Quote Originally Posted by TrollHunter View Post
They're meant to pace out levels. It makes it to where if you die, there's actually a cost to it. It's not just a minor inconvenience in all cases. Sometimes save points are spaced out SO damn far, or are nonexistent (check out the DS version of FFIII, the last 1-2hours of the game had no save points AT ALL, so if you died at the first boss, the second boss, the third boss, the fourth boss, the fifth boss, or the last boss, you had to start COMPLETELY over from the start of the dungeon that leads up to the first.
I think star ocean (for the most part) was the same way. 1~2 hours between saves. It makes it so you can't just pick up the game for even 20 mins or so, add the cutscenes (especially unskippable ones) in there and there's a lot of lost time.


This really made every encounter intense, and you gave each one your all (or you ran, YOU PANSY). While it was mechanically a godawful decision that caused me hours upon hours of stress... it still made it so much more memorable and made me a god at FF3
But when save points are actually spaced out properly, it evens out the pacing, so you can't just cheese the dungeon and save after every fight to make sure you get through without a scratch. That's no fun...
Yeah, but you could have used that lost time to level up your characters instead or something useful if you knew you wouldn't win. It just gets boring because it feels like a waste of time....FF13 did a good job getting past that though (since you come back before a battle).

But people saving after every battle, I understand the point of that (it's something I still do), but at least let me save in 10 min or so Then they added healing with some of the save points too, that's no fun.

Quote Originally Posted by Skyblade View Post
Indeed there are. Save Points mean that there is plenty of information that doesn't have to be saved. You don't have to save everyone's exact position, only which save point they used. This is why nearly all early games utilized Save Points or reset you to the start of the level when you reloaded, because it was much easier to implement. Nowadays not much of a concern, but depending on your system and world, can still save a lot of trouble.

The thing about the older games too is that they didn't have so many cutscenes that lasted 10 mins-1/2 hr or so. Made it much easier to handle.