I don't know much about the broader community since my main experience has been this forum, Xseed, and for a little bit Steam. Had to step away from steam because a lot of the discussions devolved pretty quickly from my short experience there. 

Harder for me to rank characters from Cold Steel personally because outside of Jusis and Fie, most characters at least from the main cast fall into "have potential but never really stick out much". I've seen people say Emma is great though I think a chunk of that is her breast size. Interesting background but between Celine being the one to give all the info about the Hexen clan and like pretty much every classmate being relegated to the sideline once CS II came around, she never became notable. I like Laura enough but like a lot of the characters she fills a certain type, in this case honorable warrior who wishes to become stronger and protect the weak. Gaius I never got the hate towards him. He's not super developed but he's fine enough. Only character I outright hate that you are not supposed to is Celine.

Alisa is one I see on the decisive area. The game starts her on a rough note and a lot of people who react really negatively to that would not be willing to look past that and ignore everything else about her character. I can attest to that being like that but multiple playthroughs I've softened up and like the idea of her character arc, but once again like so many others it just doesn't pan out well enough for me.

I always forget about Helmut, Jusis's father. He's around so little and just a complete prick I always forget replaying the games he shows up.

Maybe it's been a while since Cold Steel are the most recent games, but I never got the idea that Josette was disliked. Overall I like her with the main hindrance being the developers made her a terrible playable character. I mainly dunk on her if it comes to her feuds with Estelle. Nothing against Josette but I'm going to side with Estelle every single time.

Elise is the main one I can see being near the bottom and from seeing small bits of other places I've never seen anyone praising her, let alone defend her. I don't hate her, but I can't think anything about her outside of liking her brother Rean and nothing beyond that. I remember in CS I near the end it was implied her arc would go trying to get away from those feelings and there could have been hope she would get her own character outside of that. But no, she is just the little sister to be in the ever expanding harem circle. Also, I know you can point to a few moments how she was important to moving the plot forward, but it never felt like it was only her alone that could've done that or that without her they couldn't have come up with something else to move things forward. Basically, there's nothing from the 3 games I've played that have given a reason for her to really exist.

One last thought on character ranking is how Duvalie would do. Most of the few places I've seen outside of here is people dunking on her and seeing the nickname "Dubully", so I feel she would rank low. Then again, it could be a jab at how everyone in the games pick on her all the time. I overall like her which I put a lot of that into how the voice actress just nails the voice and makes her endearing to me. I don't see her being really high but I would like her to be in the upper part of the ranking.

Poll rankings are a strange thing. There was a little poll in the Kiseki threads at spacebattle and Laura placed first, followed by Alisa. Oh, perhaps I should also clarify what was polled, namely who would be the best love-interest for Rean. The Kiseki Nut's poll is asking about characters on their own merits, so it could end up quite different.

I also have some insight into the Kiseki fanfiction community. Most of the longer fics are about Cold Steel and going by fic popularity Fie is a community favorite followed by Laura on Fanfiction.net. On Archive of our own, the only character who notably sticks out as far as popularity is concerned is Crow. AO3 is practically littered in Rean/Crow slash fics. As for the second most popular pairing, that would be Jusis/Machias slash fics. And yes, I'm totally sighing while writing these lines.

I also lurk on Falcom reddit occasionally, but the usually discussed rankings are power levels or best game in the series. Character pollings are all over the place, though as far as CS is concerned, there's quite a vocal Alisa fan-club going on. And to a lesser extent a pretty vocal Towa fanclub.

As for my own preferences, I'm a little leery to voice them about the Cold Steel core cast, because I'm currently in a strange headspace. I'm writing an Alternative Universe fanfic about Cold Steel 1 and one of my objectives is to take away Rean from the spotlight and give all OG Class VII members more room for character development than canon did. So I don't see myself capable of disentangling how I'm writing down my own version of Class VII characterization vs how the games did it originally.

As for side characters, the church girl is Rosine and probably the one 'minor' side character in Cold Steel who has quite some romantic chemistry with Rean. I like her pretty much. Patrick also seems to be quite a favorite, though I never liked him even in later games and always indulge in schadenfreude when Rean goes  overprotective big brother mode on him or crushes his hand with his monster grip. Alan is also memorable for me. His cute little romance with Bridget followed by becoming a protege of Neithardt and Olaf was always something I liked to catch up on. Duvalie is a character I didn't particularly like in the beginning, but without spoiling anything, she really grew on me after CS4. She has a lot of really awesome moments in that game. And at least in the spacebattle community, there are quite some people who are fond of her.

Elise is for the most part considered a superfluous character nearly everywhere I looked and there are some vocal people on Falcom reddit who take every opportunity to point out how bad her character writing is. Mind you, their arguments are usually pretty sound.

While I don't hate Celine, I absolutely understand why someone might hate her. I consider her a character who ruined Emma's potential and my own theory regarding this is that it's another side effect of the bonding system. To elaborate, plot wise, Cold Steel 2 should've been the game for Emma to shine. Witches are supposed to be the guides for their chosen Awakener (just like Vita /Crow). But as we know, most of that guiding role was 'outsourced' to Celine. Now why did the writers do this? Because the bonding system also included the choose-Rean's-waifu system. For the writers to maintain the feeling that there is a choice, it's important for the main-plot of the story not to give any of the romanceable girls too much of prominent role especially in regards to Rean's own character progression. And let's be honest here, a good chunk of Rean's development in CS2 was him getting used to his role as Ashen Awakener. By giving Emma the role she was due, it could have ended up feeling like the player was railroaded into a Rean/Emma romance.

And we can't have that with a choose your waifu system, can we?

Speaking of Elise, everyone I see who mentions her dumps on her. I don't really care for her much myself either. But I just have a gut feeling she wont be quite as low as we all probably expect.

Incidentally, you aren't mistfox on steam forums are you? Steam forums are... difficult to digest at times. But eventually you learn to appreciate the good and ignore the bad. Kinda like the games. For every great game there is a bad game, a who cares game, and 10 shovelware why is this even on here games, but people tend to like it anyway because you don't have to deal with the bad, just move past it. The only posts I really hate are ones that flat out lie in a way that isn't obvious. Like I saw one guy on the steam forum say he stopped playing kiseki games after crossbell because they are somehow pay to win after. like. wut. Absolutely ridiculous, and  I hate it because I just know some people may see that post and think they shouldn't try the game because they feel strongly about pay to win and wouldn't suspect someone would lie about it or whatever.

Anyone else have a bottom 3 prediction like Helmut? Can't use him, I called it first =P

Posted by: @ghaleon

Speaking of Elise, everyone I see who mentions her dumps on her. I don't really care for her much myself either. But I just have a gut feeling she wont be quite as low as we all probably expect.

She has a really attractive design especially beginning with CS3. I have a weakness for elegant woman with straight dark hair. Unfortunately, that is the only praise I can give her.

Incidentally, you aren't mistfox on steam forums are you? Steam forums are... difficult to digest at times. But eventually you learn to appreciate the good and ignore the bad. Kinda like the games. For every great game there is a bad game, a who cares game, and 10 shovelware why is this even on here games, but people tend to like it anyway because you don't have to deal with the bad, just move past it. The only posts I really hate are ones that flat out lie in a way that isn't obvious. Like I saw one guy on the steam forum say he stopped playing kiseki games after crossbell because they are somehow pay to win after. like. wut. Absolutely ridiculous, and  I hate it because I just know some people may see that post and think they shouldn't try the game because they feel strongly about pay to win and wouldn't suspect someone would lie about it or whatever.

Anyone else have a bottom 3 prediction like Helmut? Can't use him, I called it first =P

If you are asking about me, I use the same handle in every Kiseki related community. And I don't post on steam forums. As for people straight up lying, yeah that's low. I mean, Akatsuki no Kiseki has gacha mechanics, but there aren't a lot of English speaking fans who've played it. Badmouthing the Crossbell games like that? Ugh.

As for Bottom 3 predictions, is Helmut even up for voting? So far I've only seen the core cast subject to the poll plus Celine. Not even Proto Class VII (Towa, Crow etc) are up yet.

I meant trails of persona = mistfox?

In any case only the core cast + celine has been votable so far but Im sure it will include most if not all the cast with faces to them. Though he did exclude riese and kevin last time for not being significant to the plot which I find questionable since Id say Riese was more involved than... uhh. Forgot his name. Big bald sunglasses knight dude.

Isn't this poll about Cold Steel characters only? KisekiNut wants to split the polling between CS1+2 and CS3+4, but neither Kevin nor Ries play any role in the CS arc. As for big bald sunglasses knight dude... are you talking about Wazy's right hand man? That's Abbas and I would be very surprised if he were included in the voting.

As for predictions... I say Laura, Fie and Crow are somewhere in the top 1-5. As for the bottom, I'm not going to predict anything without knowing everybody he's going to include. Helmut, despite his indisputable douchebaggery, is a really minor character. If Duke Cayenne were involved, we can be pretty sure he would also be somewhere at the bottom.

I said LAST time, that being the crossbell character polls. Ries and Keven were excluded from the crossbell arc. I know they weren't super big characters but I'd argue Ries was more involved than Abbas.

Sorry, overlooked the little words. I don't follow the Kiseki youtubers that much. But yeah, in a Crossbell poll I agree about both Kevin and Ries. Despite their limited presence, they accomplished so much more with so little screentime.

Posted by: @ghaleon

I meant trails of persona = mistfox?

In any case only the core cast + celine has been votable so far but Im sure it will include most if not all the cast with faces to them. Though he did exclude riese and kevin last time for not being significant to the plot which I find questionable since Id say Riese was more involved than... uhh. Forgot his name. Big bald sunglasses knight dude.

My Steam name funnily enough has fox in it, but that is not my username. I only posted once or twice before in the CS II section when CS III for PS4 had yet to come out. I remember during that time there were a number of interesting topics. I remember someone thinking the game was censored because I guess in the Japanese version showed Juna's hand hitting Kurt for the slap, where at the time the Demo showed that last second moment get cut out. At least I think that was what was being argued.