Rita is a spunky young girl, who appears in Suikoden IV, and Suikoden Tactics. She's a side character that you can recruit early on in both games. She'll join the party if you play, and beat her in one of her games. Suikoden IV involves the player playing against her in "Rita-Pon", a game like Mahjong, except with characters from the game as symbols. In Tactics, you have to get your characters element over more spaces than her, in a splatoon like fashion. Since Suikoden Tactics came out in 2005, Rita thought of Splatoon first ya'll!
In the series, she takes place of the Trickster category. Tricksters are normally young, energetic girls, who use hammers, or long range weapons (Knives and crossbows). Usually, they have a knack for engineering/building things. Rita isn't necessarily a builder type, but her creativity when it comes to making new games, can be similar to "creating". Her outfit is very reminiscent to the other trickster characters as well. Other tricksters have striped clothing themes, and a focal point item, for Rita, it's the orbs on her outfit. (Earlier, and Later installments have Bells, and Buttons. Unironically, another trickster's name is Belle, and she has bells.)
Rita is an early character, who has great magic stats, and a powerful weapon for a magician type of character.
Rita is actually a mix between a mage character, and a fighter character, but she's not strong enough to be a Jack of all trades type that has an equal amount of stats all around. Basically, she is weaker than the hero character when it comes to HP, and Strength, but she has better magic power than him, and she's stronger physically than other characters who are complete mage characters. Which makes her a bit of the best of both worlds. Since she's one of the first recruit-able characters in both games, it's good to have her in the party with her high magic stats. She'll gain magic faster than the other early characters, although eventually she does slow down around level 40 and everyone else catches up with her.
The really interesting thing about Rita is, although she is more of a mage character, her weapon is actually much stronger than other mage type characters, and can deal much more damage than most mage types.
Basically, Rita has good magic power, and her weapon is strong, but her "physical" strength and hp are not as good. She's basically an equal opportunity character, but just a little bit under the line of jack of all trades type.
When Rita appears in Suikoden Tactics, they change her into a "Fighter" type character, which means she cannot use regular magic (Due to it being a tactics game, the mechanics are a bit different than a normal Suikoden games). This also happens to the character Wendel, which is very bizarre considering Rita and Wendel are great magic users in Suikoden IV. They literally have better magic stats in Tactics, than the rest of the magician characters! But they cannot use magic, I think the reason they did this, was because of their weapons not being "Mage type" weapons, and being more powerful, so they toned the characters down. (Wendel uses claws as her weapon) Maybe they didn't want the characters to be OP, even though there is one character you can get, that has a fighter type weapon, that can use magic. (Obviously, it's a different story, but still.)
Overall, Rita is a quirky, and unique character, who walks like Tommy Pickles from the Rugrats, and is a nice mix between a mage, and fighter character. Who may or may not be, and ancestor to the trickster Meg, from Suikoden I & II. (Considering Suikoden IV takes place 150 years before the first game, and they hint this with other characters in Suikoden V.)
