At the beginning of the game, players create their initial character to lead the party. This character will be the strongest statistically and will begin with a strong weapon, but once chosen, the selection cannot be undone. They are given a choice of three races:

• Humans - Humans cannot learn any abilities or use magic books. Instead, they have the most equipment slots allowing them to equip a wide variety of weapons and armor. Humans only grow stronger by using stat upgrading items sold in shops to increase their stats. As they have no natural defense and must rely on their armor as well, Humans are the most expensive units to recruit.
• Mutants (called Espers in the Japanese version) - Mutants grow stronger with each battle, obtaining random stat boosts at the end of the battle. They also may learn or forget abilities, up to a total of four abilities being available to learn. Magic potency is determined by a character's Mana stat; since this can develop in a Mutant more readily than a Human, Mutants can use the various magic books found throughout the game. Mutants are limited to four equipment slots, but can still use the full range of items. They can be cheaper to recruit than Humans, though much will depend on how they develop. As they evolve, their Def may also increase; thus they may be able to survive with only one or two pieces of armor.
• Monsters - Monsters get stronger as the party defeats other monsters. At the end of each battle, one monster may drop its meat, which any of the party's monsters can eat. The meat may transform the monster from one genus to another; and depending on the source of the meat, it may make the monster stronger or weaker while granting abilities present to that genus (e.g. a Werebeast-type eats a Ghoul-type and becomes a Ghost-type). They cannot equip items at all, but their abilities will recover upon resting at an inn.

The player can also choose a gender for the Human or Mutant character, which will affect his/her starting stats; males start with higher Str values, while females begin with higher Agl values. After the initial character has been chosen, three more can be recruited at Base Town, created just like the initial character, to make a party of four members. However, units recruited from the Base Town Guild will be much weaker than the initial character.