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Cyrene is a Remembrance unit and the capstone support character for all 12 Chrysos Heirs and the Remembrance Trailblazer. She provides exclusive and unique buffs based on the specific Chrysos Heirs she's on a team with when in combat. She can provide some True DMG bonuses to the team as well, and is able to automatically activate every other teammate's Ultimate once per combat. Cyrene is slow to ramp up, but this can be alleviated with certain Chrysos Heirs, even more if you have multiple of them, and especially for invested teams. Cyrene's E2 solves these issues entirely.

[Intro]

Cyrene is an interesting support, and to explain why, I'm going to talk about Fugue. Just stick with me on this.

Fugue was released as a unit that essentially allowed you to replace the Harmony Trailblazer in those Super Break teams (you know, the ones we had when the dinosaurs were still around). While you could, of course, use both together, it mainly allowed the Trailblazer to be untethered from their Harmony responsibilities to pursue the new Path, and we're all very grateful for it because Remembrance Trailblazer is the GOAT.

Instead of following in the footsteps of Fugue, Cyrene is opting to just do something completely different, becoming a support exclusively tailored to buffing the Chrysos Heir characters. These effects vary quite a bit, and they are actually individually curated per Chrysos Heir. Because of this, the Abilities section is going to be even longer than it's already been getting, but I will try to condense it as much as I can (Editor's Note: I failed). It's really getting out of hand at this point, and people are becoming increasingly unwilling to read 'all of that', of course accompanied by a broad gesture, furrowed brow, and half-squint (though I suppose if you dislike reading, you're unlikely to be on this review in the first place).

This design choice is proving to be rather contentious overall, and with Cyrene not perfectly replacing the Remembrance Trailblazer, they are unfortunately not freed from their Remembrance duty, and we are rapidly approaching the end of the Amphoreus saga, and getting closer and closer to 4.0.

We can never be certain about what's to come, but if there's one thing that seems likely when based on experience, it's that whatever the new Path is for the Trailblazer is going to be really damn good. As they have yet to come up with a way to perform mitosis (much to the dismay of several crack shippers), you're going to have to pick which Path you want them on, and that could very well leave some of these 'older' teams without a top tier support going forward.

In at least some of these cases, Cyrene can certainly act as a great replacement, but amusingly enough, having both her and the Remembrance Trailblazer on one team ends up being quite practical, as we'll see later.

I have often made the distinction between 'good' units and 'strong' units in the past, because I believe that distinction is very important to identify, as it usually leads to figuring out if the unit is right for you, and potentially even how long said unit may last.

So the question is posed: Which of these is Cyrene? Is she a 'good' unit? Or just a 'strong' unit? You'll probably come to an answer for yourself, if you haven't already, but I'll have my own answer at the end. On to the wall of text (no, the other wall of text).

[Abilities]

Buckle up, friends, we may be here a while.

As a Remembrance unit, Cyrene has a memosprite as well. Unlike other memosprites, it's technically not a separate entity. When it's summoned, it will have 0 SPD, will not appear on the Action Order, and is considered Out-of-Bounds, meaning it cannot be actively targeted by anyone.

It has Max HP equal to 100% of Cyrene's Max HP, and any change in Cyrene's HP will be reflected in the memosprite's. Having it on the field will increase both of their Max HP by 24%, and the initial summoning will cleanse all Crowd Control effects from allies. It's pretty much cheating at being a memosprite by becoming the memosprite. While Cyrene is on the field, ally DMG dealt increases by 20%, this coming from her Talent.

Cyrene's entire thing revolves around her Ultimate, as it is what summons the memosprite and enables the unique buffs (which we'll get to). Her Ultimate uses a special energy mechanic, much like Phainon and the like, and she collects points of Recollection.

When Cyrene has collected 24 points of Recollection, her Ultimate may be used. On the first use of the combat, it will summon the memosprite and give it 1 extra turn, then it will grant Cyrene the Ripples of Past Reverie state, enhancing the Basic ATK and locking her out of using her Skill for the remainder of the fight. It also increases Cyrene's and her memosprite's CRIT Rate by 50% permanently.

This initial cast of her Ultimate will also produce a short cutscene during which all other allies' Ultimates will be activated, meaning they now are able to use their Ultimates immediately if you choose. This works for special Energy pools like Phainon, Acheron, Feixiao, and Castorice. This then gives you a context menu where you select one of the eligible characters to receive a unique buff to them. This includes all of the Chrysos Heirs, as well as the Remembrance Trailblazer, and also herself but with a special condition.

While she needs to get to 24 Recollection to cast it for the first time, the actual Ultimate use itself only consumes 12 Recollection, meaning it is possible to 'double-tap' the Ultimate, able to apply 2 of the unique Chrysos buffs immediately upon gaining access to the Ultimate for the first time.

All subsequent uses of the Ultimate will cost 12 Recollection. Reaching 24 Recollection for the first time will also dispel all debuffs that are on Cyrene, so you won't need to worry about being unable to act.

[The Unique Chrysos Heir Buffs]

Oh you better believe this needs its own section. I recommend jumping directly to the character you want to see if you have a specific one. Additionally, I will be assuming that you are already familiar with the characters' base kits, or we really will be here for 33,550,337 cycles.

For extra clarity, these are the Ode buffs that are applied to the character after Cyrene uses her Ultimate and gets to select a character to buff. These come in two forms: a one-time effect that expires after its benefits are used, and a permanent effect that lasts for the remainder of the battle, and these are noted as such in the actual Ability descriptions as 'One-time effect' and 'Effective for the entire battle', respectively.

[Abilities 2: Electric Boogaloo]

After that entirely too long section, we now know what each Ode does and why it can be good or might only sound good. As you can see, many of the Odes themselves accentuate the strengths of the different Chrysos Heirs, but do not necessarily alleviate the weaknesses present in their kits; sure some of the Odes do circumvent some mechanics inherent to the character, but it's only a temporary measure and is by no means infallible.

Cyrene does not really solve the issues in the Chrysos Heir kits, in fact she only creates more issues and more hassle for the vast majority of them who now need to play around the production of Recollection to even be able to play the encounter.

All this talk about Recollection — how do you even get points of Recollection?

The Basic ATK deals 50% Max HP to one enemy, and grants 1 Recollection; the Enhanced Basic deals 30% Max HP to one enemy, and 30% Max HP to all enemies, similar to how Evernight's explosive Evey is (one enemy gets 30% + 30%, and the rest get 30%), and grants 3 Recollection. The Enhanced Basic is less useful for this, since it's only accessible after using her Ultimate for the first time in combat. This Enhanced Basic also does NOT generate SP.

Cyrene's Skill gains 3 Recollection on use, and deploys a Zone for 2 of Cyrene's turns. While the zone lasts, each instance of DMG dealt by all allies will deal an additional instance of True DMG, equal to 24% of the original damage. The Zone will automatically disappear when Cyrene is downed.

As this Skill is locked after the first Ultimate of combat, its effects become permanent, and the Recollection gain is shifted into the Enhanced Basic ATK.

Lastly, Cyrene's Talent states that upon entering combat, or after Cyrene takes action (her turn, specifically), other ally characters under any state and their memosprites gain Future. When allies with Future take action, they consume the Future status to give Cyrene 1 point of Recollection. As mentioned before, this Talent also provides a 20% DMG boost to allies while Cyrene is on field.

[Bonus Traces]

A2 states that when a teammate's memosprite is summoned, it gains the Future status. Future that is held by memosprites cannot be consumed, essentially meaning that every single memosprite action (but not including Joint ATKs) will grant 1 point of Recollection for Cyrene.

A4 says that when there are 1/2/3 Chrysos Heir(s) OR Remembrance characters aside from Cyrene in the team, Cyrene gains 2/3/6 Recollection points at the start of combat. This should be always active ideally, because believe me, you need the starting boost to Recollection if you want to get Cyrene's first Ultimate off in a timely manner. Ignore the part about Remembrance characters; every Remembrance character currently in the game is a Chrysos Heir, and any future ones won't be considered as Chrysos Heirs, so this is just a redundant effect.

Lastly, the A6. When Cyrene's SPD is 180 or higher, all allies' DMG dealt increases by 20%. For each point of SPD that exceeds 180, Cyrene and her memosprite get 2% Ice RES PEN, up to a maximum of 120% (bruh) at 60 points of overcap. It's nice to have her at the breakpoint for the teamwide damage, but going over that is tricky because you'll be sacrificing HP to achieve that, and she's not a damage dealer. 200 SPD is a very powerful breakpoint as we'll see later, but again it can be difficult to reach. But hey, Divergent Universe does exist, I suppose.

[The Rest]

It's clear to see that Cyrene's Recollection generation is dismally slow under most circumstances, being fastest in a team with multiple memosprites that can also hold the Future status. Since her Enhanced Basic is locked behind the first Ultimate, the fastest way to generate Recollection is to use her Skill, a Skill that actually consumes Skill Points, despite Cyrene being a HP scaler.

This is unideal for the Chrysos Heirs who are essentially throwing their whole usual gameplay aside to possibly benefit from Cyrene's unique Ode for them; a great example of this would be Phainon.

Phainon's Ode to Worldbearing quite literally doesn't interface with his 'intended design' in any way really. The accumulation of Coreflames is completely circumvented by Cyrene's first Ultimate, and the permanent Ultimate state means you (again, ideally) never need to worry about generating Coreflames again. Given that this team doesn't have the memosprites to more easily fuel Cyrene's Recollection, you need to get creative with how you go about it, with such strange things as using the Remembrance Trailblazer's Mem's Support buff on Cyrene to give her an additional turn, all the while Cyrene is spamming her Skill and tanking the team's SP — but it's fine, Phainon doesn't need it anyway since once he enter his Transformation it's all irrelevant anyway.

This then leads to the greatest concern about Cyrene, which is her ramp-up time. It's far too long at E0. It just is. In many of the already existing 'best-in-slot' teams for Chrysos Heirs, you just GO, you just press the buttons and do the things, and it works. You are sacrificing an already existing teammate to occupy their slot with Cyrene, for the promise of the immense power that's held within the Ode buffs, but... By the time you've gotten to Cyrene's first Ultimate, the team you had before could have already been done with the whole encounter. This is of course hyperbole, but you get the sentiment.

Let me clarify, I am not obsessed with 0 cycles like seemingly so many people are, and they do not paint my opinion on a character's overall strength or value; the amount of planning, forethought, and most of all reset attempts that go into 0 cycle clears is not something that can be reasonably replicated by the average player, nor is it even replicable between different combat encounters against different enemies.

However, I do value characters that can clear in a low number of cycles easily and consistently, especially if the result is easily replicable for the average player who doesn't know or care about the intricacies of SPD and action order and so on and so forth.

Thus do I say that Cyrene is maybe not for the average player, because she actually doesn't let you go on cruise-control easily at all. You need to pull manoeuvres like the aforementioned 'Mem's Support on Cyrene' to even have a chance at a timely first Ultimate outside of memosprite teams, and for many that just may not be very intuitive at all.

Unfortunately, however powerful the Ode buffs are, and however more powerful they'd be compared to existing setups, this is frequently offset by the Action Value needed to get Cyrene ramped up. If you find ways to skip forward, either through clever use of Action Advances, clever timing on out-of-turn Actions, or by putting her in a full Remembrance team, then you can gain more of the intended value of the Ode buffs. But if you take to too long to get to that first Ultimate, then her buffs just won't be worth the hassle.

Playing Cyrene in a team without at least one other Remembrance character will be excruciating to try and get to her first Ultimate before the first cycle ends, leaving you having spent an entire cycle doing substantially lowered damage. In the case of Pure Fiction, Apocalyptic Shadow, and especially Arbitration Anomaly, that is time you just may not be able to afford.

Thus we wrap back around to the Remembrance Trailblazer interaction, as it's surprisingly one of the more consistent ways to ensure a good amount of Recollection is stacked early on, and thanks to the massive influx of Energy Cyrene gives with her first Ultimate, Mem can get enough Charge to use Mem's Support again immediately after (maybe you need to use RMC Ult too). This way you can advance Cyrene to steal 1 SP for 3 Recollection, and then still be able to advance the actual DPS of the team once the Ode buffs are in play.

Every single team will stack Recollection differently and at different rates, and individual SPD values will also matter, as will Dance! Dance! Dance! and Vonwacq. The only thing you can consistently rely on is the Remembrance Trailblazer, and maybe getting to around 200 SPD on Cyrene, something that's incredibly difficult to do, especially without her S1.

If you are able to do all of this, relatively consistently and without too much hassle, then your team can be elevated to be dealing very impressive damage, and will gain access to mechanics that you otherwise wouldn't have, making certain encounters in particular significantly easier to deal with.

I must stress this again so that it's visible: If you are talented enough to play around the trickiness Cyrene brings, you will elevate your Chrysos Heir teams significantly.

If only there was some way to make stacking Recollection easier...

[... Eidolons]

My sigh is so long and drawn out that the CO2 meter in my room went up by a few hundred ppm. I wish I was joking.

E1 grants extra Bounces to the Memo Skill, and more importantly allows it to generate 6 Recollection when used, providing a very notable and welcome increase to Ult uptime once you're already in the Enhanced state.

But nobody cares about that, everyone cares about this: E2 grants an additional 12 points of Recollection when entering combat. ADDITIONAL, by the way, meaning you can start with a staggering 18 Recollection if you're in a full Chrysos Heir team, basically completely nullifying the ridiculous ramp-up time Cyrene has by default.

This Eidolon straight up fixes the problem with Cyrene, and then also gives you increased True DMG from the Skill after giving teammates a unique Ode, up to a max of 48%. If you never want to have to think when using Cyrene ever again, all you need to do is get her E2.

[The Rest of 'The Rest']

Putting aside the Eidolons, there is another thing to consider about Cyrene, and this is directed at the newer players, or those who have not been keeping up with character releases.

Before you go for Cyrene, it is important to consider how useful she will be for you if you lack certain other Chrysos Heir characters. The astute of you already know the main one I'm referring to.

The all-powerful, and ever-voracious, Portly Pegasus, Little Ica, and its pink-haired retainer whose name we may never find out. Hyacine and her Signature Light Cone, for better or for worse, has been nothing short of meta-defining ever since she released. She has been a mainstay in a great many teams, being the most valuable member of all of the HP scaling teams due to her specific mechanics and interactions; you won't find a Castorice, Mydei, or Evernight who is not tethered entirely to power of Ica's healing and that damned Signature Light Cone.

It's just too good, and because of that, it's the number 1 priority for building out those teams. Even with how good Cyrene's Ode buffs are when they're in play, without the support of Hyacine, some of these aforementioned characters can't actually even make that much use of them.

Mydei is more or less fine since Cyrene just straight up gives a free GBG, and he can even be run sustainless if you really want to; Evernight won't lose too much, but still appreciates the incredible sustain on offer; and Castorice is a completely different character with and without Hyacine, to the point where you can forget about ever making use of Cyrene's Newbud overcap without Hyacine.

It's a similar thing for Phainon and Anaxa, since both of them want Cerydra to truly pop off. Phainon loses a colossal amount of value in his infinite Ultimate without Cerydra's passive Military Merit stacking, and life without double Meteor is no life at all, truly. Same for Anaxa, his 8 Bounce Skill that Cyrene unlocks could be a 32 Bounce Skill with Cerydra's Coup de Main in the mix, and without it, you're not really getting the benefits you could be.

There are other noteworthy ones like Tribbie and Cipher, who can both be used on any team in existence and make it extremely good, damn near carrying the team in the process, and unlike Cyrene, they're not shackled to a specific group of characters.

Cyrene IS the capstone support for the Chrysos Heirs, but because of that can only really make the most of her potential when you actually already have the aforementioned Chrysos Heirs. She is objectively worth at least considering if you DO have those characters already built and ready, even with the absolute mess that is stacking Recollection at E0.

But, there is actually one other situation when you may want to seriously consider Cyrene, and that is if you have the other Chrysos Heirs and have vertical investment in them. I'm not talking about just the Signatures, I mean actual Eidolons.

Many of these Eidolons greatly enhance the capabilities of the character, by enough that, honestly, if you had to choose between Cyrene and the vertical investment, you may have quite the conundrum on your hands.

Everyone will have their own answer on this, but I'm not talking about choosing between like E1 Tribbie and Cyrene — you can make that decision by yourself, I ain't getting involved — I'm talking about those who already had Eidolons on their Chrysos Heirs. For individuals such as these, the Ode buffs that Cyrene provides suddenly jump in value dramatically.

Phainon E1 giving more SPD inheritance and E2 granting an extra extra turn; Mydei E1 making Godslayer Be God fully AoE; Evernight's E2 granting a permanent Darkest Riddle; and of course, Castorice E1 giving Netherwing's explosion a true multiplier, and E2 giving a Newbud refund of 30%.

These are just the most prominent examples off the top of my head, and buffing any of those with Cyrene has the potential to massively outdo what they were already capable of.

I want to touch on Castorice to really illustrate this (don't read into the phrasing), as I briefly alluded to this in the explanation of Castorice's Ode buff. For a Castorice with a well built and well invested team, especially if the Castorice is vertically invested, your in-combat goal will shift; an E0 Castorice cares about generating Newbud; an E2+ Castorice (with a well invested Hyacine) cares about wasting Newbud.

It's one thing to deliberately hold off on summoning Netherwing to overcap on Newbud, and it's another entirely to straight up need the overcap or risk losing the equivalent of several entire summons of Netherwing over the fight.

I say again, Cyrene does not solve issues, she realistically creates more, but with this new added caveat: she does this in exchange for pushing already vertically invested characters to potentially comical heights, such that they don't care about whatever now-insignificant issues Cyrene brings with her.

[Beyond the West Wind]

Rather a contentious character it turns out. Still, the brave among you should have no problem adjusting to the challenges Cyrene brings, and may even be rewarded for your efforts. Meanwhile, those of you who share a name with a certain type of flower and/or marine invertebrate who happen to also have an E6S1 Castorice, you'll probably be fine either way, so please enjoy.

The last thing to ponder is Cyrene's longevity. Usually how long a character lasts is difficult to predict, because any number of things can happen, from sudden HP inflation to getting ousted by a numerically stronger unit, or just through having everyone's Break Bars get more than twice as big (no I'm not bitter, shut up).

Usually I don't bring it up, but this case is special. This is the first time ever where we've had a character tied to specific units that have already been released. We're already quite close to the end of the Amphoreus saga, and there's no telling what awaits us in 4.0.

As such, it could be argued that Cyrene may be a poor choice, as her shelf-life is already very well defined in terms of the viability and strength of the other Chrysos Heirs. What will E0 Cyrene do when the Trailblazer is sent off to claim another Path as their own?

It could equally be argued that Cyrene will help to bolster the existing Chrysos Heirs such that they remain strong contenders even in the face of whatever new meta is waiting for us at the end of this particular tale.

Who's to say which it is? Is the glass half empty or half full? Does this make the letters on the wall clearer or blurrier? We won't know until it's time anyway. The only certainty is that psychoanalysis will never again be the same in the wake of Cyrene's release.

At the end of the West Wind, we can return to the question posed at the very beginning: Is Cyrene a 'good' unit, or just a 'strong' unit?

... Cyrene is a 'strong' unit.

And on that bombshell, it's time to put the pen down. If you made it this far, thank you very much for reading; goodnight.