I tended to be underlevelled, so using a party of mostly later characters served to deal with this a little bit since I’d be like oh, the character who has just joined is 5 levels higher than me. Whoops. In my party you go!
This makes a lot of sense! It had slipped my mind as a reason one might choose to use particular characters, but it's the reason I replaced Rinoa with Irvine on my first Final Fantasy VIII playthrough; Irvine was at a higher level because he'd joined the party later. I love the weird party you ended up with as a result.
When I was writing this entry, Final Fantasy was the only series coming to mind in which I had to choose a party; I was kicking myself when I realised I'd forgotten Persona! Might as well post my own parties here:
Persona 3: protagonist, Akihiko, Yukari, Mitsuru. As you mention, Mitsuru's AI is a bit dodgy, but I kept her in my party because I liked her character!
Persona 4: protagonist, Yosuke, Kanji, Yukiko. Yosuke and Kanji are my favourites, and then I like everyone else pretty equally (except Teddie); I mainly use Yukiko because she's a good healer.
Persona 5: Joker, Ryuji, Makoto, Ann. For the final term, I switched to Joker, Ryuji, Makoto, Akechi; I don't use Akechi when he first joins the party, but he becomes much more fun after he shows his true colours.
I definitely seem to lean towards just choosing characters I like in the Persona games, possibly because all the characters tend to have unique strengths, so it's rarer for one character to make another redundant (whereas I wouldn't have e.g. Garnet and Eiko in the same party in Final Fantasy IX).
Ship-wise, honestly, I think any of my Persona parties could work as an OT4, with the possible exception of Joker/Ryuji/Makoto/Akechi; I don't think Akechi would consider Ryuji worth his time. (Sorry, Ryuji. I still love you.)
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This makes a lot of sense! It had slipped my mind as a reason one might choose to use particular characters, but it's the reason I replaced Rinoa with Irvine on my first Final Fantasy VIII playthrough; Irvine was at a higher level because he'd joined the party later. I love the weird party you ended up with as a result.
When I was writing this entry, Final Fantasy was the only series coming to mind in which I had to choose a party; I was kicking myself when I realised I'd forgotten Persona! Might as well post my own parties here:
Persona 3: protagonist, Akihiko, Yukari, Mitsuru. As you mention, Mitsuru's AI is a bit dodgy, but I kept her in my party because I liked her character!
Persona 4: protagonist, Yosuke, Kanji, Yukiko. Yosuke and Kanji are my favourites, and then I like everyone else pretty equally (except Teddie); I mainly use Yukiko because she's a good healer.
Persona 5: Joker, Ryuji, Makoto, Ann. For the final term, I switched to Joker, Ryuji, Makoto, Akechi; I don't use Akechi when he first joins the party, but he becomes much more fun after he shows his true colours.
I definitely seem to lean towards just choosing characters I like in the Persona games, possibly because all the characters tend to have unique strengths, so it's rarer for one character to make another redundant (whereas I wouldn't have e.g. Garnet and Eiko in the same party in Final Fantasy IX).
Ship-wise, honestly, I think any of my Persona parties could work as an OT4, with the possible exception of Joker/Ryuji/Makoto/Akechi; I don't think Akechi would consider Ryuji worth his time. (Sorry, Ryuji. I still love you.)