[POLL] WHICH FINAL FANTASY HAD THE BEST CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT SYSTEM?

author=ego
Also, I don't understand when people complain about "sameness" when it comes to character's skills. Frankly, I prefer having the ability to customize skills the way I want so they match my playstyle and so I get to use the characters I like, rather that having to include characters I don't like into my party just because of their skill sets. ff10 had a lot of this. If I needed to get rid of an aerial or mechanical enemy, I had to put Wakka or Rikku in my party, and I found those characters to be annoying. xP

I don't like it because it doesn't reward any sense of forward thinking, creativity, or adaptability. If nobody has any limitations to what they can become or what they can do, the goal just turns into 'make everybody be able to win all the time'.

The difference is whether or not it's viable to have the ability to make everyone identical, whether you actually can or not. Sure yeah, titles like FF4 or FF9 are static, but in titles like FF5, FF10, and FF13, you CAN make everyone identical, but it's generally a dumb stupid idea until the very end of the game.

For example, FF5, sure, you could make a party of all Knights, but the game won't reward you for being so dumb and uncreative and will actually be much easier if you thoughtfully combined your party's abiilities and jobs that complement each other. FF13 is actually the easiest example of this, as it's battle system was specifically designed for Paradigms to play off one another and pretty much told you 'lol dont do this' if you made a party of all Sentinels or Sabotuers or w/e.