Customization V.S. Specialization
 

In the ff games, some have let you customize your characters to do whatever you want, (FF7 and FF8) and some have characters with one class/list of abilities that wont change (FF9). Which do you like better?

I want to have my own way with my characters. If I want an all character fighting-club, I want to really be able to.
Grandia II was reasonably good at that as well.

I want customization, to an extent. I don't want the option to make the child who was brought up as a black mage into a pure melee fighter, nor the option to make a swordsman with no magical background into a spellcaster.

I want to be able to choose what kind of abilites a character can get, I want those choices to make other choices unobtainable. I don't want to have a spellcaster with the most powerful fire spell to also be able to master the most powerful ice spell. I don't think that makes sense.

I personally like the approach that is taken in games like Baldur's Gate, where the pre-created charachters you meet are already made and only customizable to a point, but where the main charachter is created by you and completly customisable

it all depends. Specilized characters are good if you're telling a solid story. that way the storyteller know what sorts of abilities and strenghts the characters have. customization is fun because you get to design the party that you want. as it was said, the Baulder's Gate system is a nice comprimise, giving specilized characters with good personalities that can be developed as you see fit.

Customization Mostly.

The RPGs I love the most all have those heavy customizable engines: VIII/X, Suikoden Series, Chrono Series (Mostly Cross for this discussion), Tales Series, Pokemon, and Symphony of the Night (not limiting myself to standard RPGs). These would be the reason I like playing them again and again. It takes a game that doesn't allow me to do this having very good veriety and characters to make me like it, such as FFVI, the Seiken Densetsu series, Zelda series (although they're mostly items) and some others.

Final Fantasy VIII, along with Symphony of the Night, Suikoden Series and even Fire Emblem series to an extent have become my most loved RPGs because of the use of all the customization (and because they're also fun in other ways or have amazing characters/stories such as FFVIII). I've over time had many games I have not enjoyed so much because of their lack of letting me customize anything, or even letting me do anything beyond just attack and the standard, overdone magic (such as FFIV and the NES Dragon Warriors dispite their common popularity). I feel I need to either have some type of customization or have characters with very original magic, fighting styles and gameplay added to them, the thing I found when I first played Chrono Trigger. If there were more 'standardized' games like Chrono Trigger, FFVI and Mario RPG, I'd be quite fine playing those (and do get them when they are made, as the new Tales games look to be). Or even non-FULL RPG games that have these multiple abilities/items to obtain like Zelda, Metroid or Shenmue.

Oddly enough, the new FFXII seems that it is going to be heading into a new type of battle system favoring player customizability havily. When I saw the news for that yesterday, that was the clincher for me and I knew that even if the story was sub-par, I could at least have fun with the game if the characters were well made and the game system was heavily costomizable with lots of magic and weapons (and hopefully lots of original forms of both of those). I have high hopes for FFXII and from all I hear, no one has said anything seems bad yet. Let's hope it comes out really well. I'm hoping for a game like FFVI or VIII (although I realize, it'll be in a totally different style -_-).

More than anything, my Heirarchy of what I look for in a game is:

Original Game System > Costomizability > Characters > Game Length > Graphics > Story

So obviously looking at that you can see that if the game doesn't have much customizing, then for me it better have good characters with good use of magic, items or somesuch. And I find if a story is sub-par or just not interesting (and sometimes even horrible), good characters can make up for it and even mask it. Some RPGs just have overdone or downright boring stories, but then there have been these types of games that the characters have been really good and made up for it.

And for me, I really have found I much more prefer a 40-50 hour long RPG such as Chrono Trigger or a Seiken Densetsu game over a 60+ hour game. Exceptions would be those really good FF games were you DO want to know the story and definitly Suikoden II. I spent 70 hours on my first play of Suikoden II and didn't mind one bit.

Hamelin: I must say, your take on it is well-expressed. I agree with you mostly.

I liked the Diablo II tree system -- each character has their own specific set of abilities, with a lot of choice as to which abilities you obtain and when. That was sweet.

As Hamelin said, customizable abilities using characters with a well-developed backstory just never makes any goddamn sense. One of the things that got to me in FFVII was that it wasn't just magic that could be swapped around, but abilities as well -- I mean, the girl who's been trained her whole life as a ninja gets her Throw materia swapped out, and all of a sudden she doesn't know a shuriken from her own ass? That bugged the crap out of me.

FFX was all right as far as customizing goes -- your characters mostly work down a set line of abilities, with a few options here and there, and once you start getting different characters working down eachother's branches, their abilities are built up enough that it just wouldn't make much sense to send Tidus down, say, Lulu's path, so you send him through the line of, say, Auron, which helps build on the abilities Tidus already has.

I prefer customization to the max most of the time (i.e. Morrowind). But like Hamelin said there are things that don't make sense (someone who trained his whole life to become a warrior then becomes a black mage in an instant.) I like Morrowind's system the best because it made more sense then many other systems I've seen in a long time. If I run I become athletic, if I use magic I become more skilled with it. I can even make my own magic spells. I also liked FF:TA's system because if I decided to switch from black mage to warrior I could still use my magic. But if some character joined my party later in the game I shouldn't be able to just completely change everything about them. Which is where the FF:TA system really comes into play because the mage who's been training for the last 10 years as a fighter has an extremely high attack power even though he's using a staff instead of a sword but is very innefecient with his magic as a drawback

Customization allows for you to be you, reflected on the characters. That's what makes everyone different in a game. For example, take FF 11. Everyone is different so they can portray themselves the best they can, visually.
But I have to agree wtih others about, how if you have a solid story line, then by all means, specialty characters are okay too.