Over world encounters

[Andio]

Is it just me or are the encounters ridicules.The second I got out of the petrified forest I ran into an enemy, I finished that battle and BAM,2 steps later another battle.Of course this could just be me.

Do you guys have this many encounters?

[Jinx]

There's quite a few, yeah.

[Rantz]

It seems pretty ridiculous when something like that happens, but luckily that doesn't seem to happen all that often to me. Mostly I can go pretty good distances without encounters.

[Wolf Kanno]

As part of a reference to the old school games, the encounter rate in IX was jumped up higher than the last few games. Its close to NES levels.

[Faris]

That explains it. Yeah I felt this way as well while playing FFIX for the first few times. Got used to it after a while.

[Freya]

I just used it to grind. Often times I wouldn't even pay attention, wouldn't even cast spells just mash X as i'm doing other things. It's a bit excessive but it doesn't diminish the story at all.

[Tigmafuzz]

I never thought there were too many encounters. I think it works very well. Although I guess it should be a little lower for people who like to explore everything, because then the party gets overleveled and it sorta ruins the difficulty curve. In every playthrough.

[Cloudane]

Much like every FF game with random encounters. Sometimes the randomiser has it in for you and it's "step step battle step step battle" and all in all they can get rather tedious when you're trying to get somewhere. But they make the transport methods all the more rewarding!

First time I got to Terra it was like that, and I was underleveled so it drove me nuts.

[Tigmafuzz]

Sometimes the randomiser has it in for you and it's "step step battle step step battle"

Thank the crystals for chocobos.

[Depression Moon]

IX isn't as bad to me in random encounters compared to the SNES games and III, though it's been probably a year or two since I've played my game.

[Tigmafuzz]

At least it never had any cheap moments like in DW3 where once you get the Golden Claw you get in a battle EVERY TWO STEP UNTIL YOU LEAVE THE PYRAMID

[Roogle]

I believe there might be a Gameshark code to limit enemy encounters if you feel like it is hampering your gameplay experience.

Interestingly, I have watched speed runs of Final Fantasy IX and one of the limiting factors of a speed run for this game is that too many random encounters on the final disc and a few other points can eliminate the hopes for achieving a world record.

[espritduo]

For speed runs, any random encounters at all is generally a bad idea. I remember when I did my EXII run, the only two levels in the game I allowed myself even one random encounter were Oeilvert and Memoria, simply because I was starting to pull my hair out after a hundred resets in Oeilvert, and Memoria I let myself relax a bit since my time was pretty good and I knew I had the EXII in the bag at that point.

But yeah, if you don't like encounters, it's perfectly possible to get through almost any area in the game without even getting into one, if you're willing to reset a few times. Random encounters in FFIX are actually notoriously low. Or at least notoriously random in their frequency. Also, battles tend to stand out more when you do get into them because battles in FFIX are so slooooooooow.

[Andio]

Huh, maybe just my bad luck. Too bad there no mad rush like in ff8. I destroy all the random enemys with that.