Best Party member

[Wolf Kanno]

This has nothing to do with personality, this is all about game mechanics and so the question is, who is the games best character?

I'm going to have to give it to Rydia in most of the versions but for the DS version its Cecil by a long shot since he can take advantage of the Augments way better and becomes a powerhouse early on.

Rydia is just great cause her offensive magic is wonderful and once you get her high powered summons, she makes dungeon crawling a breeze and is a formidable enemy in boss fights. Its a shame she been nerfed in the DS version with her summons having longer cast times and costing more MP.

Kain gets an honorable mention as well cause his simple design is lethal. its just a shame he spends most of the game brainwashed.

[The Man]

i think trotsky is a pretty cool guy. eh opposes stalin and doesnt afraid of anything.

...oh, wrong Party. FuSoYa was awesome for the brief amount of time you had him in your party, purely because having a character who could cast so much magic was awesome. Other than that I liked Lydia, Edge and Cain for varying reasons. Lydia was probably the best of the three, although Cain’s ability to jump was useful against certain bosses who dealt frequent damage.

[Roogle]

Tellah was pretty effective as the sole magic user for a few dungeons in the middle of the game.

It is unfortunate that he has a limit of 90 MP.

My favorite party member was Rydia. As a character in the Final Fantasy series, she tends to be unique as she is a Summoner with Black Magic as opposed to a Summoner with White Magic.

[Storm]

It's so hard to identify who the best party member is in FFIV, because of all Final Fantasy games it's one of the few where you really need every single party member to play a role in the battle (notable exceptions being Edward and Yang to a certain extent).

I think Rosa is a little underated. Without constantly casting cure, wall when necessary, and removing irritating status ailments, you would be totally screwed. And although her attack power is pathetic, it's amazing when she finally learns Holy (I think it was called "White" in the original version) towards the end of the game (especially with how difficult some of the battles in Lunar Subterranean are).

[Clo]

I really liked Cain, because I'm a fan of Dragoons in battle. The jump technique is useful a lot of the time, especially during battles that have bosses that do a lot of damage at one time to the entire party.

[Vermachtnis]

I'm going with Rosa. This was one of the few Final Fantasy games where buffs and debuffs were needed. Slow and Haste especially; smurf you Demon Wall, smurf you! Plus keeping everyone else from dieing was pretty nice too. She even brought them back when the enemies cheated and killed them somehow. Also with the Augment system in DS she is mean! Dualcast+Pierce+Omni Casting means you can have Reflect and Haste up on everyone in the same turn. And you can keep healing them with Reflect up.

[Rase]

Kain, since with proper timing he can wipe out Zeromus singlehandedly.

[Roogle]

There is a point in the game where Cecil, Kain, and Edge try to leave Rosa and Rydia behind before going to the final battle on the moon.

I imagine that if they had truly been left behind that the final party consist of Cecil, Kain, Edge, FuSoYa, and Golbez. That would mean that FuSoYa would have to act as the healer with his limited MP pool, and there is no way that he can compare statistically to Rosa.

The party lineup would require that someone, likely Golbez, be placed in the back row alongside FuSoYa.

Golbez had the following skills in Final Fantasy IV: The After Years:

Attack
Provoke
Pressure
Black Magic
Item

Provoke draws enemy attacks towards Golbez; Pressure paralyzes a single target. Golbez can equip many types of weaponry and armor including heavy armor making him quite a formidable opponent.

Rydia and Rosa technically could have been replaced, I suppose, but they're very important to me.

[black orb]

>>> Dark Knight Cecil..

[RedPouch]

Rydia is just great cause her offensive magic is wonderful and once you get her high powered summons, she makes dungeon crawling a breeze and is a formidable enemy in boss fights. Its a shame she been nerfed in the DS version with her summons having longer cast times and costing more MP.

I'd argue that she was more useful in the DS version of the game because without her spells, going through the final dungeon would be a pain in the ass. I'm mostly referring to stop [lets you deal with Silver, Gold, and Blue Dragons with relative ease]. I first went through the final dungeon in the high 40's on the DS version if I remember right.

[NeoCracker]

Edge was a damn beast. Haste + Berserk, my god the shear number of attacks. O_O

[Roogle]

I'd argue that she was more useful in the DS version of the game because without her spells, going through the final dungeon would be a pain in the ass. I'm mostly referring to stop [lets you deal with Silver, Gold, and Blue Dragons with relative ease]. I first went through the final dungeon in the high 40's on the DS version if I remember right.

The Super Nintendo version and the Nintendo DS version of the game have the same type of monsters in the final dungeon. For the most part, all of the status immunities and weaknesses carried over from the older game to the newer game. You are able to cast Stop on the different types of dragons in the final dungeon in every version of the game, so you would be able to duplicate your feat on the other console, too!

[RedPouch]

The Super Nintendo version and the Nintendo DS version of the game have the same type of monsters in the final dungeon. For the most part, all of the status immunities and weaknesses carried over from the older game to the newer game. You are able to cast Stop on the different types of dragons in the final dungeon in every version of the game, so you would be able to duplicate your feat on the other console, too!

That's true but those monsters I mentioned are so much easier in the other versions that there's no point in doing fancy stuff. It's basically your typical RPG scenario where casting things like Petrify/Death/etc is useless because you can kill the monster in 1-2 hits anyways.

[Roogle]

It's basically your typical RPG scenario where casting things like Petrify/Death/etc is useless because you can kill the monster in 1-2 hits anyways.

I agree. The difficulty for the older versions of the game is so low that you might as well just attack it and let it die. I was glad that the Nintendo DS version of the game increased damage done to your party by the enemies and increased their various parameters across the board.

[Depression Moon]

<span style="font: 16px Candara, Skia, Corbel, 'Trebuchet MS', Georgia, Geneva, Helvetica, Lucida, 'Lucida Grande', Arial, sans-serif; color: #38bcee;">i think trotsky is a pretty cool guy. eh opposes stalin and doesnt afraid of anything.

...oh, wrong Party. FuSoYa was awesome for the brief amount of time you had him in your party, purely because having a character who could cast so much magic was awesome. Other than that I liked Lydia, Edge and Cain for varying reasons. Lydia was probably the best of the three, although Cain’s ability to jump was useful against certain bosses who dealt frequent damage.</span>

You know you typed Lydia right?

For me I only played the PS1 version and from that I found FuSoYa and Rydia to be the strongest. i had thought that Tellah had a low max MP because he was an old man so he would have less stamina, but apparently that doesn't apply to FuSoYa who is old too.