I was thinking about this yesterday and it seems that as far as characters go, FFs fall into two major categories:
1. You play as the same characters for the vast majority of the game, with possible slight variation with guests or characters stepping away for a bit. (1, 2, 3, 5, 15) 2. You play as an amount of characters larger than your party can handle throughout the story, and by and large once they're all established you get the opportunity to switch and shuffle them out to your liking. (6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 12, 13) IV is the only one (of the main numbered) where it's a large cast and you don't get the option to shuffle, which makes it interesting how they ended up addressing that in both the Advance (just give you the ability late in the game) and DS versions (Augments kind of serve that purpose a bit).
What are some other RPGs that do what IV did?
I dont like how some of the characters only stay in your party for a bit before they leave for good.