[General Discussion] RPG Elements: Characters

I don't care for games where characters are fully customizable, since then they have very little difference between them. Having defined roles makes choosing your party lineup much more important, and it helps me to actually care about the characters.

I remember playing FF VIII, and I essentially abandoned Quistis and Selphie as soon as I got them. They were around lvl. 13 at endgame, because they were essentially pointless. Limit breaks alone aren't enough to distinguish characters from each other. Some games do manage it well though. Shin Megami Tensei: Digital Devil Saga was a great example of this. Aside from their innate elements for strength/weakness and what they cast slightly better than other characters, abilities were totally in the hands of the player. The only path that you tried to learn with everyone was at least basic healing. There was so much to learn though, that all of your people stayed pretty seperate, and the key was what abilities you equipped them with for battle. Since status, healing, attack magic, physical skills, and elemental voiding spells were all very important in DDS it was hard to decide on just a few skills for each person to bring into battle, and those decisions made the difference between being crushed by a boss or breezing through. Not to mention characters' weaknesses possibly giving enemies extra hits if you brought the wrong people.

Completely unique characters can be good too, but then they always leave me feeling sketchy about leaving certain people out of my party. Using FF IV as an example, I hate leaving Rydia out. She's a good black mage with summoning abilities, so exchanging her for Polom leaves me worried about the lack of healing/mass damage. There are times when I'd really like to bring Kain in for Jumping, yet Yang is a better fighter. It's the same with Tales of the Abyss. Guy has roughly the same abilities as the main character, so he ends up being left out most of the time, and the two healers in the party just get swapped out every so often, since their attacks that seperate them don't matter very much. Ditching good characters just because they have no real way of distinguishing through a little customization can be a real pain. It just feels a little too restrictive at times.

FF VI was a great example of having customizable characters through learning magic, while keeping them seperate. Honestly, who took Edgar out of their party unless they were looking for a challenge? It always made you question leaving Locke out, because what if a boss had some great item you'd miss out on without a thief? Having a little bit of control over how characters developed while still keeping some restrictions to seperate them is definitely the best way to go for me.

Jam it back in, in the dark.