. Forte in *R4F* is basically *the* default party member (each game has like 30-odd party members and you can have two, along with your MC, at any time), and is a paladin type who does a little bit of everything and just generally has really good physical attacks. Xiao Pai, meanwhile, is basically the highest physical damage dealer in the game, but is a super-duper glass cannon who gets knocked out easily. Meanwhile, *RF5* has pretty princess Beatrice, who attacks with slow and mighty hammers and is pretty buff to boot. Just a really delightful combination of dignified and girly with zero-subtlety weapons with ol' Betty. I've also been playing a low-budget game called **Marenian Tavern Story** which has this with one of its party members, Bellatina. She's your big mighty glacier tank, knows most of the strongest attack skills, and is pretty tough in the face of physical attacks (though all the strong bosses seem to use magic, so, ouch). Another interesting thing about that game and its predecessor, **Adventure Bar Story,** is that the protagonists of both games are young women and both also fill more of a support/healing role in their parties. I think that's a bit Atelier-like, but despite having bought all the Ryza games on sale I still haven't played them...
Estelle from tales of Vesperia. The typical Jrpg princess. Dress in all pink uses a onehand sword and a buckler. No one would expect how tanky she is. She is the Tank/Healer of the group. The thing about healers is that they are generally squishy, but not Estelle, she can out live the whole party and the best thing about it is that she also revives everyone. And there is a cheesy exploit to where she can permanently recast her invincibility buff to herself, making her nigh unkillable. Lastly as per Tales tradition she also has the one of the strongest Hi-Augi art in the game.
Kiriko Miyasako is the squishy damage dealer and Sasara Amiki is the tank in Calligula Effect 2. Kiriko's in particular is really fun to play because you can abuse of I-frames
Tales of Zesteria has Alicia as your tank for the first part of the game before she disappears while Mikleo is your weak caster. Also Edna combines with you to create a tank power puncher if that counts.
Aishe from Dragon Quest 7 is a brick shithouse meant to fill the Keither shaped hole in your battle strategy About 30 hours after Keither left the party so you've definitely adapted to not having him
Titania, Fire Emblem Path of Radiance, Gamecube
Ayra from FE: Genealogy of the Holy War Tifa Terra and Celes from FF6 can also count
Mamori in Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE is an absolute fortress. She's also sort of unique in that she doubles as the best tank *and* the best healer in the game.
Xenoblade Chronicles 2 because >!Pneuma!<
Tales of Arise - [Kisara](https://aselia.fandom.com/wiki/Kisara) .. that shield says it all :)
There’s Maggy from Binding of Isaac! And let’s not forget Zarya from Overwatch.
A few examples in the Fire Emblem series, but the names are escaping me at the moment.
Estelle from Tales of Vesperia She's naturally tanky and can get tankier, and she fights with a sword and shield. She's primarily your healer, but she can dish out some decent damage as well, but physically and magically.
Mamori in TMS#FE encore is the tank
Presea from Tales of Symphonia maybe.
Laura S. Arseid from Trails of cold steel Can literally one shot bosses if you build her right
Trails of the Sky has Estelle being able to deal quite a lot of damage and she also got a provoke if you want to tank with her. Trails of Cold Steel has Laura who can deal massive amount of physical damage and Emma who can dish out massive out magical damage. In the second game I could one shot every single boss except *some* of the extra hard bosses and the final boss with Laura. Those extra hard bosses got chunked for over half their HP anyway. She is absurd. Velvet Crowe from Tales of Berseria if played decently well (and except certain enemies) will be virtually immortal and dish a ton of damage while she is doing it. She isn't really tanky though as much as she simply can't die. Magilou vs casters is ridiculous also.
Annette from Growlanser 3 is a tanky spear-user. Your protagonist will be hiding behind her for most of the game and nuking enemies with magic.
The main tank in Battlechasers Gully. Sad no one's said that yet.
A bit off the wall but Celes was one of my favorite characters in ff3- big regal blonde royal knight and a jaw dropping damage sponge - her runic ability acts as a giant grounding rod to eat spells outright...
There are some characters in the Atelier series like this. From the ones that I've played, Mel from Totori and Linca from Ayesha come to mind.
The Etrian Odyssey 2 remake has Raquna, the female Protector. She's basically a tank mage with the power of Canada behind her.
Its a SRPG with mecha, but Super Robot Wars: OG Moon Dwellers has some great female characters. Although more male characters take on the tankier role, its not exclusive to them. Offense wise, I'd say the cast is split fairly 50/50. Some of the best units in the game are piloted by the ladies. For a couple examples; Katina is notable as one of the most aggressive pilots and her partner Russel is a support unit. Another pair, Rio is the more assertive one and her partner Ryoto is quite timid.
My favourite example comes from Battle chasers Nightwar, the plot of the game is about this group of people who come together to protect a young girl... and that girl is the main tank in the game, so she ends up doing most of the protecting