Zeckt said:
That freakish pink animal thing in Xenogears. The game tries so hard to be serious all the time, but do they realize the main character is followed by a freakish girly carebear / muppet thing?!
Yeah, Chu-chu is kind of ridiculous, but I found it quite useful actually, especially when it grows to gear size - it has a healing spell that works on gears (and is strong enough when Chu-chu enlarges to make it worth using), and it doesn't have to worry about fuel; it comes in especially handy at the last boss when fighting the pillar of Deus that spams AoE fuel drains and uses high-damage attacks.
Anyway, back on topic:
Final Fantasy: I don't use Black Mages - spell damage doesn't scale as well as weapon damage, and their weapon damage is pitiful because of low STR, low Hit, and poor weapon selection. In the middle of the game, when their offensive spells are actually useful, Red Mages have access to those spells, and in the end-game, they're only really useful for their buffs, which are available to red mages AND ninja.
Final Fantasy 2: Not that they give you any choice in the matter, but several of the "fourth-slot" characters are lackluster.
Final Fantasy 4: Again, at least on the SNES version, you have no real say as to who's in your party. Nevertheless, I don't like having to use Edward. Tellah's kind of meh the second time he joins up, as well.
Final Fantasy 6: I don't use Gau very much, because I don't feel like investing the time farming to good rages - even if he is incredibly exploitable if you put in the effort. Relm gets skipped because of low weapon damage potential, and because I first played the SNES version, wherein here signature command, which was already not very useful, had a tendency to glitch the game. Umaro gets passed over because I have no desire for an uncontrolled character.
Final Fantasy 7: Cait Sith gets benched because I don't like the character design and I don't care for his limit breaks, and those are the only real reasons to pick one character over another. Yuffie suffers a similar fate.
Dragon Warrior 3: I never use Goof-Offs/Jesters because to me, turning one into Sage without needing a Book of Satori is simply not worth putting up with it for 20 levels first. And I skip merchants because I don't particularly care about increased item and gold drops.
Final Fantasy Tactics: I don't use monsters. Period. They simply lack the versatility that I want in my characters, even if they DO compensate with absolutely ridiculous damage output growth. I ignore Cloud as well, because it takes too much work to make him viable, and even then he still can't compete with most other special characters.
Chrono Cross: Between characters with ridiculous character designs, characters with poor element grid growth, and characters who are clearly jokes, I bench probably 3/4 of the game's cast.
Paladin's Quest, Lennus 2: Both games have large numbers of companion characters, but they're all basically mercenaries who you explicitly hire to join your party. Because there are so many, I can't recall which ones I skipped - though I can say that everyone I skipped was because they were inferior, either in gear selection or spell list, than the ones already in my party.
Mass Effect: I like my parties to have a balance between tech, biotic, and combat abilities, so different characters get benched depending on my class - for example, my soldier completely ignored Ashley (and let her die, in fact).
Mass Effect 2: Legion doesn't get used a lot, because I tend to postpone the derelict reaper mission as long as possible, so I usually only have him available for two missions.
