Favorite parties?

[CoyoteTraveller]

The recommended ones are presumably pretty balanced, I'm just wondering which ones you're having fun with out there. Or, you know, which ones are really broken.

Science Genius Girls: Anna, Agatha, and Emilia.

Anna's AoE attacks are great (Experimentation gets huge, and her stun is basically mandatory) and she's pretty balanced speech/attack. Agatha brings needed Impress to the team, and she gets gets two AoEs by level 3, even if they're not great. Neither of her speeches miss. Emilia's Tranquility will absolutely keep you alive, and in a speech heavy team, giving everyone Excited is a real powerhouse. Overall the team's main attacks have 2x Terrify, 2x Excite, 1x Enrage and 1x Impress.

Anna's captain ability is really broken: frontload as much science as you can, and when it gives you an option to pick your Study token upgrade, pick something non-science because you'll be drowning in that science soon enough. And of course you can get a ton of mileage out of the scientist research tree, too. Don't underestimate the "two trinkets" perk: there are cheap trinkets that give resistance to an emotion, and resisting two emotions is insanely powerful.

Nobody has weak armor, nobody has low hit points, and your healer is a massive tank. There's nothing not to love (except that they suck at a lot of spinner challenges).

[WotanAnubis]

I haven't played the game enough to have a favourite team. I haven't even been able to try every character yet.

But so far I like Maria for being really good at talking, Bia for being able to stab people without it affecting the mood (really handy if you want to, say, keep the abbess friendly) and that red-haired Scout with the tattoos/woad paint whose name I forget for just being pretty decent and reliable when I tried her out.

[saintdenis]

My favourite parties so far are:

Aggressive: Victor-Harry-Phillipe (Harry deals good damage with his cone shot, both Phillipe and Victor can buff/mass heal, overall easy to switch between friendly and aggressive)

Devious: Anna-Kiwi-Yvonne (Anna is just a good character anyway, all three can buff alot of their devious attacks with the books you buy in New Orleans)

Friendly: Maria-Pedrinho-Agatha (lots of speech related buffs/debuffs, Pedrinhos Party bomb is pretty cool, no mass heal though despite being friendly)

[Reevo]

Charles-Agatha-Dolores - aggressive/devious team. Really strong with devious later on. Get the book of joy that buffs Agatha's last ability. Lots of cone AoE and Dolores and Charles can take hits easily allowing you to survive a few turns until Agatha's last ability ramps up(increased damage every turn). Find an angle, and boom. Works really well on bosses too, I beat Roche in 2 turns with this team and that specific strategy after fine tuning item and research choices. I think Agatha is strong in general and probably combos well with a lot of characters but this is the one I'm liking right now.

[Xaneorath]

I agree about the part with Anna. She clearly has the most convenient Leader ability of them all.

In my last run I tried around a bit with "only characters of one class"-achievements. And there I realized how having an all-Scout team is surprisingly effective (with some luck).
I took Kiwi as leader (for extended voyages. Of course I only picked the missions with much natural tests then) and added Hatice and Molly.
Since all three of them had different perk-paths, I had a good chance on most wheel-spins. And I added to the diversity by focusing on getting Allies which give some sort of perk (and have synergy with the perk levels I already got).
Battlewise it started out rough, but got a lot easier fast. The team was a physical damage powerhouse. Let Kiwi Rage a target and watch how fast those HP drop, if you just flank them or shoot them from afar with Hatice. If you got groups of enemies, a well placed straight arrow can decimate various of them. And then you also got that attack on Kiwi and Molly which has area damage, if you need some more of it. (Also Molly has a nice synergy with Kiwi early, if you pick her flanking to be stronger against raging enemies.)
After you research the scout-skill which converts evasion into attack, that girl squad devastated even most bosses, including the Shangri-La ones. You just gotta make sure to collect money for legendary or master boots and have them ready. (I had legendary boots on both Kiwi and Molly)

At some point I was wondering, if Healers might be too important in the game, since I believed you ~need~ 2 Healers to get through. Considering I won without any Healer at all in that group, Im not too worried about that anymore. :D

[alonzo345]

Anna -Hatice-Dolores

Anna is a great character for a devious and aggressive and have the best AoE in the game
Hatice is actually not a good character i just didnt have the chance to try anything else yet
Dolores is an aggressive devious character with a great AoE ability

[Tack7800]

I haven't played too much but I found Hildegard/Molly/Agatha to be a surprisingly capable trio. Hildegard has probably replaced Kwame as my favorite support/healer in the game (and is an insane Captain), Agatha's area speeches can be really damaging, has a half-decent melee attack, and is shockingly durable due to being able to gain Tactician and Archeology traits easily, and Molly is as strong as scouts get for physical damage, while packing a relatively good devious skill in the form of Loudmouth.

The only real issue is that the party isn't set up well for inflicting Enraged for Molly's Flank & Shank, though getting the added emotion for Terrify makes this nearly a non-factor. Also helps that this is the group I used to complete Shangri-La for the first time (the only thing I really needed to earn was Survivalist traits for Molly)

I'll need to try other party combinations at some point, but of everyone I think Agatha might be my favorite overall member to take.

[Kayeka]

Well, I do love me some Emilia. That heal is just too good to pass up. I prefer to stay away from Anna as a captain, though, mostly because of how unbelievably broken her ability is.

I had a lot of fun with Hildegaard, Emilia and Pedrinho. Which, now that I think about it, is a pretty similar idea to the one in the OP, including the science-based captain. Hildegaard does the impress, Emilia got the Excite heal, and Pedrinho befriends the crap out of pretty much everyone with that great AoE attack of his. Party Time all the time, yo! A bit one-sided since the team has rather few reliable non-friendly options, but then you get to max level where Hildegaard becomes practically immortal and Pedrinho a party monster, and the entire world elects your team as god-emperors.

This team also has a nice spread of perks that allows them to take on both Nature and Culture challenges with great succes, and take on Sharngri-Lah (with a little investment in Athlete, but a machete is hardly the most expensive trinket).

Another, more aggresive/devious approach was Bia, Hattice and Charles. Not enough Terrify on the team to make good use of Bia's Triple Slash, but her captain ability made her perfectly capable of killing everything with just one-and-a-half slash after a few boss fights. Charles would Enrage everyone on the first turn, Hattice would launch a focussed Piercing Shot on the next, and Bia would mop up whatever was still standing. Who needs hitpoints if everyone's dead before they can take them from you?

Of course, occasionally something would keep standing after the first onslaught, and I'd be leaking resolve here and there, but that's half the fun, non?

A bit more sturdy team on the same basic concept was Jan-Piet, Anna and Kiwi. Perfect skill set for Nature challenges (though I prefer having Athlete and Survivalist perks on the same person, for obvious reasons), a wide range of emotions to abuse, and Jan-Piet learns a pretty effective healing ability early on that just so happens to boost Anna's Experimentation ability as well. Damage-per-round was not quite as hilarious, but gave a lot more options for battlefield control.

[Ferrus Animus]

I vary them up.

But as awell-rounded easy starter I have found the combination of Agatha, Harry and Yvonne to work well. They have all their skills at 100% hit rate and their specials give a good amount of area cover. It's not a trendemously powerful team, but it is reliable and versatile and as such I consider it a good to keep in mind and would recommend it for new players.

[Kivivarvas]

I dont have favourites.

I did like Harry, Emily and pedrinho team though. It felt like a classic main character trio of a cartoon show, AND it was the first team I beat rivaleux with.

[charles_watkins]

I've been doing Ok with Emilia, Harry, and Piet. There have a good range of perks so I almost always have good odds on the spinner (plus I have Emilia). Emilia covers Nature and Archeology. Harry is a Rogue and adds Beguiler. Piet can handle all physical challenges with Athlete. In combat, I have Piet's oar whack, Harry's cone strike, and Emilia's healing.

[Burguul]

My first 12k achievement was with Maria + Ivan + Hojo. Don't ask me how. Shenanigans.