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Found this really neat article on the subject I wanted to share and see if we can discuss games that have good battle mechanics that transfer well into the whole game as opposed to just boss battles. What are your thoughts about RPG battle systems utilized over the years?
I think the inclusion of too much 'trash' encounters is one of the things that holds back RPGs the most (not just JRPGs). I generally see three ways to mitigate this:
1) Make the game harder
Each random encounter has the potential to seriously harm you if you aren't on your A game for each. Even an encounter that you have already cleared 10 times isn't something you can just zone off for, differences in the RNG are significant enough that you have to have slight tweaks to your strategy.
2) Meaningful difference between excellent and mediocre performance in battle. Whether it is a tough dungeon where resource management is a problem, or a system which increases the rewards based on battle performance. My favorite version of this was Mega Man Battle Network I. While not a fantastic game each battle had a chance to get a reward that was increased by not taking damage and killing the enemy faster. Also HP was re-filled after every battle. Because of this each battle was you trying to go all out and nail that 'perfect' fight, rather than just playing it with a routine safe strategy.
3) Make the regular gameplay fun. The encounters between bosses shouldn't be filler, they are THE GAME. Look at FF1, though not a shining example of deep gameplay, it wasn't necessarily always the bosses that were the difficult part. I also think of FFT, where random encounters make a huge chunk of the game, not as filler, but as a part of the legitimate gameplay experience.
I can agree that most random encounters in JRPGs are pretty plain and simple and don't add much. I can't agree with the writer of the article about chastising bosses with status ailment immunity. Boss battles would be way too easy if I could just petrify a boss or silence a pure magic using boss. I understand his point with Pokemon, but the boss battles themselves are way too easy and don't start to become a challenge of any sort until you reach The Elite Four.
Final Fantasy XII and X-2 I've found to be excellent contenders when it comes to battle systems, but I've only found XII's common encounters addicting.
Arc the Lad Twilight of the Spirits also made each common encounter feel a bit different or at least it had more ways of making them feel different since you had a map you can move around so you'd be at a different point every time. It's been a while since I played it so your placements on the map might be predetermined.
>>> Items and more items, drop common or rare, and mug items from monsters is what make common battles fun for me..:luca:
A shame this died so quickly, IMO this is probably one of the most interesting topics from a game design point of view.
I'll get to this, I'm busy with finals. :p
Eternal Sonata had a super interesting battle system - it pretty much made up for the rest of the game, which uh, could have been better. xD
I quit Eternal Sonata as soon as it looked like they were transitioning from a more turn based to more real time system. I enjoyed it quite a bit at the start.