Auron from FFX is the ultimate badass. Dude is so calm almost the entire game and annihilates any enemies in his way. Nothing beats a character with a huge sword
Grobyc from Chrono Cross has such a sweet design. He’s a cyborg assassin that you encounter at a few points in the story and he eventually joins your party and is such a powerhouse.
Morag from Xenoblade Chronicles 2 is probably my favorite tank in the entire game and her blade, Brighid, have such great designs and they’re totally vital to surviving in combat.
Do demons from Shin Megami Tensei count? My favourite of the early demons you meet is Pixie. Her simple look combined with her friendly personality in most of the games leads me to be quite enamored by her charm, and I almost despair when I have to fuse her. Her early specialization into Zio and other elemental spells makes her incredibly useful, but you’re gonna want to be careful around enemies that use physical.
Two and a half decades later and I’m still furious at Star Ocean Second Story making me choose between Ashton and Opera. I don’t think it was possible to recruit them both in a single playthrough? Recruiting one precluded the other. I used to have the printed strategy guide for this game, I played through it a good half dozen times or more … I should do it again …
Magilou in Tales of Berseria. I love freak party members, just absolute pieces of garbage who cause problems or are just utterly bizarre, and an ambiguously elfish clown girl with severe nihilism who constantly betrays the team while doing extremely cheesy and obnoxious bits is high on that list. A lot of JRPG parties tend to bore me because they get too normal, outside of maybe one or two weirdos who are genuinely weird and not just a normal character but Cat (cough red xiii), but Berseria was especially good at loading you up with freaks and assholes and this awful clown girl is at the peak of the freak mountain. She’s terrible and I love her.
And if I may be bold, I would like to argue that Slitterhead is a JRPG because you can level up characters and they form a party (airtight logic) so now I can throw out these weirdos: Anita, the apathetic prostitute who ends up joining the slitterhead hunting party because they’re getting in the way of her paying rent, Edo, a former boxer turned homeless guy who knows where all the rich people dumpsters are, and Betty, an elderly English woman who thinks faeries are real and your player character (Night Owl, a spirit without memories possessing people) is one, and also fights things with a blood cane, has a berserker form, can put other people in a berserker form, turn pools of blood into spike traps, might have taken a hostage at some point in the past, and craved the initials for God Save The Queen into her hand after meeting Queen Elizabeth once and scolded the would to make it into a permanent tattoo.
If you have not played Slitterhead, please do, it is bonkers (I didn’t even get to Alex, the guy who can turn people into time bombs)
Oh yeah, they count and while we’re at it, shout-out Jack-o’-lantern and Surf. Both provide ridiculous amounts of firepower at different points in the game
Fuck fuck fuck I just went to a game store last night and could’ve picked up a copy of this game. I really need to just pull the damn trigger because these character designs are EXCELLENT
Slitterhead is now on my wishlist. All of that sounds absolutely bananas.
Also, I’ll trade you a clown girl for your clown girl - Harle a French-accented clown from Chrono Cross who actually a Dragon God in disguise and develops a romantic interest in the main character, Serge.
Oh definitely do, I cannot recommend it enough. It starts out as such a cozy JRPG and gradually grows in scope to this epic space opera when OH FUCK, OH MAN, OH NO!
One of the best aspects is that every town has the option for “Private Actions” which splits the party up so you can see what the other characters get up to when you’re not around. It’s a nice way to develop the story and also see the characters develop interpersonal relationships with each other as well. It makes them all so memorable, they still stand out in my mind all these years later.
If she’s not doing a bit that makes nobody laugh, she’s betraying the party in some extremely obvious way because she hates everyone and everything (including herself) and the entire party just doesn’t care. Like, at all. It’s just what they expect her to do when she isn’t being annoying. It helps there’s only, like, two well adjusted people in the party, and the rest include a blood knight himbo, our extremely edgy bisexual female lead who has a giant monster hand that eats other monsters, and a literal child slave homunculous that was introduced being used as a suicide bomb.
Berseria is freak central, not just in terms of the characters being weird beings, but just being weird to their very core.
There’s a lot hate for Amarant because he doesn’t add fucking anything to that story, but he’s soooooooooo useful. He has an ability that casts Regen and Auto-Life and when he’s in Trance he can use it on the whole party
What’s incredible about Auron is how the whole of FFX is just one long redemption arc for him, when you realise that he’s been on this journey before, done it all and was completely humiliated at the end, only to pick himself up and basically orchestrate the ultimate revenge while telling nobody a thing.
What I’m saying is that FFX could have easily been about him, and X-2 about Tidus and the gang, and X-2 could have been X-3 only it would have Lulu in it because we were ROBBED with the real X-2
I will always have a soft spot for the Persona 3 party members, specifically Junpei, Aigis, and Yukari (since they were the team I used the most). I remember the first time I played Persona 3, the game’s presentation really blew me away. I was really sold on the world, that it was a simulation of a small slice of a real city, that the people in it had real schedules and lives (I was young, but I still feel this way when I play P3). Part of what sold me on that were the party members. They had their own lives and goals, and they also controlled themselves in battle. I could only offer suggestions, never totally control their actions, and it made them feel more like teammates I worked with rather than resources I could strategize around. In particular, I’m a big fan of Aigis. Her “robot learning to become human” arc is nothing new or groundbreaking, but it added some variety, levity, and heart to Persona 3’s world and story that I really appreciated (I also really loved Karen Strassman’s performance).
I’d also add basically the entire party of Metaphor Re:Fantazio to this list. Not to be a complete Atlus fanboy but that’s my favorite RPG party ever. I’d love to talk about them more in detail but I don’t want to spoil anything.
such a great combo
and while we’re at it, shout-out Jack-o’-lantern and Surf. Both provide ridiculous amounts of firepower at different points in the game
