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.  

I'll add another complaint: Battle systems that drain your MP too quickly and force you to conserve your MP-restoring potions in dungeons, so you have to primarily stick to boring basic attacks until you get to a boss.

For me, random encounters aren't the problem. I prefer seeing enemies on a field map, but I can live with a game that has a decent encounter rate and escape rate. The real problem I have is grinding. It doesn't matter whether I can choose when to battle or not if I'm forced to choose to repeatedly and mindlessly battle to get past a boss or area that has a sudden jump in enemy levels and stats. That is an issue with a game's pacing and design, not with the way battles are encountered.

I played Tales of Phantasia on my GBA last year (started in 2016), and I could not agree more with your thoughts. I saw it through to the end, but I will never touch that game in its current form again. Random encounter rate out the ass, slowest paced battle system I have ever seen in my life (imagine an action-stopping FFVII summon every single time one of your party members, who is mandatorily in your party for more than half the game, casts a spell, and about 40 percent of the time for another party member), an MP (or TP)-based system like the one I mentioned above, and like many SNES RPGs, a horrible world map traversing system using Mode 7 that makes you waste more time guessing where to land than just walking there yourself (that would be true if not for the random encounter rate). I'm currently playing Tales of Graces f on the PS3, and I'm loving the battle system in it, and wondering if I can ever go back to the TP system in other Tales games now.

Actually their sales have fallen off because they stopped doing a lot of this stuff.  Final Fantasy X is the 2nd best selling FF game, and it was the last to include turn-based random encounters.  They should try getting back to their roots.

If we're talking JRPG sales in general, they've fallen off mostly because they just aren't getting made as much anymore.  Leaving aside Pokemon (which I feel is never considered a traditional RPG anyways) the FF series sales have been consistently in the 7-9 million range.  Since FF7, and with the exception of FFIX and FFXII, all of them have sold between 7-9 million roughly.  I don't know about XI, but I believe XIV is up there now.

 DQXI from what I have heard is actually one of the highest selling DQ games in the NA region now.

Honestly, I really enjoy classic RPG's with very high random encounter rates as long as level grinding my characters enables them to beat bosses later with relative ease. What I can't stand is spending hours level grinding through a dungeon only to get to a boss where there is some kind of special trick or tactic that needs to be discovered that requires your party to die a few times before you can actually beat the boss regardless of your level. The reward for level grinding should be the ability to easily beat bosses, otherwise there is really no point.

I think westerners generally don't enjoy old-school RPG's with high encounter rates because we can't understand the concept of utilizing game time (as opposed to  playing skill) as our resource in games.  There is a lot of reward (and in my experience, a lot less frustration) in investing time (ie. by levelling up) as the means to defeat a game's enemies as opposed to your own skills as a gamer.  There is something very satisfying about watching your over-powered party lay waste to a difficult boss especially when it was your time spent strengthening them.

I'm glad im not the only one.

I dont think so, most tradtional rpgs and JRPGs in general these days are niche or lesser known games that generally aren't big in the West.

Final Fantasy and Pokemon are big names that sell well no matter what.

The fact that JRPGs have moved away from these elements says shows Western RPGs mainstream success. The Souls games and Bloodborne sell better in the west despite being JRPGs.

Disagree. Traditional JRPGs dont sell well in the west. Western RPGs have taken over and sell better each generation, i'm not saying they're better but it shows that mainstream gamers are more interested towards Western RPGs. Pokemon and Final Fantasy have always been good sellers in the west especially in the Playstation era but Dragon Quest has never been a big seller in the West not even DQ11 has done good numbers in the west.

It's truly a great game even with it's flawed fighting system but the encounters really ruined the game for me.

I think we do but why spend most of your time grinding with random encounters if you can freely explore worlds and do lots of side quests in Western RPGs. It's really the freedom of choice, character creation and the more realistic gritty visuals that has made Western RPGs so succesful. The Souls games + Bloodborne are all JRPGs and they really dont sell all well in their native country.

2nd best selling if I remember right.

Ni no Kuni is almost perfect. You not only can avoid enemies (unless when they're standing on a too narrow path) but you don't need to avoid weaker enemies, they just run from you. So when you need to go back to some area you've beaten, you don't need to care about the useless weaklings.