I went with 3 knights and a white mage. So far it's ridiculously devastating. Magic attacks kinda hurt but that's what the white mage is for. And the mage almost never gets hit since there's 3 tanky knights sitting in the front row with the mage in the back.

The only advantage I see to taking a Thief is stealing stuff without getting attacked by the guards. Well... I don't really care about that. I have 3 knights. If those guards show up, they're absolutely no challenge. Maybe it'll change in the future but so far it just seems to be 4 melee-type guards which just get wrecked by my setup. Don't really care if my wanted level gets to 100%. Have to fight guards every time I loot a chest? Guess what I like fights. Killing those guards nets you a lot of XP.

Also, (slight non-story spoiler?) if you insist to sleep for free at the inn, you'll get attacked by guards... if you kill them you get to sleep for free. So that's awesome.

Engineer... the tunneling is meh compared to having another awesome knight, in my opinion. It's all about the combat. So far I haven't seen a situation (although I'm sure there is) where I -have- to have a tunneler to get somewhere. So for such a, in my opinion, limited utility, it's not worth the sacrifice.

Gray mage is crap late game so I won't touch it. Never been a fan of jack-of-all-trades types.

Black mage... my main reason for not taking one is because I don't want another mana sink. I feel that later in the game I'll probably start making use of potions. And I think a setup of 2 knights and 2 mages would be more vulnerable in general. That'd be like a 25% chance of a mage getting hit instead of like... 10% with just one mage. And those percentage guesses are what they are because of the rows.

I don't want a hunter because again #1, it'd hurt my combat effectiveness. Also, not a fan of taming a moa to ride around on safely because guess what, that's going to hurt you. Less fights = less experience = less SP = less gold. I'd rather take a little more time and plow my way to the target and be stronger when I actually show up. Same reason I set the encounter rate to Grind. If you can't handle the mobs on the way to your destination, it's a pretty safe bet that you can't handle the boss.

And monk. Monk is really the only alternative I'm considering at the moment. I might try a game with 3 monks and 1 white mage. Because with 3 knights and 1 white mage I feel stupidly overpowered. I feel that I can take the early game hit to difficulty and come out stronger in the late game. Dodging attacks entirely will really really help for boss fights, and I assume monks will take less damage from magic attacks.

This is assuming of course that by "overleveled" the game means being a higher level than you're supposed to be, and not just over level 30. You might think it's common sense that it'd be the first one, but it could be the latter due to a possible lack of 30+ gear.

So here's the only negatives I really see that haven't been explicitly touched on, with my 3 knight 1 white mage setup:

-Boss fights. I don't dodge attacks so even though my guys are really tanky, they still get hit with trucks over and over and over again. The first boss I encountered (in the desert mountains) was a seemingly drastic difficulty spike. Maybe my white mage was underpowered but she couldn't keep up. I lost 2 of my knights but managed to keep the last one up as he finished off the boss.

-Magic. Magic hurts. A lot. Like seriously. I'll probably eat ♥♥♥♥ if I come up against a magic boss.

-Expensive. Gearing up 3 knights takes a LOT of gold. Like seriously. But to be honest, with how much money you get from fishing, I feel that this is a worthy money sink.

This is a "Standard" JRPG party, providing a nice mix of physical and magical attack as well as utility spells. The knight will become a bruiser very quickly, and within a couple of levels the thief can be hitting very hard as well. This frees up the white mage to focus on healing and debuff removal, and the Black mage to focus on blowing things up.

Stat-wise I recommend 2 points into HP every level for every character, with 2 points into preemption also helping greatly (if you hit first you take less damage!) I personally also spend a couple levels investing 2-4 points of Magic Defense per character whenever magic starts to hurt.

Knight is a simple character to level up, focus on attack/defense/accuracy, dabbling into MP if you choose to level up active abilities for him. Its pretty hard to go wrong with this guy.

Thief is taken because he is capable of dealing damage while also allowing 100% success rates in stealing from townspeople. This is particularly important for a beginner because in Last Dream you will begin the game strapped for cash, and those extra pickups go a long way to being able to gear up and upgrade equipment. Stat-wise similar to the Knight with Attack/Defense/Accuracy being prioritized, while dabbling into Agility to ensure his stealing abilities hit (if you use them.)

Because you have two physical damage dealers, this frees up your mages to focus on magic and magic alone. MP is by far the best stat early (and possibly forever) because the more spells you can cast the more clearing power you have for those large monster groups and the longer you can heal without resting at an inn.

The white mage allows you access to efficient healing and ressurection options as she levels up. She is a simple build of MP, INT, and maybe some defense if you feel she's made of paper.
Priority of spells in the early game is her heal's and status removal, with buffs if you feel like it. The holy water branch of skills can also be handy, but if you do not want to sacrifice the points the black mage can always hit them with fire.

Black Mage is also very easy. MP, INT, and some defense here or there and he will do what he does best. Prioritize his elemental damage spells, with a splash of buff/debuff if you so choose.

It is worth noting that I build my mages with staffs only, as I do not level attack and they can't deal more than about 1 damage anyway. As previously mentioned, with 2 physical damage dealers in the party you really don't need the mages attacking with anything but magic.

My current team is white mage, engineer, thief and monk.

Monk will be dmg/tank especially with his inability later game to get status effects.

Thief is for items/damage since he seems to hit pretty hard, also can heal if need be. I've only just started playing im still quite early in and i assume the first real boss is the ogre guy in the desert. I used my thief steal on him 4-5 times before it ran out of things to steal...believe i got potion, small sp and tiny sp orbs and a ring that gave +10 attack. I assume if thats what i can get off the early game, the late game stealing must be amazing.

Engineer will hit his peak later i believe when you have items like grenades, bombs and potions since he does x2 effects or possibly better later on.

White mage is obviously just a healer, if shes not healing shes guarding.

my party is monk front thief middle white and black in back all my characters are level 15 + only time i've ever lost a person in any fight throughout the game is when i decided to go to a part of the woods that level 7 characters should not be in

I find that people always utilize their "offensive casters" in the wrong way physical damage is always going to be the best single target damage black mages are important because they allow you to efficiently clear all the encounters on the way through dungeons without taxing your healer at all freeing up her mp for the boss fights and status removal after battle

On a side not monks look to be the superior late game dps class meaning that in the long run having knights (which have fallen off in every game ever) is going to not only be more expensive (prohibitally so if you don't abuse fishing) but also outclassed damage wise by someone who you don't have to buy any items for

Spoiler alert
as for enemies that are resistant to physical attacks i have run into one on the western continent which was a hunt monster he seemed to have lower hp to compensate compared to some of the other hunt mobs but from that experience i can tell that they implemented one and more than likely there will be more... it won't or shouldn't be prohibitive thought because i've heard people doing solo runs with only a monk so

anyways my main point is in a full party for a realistic setup you should never be without a magtc damage dealer and engineer seems like a sub par choice becaue they don't get good till your front liners start to shine anyways hunter i'm not really able to speak on i think you could probably make a back row hunter that can dps pretty well but monk still seems to be the way to go

and finally thieves seem to be incredibly underestimated their ability to steal from bosses and get items/loot that you don't / wouldn't otherwise have access to in pretty invaluable in my opinion.

Went with hunter, monk, thief and engineer
grind, hard(or very hard not sure)

hunter for scan abilities and later moa (since I went with grind, eventually encounters will get annoying even with macros)
monk cuz its cheap and still efficient (specially later)
thief stealing always a good way to get more stuff (or otherwise limited stuff)
engineer for general support (potiontosser early, int skills later) (not sure if there are areas only accesible with tunneling either)

early game is alot of running back for the free rests but havent had a death so far (been to oasis, and desert town, so not that far yet)
the undead were usefull to get some exp/sp on with thief stealing holy bombs and bombing the bigger undead groups with them

so far I think I went 1 hp, 1 def and 1 mgd on every levelup for everyone to not have to use too much potions or run back too much
actually here's the stat layout I used/have planned early on(based on having 40ish and later when u have more some attributes will probably start getting more expensive)
(edit: adjusted table cuz apperently steam discussion dont like tables)
...............HP....MP...ATK.DEF..INT..AGI..ACC..CRT..PRE..MGD..interchange
monk........1......0......2.......1......0......1......2.......0......0......1.............pre/mp
thief..........1......1......1.......1......0......2......1.......0......1...... 1.............pre/crt
hunter.......1......1......1.......1......0......1......0.......1......1......1.............acc
engineer....1......2......0.......1......2......1......0.......0......0......1.............pre

dunno if acc is needed for non physical attacks
when defence will be sufficient more focus will shift towards the offensive stats

weapons:
hunter: bow obviously
engineer: staff (could give him a whip early before getting some skills)
thief: whip early, spear later for the pre bonus(apparently spears weigh less then whips :p)
monk: nothing

also thought of skills I want to get with them but I'm not gonna bore you with that list (after I got those I can spend sp in passives left over and after fill out the rest of the skills)
in short:
monk obvious fists of fury and the acc boosts (crit dmg boost too)
thief: stealing / debuff skills
engineer support skills and int skills
hunter status clear, crit boosts scans

setup with hit %
I have hunter and thief in frontline (they have the highest defence equipment) 33% for each to be targetted
monk middle cuz he has no equipment so his defence is bit less (22% he is targetted)
engineer in the back cuz he's a sissy atm (11% chance to be targetted)

aside from the engineer they have cheap acces to agi, and early acces to smoke bombs should help limitting dmg taken as well (guess the grenadier skill wont work with this skill but it would be neat :p)

I ended up going Monk, Thief, Hunter, White Mage. The reason I took thief over engineer, is theif's ability to steal items. Thats really helpful. And I took hunter for her ability to scan enemies. Finding out their weaknesses and immunities, as well as their items available to steal. So far it's gone really well, making lots of profit off my enemies now that my thief has a bit of mana. Mage is for healing, though I might try engineer item heals instead of mage heals sometime. Monk over knight, just cause I like monks.

So far I've been playing on hard difficulty with a part consisting of Knight, Thief, Engineer and White Mage. I kind of agree in that you can get by in the game without a Engineer. Great for shortcuts, but not much else. You're better off taking ANYTHING else including a Gray Mage.

Knight is amazingly good at being a damage dealer and front row combatant. Almost a must on anything harder than Normal. I have nothing more to say on this guy, he's just a great class.

White Mage... Love/Hate relationship with this. On one hand I love the heals, on the other I hate having them around when they're not needed. Basically she can't do crap for damage so she's a dedicated healbot that truly only shines when there are undead. Then she's a godsend. I recall back in the days of FF5 I had taken my white mage and turned her into a monk who could heal and punch the crap out of things. Worked well. This game.... It's possible. Her attack cost to level is fairly low but it's not worth it because her accuracy needs levels along with it or it's worthless. Sadly I think White Mage is doomed to simply be a dedicated health battery for your team.

Only good thing about having a Engineer is the twice as effective potions and bombs. He feeds my other characters mana and health when the White Mage needs to take the time to buff and whatnot. Saves time in combat a LOT. Plus I can say the only thing your engineer should be throwing is fish. Yes. I said it. Fish. Any fish that says PARTY on it you throw them. If you were solely relying on Engineer, for some reason, as your healer, throwing fish to restore party health/mana is absolutely amazing. Works almost as good as or better than a white mage. White mage can only cast so many spells per battle but you can stack fish and potions a LOT higher. The long term use out of stockpiles of items can be better than a white mage as long as you don't mind spending a few thousand coin on stocking it.

Having a thief is handy because he builds roughly around dodging and crits. Plus getting into locked doors and chests without alerting people is handy. I orignally planned on building him as a front line 'Dodge tank'. However... I feel that dodges dont' come anywhere often enough despite me having like 120 AGI and being 3 levels higher than what I need to be.

So far the only thing that's killed my group is enemies who spam a TON of CC, and honestly you don't win those fights anyway unless you have resist rings or absorb armor. But I feel that if I ever chose to do my entire game over I'd do it with Knight, White Mage, Thief and Monk. Simply because I think the extra damage would go much farther in the end.

Basically any team needs to have some form of sustainable healing or buffing class. I'd say White Mage is almost a given on any difficulty over Normal. On Normal I think you can scrap by with pretty much whatever you want. Higher difficulties though you need healing and buffs or you die.

As I stated before... This party hasn't met with much that can just railroad it aside from that one time I went into the forest to the place where the Gargoyle boss was when I was level 10 but... I try not to remember that time... But it has a TON of survivability even if you're caught somewhat unprepared. Lots of group spam healing and AoE CC and the ability to increase your party's PRE make it a very scary thing to go against.

I've been running Knight/Thief/Monk/Engineer and it's been working great. Early game, I built everyone fast and powerful to kill enemies quickly, and then decent defense and armor selections made early game manageable.

Now I'm grabbing the four Ultima crystals. By grabbing fish, I essentially have unlimited money. Icewater fish can hit a target for 2000 damage from my engineer if they have a weakness, and 1000 if they don't (always too, with the non-elemental fish). I don't have the Luring Rod; I can only assume things get better later.

I have been able to full heal the entire party in one turn with an engineer fish for the majority of the game.

If I was going to change one thing, I'd probably swap the Thief for a Hunter, since stealing hasn't helped much and a Moa would let me move faster, not to mention being able to learn weaknesses without the guide. But I haven't seen Ninja yet, so I can't say for sure if the thief's combat effectiveness increases later.

Engineer as healer/nuker was a fantastic choice. Black Mage and White Mage in one.

Ok, so i just completed the game with a thief monk hunter white mage, level~70

Overall I would say that the hunter is the weakest and should not be used, the moa is nice and all, but hardly vital, everything else he does, other people do better, he has what look to be good status removers at the tail end of his skills but by the time you get to level 50 your entire party should be status immune anyway (this game hands out full status immunity items a little too freely for balance I reckon). With no multiple hit skill his battle potential is severely limited. I would swap him out for a knight or engineer.

For the monk I say the same as lebe frei, hits 7 times for ~7-9kdamage each before the enemy can move, no question about it, he kills things, also he doubles his defences, just fantastic.

The thief I would disagree, I liked him, his main use is clearing mobs,he hitsfirst and has lots of hit alls and can do decent if not great damage. poison dagger is a good skill you get early and he has a three hit that makes him ok in the late game. Stealing is mostly useless throughout the game, i never seemed to get anything good until the super bosses when i got an extra ameranthine ring and an extra kali's ring which was what tipped the monk over the edge into full untouchable status. If I swapped him out it would be for a black mage.

White mage is great especially the "fast" skills, only boring when you are overleveled because he has nothing to do, if you really, really want to, there are some decent late game items to give him pretty good attack power, but you can't put points everywhere I suppose. My only regret is that there is no one to really unleash his hilariously overpowered finally holy attack on, the last time i used it (200 INT less ago or so) it did 23000 damage, oh well.

The party had no real problems, except the absorbant jelly, which i chucked fish at till it died.

If you abuse fishing and like getting lots of extra goodies
Monk/Monk/Thief/Engie

Monks seem to just be better than knights. They do more damage, they are immune to status effects and though they are weaker early game they still did well on the front lines.

Personally I love stealing/lockpicking, maybe none of the items you get are essential but you get tons of extra stuff a lot of which your engie can use effectively. Even without the Engie or without abusing fishing it is still a lot of extra cash if you sell it all.

Engie works well with the Thief and if you fish he gets a little ridiculous. I don't actually care about tunneling, but since it's there - why not?

If you don't care about fish abuse or cash, I guess you could drop the thief/engie and instead go:
3 monks/ 1 gray mage

Worked pretty well actually with the gray mage kicking butt in the beginnning and the monks taking over late game.

I played on Hard so maybe things would go differently in legendary or something but it worked well. I had more fun with the thief/engie combo just for variety.

Every party I saw on the guide has a monk or a knight. I'm sitting over here with neither. My party and reasoning/leving guide:

Black Mage (main char.) Huntress, White Mage, and Theif.

Rows: Front: Black Mage Mid: Huntress/Theif Back: White Mage

Party Comp. Reasoning:

It's mostly your standard party but withoute a huge physical damage character. The Huntress deals a fair amount of damage and the Theif's damage increases with levels because his crit rate increases (he does double damage). I actually have my white mage have high attack as well (on par with my theif) and my black mage is straight intelligence. Not a single point in attack. I have not had a problem yet except for when I go into an area that I'm really not supposed to be in. I.e. One hit whole party. Although I did make it through most of the trials on the mystic island thing underleveled (all but the boss, he one hit whole party). Also, huntress uses scan, theif steal and etc.

How I level:

I don't balance. How I level depends completely on the situation. In the beginning it was a little more balanced, I had to get their attack/mp/defense/hp up so that was a thing, but after a few levels I started to get into my own groove. The enemies in what ever area I'm in basically only do 1 damage, unless using magical attacks. In that case they only really damage my theif and my huntress. Basically what I do is when I get to an area that the enemies start to do a fair amount of damage, I put an entire level's worth of AP into defense. Then they don't hurt them anymore and I move freely. Ever once a few levels (like 5 or 6) I'll decide to put all of their ap into hp for a whole level just to get it up some unless the situation calls for it to be done right away. A couple times I also put all their stuff into PRE but I don't do it as much just because I get a lot of good equpiment that gets their pre up. And I put all of their stuff into MP for one level just so my huntress and theif could have something to work with. When I'm not raising those I raise other stats according to character:

Character growth:

Black Mage:

Int, MP, and Defense.

I decided to make my Black Mage a tank and it's working hard. I get his defense up just a bit more (like by 15-20 points) than every one else. The reason this works is because of his equipment bringing his Magic Defense up, I don't have to worry about that. Then I just increase his defense and then he just doesn't take damage. Of course, not many of my characters do, but when I haven't leveled defense in a while, he can take the brunt of it. And I also keep my Int, and MP on par with each other. So when I level I just go MP, Int, MP, Int, MP, INt putting something in defence every once in a while, it's not needed so much anymore since I already got it up a good bit and I level it up every so few levels.

Huntress:

Attack, Agility, and ACC

She's pretty simple huntress. I keep her Attack and Agility on par with each other just because. Although I'm not sure if agility actually has too much of an effect until later game because she barely ever dodges enemies' attacks. She's usually one of my higher damage dealers but has sorta been taken down by down by my theif because of his crit. I put stuff into ACC ever once in a while just so she won't miss too much. I wasn't doing this for a while and my characters were missing like ever 3rd/4th attack so I needed to start.

White Mage:

Attack, MP, and MgD

It's a littlte strange that I don't put a whole lot into intelligence. I do put some in sometims when I have a few spare points, but I'm going for somewhat of a paladin. Her attack is basically the same as my theif's (except for the crit) and the mp really helps because lotsa healing gets done when I travel into places I'm underleveld for. I also keep her MP and Attack the same (I got this pattern, see?) I get her Magic Defense up a lot just because. I don't think I've ever really seen her take that much magic damage except for that boss that one hit everyone. She still uses a staff though, mind you that gets her intelligence up enough so I don't spend points in it too much.

Theif:

Crit, Attack, and Agility

For a while I focused mainly on crit, just because thats who I wanted him to be. I started putting stuff in attack so he could actually do damage and that's working out pretty well. He's the only character that I don't have two stats that are the same and that's because his crit costs so much to level. I think it costs the least out of everyone, but it still costs 9 AP per point. It's worth it though, because I'm at level 21/22 and he crits 65-70 % of the time, not to mention I know crit increasing spells. So he basically does double damage, and once I get crit all the way up to 100 % I'm just going all attack. I also put some stuff into agility sometimes, just because.

And that's my party comp.

tl;dr version:

BM: Tank Mage
HNT: Sniper/Dodge Master
WM: Paladin
THF: CRIT CRIT CRIT