Why 3 party members???

[Drake Teglen]

In the original Final Fantasy, you had the option of using four party members, which gave you a great way to balance out your team with muscle, magic, and support. In FF4, the character number was raised up to 5, which added even more diversity, although there wasn't much choice on the player's part of which members to use. In every other FF game up through FF6, the player could use four party members as well. There were so many to choose from in 6 that I often had a tough time choosing only four.

Then came FFVII, which dropped the party member limit down to only three. The tradition continued in FF8, and since there were very few characters to begin with, and they really weren't that diverse in terms of battle, three seemed like an okay number.

Then I overjoyed at the limit being raised back to four party members in FFIX. This again allowed a good mix in a party, and again the characters were very diverse, and not everybody could use the same spells and such. Then with more technology and better graphics again came a lower number of party members in FFX. The ability to switch in mid-battle was nice, but I would have preferred to use four and not switch them out mid-battle.

Now with FFXII on the radar, it appears the three character limit remains in place. Now after all this rambling, my question is WHY THREE? I dislike having to limit my party to this few, and I feel that the classic four member party should make a comeback.

I realize that one reason they limit to three is that the battles might be too easy, but that's a design flaw they can remedy. I'm not sure how diverse the characters' abilities will be in FFXII, as it is difficult to tell from the demo, but I hope they are not all the same like in FFVIII.

Now before any FFVIII fanboys/girls jump on me about that, just think about it. Every character can use every spell. That severely limits diversity in character building. I think mages should use magic and fighters should fight and hybrids should at least be limited in what they can use.

Ok, so thoughts on my rant...?

[LocoColt04]

I believe they initially went with three characters upon the arrival of FFVII simply because of the new technology. I don't know how much testing they may have done with four active characters. Maybe they just felt like a change? In any case, there weren't too many characters in VII or VIII, as you mentioned...

...and there were only seven characters in X as well. There aren't many characters in XII either -- at least not many main characters that have been featured in all of these promotional videos we keep seeing.

With fewer characters, three makes sense; plus, three characters makes the game a little bit more difficult than having four characters would. It means utilizing more strategy. Granted, the games have gotten progressively easier over the years (for the most part), but with any luck, FFXII will be difficult.

Unless there's a press release from Square floating around on the internet somewhere, we're not going to know why they dropped from four to three, though.

[Lordofdragons]

i liked the four party formation in the early FF games and in FF9,
it allows for more stratagy in battle. i likey the FF9 battle and class system
very well. i dont know why they put it down to three party members, it could be because it would make battles 2 easy or it could be because that there are not enough skills and if there were four chars they would be 2 similar.

[Chez Daja]

I always thought FFVIII used three characters in each party because there six characters, and six divided by half, as we all know, is three.

I thought that was the reason for other FF games as well, but then again, I haven't played all of them, so I may just be talking absolute bullshit.

Yeah, this is what I originally thought, though.

[Thunduga]

I think the characters were reduced to three cuz of the better technology Square used after ff6.i liked the four character mode.i had a difficult time choosing which characters to pick in ff6,there was no way i was going to pick Gau.

I dont know about ff12, in 1 screenshot i saw three characters in a party and in another i saw a party of four

[Crazy Chocobo]

I prefer using three characters in battle instead of four, it's more of a challenge that way. It makes you think a lot more and make you cautious about everything you do. I prefer having the challenge. Having 4 or more characters in battle is great too but it makes it a lot easier if you have them all attacking at once. I found VI easy most of the time because you could have more than three characters in battle. Either way, it's all good.

[Maridia]

Well the earlier ones give you more than 3 usually. But as they became 3-D they established they like 3 characters in a fighting team. Which I'm happy with as well. You can do just as much but with less, and also less managing. I like being able to be straegic with who i choose and not have all the members just waiting on my team because of lack of choices.

[Wolf]

I agree with Setzer. Just thought I would make up a list.

Max Characters fighting in battle at a time:

FFI = 4
FFII = 4
FFIII = 4
FFIV = 5
FFV = 4
FFVI = 4
FFVII = 3
FFVIII = 3
FFIX = 4
FFX = 3
FFX-2 = 3
FFXII = 3? <---- In the demo its three, but in some screenshots I've seen four characters in the party.