Flavor vs. Usefulness

[Realm25]

White Mage is far from mandatory. My current play through is my ONLY play through to use a White Mage, and I'm actually finding it harder this time around.

The easiest team I've EVER used is a Knight Knight Knight Red Wizard. Your three Knights are going to be huge tanks, strong attackers, and light buffers/healers. The Red Wizard will play backup buffer/healer and throw in those nifty elemental spells and so on.

This team is almost cheating it makes the game so easy.

Now I've heard that a FULL Monk/Master team can be devastating. I know a bare naked Monk can be the hardest hitter in the game, but they also take damage extremely badly, and with no spells I just cant see how somebody would play this team.

[theundeadhero]

Nah, it's pretty easy. I played through with four monks a while ago. The monsters die so fast they never have a chance to hit you.

[Chris]

Flavor before anything! Weird parties are the best parties. Standard parties are boring~!

Doesn't playing the standard way feel so trite and abused? There is so much to be explored in the ways of whacked out party dynamics and in the challenges of lacking typically critical elements.

I agree with this post one-hundred percent. Standard parties are only worth trying out the first time around, afterwards, it only becomes mind-numbingly repetitious.

[Garland]

I usually build my parties around a theme or logic. My current party, the first I've played in over a year, is Fighter, Thief, Black Belt, Black Mage, because I wanted the four most damaging classes without doubling up. The other rule for this game is that I never run from battles, but I never stop to level-raise. Always have lots of metagaming going on.

[black orb]

>>> Flavor, I can beat the game with pretty much anything..

[Crossblades]

I'm the type the person who always like to use a balanced party composed of a tank, healer, nuker, and a powerhouse. So a Warrior/Monk/White Mage/Black Mage combo always works for me.

[Laddy]

There's six classes with the custimation of Glenn Beck. Hardly what I call flavor.

[Sefie1999AD]

I usually go for usefulness, but in a biased way. Even though I try to make a party that works well, I often restrict my character choices by not allowing two of the same class, and I clearly use my favorite classes (Fighter and White Mage) the most, and my least favorite class (Black Belt) the least.

[Draniei]

I only played through it a couple times, but the teams I used were as follows:

Fighter, Thief, W. Mage, B. Mage.
Thief, Thief, Fighter, Fighter.
W. Mage, W. Mage, W. Mage, W. Mage. (This one was HARD!)
Fighter, Monk, W. Mage, B. Mage.
Fighter, R. Mage, W. Mage, B. Mage.
Monk, Monk, Monk, Monk.

[Mage_of_Fire]

How do you decide your party? Is it because of arbitrary personal preferences (flavor) or the usefulness of that class?

I tend to be a practical person in my game playing and choose the "best" party. I like Fighter/Fighter/Black Mage/White Mage because of its overall usefulness: badass physical fighters up front, and badass magic users in the back row.

So by what standards do you chose your party?

I either pick the 8-bit Theater party or by preference (or challenge). I hate Black Belts thanks to Dr. Unne, so I never use one of those. I've never been a fan of Red Mages since I love using the most badass, highest levels spells in any game where I play a caster.