Party at my place

On Friday I celebrated my twenty-eighth birthday. One of the presents I received was Soul Calibur Legends. Dismissed by critics, I actually found it not bad a game. Repetitive maybe, straining on the arm with use the Wii-mote perhaps, annoying lock on system glaring, but all in all, it's been a fun little diversion.

Yet I noticed, as I went further and further, that the computer keeps track of my use of the characters with a progress bar showing their usage with the completion of a quest. In a way, it seemed expected of me to use one or two characters almost exclusively, thus creating a 'super' character, capable of wiping the floor with the opposition within minutes.
But I don't play like that: I like to invest time and effort with the characters in my control, building up a well-oiled machine capable of taking any challenge head on. When given a group of characters, I expect them to function as a unit and for each of them to contribute something that the others cannot - and, in some cases, provide a back up for someone else's talents.
It is a good philosophy: like any true army commander, being all too aware of getting the best out of the most seemingly ordinary underling. I think this philosophy is best utilized in the customization process of Final Fantasy X. Now you often hear RPG's being criticized for having useless characters and the FF series is no exception. Yet, I really enjoyed FFX's party customization and with some clever use of the Sphere Grid, as well as the ability to switch combatants in the middle of battles, I made sure Tidus, Yuna, Auron, Lulu, Wakka, Kimahri and Rikku each had a role to fill and brought something to the table. And indeed, this varied approach sure provided a fresh perspective on the game.

But that is only one game: Some times this philosophy doesn't work. I've building up all the characters handed to me in SCL, in this quest to have no useless characters, but in the end it's a fairly useless exercise as, the game appears to want me to produce a singular, crush-anything super-dude. Well that's nice the game thinks that way but then what's the point of handing me all these other people then? If I can only bring two characters into a battle (in particular the confrontation with the enormous Barbaros) why should I bother with the other four?
It should be also noted that I encountered the same problem with the Chronicles of the Sword feature in Soul Calibur 3.

So sorry Namco for my preferred way of solving a problem not being the way that you want me to