Sharla and Mellia are so useless, though. Kind of a shame.
On my first playthrough I used Sharla until I got Melia and used her from then on as an NPC and only started controlling her here and there veeery late in the game.
The game is easy enough you can have those characters in your party with no real problems. It's just not ideal.
Well, I beat Xenoblade late last night. Amazing game, albeit really long. $20 for a game with this much charm and content was a steal for me. Granted, I'll probably never replay it, but it's definitely grown to be one of my favorites.