LogFAQs > #961710839

...Tifa is not an acceptable answer to this. She's one of the best.

DireKrow posted...

In JRPGs where you can only use a subset of the full party at any given time, I will usually rotate what party members I'm using constantly so that I end up using everyone pretty much equally. Even if I like certain ones more, they get no favoritism - I prefer the variety and 'sense' that everyone in the team is actually involved in the gameplay as well as the story.

I do some semblance of this, however I tend to exclude a character or two depending on the size of the party. If it's a four-character battle system, I keep it at six. If it's three characters, I will only use five. This keeps variety and the sense of a team without feeling like a chore. This is one reason I like games that limit the number of playable characters reasonably. Tales of Symphonia has eight, which is a lot, but my answer to the question would probably be Sheena (I usually use Lloyd + Sheena + Raine + Zelos). Symphonia has that crap spell canceling though.

Sometimes it's the weakest who gets benched (like the kitty in Persona 5) but other times it's just someone with too situational of a moveset. Depends on the game.