A look at the downfall of turn based battle mechanics in the Final Fantasy series and through out the larger industry. Followed with new hopes in recent releases and upcoming ones like Expedition 33

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[–] ampersandrew 8 points 1 week ago (1 children)

What you're referring to are "trash mobs". They're usually less incentivized in tun-based games that emphasize tactical positioning, like Baldur's Gate 3; you won't find a single encounter that felt like it shouldn't have been there. If the combat encounters are very quick, the designers are incentivized to put in more of them, which is why I don't usually like real time with pause (like old D&D games), though Pillars of Eternity II definitely cleaned up the trash mob problem from its predecessor, even when you play it in real time with pause mode.

[–] RightHandOfIkaros 4 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Well, with regards to Koudelka, I am specifically referring to the mechanic in many JRPGs by which combat is initiated randomly, without the player ever interacting, colliding with, or even seeing a visible enemy. One moment you are walking, and the next you are in combat. You never had the option to not be in combat, you just get vortexed in. Chrono Trigger and many Final Fantasy games operate this way as well. Its not that they feel out if place, they are annoying because they interrupt what I was doing. In BG3, PoE2, and even Dragon Quest, enemies are visible. You basically never enter combat randomly.

Now, with regards to Dragon Quest, I found the music always being the same was too repetitive. Combat always felt the same regardless of what enemies I faced or where. At least I could choose when I enter combat, which is probably why I made it as far into the game as I did (got to the mermaid queen and stopped shortly after).

[–] ampersandrew 5 points 1 week ago

Enemies are visible in Chrono Trigger as well, specifically so you can avoid them. If you're significantly over-leveled, they'll even run away from you, if memory serves. I'm playing through Metaphor: ReFantazio right now, and its solution is to make it so that you can one-shot those enemies outside of battle; and if they'll actually challenge you, you go into the battle mode proper. That's certainly one way to skin that cat. Meanwhile, The Thaumaturge (released this year) has a shocking number of similarities in its battle system to Metaphor (and, presumably, Persona), but its number of combats are fairly scarce, in a good way, never really ending up in that situation where you're super over-leveled, because its leveling system doesn't revolve around a lot of "number go up".

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Combat is supposed to be the core gameplay loop. If you feel like that's an unwanted interruption, I think there's a deeper problem where the game has left you feeling like you don't want to play its core loop.

[–] ampersandrew 4 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

No, I understand where they're coming from. I played the original FF7 for the first time not long ago, and the combat is good, but there's too much of it, and you can feel disoriented returning to the world map, trying to remember what you were doing and where you were going. I love the combat in Larian's games, but there's far too much of it in the first Divinity: Original Sin game relative to the other things you do in that game's loop. It's a problem of pacing. There was a really good article on then-called-Gamasutra breaking down the pacing of the X-Men Origins: Wolverine game versus Batman: Arkham Asylum. Even though people pretty unanimously thought the combat in Wolverine was good, we only really still talk about one of those two games today.