I don't have a strong opinion of cast balance in most games, or just agree with the ciatos in the few cases where I do, except...
Final Fantasy Tactics
Cast distribution: 4 women, 6 men, 2 neither
Best PC: Male
Higher average: Male
I dunno, I feel like the best cast member in FFT is generic female, and you should have four of them in your party >_>.
Valkyrie Profile
Cast distribution: 10 women, 12 men
Best PC: Female
Higher average: Male
Five best PCs are probably Lenneth, Lawfer, Lucian, Arngrim, and mage. 3/5! Seriously, unsure of how to deal with mages in this, since they all occupy one specific niche.
Hmm...dunno. Like...I never run fewer than two females in VP, and frequently end up running three. (Two mages is an optimal party at many points in the game). And ok so you can't remove Lenneth, but I'm not sure why you'd want to with bow lenneth being insane.
VP is also really weird, because character strength varies a lot depending on situation.
Let's see...
Females:
Lenneth (best in cast)
Freya (temp/bonus dungeon chaaracter, but very good)
Jelanda (Mage, solid)
Nanami (Mage, solid)
Yumei (Mage, solid)
Aelia (Honestly? I don't use that much of her; I'm less of a fan of Lawfer than most people seem to be, although I still recognize him as good in the windows when his weapons are good. But I've never had much use for a character who is slightly worse in most ways).
Lyseria (Mage, I do feel like mages unlocked later in the game tend to be of less value, just because you can run three mages at most, and your other mages will be trained up more...so she doesn't tend to have a place in-practice)
Lorenta (Mage, solid. She's the last mage I've been known to pick up and use; and she has a lot of starting spells so doing so can be reasonable).
Mystina (Mage, ehh, sort of late but.... The cutoff is before her for me, probably because I dislike her personality, but she has a good spell selection, and some people choose to use her because of that...and I can't really fault them for doing so).
Shiho (Mage, and a late one, but actually she still has a niche--I believe she can get might reinforce before it's normally available, and that's actually noteworthy enough to propel her into making the cut a lot of the time).
Jayle (garbage)
Males:
Arngrim (Yep, definitely used him on challenge runs to take out specific bosses)
Lawfer (My feelings about him aren't -as- positive as some other people, as the first few times I played the game I didn't figure out the item crafting, and I've subsequently done challenge runs which also disallowed item crafting, and he drops off in the bonus dungeon. But no question he's good; when I beat C-ending boss Freya, he's an integral part of my strategy).
Belenus (He's probably average; can't think of a challenge run where I was like "oh man, I need belenus for this", unlike, say, Lewellyn. But he's not bad)
Llewelyn (I have found him to be an optimal choice in challenge runs...once, mostly because his PWS can be insane against the right target, but he is also hilariously bad in a lot of situations)
Kashell (This asshole crashes disks, screw him. Umm...in all seriousness, I have considered using him in a challenge situation because greatswords are so good. I ended up going with someone else, but I breifly considered it).
Janus (Ehh...average for a fighter I guess, but not someone I'd really want in my party)
Jun (Garbage)
Badrach (Garbage)
Grey (Garbage)
Suo (Garbage)
Gandar (Probably the worst mage because of how late he joins while adding nothing new)
Lucian (Definitely good, although he also tends to be just as much of a temp as Freya most of the time. I also feel like he's more of an allstar in randoms, where being able to PWS solo means you can save three characters for other targets. Against bosses having a beastly regular attack, and a weak PWS is actually not what you want, because you don't get the multiplier bonuses. Can't really think of any challenge runs where he was a roleplayer, but being a temp gives him less opportunity, of course).
Lezard Valeth (Well...ok, I suppose Lezard is technically worse than Gandar in the race for least practical mage. But unlike Gandar at least he's overflowing with fantastic quotes and great voice acting).
Brahms (Very good afterame character to the point that I feel he's actually a little underrated. 17 hit PWSs are good for the ridiculous amount of multipler they provide. I think he should probably make the cut over Lucian in most aftergame parties--despite the massive advantage regular sword users are given in the aftergame).
I dunno, I feel like males have more characters where I feel like "If I'm using this character in my party, something has gone horribly wrong, or I'm just training them up to give them levels or something". For females that list would be Lyseria and Jayle. For males, it's like...Jun, Badrach, Grey, Suo, Gandar, Kashell.
And...while I think 2 males, 2 females is probably the most common party gender distribution, 1 male, 3 females is pretty reasonable at several points. Like...any party with Freya in it. Like...various points in the game where two mages are optimal. Like...if you're item crafting then Lawfer+Aelia+valk+mage probably has a case for being the best party for a period of time. On the flip side, 1 female, 3 males? Yeah...that like...never happens for me, ever. Even in the final dungeon when I'll sometimes use Lezard for his stylishness, chances are I'll also be using Freya. And ok yes, you can run 0 mage parties, but like...I run 3 mage parties more often than I run 0 mage parties; mages are stupid good at some points in the game, and pretty much never bad.
