CAN YOU HAVE TOO MANY CHARACTERS IN A GAME?

Most Compile Heart games generally throw loads of party members at you, with many of them being functionally identical and only a small handful of them ever having good enough stats to use in your party. But I think a lot of that can be chalked up to most CH games being visual novels with some semblance of an RPG attached, so a lot of characters that had an impact on the story just get dumped into the wagon for all eternity.

Generally, I find that a lot of games that focus on multitudes of characters tend to end up with bloated rosters. And even if it means you're give players options for party composition, most players are going to find the proven formula and stick with the handful of characters that optimize the gameplay experience. I find that RPGs generally work best with fewer characters and tighter mechanics based around them and the battle system.

At some point they just become playable units and not characters. Suikoden and Chrono Cross have so many playable units that most of them are completely devoid of personality, and add nothing to the story.

But if you need them for gameplay reasons, then fine, go ahead. Chrono Cross needed to have 2-3 characters per element on Serge's team, since a typical player would miss about half the characters. And then it needed to have that many again on Lynx's team, because you lost your entire party for story reasons and had to start building a new group of party members.

From a purely story perspective, the more characters you have, the harder it is to make the player care about them. About half the party members in Chrono Cross have no more than five lines of dialogue in the whole game. Many of the ones who do have dialogue are totally uninteresting and simply act as plot devices. Or they have story roles that in any other game would be NPC roles, but then when they're done they just randomly decide to start following you around and fighting for you, and they never speak again. None of this makes for remotely interesting storytelling. The only reason why the game didn't just have recruitable generic units you could buy from a shop is because the party members were designed to be a reward for exploring the world.

I can imagine a version of Chrono Cross where the only playable characters were Serge, Kid, Fargo, Lynx, Harle, and Norris. Gameplay-wise, that causes some major problems, but they're probably solvable problems. Story-wise, it just straight up results in a better game. The temptation is always to add more to your game, because of course you want to add more, creating is what creators do! But most of the time, you make games better by pruning, not adding. It's an instict you need to learn to temper.

Science fact: Suikoden doesn't have any more characters than FF7. It just makes 98 more of the characters join the player's party than FF7.

Tenkai (天魁) Cloud Strife
Tengou (天罡) Tifa Lockheart
Tenki (天機) Barret Wallace
Tenkan (天閒) Aerith Gainsborough
Ten'yuu (天勇) Red XIII
Ten'yuu (天雄) Yuffie Kisaragi
Tenmou (天猛) Cid Highwind
Ten'i (天威) Vincent Valentine
Ten'ei (天英) Cait Sith
Tenki (天貴) Reno
Tenfu (天富) Rude
Tenmen (天滿) Elena
Tenko (天孤) Tseng
Tenshou (天傷) Godo Kisaragi
Tenritsu (天立) Chekov
Tenshou (天捷) Staniv
Ten'an (天暗) Shake
Tenyuu (天祐) Gorki
Tenkuu (天空) Don Corneo
Tensoku (天速) Elmyra Gainsborough
Ten'i (天異) Lucrecia Crescent
Tensatsu (天殺) Butch
Tenbi (天微) Choco Bill
Tenkyuu (天究) Choco Billy
Tentai (天退) Chole
Tenju (天壽) Chocobo Sage
Tenken (天劍) Fort Condor Head Dude
Tenpei (天平) Bugenhagen
Tenzai (天罪) Shinra Tower Receptionist
Tenson (天損) Reeve Tuesti
Tenpai (天敗) Palmer
Tenrou (天牢) Ester
Tensui (天慧) Coates
Tenbou (天暴) Dio
Tenkoku (天哭) Zangan
Tenkou (天巧) Shera
Chikai (地魁) Joe
Chisatsu (地煞) Teioh the Chocobo
Chiyuu (地勇) Priscilla
Chiketsu (地傑) Priscilla's Father
Chiyuu (地雄) Mukki
Chii (地威) Kotch
Chiei (地英) Johnny
Chiki (地奇) Dyne
Chimou (地猛) Snow
Chibun (地文) Lost Number
Chisei (地正) Mayor Domino
Chikatsu (地闊) Deputy Mayor Hart
Chikou (地闔) Heidegger
Chikyou (地強) Scarlet
Chian (地暗) Elder Bughe
Chifu (地輔) Junon Submarine Captain
Chikai (地會) Junon Submarine Private
Chisa (地佐) Holzoff
Chiyou (地佑) Holzoff's Wife
Chirei (地靈) Wall Market Dress Shop Owner
Chiju (地獸) Honeybee Inn Queen
Chibi (地微) Beautiful Bro
Chikei (地慧) Weapon Seller Who Gives You Great Gospel
Chibaku (地暴) Tiger Lily
Chizen (地然) The Dolphin
Chishou (地猖) Cait Sith #2
Chikyou (地狂) Guy Who Are Sick
Chihi (地飛) Nibelheim Lead Researcher
Chisou (地走) Mog
Chikou (地巧) Ifrit
Chimei (地明) Shiva
Chisin (地進) Ramuh
Chitai (地退) Titan
Chiman (地滿) Hades
Chisui (地遂) Typhoon
Chishuu (地周) Kjata
Chiin (地隱) Bahamut
Chii (地異) Neo Bahamut
Chiri (地理) Bahamut-ZERO
Chishun (地俊) Alexander
Chigaku (地樂) Odin
Chishou (地捷) Leviathan
Chisoku (地速) Phoenix
Chichin (地鎮) King Arthur
Chikei (地稽) Lancelot
Chima (地魔) Galahad
Chiyou (地妖) Bedivere
Chiyuu (地幽) Percival
Chifuku (地伏) Gawain
Chihi (地僻) Bone Village Foreman
Chikuu (地空) Baby Condor
Chiko (地孤) Cargo Ship Captain
Chizen (地全) Mideel Doctor
Chitan (地短) Highwind Pilot, Level 10
Chikaku (地角) Goblin
Chishuu (地藏) Cactuar
Chizou (地囚) Snowboarder
Chihei (地平) Professor Gast
Chison (地損) Ifalna
Chido (地奴) Rocket Town's Professional Comedian
Chisatsu (地察) Marlene Wallace
Chiaku (地惡) Old Miner in Kalm
Chishuu (地丑) Midgar Zolom
Chisu (地數) Seto
Chiin (地陰) Kalm Traveler
Chikei (地刑) Shinra Manager
Chisou (地壯) Dark Nation
Chiretsu (地劣) Biggs
Chiken (地健) Wedge
Chikou (地耗) Jessie
Chizoku (地賊) Zack Fair
Chikou (地狗) Sephiroth

Man. Imagine if all of those characters joined your team in FF7 though. It would feel exactly like a Suikoden game. And would add basically nothing to the story whatsoever, aside from forcing the developers to give some of them names.

Yeah, I guess. To really feel like Suikoden you'd probably have to add even more throwaway characters. 50% of the scenes that involve the main cast would need to be rewritten to involve new characters instead, doing the same things that the main cast did and saying the same things they said in the original version of FF7.

Like when you got to Wall Market, it would be someone new there instead of Tifa to help you crossdress. When you got to Corel Prison, you'd meet a new character who used to live there, instead of finding out that Barret used to. When you stopped the train from crashing into North Corel, it would be a new character instead of Cid. When you were about to reach Cosmo Canyon, you'd meet two more members of Red XIII's species who escorted you across the world map to the town, and all the events there would happen to those two characters instead of to Red XIII. Etc.

That would fill in the blanks in the same way that Suikoden does. But unfortunately, none of those characters would really have any extra characterization later, they'd mostly just be siphoning characterization off of the main cast. You'd need more dialogue than the original game just to introduce each of them, but the core cast would suffer greatly.

Every time you write a new character into your game, you should be thinking about whether you can use an existing one instead. One character who shows up in twenty scenes is infinitely better than five characters who each show up in four scenes, which is still infinitely better than twenty characters who each show up in one scene.

...most of the characters in Suikoden have quite a bit more characterisation than you'd think. They just don't get much in the way of dialogue. (But then, dialogue is not the only way to add character.)

Don't rely on just the blah blah to make a character. Differ how they move, how they react (to each other, to the world), all kinds of things.

There's nothing wrong with a large cast if you need or want it, but at least pay attention to the many varied ways of giving them characterisation outside of just talking. Talk's cheap, after all~

I'm not really sure. As long as there is enough time spent on each, then I think as many or as little. It's like a ratio, you need enough time per character to make them mean something and be memorable, e.g like 3hours - 1 character, if you wanted 10, 30hours - 10 characters, ect.

Maybe I'm just a minimalist, but I've always felt that a game should have a maximum of maybe 3 main characters, one of them being the main character that you play as.
I'm used to games from NES and up, where you'd have maybe 1 player character, and a handful at most that had backstory.
Examples:
Metroid: Samus - Main Character, 3 other secondary mains were Kraid, Ridley, and Mother Brain.
Zelda: Link - Main Character, 2 other secondary mains were Zelda and Ganon (then spelled Gannon)

Of course, this depends on the genre of game, the 'age' of the game (if you want retro, best to use 1 or 2), and the overall intent vs. your target audience.
Game creation, in every aspect, is really a game of balance, too much of anything can be bad if it's not equalized by something else.

Just my two-cents. Good luck! :)

Uh, wow. Someone who thinks Pacman was overly complex because it had too many characters? That's a new one.