do i have to 'train' all the members of the party?

i've been playing ff-x for around 10-15hours now.


i usually have auron, lulu and yuna in the first row...

but as i see, only those people get AP who actually participate in the battle ... that means the people who stand in the second row most of time won't 'level-up' that much.

should i use them more to make them more even?

and, as u see i don't have tidus in the first row. will that be a problem later?

i remember how big problems i had in ff-9, when i had to fight with zidane+quina, and quina only knew 2weak spells.

Considering that you are in an early stage of the game, it's not that important to train all characters yet. But later on, you should have all characters at a decent "level" (can't find the right word :p), but it's no need to train them all to the top. Your main characters should be the ones with best stats, but it wouldn't hurt you to have good stats on all of them, if you are doing some of the sidequests.

When i was in the early parts of the game like you are now, i was training really much, because i wanted Lulu's lv. 2 spells earlier then usual, but it is no need for it.

u might need to train them all. if ur past the via purifico and mt. gagazet, then dont worry about it, cuz u have already passed the "harder" parts of the game. as long as u have wakka or lulu strong, then the game is going good for u. seeing that some bosses will need to be hit with the ball or magic. dont worry about yuna or your aeons to much since (SPOILERS) u will have to fight them later, and however much hp and strength, etc... they have is how hard they will be and the aeons grow with yuna, so its best not to worry about them. even though it makes some battles easier, u wont regret it. and dont bother with the hidden aeons until u have beaten the game (anima, magus sisters, yojimbo)[

I'm doing just fine and I don't train too evenly. Untill recently, I only used Wakka when there were flying enemies, and I don't use Rikku a lot anymore. I never use Kimahri, but after I beat the game I'm gonna start over and use him more. But if certain characters are weak, they'll grow faster. Liek when ever Kimahri levels up for me now that I use him a little, he gains about three levels when other gain one.

yeah, and a good way to lv. up is by equipping double and triple ap, triple od, and od-->ap, and set ur mode to slayer. then go back to where u stopped using the character, and just go from there.... shabamm

There is one point where you have to use only Kimahri in a fight that would normally be easy, but is damned hard if you've just forgotten about him the whole game through. That part alone nearly had me restarting.

i'd say try to train evenly. It makes the ame SO much easier, and there are parts where your party will be splintered, and you might be left without one or two members that you're dependent on. Keeping it even will leave you with a fairly interchangeable "front line".

From what i know, the hp of those you are fighting with only kimahri depends on kimahri's strength. I didn't use kimahri at all before that, so when i came there i wondered how i would beat them, but because of kimahri's low strength they had like 2500 hp, which made the fight pretty easy :p

I stoppted using all chars when i got to the Calm Lands.

The only chars i've been using since then are Tidus, Wakka and Yuna, and I never had any problems.

I don't really see any point as to why you have to train them all. That just takes too much time.

i just had all my characters jump in a battle, use a potion or something. then jump back out and let whoever i was using for my main continue the battle, you dont have to acually use them for the whole time, just get them to do one thing in battle and they'll get ap for it. it can be kinda tedious but it beats doing the whole battle with them whilst weaker, and everyone goes up kinda evenly this way.

you dont.
because you can beat the final boss even without too much "level-up".
And there is also a easy way to dramatically gain mega-AP in the monster arena . So at such first stage you need not to train much.

Although the Kimahri battle is fairly easy if you continually get the other Ronso's rages, which will give you a full overdrive about 8-10 times, if you ignored him before, depending on how many rages you had before.