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[PhoenixUltima]

Oh hey, that reminds me of another prime entry for this topic: FFX-2's stupid, stupid fucking Calm Lands PR sidequest. "Go tell people about our company! Any given person in a town can be told about us, and depending on which of five similar lines you give them, they may be 'totally pumped' or they may tell you to fuck off! Oh, and you have to get X amount of PR points before an event in Chapter 5 in order to get an Episode Complete, which in turn is necessary (along with a whole bunch of other Episode Completes) in order to get one of the game's best dresspheres! Better crack open a PR guide and get cracking, bucko!"

[Norondor]

This could go on for days. Let's just pull out the battle system and dump the rest of FFX-2 in the bin and be done with it.

[TA]

The game is not fundamentally worse for having something that could be exploited in it.

Again, it's not so much that the intended intent of the game can by ruined for the player by the player, but the underlying issue that the character can engage in an unlimited number of encounters with opponents that pose no threat and still derive "experience" from it. I'm hesitant to say that random encounters should be difficult, because then you end up with wars of attrition such as 7th Saga and the Xenosaga series. I like how WoW handles it; experience is awarded depending on the ratio between your level and the opponent's difficulty. If you run around the newbie zone and slaughter all of the level one imps as a level thirty character, you get nothing out of it.

I dunno, I always really liked that aspect of the first Final Fantasy, and the Dragon Warrior series.  Bosses were given less of an emphasis - they weren't these huge rapebeasts, though they were handily tougher than the things you fight leading up to them, but being at the end of a cave/volcano/castle/whatever full of fights that were actually challenging and actually cost resources to get past, combined with none of this "save point right before the boss that heals you to full" bullshit, meant that they were more of a capper than a seperate thing.  You weren't just seeing whether your party could beat the boss, you were seeing whether your party could make it through the entire dungeon with enough resources intact to be able to beat the boss.  Made the entire complex a preservation game, which I really appreciated - random encounters actually meant something..

[Brentai]

You must be referring specifically to Dragon Warrior.  FF's bosses were pretty rapey.

I'm just going to reiterate my stance that console RPGs are pretty much just maze games with a resource-based time limit.  Find the exit before your ethers run out, basically.  Attempting to futz with that core concept is where a lot of the more "inventive" RPGs get fucked.  FF12 is just as guilty of this as, say, FF8 and Wild ARMs 2, which is probably why nobody seems to be able to stand it for more than 10 hours, despite the fact that it's otherwise pretty fun.

[Thad]

You must be referring specifically to Dragon Warrior.  FF's bosses were pretty rapey.

I seem to recall having a lote more trouble getting to them than beating them.  Chaos in particular was a pussy.

DW had some bastard-ass bosses (the Green Dragon and the Axe Knight come to mind), but it really, really had some bastard-ass random encounters.

I'm just going to reiterate my stance that console RPGs are pretty much just maze games with a resource-based time limit.  Find the exit before your ethers run out, basically.  Attempting to futz with that core concept is where a lot of the more "inventive" RPGs get fucked.  FF12 is just as guilty of this as, say, FF8 and Wild ARMs 2, which is probably why nobody seems to be able to stand it for more than 10 hours, despite the fact that it's otherwise pretty fun.

I'd say FF12's strengths are mostly in the fact that it doesn't seem very Japanesey.  It plays an awful lot like a modern American RPG.  (Then again, there have been Japanese RPG's that eschewed random encounters at least as far back as Chrono Trigger.)  And the places where it sucks are the exceptions -- like, say, having save points.

[A²]

Final Fantasy VI's river loop + temporary character with infinite healing skill

You also get a permanent character with infinite healling skill, in case you want to go back and do it again at any (pre-WoR) point.

Er, unless you mean Gau and one of his Rages (Which is possible), I have NO idea who you're talking about.

[Rico]

DW had some bastard-ass bosses (the Green Dragon and the Axe Knight come to mind), but it really, really had some bastard-ass random encounters.

Did anyone ever fight a random encounter in Charlock past the first few floors?

Absolute best thing about Dragon Quest bosses is still that status effects usually work.

[Thad]

Er, unless you mean Gau and one of his Rages (Which is possible), I have NO idea who you're talking about.

Mugu mugu?

Did anyone ever fight a random encounter in Charlock past the first few floors?

I remember there being Red Dragons pretty close to the end.

[Rico]

I meant that in the sense that they were hard enough that even at level 30 you might be in trouble if you fought more than a couple before taking on the Dragon Lord.

[Classic]

Did the GBC re-release of 1&2 let you make a higher level, or somehow more badass? Because I remember most of the enemies in the final castle being kind of challenging to start, but by the time I decided to take on the Dragon Lord, kitten weak. Even those freaking red dragons.

[Bongo Bill]

The GBC ones, and the SNES ones to which they're basically identical, had permanent stat-boosting seeds scattered about and smaller experience requirements, but the level cap was still 30.

[Brentai]

Er, unless you mean Gau and one of his Rages (Which is possible), I have NO idea who you're talking about.

Mugu mugu?

I never tried it, but I suspect if you leave that on all night you stand a good chance of being triple-bar'd and Crusader'd to death.

Mog's Sun Dance might work, though.  I dunna remember it that well.

[Zaratustra]

Dahling, Magic Urn, General or Nohrabbit. Magic Urn is Cure3 the others are Cure2.

[Thad]

I never tried it, but I suspect if you leave that on all night you stand a good chance of being triple-bar'd and Crusader'd to death.

I doubt if it's actually possible to get a match just by hammering buttons.

Anyway, it's certainly not a GOOD chance.  I did the trick when I was going for the "beat it with the minimum party" play.  There were a few occasions when I'd leave it on overnight and it'd be black-screened by morning, but never died.

[Thad]

Fits into the whole "unskippable cutscenes" frame, of course, and is so obvious as to barely warrant mentioning, but...I just fought a boss in FF12 which was a five-minute TIMED BATTLE that took over twenty minutes.  Big flashy attacks piss me the fuck off.  Sure, turning it into a little roulette minigame is moderately better than just letting me go take a whiz while I circle-mimicked Knights of the Round, but it's still stupid.

[Classic]

Every fiber of my being (except for some small part of my brain) says that's crap. Big flashy attacks are the slothy, filthy heart of a modern JRPG, and I'm certain it's not categorically bad game design.

Yet, I can't help but recall being horribly bored watching Laharl do a winged slayer for the millionth time. Or how FFVI managed to have fairly amazing seeming spells that didn't take minutes upon minutes to execute.

Maybe big-flashy attacks are OK if they're somehow limited in how often they occur?

[Thad]

Or, you know, if you can SKIP them and cut straight to the damage.

Even in the case of the minigame component of Quickenings, you're STILL spending more time sitting there waiting through (THE SAME, REPEATED) animations (OVER AND OVER) than you do actually mashing buttons.

Hell, I used the example of a 5-minute fight lasting 20 minutes -- but Quickenings themselves are 4-second attacks that can go on for...well, I've never actually stopwatched it, but I am comfortable in estimating they can go on for more than a minute.  Hell, maybe two minutes.  If they actually TOOK only four seconds, obviously that would be a much more difficult thing for me to complain about.

[A²]

Didn't FF9 give you the option to turn on the cutscenes, or simply make it go from Summoning Animation to Damage Numbers pop up?

[MarsDragon]

Yes, but if I recall they were less powerful. If you wanted full damage you had to sit through the entire thing.

[Dooly]

What FF9 did was play out the entire summon animation the first time you used it, and afterward only showed the full animation on randomly selected uses (quite rarely, at that), unless you equipped a specific item or learned a specific skill or something.  If the game didn't show the full animation, the attack would do less damage.  This is a really boneheaded response (more of a kick in the throat, really) to the people who complained about sitting through the long summon animations in 8, because instead of forcing the player to watch it every time, it denied the player on many occasions when he actually wanted to see it.  The damage penalty is just a dick move, too.