Lost Odyssey(Check OP for any help you need w/endgame stuff)

[Deejay]

What's the difference between random encounters and real time combat anyway? Monsters still spawn randomly, and the time you waste running around trying to dodge creatures is just as dull as escaping random battles. Either way you're still wasting time when you don't feel like fighting.

[Exoduso]

The 10 second loading times. Dreadful, I know. buy a PS3, I hear you can dedicate 1/10 of your HDD to lower them by 2 seconds.

[Elcura]

What's the difference between random encounters and real time combat anyway? Monsters still spawn randomly, and the time you waste running around trying to dodge creatures is just as dull as escaping random battles. Either way you're still wasting time when you don't feel like fighting.

You seriously are asking what the difference is? I thought it was obvious. The only game I remember where dodging an encounter would possible take you longer than it would to just initiate a battle and run away is Chrono Cross. In the most obvious game (FF12, which everyone loves to use an example), I could run through entire zones without fighting a single monster if I didn't want too. In a less obvious game, Valkyrie Profile, I could just freeze an enemy and hop over it, provided it was even in the way to begin with. But funny how the games with no random encounters are the games that you actually want to fight in huh?

The 10 second loading times. Dreadful, I know. buy a PS3, I hear you can dedicate 1/10 of your HDD to lower them by 2 seconds.

Yeah, totally.

Also, 10 second loading time for a random encounter is fucking rediculous. Not to mention if that doesn't include the stupid intros for the characters and monsters (which could run you up to 15 seconds easily even on a game with not-so-stupid loading times) a game taking that long would kill any desire to want to level up beyond what was needed to get by or explore what wasn't on the immediate path to my goal.

[Exoduso]

Yet you played FF7/8/9/10 right?

Plus no one's forcing you to get LO.

[Kuya]

You don't seem to understand that people can still like the game regardless of it having random encounters assuming everything else is decent, however this does not stop random encounters from being annoying.

[Exoduso]

I never said they weren't annoying..yes they can get extremely frustrating. Yes, it WILL be that way in Lost Odyssey to the point we would have to shut the game off for a couple of hours before it drives us crazy. Yes, it will have very long 'cutscene' going into the actual battle, and hell the battles themselves look like they're on a pretty slow pace (Blue Dragon-esque)... does it mean it will necessarily be a bad thing? I don't think so. At least, it'd like to think that it won't be since I do enjoy RPGs, even if they do have the random encounters and turn-based gameplay that's oh so old (because FFX came out eons ago, duh.)

Sure you can enjoy them, but if you enjoy them then why are you crying about it so much? That's Mistwalker's style, they like to be old fashioned and as long as it sells I don't think they'll really care.

Then again, what do I know.. I gamefly, right?

[Maguspk]

You can beat the game at level one so any argument over random encounters is pretty dumb considering you don't have to grind; the monsters grow as you grow. The random encounter rate is also fairly low compared to other titles.

I can see disliking random encounters if you have to grind, but since you don't it's not a big deal... you just fight what you encounter or run, get the points you need for learning skills and stuff and go to the boss.

[Lordwafik]

The biggest gripe I have with random encounters is the lack of control over the situation, the second biggest being intro/outro.

For example, pokemon diamond and pearl. I wanted to play it casually, here and there in the morning before work, on the way home, between waiting for things in FF, etc. However, random encounters pissed the hell out of me so much. Why am I forced to fight things all the way through the game? Especially when backtracking to go to the older areas, and I'm assaulted by weak monsters. True, there's items to slow the encounter rate, but it's inneffective against monsters your level.
In the later areas of the game, the encounter rate is so retardedly high, some of the areas I could only literally take 4 steps. On top of that, the animations were oh so damn slow, it would take forever just to watch them fight, and god forbid there was a weather effect, another artificial slowdown in battle animations.

Second gripe is intro outro, and FF3 on the DS did this worse, the the point where I just up and quit the game. At the end of each battle, after being loaded into the slow and cumbersome battle to begin with, each and every character has to wave into the camera, one by one, and smile to show their exp. WHY????? I can understand a short Victory fanfare and taking you to the exp screen to show you that, but why does each and every character have to do it 1 by 1 in this game?

Third gripe I have is it takes away the feeling of a nice fluid game. I can understand in the past, the limitations of having too many sprites on the screen and/or AI behaviour, but that should not be an issue today.

The reason FF12 is the comparison is because it did it so excellently well. There wasn't an intro/outro, unless it was a boss, and when it was a big deal you'd get the special victory animation. You'd go through a dungeon completely uninterrupted by some random battle, but instead be fought by multiple enemies along the way, in the pace and flow of the dungeon. Exp is shown after you kill each monster, but not screen hoggingly huge, it showed up as a small thing ontop of the monster after it died. Not once is the pace broken, not once are you sent to another area that doesn't look like your place you were fighting, etc.

Gambits were tittingly great too, it was a cross of FF11 and uh, botting.

PS : I played FF6/7/8/9/10/11/12, I still like them, but games of these days onwards should follow in the footsteps of no random encounters, and if it does have random encounters, they should be made to be very fast to load and to leave, and not painfully time consuming either.

[Jefe]

The main thing I've always hated about the FF series was that, random encounters. When I first played FFVI it got incredibly annoying, 2-3 steps and a random fight. Thank god I somehow got the moogle pin to avoid them. However, the first one that allowed me to pick fights was Chrono Trigger, even if there were a few forced ones.

What I hate is not having the liberty to choose whether I wanna fight non-story related battles. Yes, <3 FF12 for that, and gambits lol.

[Kuya]

Sure you can enjoy them, but if you enjoy them then why are you crying about it so much? That's Mistwalker's style, they like to be old fashioned and as long as it sells I don't think they'll really care.

Same reason i cry about FFXI, my family, or my country. Just because i like them, it doesn't mean they don't have shit that downright infuriates me.

[Exoduso]

Wafik, you're just pointing out the extreme cases I think.. previous FFs have done an okay job at random encounters, to the point where they weren't too annoying (FF9 had a pretty good grip on it I think.. X-2 did as well but i'm assuming you thought you were too manly to play it? )

I agree that it can get extremely frustrating at times (like FFX's Inside Sin area where you'd get a random encounter every 3 steps >.<), but at that point you have items that can completely dismiss encounters from the game so you don't have to worry about it.

And grinding in a turn-based, random encounters game is pretty much useless most of the time since it's not needed (especially if the monsters do indeed grow with you... then it's just pointless)... most of these games make sure you have enough fight experience/levels to defeat anything in the game.

Again with FF12, it did an okay job but it was pretty much automatic... sure, you can claim that all of these games are automatic and at certain points all you have to do is tap X and you win. But when you fight the final boss and all you have to do is watch how pretty the colors are, something is faulty in the design of the game. Some people liked it, I sure as hell didn't. Oh and Kuya, you seem to think that I hate it for some reason, and I really don't... I enjoyed the game a lot, I just thought it got too robotic for me towards the middle of the game. When all you have to do is set up specific instructions to all your characters and then just run that group around an area, I tend to get bored. I think it's the only reason why it took me so long to beat FF12 (a good 2-3 months.. I just lost interest at certain points, and the fact that the story was practically nonexistant until Pharos didn't help either.)

Same reason why Xenosaga 1 was annoying (and it was another game I enjoyed)... if I want to watch something i'll watch a movie. I'm playing a game, so i'm assuming i'll be doing something once in a while.

[Lordwafik]

Wafik, you're just pointing out the extreme cases I think.. previous FFs have done an okay job at random encounters, to the point where they weren't too annoying (FF9 had a pretty good grip on it I think.. X-2 did as well but i'm assuming you thought you were too manly to play it? )

Indeedy I am pointing out extreme cases, these are the exact cases why I now do not play games with random battles, unless the story is realllllllly good and the good outweighs the bad of the game. That or the random battles aren't time consuming.

And wtf @ me hating FFX-2, I love the game, I loved every part of it! I think it has the best battle system in any turn based FF I fought - the only gripe with that game's battle system is I wish I could have them change acessories too when you changed jobs, unfortunately if you turned a melee into a mage in that game mid fight they'd keep their melee rings / acessories, oh wells. <333333333 FFX-2.

I agree that it can get extremely frustrating at times (like FFX's Inside Sin area where you'd get a random encounter every 3 steps >.<), but at that point you have items that can completely dismiss encounters from the game so you don't have to worry about it.

Yep, the more games that introduce the items the better, actually the more games that do away with random encounters the better. I got an item in Pokemon diamond quite early on from the ghost place, but I don't know if it's buggy or not but it never worked despite me equipping it.

And grinding in a turn-based, random encounters game is pretty much useless most of the time since it's not needed (especially if the monsters do indeed grow with you... then it's just pointless)... most of these games make sure you have enough fight experience/levels to defeat anything in the game.

Grinding always sucks, but it's up to the devs to make such a large portion of the game fun or tedious. Pokemon DS / FF3 DS = Tedious, FFXI / FF12 / FFX-2 = not so tedious. If the battles are fun then there wouldn't be complaints really, but after the first 30 or so random encounters, it's pretty much the same thing in most rpgs.

Again with FF12, it did an okay job but it was pretty much automatic... sure, you can claim that all of these games are automatic and at certain points all you have to do is tap X and you win. But when you fight the final boss and all you have to do is watch how pretty the colors are, something is faulty in the design of the game. Some people liked it, I sure as hell didn't.

Well that's where the best part of FF12 came in, the option of having it play out automatically (even then, you better be at your controller if you're in a dungeon with multiple varying monsters with different weaknesses), and the option of playing it out like a classic FF. Nothing stopped you from doing this in FF12 aside from yourself.




Random encounters will never die, they'll keep making games that make them, hell I even want to make a game with them for the DS (story and art are set, coding missing kekeke), however if I were to make one, I'd have the random battles as simple as possible, and emphasize the boss battles to be the only ones with overwhelming intros/outros and jazz.

A similar problem in the FF series was summoning, I remember in the "Making of" FFX DVD, they said they added an option to shorten the animation of summoning monsters because of the complaining of how long it took in the previous ones. It was only logical for them to make this progressive step too.

[Exoduso]

PS : I played FF6/7/8/9/10/11/12, I still like them, but games of these days onwards should follow in the footsteps of no random encounters, and if it does have random encounters, they should be made to be very fast to load and to leave, and not painfully time consuming either.

I see no X-2. Only reason I made that (sarcastic, btw) comment. And I definitely agree, I still think it's the best turn based FF battle system... probably the best turn-based system period.

[Kuya]

FFXI / FF12 / FFX-2 = not so tedious.

WELLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL

[Lordwafik]

oops, forgot to add X-2 into that list. I've played it multiple times to see the endings.

And the reason I say FFXI isn't tedious is because it's fun to exp, for about an hour or two, before it starts getting snoretastic. Also you're not forced to randomly fight everything on your path on the way to stuff unless someone is a retard and aggros it , or it's unavoidable true sight. Silent Oils / Prism powders are a hell of a drug.

[Exoduso]

http://youtube.com/watch?v=LrCNKX_NTfs

US commercial..

[-Zer0-]

Enc-None works wonders. Fact :rocl:

[Belkin]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m0YrK_NspJQ&feature=related

Choreography of that beginning scene combined with the main theme is fucking amazing, definitely goosebump worthy.

Pray to GOD somebody makes an avatar out of the guy that gets fucked up at 1:40

[Deejay]

So theres no grinding needed in this game, and from what I've read the random encounter rate isn't that high. The music is great, graphics are good, I might be buying this >.>

[Po]

Only downside to this game I heard is a shitton of reading and watching cutscenes and not enough gameplay.

That is also what critics said about Xenosaga 1 though when it came out and that game was made of win, so I have ti assume this will be good as well.