Once you reach 5th level with the starting class you can play as the other two classes (note that nothing carries over between classes), both of which seem notably better.
The archer has the distinction of being able to attack off-screen, greatly reducing the annoyance caused by ranged attackers and letting you mow down the hoards before they’re even aware of your presence. Equip a Quiver and Splitting Arrows and she just rains down utter devastation with little effort. The lower starting HP is an issue though and she can’t use arrows if enemies get too close.
The mage doesn’t seem to have any distinguishing features at all beyond an abysmal starting HP pool. I guess you could say he excels at crowd control thanks to his lightning/ice spell options… but a split-arrow archer can accomplish something similar while attacking at far greater range. So I’m rather underwhelmed at his pre-Cook performance. Maybe later spells are more devastating?
At this point I doubt I’ll ever touch the starting class again, but the archer is enjoyable in small bursts (due to sidestepping a lot of annoying enemy abilities) and I’ll probably keep playing on-and-off between doing other things for a while yet.