Quote Originally Posted by Elly View Post
the thing about being able to recruite all those characters is that most of them are optional, you do not have to recruit all of them or even half of them if you do not want to... i always took it that the creators aproached that aspect by hearing players say "_____ was so awesome, why could we not have the option to play them?" so they added the option to recruit many unique characters, if you wanted to...
Many of the characters join the party upon their introduction without any clear indication or motivation for doing so. Many of the plantoid characters are examples of this: NeoFio, Turnip, and Funguy.

I can see this as a point for the characters that you come across in the course of the story like Macha and Steena, but maybe over a dozen characters had no relevance to the story aside from being a party member.

Quote Originally Posted by Khalin View Post
I agree, but I try to ignore those silly excess characters and just stick with the cool ones [it's all about SergexGlenn]. Glenn's a kickass cutie and Harle's just awesome. I don't think anybody uses that fat lady anyways. Besides, all the characters end up being more-or-less the same anyways[sorta like FF VII], so I never understood the point of giving such a huge roster.
I would have enjoyed this game a lot more if only the story relevant characters like Glenn and Harle joined the party. This would have helped characterization and interactions in the story. I think I saw a list that someone created on another forum several years ago that listed about a dozen characters that would join and leave the party at certain intervals and the story would have been a lot more cohesive if this was the case; there would be no pointless sidequests recruiting plants that sprout out of the ground or anything like that.