The Like/Hate Thread

[Ashe]

I agree. Its one of the things I liked most about FFIV. It didn't force me to level 6 other fairly irrelevant characters to keep them up to par "just in case I want to get a secret item from a boss just for the character being there" or to see some special version of the same conversation. It kept those characters up to par and manually switched around with the story. The change to VI involving too many characters and most useless (and again in VII and the others, or even Chrono Cross being an extreme example of this) detracted, for me. IX was kinda a blend between the two styles on that front, but I really really enjoyed the storyline and the way it was told. Even if people felt (justifiably) that Zidane was a ripoff Saiyan story, I liked his whole adamance about helping people, and Dagger was awesome as well. Just everyone had this great "purpose" story, to me, like the black mage.