Is it just me, or do the enemies lack variety?

I mean, I could swear that the variety of enemies was much more vast in previous FF's. In this one the enemies are pretty much the same all the way through. Behemoth, dog, soldier, flan, pulsework soldier, dragonbird, owlbatthing, etc. Sure, there were a lot of types of each species, but overall I can't think of more than 20 or so different species of enemies that easily, at least not off the top of my head. Didn't previous FF's have so many more? Or is it just me?

EDIT: Admittedly these ones were a lot more realistic. No ghosts, no floating cards, etc.

They had a bit of both really. The older ones had a lot of variations of the same...but they had a lot of species to variate from. FFXIII does lack variety in its enemies, but there are very few location changes, and its the same enemies throughout each location, so it's easy to see why.

They should have added more though

XII didn't have very many either.

However, unlike XII, XIII's bosses aren't repeated over and over. In XII many of the bosses were either recycled from a previous boss, or a regular enemy, or both.

Its not so much the lack of variety that bothers me its the design of the enemies. Some range from passable to downright ugly. The Behemoth is the only one I'm truly impressed with. The rest should have been scrapped.

This is nothing new for the FF series! FFX was also heavily guilty of this.

Yeah, it seems like there is about 20 slight variations of only a dozen or so main types of monsters. It sure seems like some other FFs had a bunch more variety.

Pretty sure there's a dozen palette variations of FF6 enemies too.

This has always been the norm really but what's changed is the number of enemies. there are usually something like 200 hundred different enemies in older titles but starting with the 3D ones, that number has dropped significantly. I think X was the first one where I really noticed how there were only something like 20 designs and about 5 to 6 variations between each design. Mostly because the monster arena makes you go looking for all of them.

I make it a variety of about 51 different monster species in FFXII

I won't stop until everyone <3 XII :D

I was just thinking this while I was playing last night. I wish there was more variety in enemies, I mean I know FFX was definately guilty of recycling enemies and stuff but I don't think it was anywhere near as bad. Like in FFXIII you come across several different groups of the same enemy consecutively, which can be quite tedious :(

I just took a quick look through a FFVII bestiary and I got to 100 distinct enemies, and I am only half way through.

It is always so disappointing to walk into an exciting new area and stumble into a recycled enemy you have already killed dozens of times before.

I was expecting XII to have significantly more, but flipping through the bestiaries of the XII and XIII official guides, the two games actually have a comparable number of physically unique "base designs" for generic enemies, somewhere in the 50-60 range (depending on how you count the PSICOM/Sanctum/Corps and Imperial soldiers in the two games).

EDIT: XII has significantly more uniquely named enemies because of the marks.

As a personal observation, the way the base designs could be grouped might make XIII feel like it has fewer. XII is oriented more toward wild creatures which can vary greatly as far as their combat styles and roles go, whereas XIII has a lot of enemies that serve the same thematic purpose: soldiers, mechs, C'ieth, Pulsework constructs, etc.

XIII's enemies also came off to me as less diverse in terms of combat styles, though perhaps the fact that the AI was handling most of the load could have obscured things a bit.

I agree with the lack of variety! Looks like they had several different versions of each creature, each one more powerful than its predecessor. I don't necessarily think it's a bad thing though, I really like fighting the different kinds of Behemoth :D

I agree with this thread to a point. FFX and XII both had this problem, but I really noticed it in X. XII and XIII were hardly noticeable to me, but I know it was there. I guess what I'm saying is we need to bring back random battles with a great variety of enemies. No "two games in a row where the main sidequests are Hunting missions."

I just find non-Random battles to be more annoying than anything.

I actually enjoy Mark Hunts, my problem with how they've been dealt with is that SE has made them the primary "optional" content. A few optional dungeons, an annoying mini-game to belittle or two, as well as just a bit of extra content to spice things up should go hand in hand with the Mark System. The Mark Hunt system only feels weak when its the games main attraction. Yet I still feel its a good system cause genuinely these optional boss battles allow the player to really play with the battle system more and get the most out of it.

My other issue with the Mark System is that I feel if your going to have it, don't leave it until the end. I feel it worked well in XII cause I could sign up for some optional battles and do them on my way to the next story point. Leaving them til almost the end like X and XIII did just makes the system feel tacked on and I generally feel cheated cause I have to wait 30+ hours to get to the major game content.