There was a Gogo thread earlier that got me thinking about party members. Personally I love games with loads and loads of characters that you can pick from. I don't really care if like only five or so get a plot, it usually means the others will always be available to join my party. I've been playing Suikoden III and my favorite character gets no plot. I mean it, she was sitting in the basement of some village and you beat her at arm wrestling and she joins. And she's always available. Now take my second favorite character, the hyper active guard of Orange Castle. She's involved in the story somewhat and only available a little bit of the time.

So anyway topic: Do you like loads and loads of characters or do you want all your characters to get fleshed out? Also don't you hate when certain characters are unavailable?