Games where 'builds' are about party composition, not character talents

[J1M]

Looking for examples.

Most games allow you to customize a character via a talent tree or skill selection. These character choices tend to have the largest impact on the play experience and most effective tactics. I'm looking for a games where the arrangement of characters has the largest impact on the team's strategy because the individual characters have few, if any, choices but the selection of those character classes is interesting.

Maybe a game has 5 roles, but the party only has 4 slots, etc.

[Gregz]

Lords of Xulima comes to mind. Itemization is still important, but party order, composition, skill selection, etc. is very impactful.

[Goth-Girl-Supremacy]

Tactics style games.

[SpellSword]

Perhaps Icewind Dale or Legends of Amberland: The Forgotten Crown?

Both of those games allow you to assemble your party from a selection of classes and races.

[revenant]

Tyranny had union character abilities, I think

[Emphyrio]

like darkest dungeon?

[Nemesis]

Wizardry 6-8
Grimoire

[rusty_shackleford]

Guild Wars. Hard to think of other games with parties that come close to GW1 heroes.

Not much of an RPG in terms of equipment/stats tho, sadly. Wish it was. The focus on PvP was a mistake, one they clearly realized as the expansions released.

[GhostCow]

Tactics Ogre comes to mind. Also Fire Emblem.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

I am replaying Aselia the Spirit of Eternity Sword, which a VN/SRPG hybrid. It's pretty much all about party composition and shuffling your party members around to different positions from fight to fight. The game is very, very tough. I have thus far SS ranked every mission except for one (because trying to defend a base from a multi-pronged attack AND capture five enemy towns AND divert one of your four squads to kill a limited time optional superboss AND capture a mana crystal in a cave was too much, so I only achieved S rank there).




You control four squads, with each squad having up to three party members, and each squad has three positions that can be occupied by a party member: attacker in front, defender in middle, and supporter in the back. There are five types of party members:

• Blue spirits: deal good to high physical damage as an attacker, have middling def and magic resist as defender, can interrupt the enemy supporter's spells as a supporter.
• Green spirits: highest physical defense, low attack, abysmally low magic resist. Can sometimes heal as a supporter.
• Red spirits: good to high physical damage, lowest physical defense but highest magic resist, can deal high magical damage (usually AoE) as a supporter.
• Black spirits: low to medium damage (but can often target other enemies besides the enemy defender, such as going for the enemy attacker or supporter first), middling defense and magic resist, has a lot of utility spells as a supporter that cannot be interrupted by an enemy blue spirit supporter.
• Etrangers (humans isekaied from Earth to the fantasy world the game takes place in): very high physical damage, high defense and magic resist, can heal or buff in supporter spot. But on a first playthrough you only have Yuuto.

On my first playthrough, I just did the boring safe strategy of making squads with a blue attacker (high damage), a green defender (high HP and defense, can heal in supporter role), and a red supporter (deals magic damage). If I faced an enemy squad that had a red mage, then I would move the blue spirit into the supporter position to interrupt the enemy's magic spells until they were out, and then move the blue back into attack position and kill the enemy squad, but this was time consuming and I did not achieve high scores on missions. On my second playthrough, I've gotten a better grasp on what each type of spirit can do, so now I'm doing stuff like building squads without green spirit tanks or having a blue spirit that can interrupt enemy magic, instead using Yuuto's (Etranger) and Uruka's (Black spirit) ability to target attackers, and using the rare power of red spirit's magic attacks as supporters to kill enemy squad before they have a chance to attack me. So I'm progressing through chapters much more quickly.

There is also an elemental damage modifier mechanic (Blue > Red > Green > Black > Blue) but I am not advanced enough to take advantage of that mechanic yet. It's already a lot trying to juggle my party composition based off what enemy party members needed to be neutralized or kill first or attacks that need to be defended against, let alone minmaxxing damage dealt based off of modifiers. The elemental modifiers are usually slight (like +5% or 10%), not enough worth caring about, but there are certain spots on the map where the elemental modifiers shoot up to 60% blue elemental modifier and stuff, which I try to be aware of.


Elemental modifiers on this spot with two enemy squads I'm attacking. The modifiers are rarely this high.



Also, as rusty_shackleford mentioned, Guild Wars 1. You hit the level cap of 20 really early. You can't levelgrind or outgear the enemies in the missions, so you really need to have the right abilities equipped to deal with certain enemy mob groups or with boss mechanics. The Drought in Nightfall was the first mission I got stuck on for hours.