What about creating an ACTUAL Dark Knight?

[Kabooa]

It's not that uncommon to reach lvl20 before changing to Paladin. At that point, a lvl 20 Kain would trump you in HP. In fact, a level 1 Paladin Cecil has around 50% more HP than a level 20 Dark Cecil. How can someone say that Dark Knight was a "high HP, high def" job in that game ?

Because for the first half of the game, you're paired with almost exclusively Wizards of some variety.