Time to split up!

It's kind of a JRPG curse. You're given all these characters, but you can only pick a limited number to take with you. The rest of them -- even if the remaining group is larger than your party -- travel separately to you. It's purely for a programming and gameplay reason, of course, but that's never the reason given.

In Final Fantasy VII, when you leave Midgar for the first time, Barret tells the party to split up because all of them travelling together would be too large a group and attract too much attention. Wat. No. That's a poor excuse. Only moments before, the player had to choose either Barret or Tifa to sit out of the battle with Hojo to protect the now rescued Aeris. Much better reasoning.

But generally, there aren't (real) reasons given for why party members have to be left behind. I think my favourite example of it being done well is in Final Fantasy VI when the non-party members are left behind in Narshe to defend it. After just suffering an attack and being in need of defence (and giving the other members time to plan with the Returners), this makes perfect sense.

Discuss your favourite and least favourite "reasons" for the party splitting up. Don't just limit it to FF games because it is an issue across the genre. Why can't we stroll around with the 108 party members in Suikoden? BECAUSE THEY'RE EVIL, LIMITING AND SOUL CRUSHING PROGRAMMERS.

The best reasons were in FFIV where each party member left for a specific reason. I really liked how the story dictated your party.

It got a little too predictable in FFIV sometimes. Like "oh hey a new guy I wonder if someone's about to leave or 'die' or something now because that is what happens in this game." I think FFXIII handled the whole plot dictating your party thing a lot better, but to be fair I guess FFIV had many more characters to juggle around. I liked that part in FFIX where you split into teams of two to go into those temple things.

The handling in FFXIII was awful because you were stuck with only two characters for a large part of the game. At least in FFIV you had 4-5 characters in your party the majority of the time.

In FFIV I didn't really notice that getting a 6th member meant someone had to leave the first time I played it. On subsequent playthroughs I already knew what happened so it didn't matter.

I will agree that the handling of the reasons for splitting up were better in XIII, though not as fun having one of your characters jump from your airship with bombs strapped to his chest.

I remember thinking that it was weird that in Shining Force II the WHOLE party didn't simply walk out and lay waste to the opponent in every battle. I forget the reason why you are limited to...12? I think? Maybe they didn't give me a reason.

I actually may like XIII's the best. I know a lot of people said that it was a breath of fresh air when the map finally opened up in Gran Pulse, but it was the complete opposite for me. I loved how the two characters were on a unique mission with a distinct reason for being together. They were both also on an important character arc, something they wanted that was important to them and seeing what happens when they get there or it comes true. I also thought managing two characters at a time was more strategic and made for more interesting choices with party composition. Once you got to Gran Pulse it was about the party's story and the character's internal struggles and aspirations seemed a lot less important.

FFXIII was actually a pretty good game.

Having most of the Stars of Destiny following me would be the ultimate dead weight. Gaspar would keep losing his dice and we'd have to stop and look every ten minutes and that one square would just want to make paint out of everything.

I can imagine a battlefield game wherein all the characters you recruit are as unique as in Suikoden... up until the moment they hit the battlefield wherein the majority of their individual skills, personalities, and fighting styles would start to blend together because computers aren't programmed to process true chaos but only logically dictated algorithms built to resemble our perception of chaos. I think it would be incredibly awesome though if all the unique characters you could recruit (at least in titles with limited character numbers like FF7/8/9/10/12) could travel and battle alongside you while retaining their individuality. I don't know how easy it would be to manage, but it would be awesome to see.

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Originally Posted by Jowy

Having most of the Stars of Destiny following me would be the ultimate dead weight. Gaspar would keep losing his dice and we'd have to stop and look every ten minutes and that one square would just want to make paint out of everything.

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There'd also be that one guy getting distracted by all the windows you pass in your epic quest. Awful.

And obviously, the best reason for splitting up is so we can more efficiently search the haunted house for clues, gang.

At least I liked those rare times in FF7 where you would re-encounter your party along the path or they would give you items they found along the way.

It seems like most RPGs try to give you a reason for the first few times you have to limit your party, but then just forget about it when they figure you have gotten accustomed to the party size.

If I could take all my hired mercenaries with me in Dragon Quest(or Dragon Warrior, whatever) III, I would have beaten that game so quickly.

But no. One day I will be a winner is me.

im playing thru ff9 right now
and im constantly worried that the people that have split off won't be a high enough level to continue once i get back to playing them AHEM steiner

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Originally Posted by krissy

im playing thru ff9 right now
and im constantly worried that the people that have split off won't be a high enough level to continue once i get back to playing them AHEM steiner

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This is what I always worry about with parties, because I like everyone to be at Level One Million before fighting advanced bosses.

I touched on this in the thread I started but I'll elaborate here: in FFVIII when you're faced with splitting up the party to head to the Galbadia Missible Base and heading to Balamb Garden to warn the headmaster and save everyone, etc. I liked how urgent the whole situation was and you really had to think about who could be useful in each party instead of sticking all the crappy people in one party and all the star players in another.

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Originally Posted by krissy

im playing thru ff9 right now
and im constantly worried that the people that have split off won't be a high enough level to continue once i get back to playing them AHEM steiner

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i ragequit my FFIX playthrough when I had his underleveled ass still trying to learn armour break with some :skull::skull::skull::skull:tty sword hitting like a kitten's paw

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Originally Posted by Jowy

Quote:

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Originally Posted by krissy

im playing thru ff9 right now
and im constantly worried that the people that have split off won't be a high enough level to continue once i get back to playing them AHEM steiner

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i ragequit my FFIX playthrough when I had his underleveled ass still trying to learn armour break with some :skull::skull::skull::skull:tty sword hitting like a kitten's paw

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Typically FFIX did an ok job recycling low level abilities so you could learn them if you missed your shot the first go.

I think one of the better reasons to split up was given in VIII when Selphie decides she has to try and rescue Balamb knowing she'd failed Trabia. They actually handled that quite well, though it became a massive popularity contest on characters since you essentially had to choose between Zell and Rinoa for most of the first half of Disc 2. I also like how the inclusion of Rinoa in the Missile Base team sparked a few lines of interaction which helped beef up the love story between her and Squall even if she wasn't there for the actual romance plot. Something which could've been horrendously overlooked. As I said in my thread in the FFVIII section, I'd have loved a bit more content in this part of the game, I'd have also have loved a lot more action with the space/esthar plot arc. I think that Square missed a major "mini" game feature here where in Esthar you could have chosen to have side missions involving cleansing Esthar of the Lunar Cry's affects. I know they essentially say "there'll be a lot of work for SeeD and Garden with this in future" but it'd have been cool to have stuff like quests where Squall wouldn't necessarily be a part of it or even dispatch missions where you can't use 3 members for a while.

One of the best instances of managing player characters was probably X, Before you begin to master every job as every character the game provides you with several options to field, do you go for Wakka's accuracy? Tidus' Speed? Do you Summon with Yuna? Do you bring Auron to bear with his destructive power? However they never once took those options away from you except for plot pieces the entire party travelled at once, together (though it'd have been nice to maybe have more than just Tidus shown on screen but the party was kinda big I guess) and you could change the battle line up whenever you wished. Of course this made levelling up a little easy if tiresome since all you had to do was switch everyone in for at least 1 round where they had to do nothing but guard/defend.