How many party members should a JRPG have?

[Lightchao42]

Throughout the long history of JRPGs, the numbers of characters has varied drastically depending on the needs of the plot and gameplay. Final Fantasy has ranged from four characters to fourteen characters. Just from the games I played, Xenoblade Chronicles has seven, Xenoblade Chronicles 2 has five, and Dragon Quest XI and Octopath Traveler have eight each.

But what do you think is the best option? What is the best middle ground between having too little variety and being too bloated? Of course the answer can vary depending on the circumstances (like the battle system, how the plot is structured, etc.), so there is no correct answer, but it can be fun to think about.

[Fabulously Olivier]

I'm of the mind that 7-10 characters is the ideal cast size for a JRPG. Less than 7, and I'll often run into situations where I have to use a character I dislike to fill a mechanical need.

 

Case in point, YS VIII. Wonderful game. Great story. Great gameplay. Great soundtrack. Brought me to tears on multiple occassions. However, because they only have 6 party members and strictly divide them into 3 damage types, while heavily incentivizing you to have one of each damage type in your party, I was locked into having one of the only two party members I did not like (Sahad and Ricotta) to fill the Strike damage type. I liked all four other cast members immensely.

[MisterIceTeaPeach]

It depends if the game gives the opportunity to let them use all.

Trails in the Sky 3rd has up to 16 playable characters and they are all usable since the game forces to be used.

 

[Magical Glace]

Honestly so long as there's no situations like DQVII where the game has four open slots but five party members (not counting Kiefer since he leaves permanently), forcing you to awkwardly leave out exactly one person.  I feel like if there's going to be customization and choosing party members you should have a decent amount of variety to choose from. 

But something like DQVIII where you get exactly four (except the 3DS version) and those four are going to be in combat at all times is also a valid design philosophy.  

[vanguard333]

It depends on how the JRPG is structured. If the game can encourage the player to switch frequently between the different characters depending on what they're going to be up against, then it can go ahead and have plenty of characters. If odds are that the player is going to be sticking with one group of characters for the whole game, then it should probably have a very small number of party members. 

 

To be honest, part of me has always found it weird when RPGs give you more characters than you can actually use. I get it in terms of variety and replay value, but I have all these characters travelling together and fighting together; why can't I use all of them? It's just something that bugs me personally and hurts my immersion, but only to a small extent. 

[Fabulously Olivier]

7 minutes ago, vanguard333 said:

It depends on how the JRPG is structured. If the game can encourage the player to switch frequently between the different characters depending on what they're going to be up against, then it can go ahead and have plenty of characters. If odds are that the player is going to be sticking with one group of characters for the whole game, then it should probably have a very small number of party members. 

 

To be honest, part of me has always found it weird when RPGs give you more characters than you can actually use. I get it in terms of variety and replay value, but I have all these characters travelling together and fighting together; why can't I use all of them? It's just something that bugs me personally and hurts my immersion, but only to a small extent. 

I think the fix to that is pretty simple. Have the remaining party members serve as logistical support or resource gatherers. You could send them off on timed passive missions to gain xp and resources. Or you could have them as background actors that randomly buff your party, attack enemies, etc. (like Futaba in Persona 5).

[Rezzy]

I feel 5-6 is a nice number. Get above 8 and the character development of each can suffer or you get tediously long dialogue where 2-3 characters are chiming in with nothing of value to say just so they get a word in.

[BergelomeuSantos]

I'd say at least 8/7 is good enough for most games as it gives some customization but nothing overwhelming, while a focused 'max deploy' (normally 4) is also really valid.

Still, it really depends on the game. Some games can work well with 16 characters, others not. Simple as that.

Edited April 30, 2020 by BergelomeuSantos

[Azz]

It definitely depends on the game and how it is structured but personally I find 6-7 to be the best number as it fits both the typically 3-4 active party structure that most rpgs tend to go for and each character has the ability to get decent development while also letting the obvious main characters to have their spotlight without detracting from the supporting cast.

8-9 can also work but tend to push it a bit much imo and more than 10 is a bit overkill imo and this is where some characters outright seem filler for the sake of it. The only game I've seen do 10+ characters is FF6 (having 14, and even then, some like Umaro and Gogo seem unnecessary which I suppose makes sense since they are optional...).

Smaller casts of 3-5 are cool too but I find that can sometimes be restricting imo.

[Punished Dayni]

So, you're on about total. I was thinking about in combat and in my opinion? 3-member combat tends to disappoint me and I've always preferred to have more than that.

Outside of FE, I'm usually okay with there being more than 5 or 6. I mean, I can certainly live with larger casts too, but I'm pretty sure about 7-8 being done well in most of the stuff I've finished.

[Pengaius]

Ideally 9-10 characters is what I'd like, but I understand that some people prefer smaller cast sizes. The 9-10 works best for a 70 hour RPG like FFVII (OG, not the shortened remake) A game should have 1 character for every 8ish hours of game. Of course this is different for every game, my favourite JRPG Dragon Quest 9, has 1 silent protagonist and all other party members are also silent, but DQ9 gets a lot of mileage out of its supporting cast. 

[Hanes]

I like 4 or 5, but 3 is bad IMO. I wish there was a "4-5" option but oh well.

I like FFIV-VI but the three party members really bothered me in FFVII

EDIT: I misunderstood the question, I thought it was about how many party members should be active at a single moment in your team. Not how many characters.

I like FFIV's cast just fine and I feel VI is way too large since some characters are not developed much or are clearly very meme units.

FFV on the other hand as too few characters but they are more developed and I don't know if I like that less, equally or more. And as of now, FFVII's cast seems to bejust the right size.

Edited April 30, 2020 by This boi uses Nino

[Acacia Sgt]

Clearly the best answer is to go solo like in the first Dragon Quest.

On a serious note, I feel like a good number to me would be somewhat between 5 and 10.

Edited April 30, 2020 by Acacia Sgt

[ciphertul]

A very hard question, More characters the more you can experiment but the more you’ll likely have a few ringers. Like Tales of Symphonia I rarely ever used anyone outside of my main party, and that even holds true when I played Persona 5 too. But I think the more characters it has the better it does. You could always pull a Star Ocean faithlessness and have all party members fighting or even like Infinite Undiscovery and have multiple partys 

[Gregster101]

5-6 seems like a good number to me, though 7 also seems good.

[vanguard333]

2 hours ago, Etheus said:

I think the fix to that is pretty simple. Have the remaining party members serve as logistical support or resource gatherers. You could send them off on timed passive missions to gain xp and resources. Or you could have them as background actors that randomly buff your party, attack enemies, etc. (like Futaba in Persona 5).

I have yet to play Persona 5, but I suppose the latter could work. The problem I see with the former is that it would have to account for moments in the story where specific characters are essential for plot reasons. 

[Fabulously Olivier]

13 minutes ago, vanguard333 said:

I have yet to play Persona 5, but I suppose the latter could work. The problem I see with the former is that it would have to account for moments in the story where specific characters are essential for plot reasons. 

I think we can take it one step further.

 

Not only can each party member have a Backup Skill, allowing you to strategically select your unused characters, there could also be a character swap mechanic like we see in RPGs such as Persona, Tales of Berseria, etc.

[vanguard333]

3 minutes ago, Etheus said:

I think we can take it one step further.

 

Not only can each party member have a Backup Skill, allowing you to strategically select your unused characters, there could also be a character swap mechanic like we see in RPGs such as Persona, Tales of Berseria, etc.

That could definitely work. I can certainly see a lot of strategic uses that could have. That could work well. 

[Azure the Scale Tipper]

10 minutes ago, Etheus said:

I think we can take it one step further.

 

Not only can each party member have a Backup Skill, allowing you to strategically select your unused characters, there could also be a character swap mechanic like we see in RPGs such as Persona, Tales of Berseria, etc.

Didn’t Final Fantasy 10 have that, too?

[Fabulously Olivier]

Just now, Azure loves his Half Elves said:

Didn’t Final Fantasy 10 have that, too?

(I'm not a Final Fantasy fan. Though I do love the 7 remake).

[Zapp Branniglenn]

In a traditional, turn based rpg, I generally prefer a cast size of 6 or 7 with an active party of 3 members. And not be one of those games where a "lead character" is un-removable from the party because that really stunts possibilities for team composition. Those main character types tend to be a jack of all trades with nothing unique besides some overpowered late game ability. When you get near double digits you start to ask individual party members "why are you still here? Don't you have a life to go back to? Is watching me race chocobos and gamble in Disc 3 that fun for you?" Your party members need solid motivation and rapport with each other in order to believe that they're putting their lives on the line for the team. And a smaller cast of characters with defined strengths and weaknesses keeps one from over-shadowing another going for the same niche.

I also like in a jrpg when you're tasked with splitting up the party into two or three groups. These sequences can really justify the massive casts of characters. As well as temporary guest characters, but it's rarely done well due to the player having to juggle a finite amount of equipment or other things like the Espers of FF6. If you have to split up the party regularly, then it makes sense to have several party members with similar strengths and weaknesses.

 

Edited April 30, 2020 by Glennstavos

[Azure the Scale Tipper]

14 minutes ago, Etheus said:

(I'm not a Final Fantasy fan. Though I do love the 7 remake).

(I wanna get in on that too, actually.)

[Ika Musume]

I would say that 3-4 is tried and true, fits well in a battle screen, isn't too much people to level and equip, and I'm super biased because the Mother games have four party members in each and they hit the closest to home for me out of any game ever made. Also, if you can see all of your party members on the overworld, after 4 it starts to look a little crazy.

[ping]

22 minutes ago, Azure loves his Half Elves said:

Didn’t Final Fantasy 10 have that, too?

Yep, as a free action. I sometimes start with Rikku just to swap in Auron and have him use one of his debuff abilities right at the start of the fight.

at topic: 5-6 seems fine. If they're customizable, I don't think it's a problem if there's no backup characters, so 3-4 is good in that case. Especially if you can constantly swap abilities around - from a pure gameplay perspective, the original FF7 could've done with just Cloud/Barret/Tifa/Aeris for the entire game.

[Reality]

JRPG - I tend to prefer 3-4 as a party limit for a normal turn based RPG, and 6-8 if it's a Dungeon Crawler like Etrian Odyssey or Wizardry - anything larger should be saved for Tactics games rather than normal RPGs because I will just bench people at that point.