Feb 15 2009
Partymember Juggling
One thing that I’ve never been good at with RPGs is juggling partymembers when you have a limited party setting. I get attached to certain members of the party and use them more often than anyone else, which causes some partymembers to never level up. For the brief amount of time I played Final Fantasy X, I remember you could swap partymembers out during battle as long as the member was still alive. That would really fix my problem with FF7. So far, I keep Cloud and Aerith in my party constantly. I don’t think I’m allowed to swap out Cloud anyway, but I’ve gotten attached to Aerith because she’s such a great magic caster. I’m going to be so sad when she’s gone. (Oh God… what will I do without her Healing Wave Limit Break???)
But for the time being, I can’t decide who to keep in my third slot. Tifa is a good fighter, but for some reason she seems to draw in attacks. I feel like I’m healing her all the time. I don’t like Barrett because he’s too one-sided in combat for me. Red XIII was okay the one time I used him, and after one combat session with Cait Sith, he may be benched the rest of the game unless I risk using him again and find he’s a great magic caster. I’ve never used Yuffie once. I really want to try her out, but her HP is so low I’m afraid I’ll be healing her more often than I do Tifa. I know I should just play some risks to find out who will be best as a magic caster after Aerith and who will fill the third slot best. I just hate getting the GAME OVER music and wondering where I saved last.
Infinite Undiscovery had a unique way of compounding this problem. Instead of giving me five to seven people to juggle around, it threw fifteen people at me to sort into three parties of five. I gave up learning who anyone was. I sorted the parties to give each one a swordsman, a healer, and a range fighter. Everyone else was sorted into, um, okay fine you go here, you go here, and who are you again? I only played around twelve hours of the game before I quit and sold it, so I can’t imagine how many more people I would have had to sort by the end of the game. From what I’ve played of Last Remnant so far, there are also a ton of partymembers to sort into groups, but the game also as an RTS aspect to it, so that schematic works for it a little better.
So far, I haven’t had this issue with Lost Odyssey. I have five partymembers, and they all have a spot in combat. I’m supposed to go recruit a couple more immortals, so I’m rather curious if they will all fit in my party as well or if I have to make a Sophie’s choice. In that case, one of the little annoying kids is GONE.
