No, I don't want his mopey ass in my party!

[Jowy]

I always kept a save right when Cloud was diagnosed with materia poisoning just because of how much more I enjoyed Cid running the show. Hell, wonder what FF7 would be like if you just started as Cid post-rocket incident and joined with AVALANCHE to get back at Shinra for totally screwing you out of your dream in life with Cloud as just a side-character. Probably would be the GOAT FF game.

Anyway, Cid for general badassery, Yuffie to load down with materia + Conformer and spam Doom of The Living and Morph, and Barret for more badassery.

[Jiro]

cloud was a badass. dont care if he was wimpy for a while. he got cooler anyway.

[Sylvie]

cloud was a badass. dont care if he was wimpy for a while. he got cooler anyway.

[DarkBahamut]

If you are going for multiple hit limit breaks, then:

Cid, Barret, and....Cloud would still be in there.

[Sylvie]

You could add Tifa in there. If you get into the sexy-vibe groove of her slots game, you can pull off all of them for exciting damage.

[Wolf Kanno]

I find it amusing how practical everyone is being. I mean I used Chrono Trigger as an example of a game that allowed you to remove the main character and yet Crono is pretty much heads and shoulders above the others in terms of usefulness. I feel everyone kind of missed the point of this thread but whatever.

[Mercen-X]

Chrono Cross' New Game + gave you the Relief Charm to have any character you liked (or just any character you'd neglected) fill in for Serge/Lynx during battle. It technically bothers me that you can't replace Serge outright. I use Norris as my Relief because he's one of my favorite characters. When I try to enter the Viper Manor when it's taken over by the Porre Army, I can't because Norris isn't ACTUALLY in my party. So I've got to walk back out and do the swappy, then hit the nearest RoF to swappy again so that when I fight the next battle, I won't have to see the main character I'd already been stuck with for an entire playthrough. You might say this statement contradicts one I made in a thread in GSE called Chrono Crossers wherein I noted I liked Lynx more than Serge (matter of fact, on a list of 15 favorites, Serge doesn't even appear because I hate his outfit).

For a remake, Square could give us at least that much.

[Madame Adequate]

FF7 is one of the few games where I don't mind having the main character forced on me, because Cloud is a severely powerful badass.