Team SaGa

Team SaGa is a name used to mention the protagonist's party in the SaGa series. While the "Team SaGa" title for the party is not commonly used, it is the closest to an official title and is used to describe such.

Makai Toushi SaGa
In the first ever SaGa game, the party consists of 4 members, one being the main character. The player can pick from three races, Humans, Espers and Monsters from Guild Houses found inside and outside the Tower. Due to the character's rather lackluster survivability, it is recommended to replace the permanently dead members with new ones via the Guild houses, rather than stock up on hearts to keep old members alive. Depending on the area the Guild House is located at, the party member will have the stats to accomodate the area's enemies. It is not possible to remove living members from your party. If the frontline character dies or if the player simply choses to do so by pressing select, it is possible to change the formation of your party on a vertical menu. Whoever is on the top of the party member list is also the character controlled on the world map. The formation also the determining factor on which member speaks in the story, as the dialogue is simply coded to correspond to the character's place on the list, and is not set to their actual character.

SaGa 2: Hihou Densetsu
In SaGa 2, the party usually consists of 4 members picked at the beginning of the game, the protagonist having his/her creation done before the story begins, with the 3 latter members being chosen at the first town's school, where they wish to help the hero on his/her quest to find their father. The player can pick from 4 races, 3 being from the former game, with a new addition being the Robots. These 3 members are unable to be removed from the party by any means, as there are no Guild Houses and there is no way for them to permanently die either, as the heart system has been removed.

A new addition to the team is a temporary fifth party member, which is added on certain story events and usually leaves the party when their particular event is over. While the player can add items to this fifth member's inventory, they are unable to remove any item worn before or any item they equipped after their recruit.

Romancing SaGa
The fourth game in the series, Romancing SaGa, has the largest amount of party members in the series, with 6 active party members in battle at once. The party is fully customizable, with the ability to easily remove every party member besides the chosen protagonist. An exception to this is the recruitable character Galahad, who will lock out the ability to remove any party members via the Pub. Ingame, the pub owners state that the protagonist has a powerful warrior in their party, not giving them the option to edit said party at all.

Most protagonists start out with one or two extra characters. Most characters can stay in the player's party for the whole game, though there are exceptions due to some introductory characters only being temporary (Diana), or some characters leaving the party after specific quests (Sylvan,Brau) or circumstances (Dowd asks to stay in Estamir after leaving the South Estamir Pub with Barbara in your party, though this is only optional).

Romancing SaGa 3
The sixth game in the series carries over the reduced party space of 5 active members, though there is a 6th slot in which the protagonist can be set into, setting up the Commander mode, though it can also be used to simply interchange between other members if the player does not wish to use in battle. Just like the first game, the player can freely recruit and kick characters by using the Pub, though yet again there is one exception, the Bard will not be able to be kicked from the party unless one of the four noble devils has been defeated.

This is the game that coined the term "Team SaGa", which appears during the tournament of Zweig.

Trivia

 * By pressing select select during SaGa 2's introduction right after creating your main character, the game has amusingly enough already set a temporary party of three humans with the sprites of the fungus monster. You can then switch your newmade protagonist with one of these mushrooms, ultimately replacing him/her. The fungus starts out with 0 HP and a full inventory of hammers, though after battle it resets to 1 HP like a regular character's. An exception is drinking a potion once the character's HP has reset to 1, as that will set it back to 0, as that is the full health stat. If you go at an Inn and every other character is fully healed, the price will approximately be 65535 Gold. Here is a video of the glitch in action.