Random battles ironically are not that random as the are hidden step counters that determine when they happen if you're in a spot where a fight can happen and in some games what type of fight you load into and enemy you fight, FFVII is a prime example as if you do the exact same movement in 10 different playthoughs you'll get the same number of fights and fight the exact same enemies.

In older games developers programmed the games to be tighter on the counter but sometimes underestimated the encounter rate so it resulted in some games having erractic encounter rates.

Every system has flaws, which can be mitigated by good design or exaggerated by bad design. There is no perfect method that everyone will enjoy.

Personally, everything being an "action RPG" now has pretty much killed what used to be my favorite genre.

IMO, action elements tend to cheapen the experience. As much as I enjoy the Xenoblade games, I’d prefer them if I didn’t have to constantly worry about positioning in every battle. If I select backstab, I’d prefer my character to auto-move in for a backstab so long as I don’t fall off a cliff =P

But, the action elements always feel like imperfections or pollution in the battle system. And it is not a Japan vs. rest of the world thing. The majority of European and some American games (like Civ) I play also use menu-based commands and/or turn based progression.

Nothing wrong with action-RPGs, if done properly, they are as deep as classic RPGs.

Problem is, these days genre is so diluted that action-pseudo-RPGs are predominant AAA mass-market "RPG" offerings.

I have no problems with random encounters, particularly if I can choose whether to fight or not. Maybe well defined areas where powerful enemies respawn are more efficient to grind, though. Fallout 2 and Temple of Elemental Evil use random encounters, Planescape: Torment has dungeons with respawning monters, plus peaceful monsters and thugs that respawn in the streets and that can be taunted. I like them all. Morrowind has enemies respawning indoors and outdoors, and intellingent ones can be calmed too for a while with magic to talk with them. In Morrowind case the only problems are lots of crap in the loot and difficulties in selling the best loot, as most traders have little cash.

FF-7 to 9 remake should only improve graphics. I could accept make random encounters transformed in enemies in the screen you choose to attack. But no action rpg.

It trully is delicious to obliterate enemies from time to time, but the investment is to high. I would say the concept of to much random encounters came from the idea of the time to make the person play a lot to see value on the game as much as the difficult in several 8-16 bits games were to hide a 1h game as something very time consuming.

Haha, maybe not that extreme in most cases - Dragon Warrior was about a 5-10 hour game but probably had around an hour to two of unique content. But I fully agree with what you’re saying with the grinding in early RPGs, particularly NES/SMS/SMD. In fact, I’d say Dragon Warrior 3 and 4 were the only RPGs of the 8-bit generation that didn’t require grinding MOST of the time (they required a little if playing reasonably, but maybe 10-30% of the game was grinding as opposed to the majority of RPGs at the time which hit the 80%+ mark (Phantasy Star series anyone?!?!). The first RPG I recall that didn’t require grinding was Mystic Quest Legend and the extremely rare Final Fantasy Legend games for Gameboy - but all those games took only a few hours to finish (FF Legend 2 had way more content than any NES RPGs but you could finish it in a sitting). I can point out the exact moment of change: Secret of Mana, that game required a ton of grinding like most RPGs before it, but just about every RPG after it could be done free of the stop-and-grind. But you’ll notice that FF6 has significantly more content and story than any Square RPG before it, and that’s probably the reason for the ease of balance.

I started FF on 9, and ever since I never needed to grind to finish regular content, the pace and quantity of random encounters is enough for you to level (still takes like 50h), and you just need to plan well your game and learn the skills so you can have an end-boss under lvl 50 with success. Of course the hidden content was another matter that is totally necessary to grind so for me that is perfect balance.

So do i. Like in Tales of Symphonia and Shin Megami Tensei 4 you are free to avoid the enemy on the map or attack them first to get the advantage in battle.

Ka-pi96 said: Random encounters are great! That said there was one particular map in Lost Odyssey where they were really ridiculous. It felt like you couldn't even take 2 steps without a battle triggering

They can be fun but get incredibly annoying after 50 hours.

Perhaps, i felt it became worse in FF8 especially since the game doesn't reward lvling up, let alone grinding. The Diablos ability is a game saver though. 

Litterally the same thing happened to me with Star Ocean backtracking is part of the story and its really makes you give up on it.

Actually the complaints for anime are far worse - everthing is too cutesy, too colorful, not dark enough, little girls doing creepy stuff.... Yeah so i decided to group them all together as too much anime.

I've read about that but even so the GC version still has random encounters like every 2 or 3 seconds while sailing the Sky, i can't imagine how much of a nightmare the Dreamcast version must be.

Let me explain.

- To be fair, most frustrating RPGs known for its insane amount of encounters appeared mostly on Nintendo consoles. Breath of Fire. Lufia. Skies of Arcadia. Tales of Phantasia. Pokemon. Dragon Quest.

- I actually wasn't aware that i had this thread on Nintendo discussion and then forgot to change it to gaming discussion so now it's stuck on Nintendo. If some mod decides it should be moved then it's fine by me.