Madora is not nearly as good as a Knight/fighter that is a PC and built correctly, optimized to only be an ass kickin name taking meat shield.
Madora can be built to kick some serious ass. She starts out at level 4, so there's plenty of opportunity to customize.
I found Bardotr to be the character I'm most fond of at higher levels and she's always with my party, with the fourth member being the jobhopper based on what's next.
My first play through, I had a sword and shield knight, Madora was my claymore DPS...she was a freaking life savor many times. MY only downside was, unfortunately it was my first playthrough, so I didn't fully understand what stats affect what. Long story short, I knew what cc hell looked like, and it was not a pretty place.
If it wasn't for the fact my pc mage originally was going to focus on fire and earth (since I read it was the more damage of the 4 combos); I would blow things up pretty fast early on and finishing them off later in the game.
At one point I was even looking into a character who specialized in summoning and buffing them, but the way the game handles (i had one summon in every magic just for kicks, the undead one was freaking op!!!) I realized it wouldn't be any different from how I play now. Summons still are a must though, at least for me.
