Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Trails of Cold Steel (1-4)
Soul Hackers 2
Xenoblade Chronicles 3
What do they all have in common? The core cast of characters and party members are all there from the beginning of the game.
Historically, some games you have party members joining you throughout the entire game and it's silly when a dude who joined in the second to last chapter just inserts himself into casual, personal conversations as if he's been there the whole time or gives a long speech about the hardship everyone went through to get to that point. Then mechanically, you likely have your party sorted out by that point, do you really want to experiment with a new party member? Often no, you stick with your party loadout from the beginning of the game unless you run into difficulty and have to reconsider. And I've definitely played games that asked me to learn a whole bunch of new party member mechanics, that I had no reason or time to engage with before, at the end of the game. I've dropped games due to that.
The thing the previously mentioned games have though is all the core party members are around from the start. They may not join your party until later (in FE3H's case when it comes to recruiting) and you may get temporary party members jumping in and out for plot reasons (Xenoblade 3 and the Cold Steels), but the core is there. Bonding, interacting, and working together throughout the game.
In Fire Emblem's case, it feels natural when you recruit a student or faculty member; they fit right in. They've been there the whole time and of course you'll slot them in alongside your friends. A lot of players get stressed about recruiting them all. The fact that they have that drive, that amount of care for those characters, speaks for itself.
Xenoblade 3, you have all 6 core party members from the start. They all bond and grow from the beginning. The temporary party members that join them along the way all serve to help further grow the core cast. Being able to just swap the player controlled character seamlessly, both in and out of battle, also encourages the player to engage with them on a level. It's a long 100+ hour game, but the mechanics introduced from the beginning encourage you to mix it up constantly. Switching up everyone's class, experimenting with new skills and moves, etc. They manage to keep the gameplay fresh throughout. I could go on about the game design of Xenoblade 3, but I'll try to refrain.
The Cold Steel quadrilogy may be the weakest Legend of Heroes subseries in terms of cast (since they leaned hard into "anime"), but the fact that those kids are all around from the start, similar to Fire Emblem, you want to use them. They're friends, they're familiar, you know their drives and motivations, they weren't just shoved onto you.
Soul Hackers 2 gives you your entire ragtag crew by the end of the prologue. Not only does this avoid the common Atlus issue of giving you a party member wicked late that rarely anyone uses or knows well as a result (Haru from P5), but let's you do all your experimenting up front. Figuring out which composition and roles you want to give every character.
I want more games that do this. Tales is getting better. Tales of Berseria and Tales of Arise gave you everyone in the first quarter of the respective games; Berseria at least introducing all of them in the first chapter before two of them f off for a bit.
By breaking up the larger game, and by limiting your party members in certain sections, the Final Fantasy 7 Remake series may be accomplishing this to an extent.
I just think it's neat that a lot of games aren't just constantly throwing characters at you anymore only for some to be unloved or underused. It's real neat.
