Looking for Group

[Vermachtnis]

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?

[Azure Chrysanthemum]

I like lots of characters IF THEY ALL LEVEL TOGETHER. One of my biggest pet peeves is a crapton of interesting characters I want to use but need to level individually. Invariably, I will just pick certain ones and use them forever. Having a bunch of characters so I can pick and choose based on how I'm feeling is great.

[Araciel]

I prefer games that allow me to make my own custom designed character. Although this generally means that any backstory/plot interaction goes out the window, I like to feel like it's someone I made up as opposed to a character in a book I'm playing as. I do like the variety in choice in Suikoden games, but once you choose your party, most of them don't interact with story plot points unless they were forced in your party anyway. While I understand the restrictions, I would like some random plot incidents dependent on who you have with you at the time.

Also my favourite character was Juan, he's a GOD at later levels! And he's just cool.

[LunarWeaver]

I like a very focused group. Definitely not a fan of an army of characters. My biggest problem with Chrono Cross was the decision to have so many. Except for Van. He can stay. Quite.

[Wolf Kanno]

Emily does have some backstory, she's the daughter of Ronnie Bell and Mose from Suikoden 1.

I like Suikoden cause generally every character has a real story. Not like Chrono Cross where you basically collect freaks and children that have nothing to go on...

If the game has a large cast, I don't mind if a few are underdeveloped (Suikoden, FFTactics, Gogo, and Umaro) but if you have a small cast and still have underdeveloped characters I get a bit miffed.

[Vermachtnis]

Emily does have some backstory, she's the daughter of Ronnie Bell and Mose from Suikoden 1.

I have no idea who those two are

Seriously though, I probably missed a lot by not playing those two. Like that person Sharon knows. But they are like way expensive.

[Jiro]

I like having a larger sized roster. Suikoden is a bit too much for me though, because some characters I want to use have to be benched because of party numbers.

That is why I like it when you have sections where two or more parties are necessary. It gives me a chance to use characters I wanted to, but couldn't.