Stuffed Fridge

[Alleo]

I partly agree with the OP. I am normally quite fine if people get taken out of the story through injuries instead of just outright killing them. The sadness is still there, the character not available for a time and depending on the situation the character itself or others around them can grow. But Ysthola (and in that way Thancred too) just got hurt way too often. And seemingly nothing much changed for her at all.

She is directly struck down by Zenos who normally one hit kills people with his swords. Yet she suffered no consequences for this action. Then we have her eyes that seemingly kill her slowly because she is using aether to see (and this patch shows that she sees totally fine too) but as long as plot does not demand for it to be important its also of no consequence and depending on how they want to go with her we might even find a solution to her problem.

Thancred got taken out twice now too but at least he has suffered from the first one quite a lot. Not being able to use magic or teleport truly hinders him and makes him weaker. The situation with Minfilia and probably his loss of magic also changed his character a bit. Ysthola has none of that imo. Yes she is snarky like Matoya, especially in this patch but imo that is not something that creates a good well written character. At the same time she has so much knowledge, then the power to take down enemies like Magnai, no restriction that truly hinders her right now so seemingly she just might be too powerful for the plot and thus gets taken out a lot. But if such a character only exist for plot points and maybe even a bit it of fanservice then I do wonder why she should stay in the game at all. So SE either kill her off or just finally give her a role in this game and create a deeper character for her that develops through the game. Much more interesting characters got killed for less.