List the most evil mechanics in RPGs

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Good thing some games actually take that into account.

You're trying way too hard to fit in here.

Here's why I avoid RPGs made before the year 1995.

This is the case with a lot of things people here and elsewhere complain about in games, but they tend to just think in extremes.

Well, what can you do to circumvent this besides level scaling?

Make the animations quicker, have items or settings that make encounters go away, instant kill weak enemies for free or just have no random encounters at all after completing some objective. This shit isn't hard to think up.

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What makes it evil is how no one sees how shit this genre is, or the fact no one attempts to innovate past the SNES age of AI. Hell, I got more to say for this trash genre.

Make a good game where you plan out areas and have enemies that have set levels. You know like every RPG did before Oblivion.

I always felt like experience should be shared in SRPGs, I mean it is in just about every other regular RPG so why not? It's not like your healer or status guy will get to act in every single fight anyway.

That's still pretty tedious when something like a quest sends you back to the starting area or somewhere near it.

Good ideas, but only half of them are even utilized in most JRPGs, or would only make the shitty element slightly less shitty.

That's why you don't send the player back to the starting area.

It needs to be a la Earthbound/Mother 3.

Well, YOU don't, but plenty of JRPG's do.

Well they should design their game better.

Which is the only time I'd ever try to use them. Even a low percentage would be better than having them not work at all.

This one, for sure. If there are no non-boss enemies that are worth using status effects on, why even have them in the game?

To add depth™

All but one of my complaints have already been posted, and this is one thing that can ruin an entire playthrough for me if I don't know it's coming and can't prepare accordingly. That would be RPGs that have a large roster of characters that is far larger than what you can have in your active party at once, that suddenly force you to temporarily break up your party and play through sections of the game with characters that you probably never wanted to use in the first place.

Bonus hatred if they don't let you remove the equipment from your "main" characters first, and Fuck this shit, I'm out if there is no rubberband/sharing mechanic for experience, so those unused characters are at their base levels which makes it impossible to progress.

Corollary to this sin:

FF9 is a pretty funny example because they went out of their way to have a segment solely for levelling up one character you didn't get a chance to use and then not long after dedicate two, harder segments to characters who you get a chance to use pretty often but probably sideline because they're subpar.

FF6 on the other hand, had the decency of auto-leveling up the characters you didn't use at certain points in the story, so that when you were forced to use them, they didn't suck.

treehouse LOC

…on a game so easy to finish that people do no-Esper/whatever runs

What segments in 6 forced you to use a character after a long absence anyways? I can only think of the Humbaba fight but that was optional and piss easy anyway.

This.

It's that kind of shit that makes me want to look up a guide before I start a playthrough of an older RPG I've never played before, even though that always fucks up the magic of a first playthrough.

One of my friends is still assblasted ~15 years later because he had his first and only run cockblocked by the mirror castle.

After the world got fucked up you don't have access to all your party members straight away, so you might have to use characters that you didn't use all that much up until that point. Also after Terra becomes temporarily unavailable, if you have been maining her and you probably did, since at that point she was the only one who could cast spells, you had to use another character. I think there was another one, besides the first one after the octopus fight(though that was so early it doesn't really count). Even so, there were times, when I wanted to try other characters and it was a breath of fresh air, that I didn't have to spend hours grinding just to level them up. At worst I had to spend 20 minutes leveling up their espers.

The only time it's done right is where there's a TON of shit scattered everywhere, so you always get something if you have some diligence.

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So ok the ideal JRPG wewe can agree on yet would have no:
alternativly some shortcut system, so they dont even show up.

whats that?

What would you use instead of randon encounters? Overworld enemies who try to run into you to trigger an encounter?
Only zelda like action fighting?

Pokemon, isn't even that hard of a game, let alone an RPG. You don't need to min/max in order to win the game, unless you are the type of guy who plays it just to fight other people, but thankfully there are tools online that streamline the process, so you don't have to grind and breed them.

Which version of Romancing Saga should I play?

the remake of 1, 2 (havent played the remake so i donno how it is) and 3.

EVs are still a terrible mechanic, though.

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there is literally nothing worse than this.

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Random Encounters

The most evil mechanic in rpg is anything that makes you miss. If the combat is based around a chance to hit completely then every encouter is a pain in the ass until you get it as close to 100% as you can.
Even worse if it is done with a quest. Hey there buddy, you have a 60% chance at best at this quest not being failed, better prepare to reload and hope for the best! Morrowind does this in Tribunal, and it's the absolute fucking worst

I think he's referring to Treehouse localisation team. Could be worse.

It makes sense in the SMT games because the contracts you make with demons are broken but it's still annoying

Then what about Persona? On the other hand Digital Devil Saga didn't have this "mechanic".

traps or curses which bring you down one level with no way of curing it
what makes the designer think I'll put up with that shit instead of reloading a save?

In some megaten games makes perfect sense, it's even cool because you can kill the leader and defeat all the demons in the other party, but in Persona, for example, it's stupid.

That probably doesn't exist, but it sure seems to happen a lot with random encounters.

BoF 3 has the same problem with Masters. It actually makes the first part of the game really interesting, so it's not that bad.

I should have said some of them

Yeah it's great when it works both ways

Earthbound actually had a good idea: afetr you killed the boss guarding the Sanctuary, all normal enemies that randomly appear in that area just run away from you (so you can ignore them or farm them starting with a surprise turn). And of course, enemies that are too weak to hurt you are automatically defeated without battle. Same idea in Mana Khemia 1 & 2, which are great.

In Final Fantasy IV that happened a lot, maybe encounters weren't so random

Valkyrie Profile had enemies you could freeze, climb, dodge and become completely intangible to. I don't see why more games don't have this shit.

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dlc.

I know, it's just a dick game design choice.

Was also thinking of that one

That bit alone kills Dark Dawn. Honestly think it would have been in the middle of the series in quality otherwise because in retrospect Broken Seal is pretty boring.

i remember some snes game in which if you ran away from over 1000 non boss battles, some voice started calling you coward.
If you continue running away there was a chance of getting attacked by some strange dark lion/monster thing

In Lufia 2 you could also freeze enemies by shooting them with arrows or the hookshot to avoid combat. It's a good system, a shame that devs are lazy and prefer just rolling for random encounters.

Not when you're being so autistic you want to min/max in a no-brain-required RPG it isn't. You want stat control, go play a dungeon crawler.

That sounds like a genuinely sweet mechanic.

SaGa Frontier lets you save anywhere. DQ otoh is some Powerman marathon shit at times and even III was bad about suckerpunching you with near-unkillable enemies in a territory.

And for a dose of hypocrisy:

Fuck you, power through it.

Ok

XCOM Enemy Unknown, right?

One of the things I really liked about Magical Starsign was being able to use every party member every fight once you got them all together. Granted, it made most encounters too easy, but it was still nice to have everybody fighting.

In Modern Persona it's integration of gameplay and story. In P3 if the main dies, Death is released early. In P4, you fail the test. Why you can't continue despite that is up in the air, likely because it's require them to re-write the True Ending route, and P4 had already been rushed and changed enough. In P5, I assume it causes a Time Paradox, not sure.

At least it's not as bad as FFXIII.

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It also happens in the new Shadow Run games. I made a post about it on the steam forums before and of course had people defending it for a few pages. I should not miss 3 times on 99%, Out of 100 chances I have 1 chance to miss so three chances in a row if I missed all three times I have insane luck and should go to the nearest casino.

I don't remember that part, and I've played through that shit a lot and plan on playing through it again next week. What quest was that?

I wish more jrpgs did that, even if it was only for one fight.

Alternatively:
I'm looking at you, Cloud.

Can you give more details or link to an article/interview. It's the first time I ever heard about this.

Breath of Fire 4 and Mana Khemia 1 & 2 allow you to bring in the characters outside of your group mid-combat (in Mana Khemia, they can come in mid attack or to block an enemy attack, and each character has a different ability associated with attacking/defending)

This is really a game that should have had a sequel that fixed everything, but it never got one.

FFX did it the best where you could switch mid battle. It also did ATB the best where it showed you the bar and turn order but didn't make you wait.

You know, I've never played any of the Breath of Fire games. If I was to play through the series, would I have to play through them in order to get the most out of, or is there a standalone game I could hop right into?

in Soujinengi you can swap parties during the final battles. It adds many layers of strategy since you have to consider which members are most useful in which phase.

Not really. There are throwbacks to earlier games, but only 1 to 2 is that major a connection. Fans aren't even sure 4 or Dragon Quarter are in the same universe.

Weapon durability in action games.

They're all kinda standalone. The story between them is loosely tied, except for 4, that doesn't have anything to do with the others.

Momo literally says she somehow ended up in the wrong universe.

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The most evil thing about rpgs is trying to play a lucksack game competitively.

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FFTA-2? Especially with the No Missing rule and said mission have you to obey the law. Your first turn? 99% Hit rate…and you miss, mission failed.

also didnt pokemon stadium gave you retail pokemon with shittier stats and moves than usual?

Unrelated but
Who ever made this game does not understand the difference between a Super and Real robot?

Instadeath attacks.
To counter it, you have to equip an item that gives you immunity to it specifically, or an end-game or rare item that makes you immune to all status effects.

It's slightly more forgivable if you have a character that can cast status immunity on everyone (even if the MP cost is high) but I'd rather it just hit really fucking hard (if your tank survives it, congrats, he's awesome) or you get a countdown clock (either Doom like effects, or a heavily telegraphed attack like Tonberries- giving you time to buff up, or GTFO).

I heard years ago that "computers don't calculate luck properly."

I.e. if you have 100 coins, odds are you'll get roughly 50 heads and 50 tails.
On a computer, the odds of getting 100 heads is just as likely as the 50/50 result.

Which IMO is bullshit. While dice and coins have very minor imbalances, usually the odds are all the same. You have as much chance of flipping 100 heads IRL as you would in a computer. "Collective odds"- where each individual event has the same odds- should result in all possible outcomes being equal.

I think sometimes odds are poorly programmed (lets make it 30% chance to fuck the player over, so we can add a few more minutes to playtime as they reload, run, or try to work around it), but most of the time blaming the computer is a gambler's fallacy (you remember the 25 times your 75% accuracy move missed more than the 75 times it hit).

That last bit..lemme guess, Fire Emblem until somewhere around the DS remake of FE1?

And just to twist the knife? If the enemy uses the Instadeath move on you, it would work 99% of the time but if it's you doing it, expect it to work 1% of the time.

Even as an FE fan (on the GBA) I've got to agree with him.

Enemies either pursue (head towards the closest person, irrelevant of range) or only react when in range of something like he said.
After about the halfway point, enemies do get a bit smarter. They'll try and avoid getting near characters who can fuck them up (if they're weak to spears, they'll avoid getting near your spear people… during their turn and ignoring what you'll do on yours) but even then they''' prefer to charge in.

FE is more about a war of attrition. Enemies pouring onto you in hopes of killing one of your people. If you had to reload when a character died and bosses roamed more it'd be tense. Or an AI that thinks more turns ahead.

Are you retarded?

Can I just say that thank god they removed the Morpher class from FFTA-2?

Games seem to be divided into Status effects not doing a damn thing (except to enemies you can just knock over with a powerful attack), or status effects and debuffs being needed early on in new levels, and against bosses.

Is SaGa series any good? Or is it just overrated mediocre hipster bait like shin megami tensei and king's field?

what is the Sleep spell?

original fallout's turn based combat…
and no, I'm not talking about turn based combat in general

the first 3 and the Romancing series are good but the rest can be anywhere from ehh to pure horseshit.

in Dragon Quest 2 and 3 enemies could crit on you which isn't just double damage or some other multiplier but a hit that completely ignores defense. Not really an evil mechanic but took me completely by surprise the first time it happened because my pretty beefy and well-armored guy got one shotted.

all crits work that way which is why multihit weapons are so overpowered.

As someone who's never liked a SaGa except SaGa 3, which had an actual normal leveling progression, i think they're all shit. The supposed best, the one i'v seen people always brag about, is SaGa Frontier 2; if you're gonna try any of them, you may as well try that.

forget to pick up that one thing early on, well too bad you can't go back and get it.

FF8 did that way worse.

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Oh I fucking hate that shit.
Also, points of no return. When I played FF8 for the first (and only) time I went to Ultimecia's castle (just to check it out) and saved in the entrance, later I realized I couldn't go back to make any sidequests, and I was using only one block on the memory card, so no backups. Luckily the game was easy enough to be able to kill the final boss in level 40 or so.

due to the game's retarded level scaling the fight could've been even easier.

Well I don't know if I've ever beaten a boss as easy as that one, it was just Draw and use her own spell against her, don't remember losing even once.

don't play console x-com tbh

I'm gonna guess you play etrian odyssey with that statement huh? I recently played Etrian Odyssey Untold and theres a monster on the 4th stratum that seems to outright just inflict death on a whole line of allies but whenever i try to run away they all fail and my party wipes, its easy enough to kill them but its such a waste of time and resources to.

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Originally I wanted to say the CT Magic from FFT where healing magic is rendered worthless due to Monk's Chakra and the Chemist's Item ability makes healing quick and easy while magic in FFT in general is terrible (unless of course, you get the Calculator class which is a bitch and a half to get) but instead I will put FFTA-2's system here where everyone starts with 0 MP, thus rendering buffing classes like the Green Mage somewhat useless at the start of every match. Also, FFTA-2's Laws are built in to the missions so you can't cheese it and wait for a different law every day like in FFTA and that the mission's laws are usually a hindrance to you more than anything else (the enemy does not follow the laws that you have to follow)

I disagree on the 0MP thing in FFTA2 being bad. It made early game skills useful and promoted using items.

Green magic costing too much and blood price are just bad balance, not a problem with the system.

SaGa Frontier is pretty damn gay.

It's the quest where you pair up the girl with one of the three guys. No matter what all you can do is choose the right speech option, and that raises the chances of quest success to around 60. Then you wait two days and come visit the guy you chose. If it fails you relad. You get BiPolar blade out of that quest if you choose wisely.

Because there's two types of encounters, Boss and non-boss.

In dragon quest 2 for example, you do have useful skills that inflict sleep. You face huge amounts of enemies that would kill your party, so you can either use Explodet late game to blast all your enemies to oblivion, which is a huge drain on MP, or you can use a simple Sleep spell and pick off your enemies one by one. Naturally some enemies, like armors and ghosts are immune to sleep and require that you use magics like Burn and Explodet to defeat them without trouble, and the harder dungeons are about survival and management when your options are slowly being cut off.

Rpgs have always been about resource management, and a good JRPG is always about MP management in the end of it.

However, when you fight a boss, it becomes about HP managment, and using Sleep to cheese the fight would be too easy.

That's because spells like Sleep were designed for groups, and indeed in fights with group bosses later in the series, status spells are not only effective, but basically required.

A good boss should power through your effects and make you play his game instead of letting you set the stage, THAT'S THE POINT OF A BOSS, to tear away your crutches and deconstruct you until you learn how to beat him at his OWN game.

This is why Bahamut had a timer, so you'd actually defend when he used Mega Flare and thus you play by his rules. This is why Psaro has a shitload of forms, to test you at your health and magic resource management which has been the focus of the game. This is why Elizabeth fucked you over with a 9999 Megidolaon if you decided to reflect shit, she was designed to test your memorization so you switch into the right resistances at the right times, as you would have to rely on that in Persona 3 because the analysis mechanic took a few turns to activate and she also tested your fusion skills as you would have to have a bunch of personas with well rounded skills in order to counter her, or simply be good at the Social Links to unlock a persona specifically made to counter her tactics.

A BOSS IS SUPPOSED TO CHALLENGE YOU.

Fucking over a dude with a dozen turn-denying, health-sapping, weird shit causing bullshit wouldn't be much of a challange, would it? In games where status is a main thing, the actual statuses are split apart and de-powered somewhat, like in Etrian Odyssey where poison's damage is based on your own stats and skills instead of an enemy's percentile of health.

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As a JRPG autiste I can think of a few

A companion to that which triggers me much harder

I know that it sorta made sense realistically but I'm not a huge fan of the FF2's leveling system, particularly the magic system. You see, I'm OK with like the weapon level system where everytime you use a weapon, you got some xp and levels on that reflecting that you get better and better…but tell me, why is it that for magic, the leveling system removes low level spells and forces you to use the stronger and more MP costly version of that spell as you get better with it? Shouldn't it be the other way around?

The first 3 Final Fantasies were programmed by an Iranian and it shows. Like half of the fucking game in the first one doesn't even work, which is funny since it ends up being the smallest pain in the ass out of the three because in spite of terrible programming the design, as simple as it is, is sound.

EVs are hit or miss, but EVs and IVs are important- they make sure Pokemon are more unique, so not ever Gengar is the same.

It would be great if they finally went all in on variations- randomized coloration patterns and features.

Your stats matter way less than your equipment.
Min Maxing isn't required for any enemy in the game. This is only a problem if you are a supreme autist.

I can't play Dragon Quest because of this.

They actually scaled the UC stuff appropriately to my memory. Makes the random ass scale for everything else really bizarre.

Asellus prefers dick. It's her not!vampire blood that wants White Rose.

why cant devs copy the level system in varkyria chronicles?

OP. You know nothing about evil RPG mechanics, fucking nothing. I was not ready and probably will never be.
I wanna play Disgaia again, it was easier and less harsh.

only for the enemy or when you don't need it ofc

are you trying to say dragon quest 2 had bosses at all?
If you could easily run away from dangerous enemies in dragon quest 1 and 2 you'd be able to reach the last dungeon in less than an hour.j

Learn japanese

Fire emblem Sacred Stones had a notoriously broken RNG

A very expoitable one, too. If you had a character move in a circle (I think it had to have at least a four square interior), the game will use the latest string of RNG generated numbers to determine if they move clockwise or counter clockwise, allowing you to "fish" for positive outcomes through the in chapter save states.

What? I didn't understand a single word you just said.

A few games that did fleeing from battles right:
Lufia 2: as long as your party's combined agility is higher than the enemies combined agility, you can run from every fight, without fail.
Suikoden 2: after you reach a certain level, the 'run' command gets changed to 'let go', which work 100% of the time (you alow the enemies to run away).
Persona 3: If you run up behind an enemy and get a 'player advantage', then you can run from a battle 100% of the time.
Final Fantasy X: quite early in the sphere grid, you get the flee skill that always work.

…Putting things simply, all I want in a JRPG is a run command that always work.

SaGa Frontier 1 is the only game in the series I enjoyed. Being rushed to get it on shelves early actually resulted in it missing a lot of the usual SaGa series irritations. Start playing Red, Asellus, or Emelia's quest; they teach you how to play early on whereas the others are either too complicated or just drop you in the middle of the world with no explanation of anything. You probably need a FAQ, too.

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It amazes me that some games still don't do this.

While I agree with you 100% on this particular example, it leads me to my absolute least favorite gameplay mechanic of any game ever: A mechanic that has little to no effect on the game but nonetheless triggers my autism. I feel FFVI guy's pain.

It also doesn't help that FF6 has assbackwards stats such as magic being the governing attribute for all of Sabin's Blitzes and the fact that strength doesn't actually do anything past halfway to the maximum value.

Permanent character death in Suikoden army battles is total bullshit.

Level scaling

You must be 18 or older to post here.

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FF8's Junction and Draw System. I do get that Junctioning GF kinda sorta like the Magicite thing from FF6 but at least the Magicite Summon thing raises certain stats after level up and magic acquisition rate but FF8 makes it more like busy work. And then, there's Drawing magic.

It's been said before, but going through a ton of random encounters going from one point of a game to another, is not fun. I believe this is what killed the game "Black sigil" for instance.

Personally I prefer things that either reduces random encounter (usually items like Repel or accesories that reduces encounter rate) or something that let's me escape random encounters easily (Smoke Bomb or Run Away). Trust me, trying to find Mirage Tower (pre-Internet) was a pain with all the encounters. and speaking of Digimon World 3…the Confuse status in that game. Fuck that shit, man.

Enemy criticals that are greater than 1.25x.
Hidden items that, without, the game would be incredibly difficult (Guardian Crusade and the toys).
The Counterfeiting skill in Star Ocean.
Plot or Gameplay crucial elements based on ingame time. Especially so when there's no indicator that the two are tied together.

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As a cool kind of aversion, I remember in Grandia, characters that permanently leave your party put skill books and mana eggs into your inventory.

God, Grandia was so good.

You also get back all the skill points you gave mareg.

can you elaborate on this? I'm interested. When do they gain more stats?

The Paper Mario approach where status effects usually work on common enemies, and every boss tends to be weak to one particular effect, isn't too bad. But still makes them not worth it unless you know all that shit ahead of time, in which case you already know how to beat it the regular way anyway.

You can also easily extend that to any time you die and the circumstances of revival are the same.

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They're usually rare though so you go into that mentality of "I'll use it when I really need it".

I don't, but I can understand why some people do.

Also, I think the game I'm playing at the moment doesn't have those safe items.

Fuck Persona games for giving me the gameover screen everytime the MC died, i still have a whole functional party and a shitload of phoenix downs SO WHY THE FUCK CAN'T I JUST RESURRECT MY MC AND KEEP PLAYING GOD FUCKING DAMMIT!!!

This is the game I was referring to exactly.

For you.

There's an RPG where you see your enemies roaming the map and if you vastly outlevel them you just run through them, they instantly die and you receive a tiny amount of XP instead of going into a battle.
What game is it?

This boyo actually has a point.
I know in some RPGs you can increase the battle speed and the message speed.
Are there any games where you can speed up the transition to battle screen etc. as in just fast forward the whole fight similar to using an emulator to speed up the game?

That's earthbound
You know
That shitty JRPG from Nintendo that nobody had ever heard of until they saw Nes on Super Smash Bross
I loveJRPG but i will never understand how Earthound (Mother in Jappan) becameso popular, that game was utter shit form every angle
The mechanics were shit
The caracters were shit
The combat was shit
The story was Shit
The UI ws shit
Everything in that seemed to have been deliveratelly designed to either anoy player or simply be ugly as fuck
The world map and the mechanic you mentioned were the only good things that game ever had

go to bed adam

Not an evil mechanic, just shit. You had little control of anything in the battles.
Man, that games was fucking garbage.

What kind of babby thinks this is some kind of achievement? Any FF game can be beaten easily without ever using a summon.

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rly nigga?
Might depend on the game but I actually get great satisfaction out of dropping an unused Lv 6 character into my party of Lv 30 something characters, taking them into a dungeon, winning a battle and seeing them jump a few levels from the XP gained.
That might be just me though.

Shit si shit m8 no matter how much you suggar coat it
I gave it a long fucking chance to, i played up to the third city and i must say i slugged through all of it
The combat was shit, the avilities were shit, the item, money, call your mom sistems were all shit, the character design is shit
ANd the story is among the most reatrded i've seen on a JRPG though i don't know the full story since i could only stand that piece of shit game up to the third city
worst of all
This shit game spawned that other game that better remains unnamed

Which DQ is that?

5

Mother 2 / Earthbound has dumbed down level design, but the game has other merits.

5

Espers give extra stats when leveling up, for example having Odin equipped gains you +1 extra speed when you level up

I thought it was actually that other girl she wound up with in her yuri ending?

Non-fixed damage per attack
Hit/miss percentages
Shady and unexplained luck stat/system
Boss is invulnerable to debuffs and malus
Shady and unexplained critical damage system

Non-fixed damage per attack
Hit/miss percentages
Shady and unexplained luck stat/system
Boss is invulnerable to debuffs and malus
Shady and unexplained critical damage system

Non-fixed damage per attack
Hit/miss percentages
Shady and unexplained luck stat/system
Boss is invulnerable to debuffs and malus
Shady and unexplained critical damage system

Luck based mechanics are mega cancer.
Sorry for spergout.

Only if you were a retard and just ran circles around the enemy, constantly hoping for something from the DMW to kick in. You're in control of the vast majority of battle, just not limits and the random buffs that don't affect your control whatsoever. And even then, specific limits can be manipulated into being likely to appear more often with the right materia.

you took the words out off my tounge. im replaying the game and i have that one parivir taht keeps missing fucking malboros with 99% sidewinders in the back WTF MAN?

Learn all Mygas spells, then put Ryu on Bunyan before leaving the initial area, when you get back you will have supercombo

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Weapon durability in any fucking game.

I don't understand the problem

GOLD SAUCER
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Literally nobody on Holla Forums can speak Japanese.

This game is the devil and it will suck you soul

This. Level scaling just makes leveling utterly fucking pointless.

Meanwhile, the AI…

I know Earth 2150: Lost Souls was supposed to be for veterans of the series, but fuck me if some of the mechanics weren't downright unfair. I especially remember one mission where I nearly had destroyed the enemy fortress, only for the game to suddenly spam twenty or so artillery tanks that merrily drove past my defenses and killed the key structure I had to defend.

Yeah yeah, you can attack and use items. Great. Everything else in the game depends on that slot machine. I don't know how your run was but mine was really easy since I jumped about 15 levels in the space of 10 minutes because of the DMW.
You didn't have to strategize or think or anything. Just run around attacking and see what happens with the slot machine.

Don't be a tard user. And having an easy time with the game and noticing that you're waiting to see what happens with the DMW doesn't really go together if you're playing normally. If you really find yourself looking that much at the slots, it's probably because you're letting the battles drag on for too long, either cause you can't kill things worth a damn and so you're relying on a Limit to help, or you're purposefully fucking around because the game is too easy.

Which would make it confusing why you're complaining about not having control over a system that makes the game even easier.

Earthbound auto-killed any enemy you were strong enough to kill in one hit anyways. I didn't like the game for a variety of reasons but that was one it got right.

Because I like a game with strategy and challenge maybe?
Really, you FFfags will eat up anything Squeenix stamp the FF name on.
The story was shit too.

I think FF7 made the encounters less frequent in areas with weak enemies.

M8, you just said in an earlier post no Summon runs are easy to do, and I would assume Limits too in this case, so how would having control of a system that already limits free access to them introduce anymore worthwhile challenge?

Not even a FF fag, more of a PSP fag when I first had it.

I know this isn't an RPG but, goddamn this had machanics I fucking ==loathed==

Dragon Quest 8 on the 3DS, playing it right now, doesn't do that. Most enemies weaker than you will turn and run immediately, and Metal Slimes move at the speed of fucking sound.

Most of the transitions were actually subtle loading screens to load in all the player and enemy models for the fight (see FF7 with the difference between overworld and battle sprites), so they didn't have the option. Most games are either pretty fast about it now (DQ8) or don't transition between overworld and battle mode (FF15).

Do you think I'm just criticizing one little aspect of CC's gameplay? The whole system was shit.
It was like they were trying to design some rudimentary mobile-friendly casual experience… which is what they did.

>points of no return with items that you can permanently miss and just so happen to be absolutelly necesary for solving puzzles further in the game

I mean, I get where you're coming from and generally agree with you, but when you put it like that it really does just make you look like you're a sperg having a tantrum.

Why even bring that game to our attention or why pay it any attention yourself? That game was a broken mess even among the broken messes that were early PnC / interactive movie games.

Thanks for reminding me about Dark Dawn's THREE points of no return, which would fuck you out of Djinn entirely for the run if you missed them. It was understandable going from GS1 to GS2, since, you know, they were entirely separate games, but in DD there's no excuse.

>points of no return with spells that you can permanently miss and just so happen to be absolutelly necesary for solving puzzles further in the game

I was just using that as an example of the mechanic.

I played it because i'm a fan of giger's art

Okay. Good reasoning.

Too bad about your quads, bro.

This one can be beneficial if the game doesn't do the upgrade treadmill and balances skills around long term utility.

That right there's your problem.

When an RPG battle starts up immediately, can end in less than 5 button presses, and doesn't even take up the whole mapscreen, having random encounters is fine, even with weak popcorn enemies.

Then you have your playstation RPGs that load entirely new screens for the fight, give a cutscene and voice acting to even the most mundane attack, and make the combat so complicated that even defending feels like a 3 step process.

Does it break the game? No, but it sure as hell makes random encounters a fucking headache.

Fucking this
There's this fucking online flash game called Epic Battle Fantasy; now that game does this shit right

that sounds like a more autistic disgaea,

Shit like this pisses me off to no end. People say games like D:OS or Etrian Odyssey are hard, but the difficulty lasts maybe through the first map.

I can think of a few reason this happens, but it's still no excuse:
If this happens, they should add a harder route through the game or more difficult forms of bosses that you can fight with better story outcomes to reward the autists who did the sidequests because they enjoy the game. Or add level caps (e.g. act 1 = level 5, act 2 = level 10, etc)
Enemies should get strong abilities to counter yours
Just allow people to respec their characters, and design the encounters around more optimized builds.
Don't do this? Having abilities that regenerate health/mana constantly in shit like Etrian Odyssey take away the resource management aspect of the game, which is usually what makes the 1st strata the interesting part.
Just don't do this shit. I'd rather a short game with good encounter design than a long one that gets boring halfway through.

I understand if trash encounters get a little easier as the game goes on, but as I progress I want fights that are more challenging than the one 5 minutes in where I party-wiped because I attacked a 5th level enemy as a level 4 party.

Other pet peeves:

In games like Fire Emblem, I'd rather a grueling fight where I'm hanging on by the edge of my teeth than a fight where I steamroll everything except I have to hope the enemy doesn't get a lucky crit and 1-shot one of my guys. Or games like King's Bounty where there's no reason to use anything except vampires/repair droids/ghosts/etc because it's a hassle to keep track of unit dwellings and restock your army after each fight. If you're going to do permadeath, just make a roguelike.

You chose option 2 instead of option 3 in the dialogue? Fuck you: option 3 gives 30,000 xp, and a +5 flaming longsword that you couldn't get anywhere else. Option 2 gives you 5,000g, which is completely useless. Also be sure to backtrack and kill the enemies in the optimal order, because completing quests spawns items/rewards that otherwise wouldn't exist and the enemies you backtracked to kill have their own loot.

Stuff like Shadowrun games take this a step in the right direction, where you get a bulk reward after each mission is a better direction for quest driven RPGs, but even then, they do stupid shit like giving out an extra point of karma here and there for convincing a girl to give up drugs and go to the local rapefugee shelter.

A lot of my other complaints are already listed ,but also
I like planning for my boss fights, and reloading to equip different gear/spells kills my immersion.

And
This was mainly a complaint With Etrian Odyssey. I'd have much preferred it if they gave you separate bags for consumables and loot. That way they could've been a bigger part of the game past one or two specific fights.

Overall RPGs are a giant ball of cancer.

This is mostly a holdover from D&D and roguelikes that didn't allow savescumming. It is bad design though to keep mechanics like that in a game where you can save anytime.

When designing an encounter, a good designer will think "If I do this, will the character just reload instead of accepting the result."

Choke on a dick Dark Yojimbo, how about YOU eat MY Zanmato instead? The fact I could do that was the only thing preventing me from dropping FFX like a rock.

Don't forget to never throw your buildings out of the hub map until you're sure nothing's in there. Even then, don't do it.
Who the fuck doesn't check for that? Who?

Another counter-example: In Chrono Cross, you could run away from any fight. Any single one. Granted, you might just be railroaded into refighting, but you get a chance to use consumables and rearrange your spell grid before the fight. Then again, CC had a few other problems…

Speaking of which

properly balancing an RPG's difficulty curve takes time.
And when its a strategy RPG like every NIS game ever, you have to do even more work testing and fine tuning…

OR~ you could just throw as many variables into the game as possible and just tell the player to grind more to win.
Then just make the first 4 levels slightly fun so Penny Arcade will think its good and plug the shit out of it.

I'm usually down for extensive, complex dungeon designs but that shit was fucking terrible in Mother 1. Even worse because of the insane encounter rate.

Something else that just occurred to me, is that Mother 1's world was really open, and you could pretty much explore anywhere at any time. That's really cool, too bad the tedious one step encounter rates killed any fun I could have had.

...

Conception 2 does this

Players are attacked more than enemies, so the enemies have statistically a better chance to crit than the player. It's mentioned in the 3D&D DM's Guide, under the optional rules of making critical hits more dangerous - it will harm the players in the long run.

Shit. I was going to post that. Fucking Mot.

It's easy to punish faggots who run because they're scared little shits: put unavoidable boss battles that are hard and require a DPR/level check from time to time.

But then they would bitch that the game requires grinding, even though they skipped every battle.

When you move a character on the map, there's an arrow that shows where he's moving.
That arrow uses the RNG in certain situation, the same RNG you use for battles and leveling up.
Since it's a broken RNG with a long string of the same numbers in it, it's pretty easy to exploit, but it's still a pain in the ass to play through the whole game with it.

This is extremely fixable by including a (not even necessarily) late game item that removes encounters, ala pokemon's repels.

People who can't deal with random encounters in RPGs are fucking plebs.

One little aspect? But user, you were the one who said it makes it so you don't have control of anything because of it, so I would assume it's a pretty big aspect. It's cool if you don't like the game, but I don't think you've completely thought through why you don't.

And I'm opening myself up for "oh so that's the only reason why you're defending it", but I just appreciate how the game mechanic itself is interwoven with the storytelling, especially at the end. I think that's a true way of taking advantage of video games as a story telling medium, instead of games just trying to be movies you control.

...

You have no idea how many JRPGs I dropped because of this.

This was awesome TV series.

You can turn off encounter rate in Bravely Default to 0%. It is not effectively what you want but when you don't need more levels you can just disable encounter rate.
Only reason I beaten that game was this option.

Most evil mechanic? Evasion decay in SRW A Portable. Dodge too many attacks? Tough, you're getting hit on the next turn. Even tough when you're in a Real Robot heavy route (and Reals aren't meant to tank)

MMO mechanics in RPG's

The encounter setting should have had the range of 100 percent to 200. Lowering it is the same as activating easy mode.

This guy.

...

I don't get it.

A bomb?

Guess the game.

Random encounters are still pretty rubbish if there isn't some way around them, i.e. grassy areas with encounter-free detours in pokemon.

Been a while but lemme think

All the Mystics are sitting over her grave. Her narrator (Gina the shop girl in Fascinaturu) recalls her happy human life after defeating Orlouge. Slide show with her KIDS that SHE WILLINGLY TOOK DICK TO CREATE. And iirc a marriage pic too.

Gina is a GILF talking to her grandkids and Asellus kinda just wanders in to say sup to her old friend. No entourage, just Asellus.

Harem of Mystics. All of them.

So yeah pretty much it's Orlogue's blood that created the Yuri situation. The Ultimecia Guide even points this out.

T260G's reaction was funnier.

which ending is this?
I thought it was weird that Rei appears on the ending card, but not this scene. Poor Rei.

Can you recover it by keeping the unit from being attacked for a few turns? Its still bullshit, but that would at least encourage the player to cycle units in and out of combat to keep them "fresh."

Well, it's been a while since I play A Portable but I don't know if they have the system from J where you can swap out units from your battleship.

Fuck you, mate…I like Gold Saucer (especially when the Submarine minigame opens up at Wonder Square)

But here's an evil mechanic for you. Arenas where you can't control your character's action throughout the fight.

They could have avoided this by fixing the sums of the IVs to be a certain value, but they wanted to completely randomize it instead. Stupid fucking Nintendo.

YOU MUST GATHER YOUR PARTY BEFORE VENTURING FORTH

FF3