>>715331072NTA but I too played it in my teens. I remember there's like 3 main characters of your party and guest member for specific plot points until in the late of the game when the fourth of the original crew joins back to your party. At the start of the game your main party is escaping the imperial troops and the fourth guy gets left behind.
The system is that you can do anything with everyone but more they do it, the better they get at it. One way to meta game is to spend random battles hitting your own characters to build up their HP and weapon and spell skills. The spells level to level 16 and unless they are very high for the particular part, they are very unreliable and weak.
Good fresh ideas and attempts, bad execution