So, in another thread I touched on this, but figured it'd be a good thing to start a new thread as this is really what kills the mood in some otherwise great games. I'm talking about sections of grind in games where the rewards for some monsters/battles are very unrewarding compared to what you fought before, but yet you appear to be expected to grind at this point in the game, because you know a boss is coming up that WILL wipe the floor with you if you don't. I will use Final Fantasy 4 (2 US) as an example here, and I will list a couple other examples later on. Most of the game flows rather smoothly, if you took the time to grab a few levels here-and-there, mainly grinding money to keep yourself equipped with the best stuff you can find at any given time; the levelups come with the GP grinding. UNTIL... You get to the Cave where the Evil Wall boss is. For those of you who have foggy recollection of the game, there's a cave with a bunch of doors that are actually monsters, and at the end of this Cave is a Wall boss that is rather infamous for being hard because he basically gives you a time limit to kill him. Said wall inches towards you, and the closer he gets, the more damage he does with his physical attacks and the faster he attacks, until eventually, he's firing off 3-4 physical attacks to your one turn, doing 9,000+ damage per (and of course your HP max is 9999 which a lot of times you will never reach unless you do it exactly right). So you are obviously meant to do a little grinding here, because if you go in there with the levels you have when you first get there, you're really going to have a bad time. But... the monsters in this cave don't give much at all for EXP, you get perhaps 900-1400 per battle. You could go to the Land of Summoned Monsters and do the sidequests there, but the monsters in THAT cave give about the same (but have more gimmicks and are harder to kill). OR, you could go back to an earlier area, and fight enemies that gave about 900XP per battle, but are 5x easier (everything dies in one hit at this point). The point of the rant is this: What's with the significantly harder monsters not giving more XP? At that point in the game, you're looking at 40,000XP needed for 1 levelup and this number obviously climbs rather quickly. 5 levels later, it might be 60,000. They expect you to gain about 5 levels or so, on 900-1400 per battle? lol. This is especially funny considering that the mobs are far too annoying and do too much damage for all they give. Meanwhile, you can go back to an earlier area and wipe everything out for 900 per battle without breaking a sweat. It seems to me, that the battles in those caves should have been giving in the neighborhood of 2500 or so, considering the higher challenge you face with them. I can't fathom why Square thought that harder mobs should give about the same as significantly easier mobs did before them. That doesn't make any sense whatsoever. FF4 would hardly be the only game to do this, though. 7th Saga is a very infamous example (that game is the epitome of grind), at least the NA version of it is (the NA version was made far harder for some weird reason). In 7th Saga, you will find LOTS of difficult, annoying enemies (cocoons, anyone?) that give pitiful XP, but yet there are LOTS of much easier enemies giving significantly more XP for no reason whatsoever. Whoever designed the balance of that game must have really been toking it up or something... Another example, would be Secret of Mana, which I am currently playing. Right now, I'm at the area right near the end of the game, when the Sunken Island gets risen and you gotta go through the ancient city to get back up to the Life Palace. Right near the beginning of that area, are Ball&Chain knights that give about 800 a pop and are the easiest enemies, they die in 2-3 hits flat and they can't hurt you whatsoever. Further in, you will find Metal Scorpions that give 1300 that are a little harder, but nothing too bad. Then you find those ridiculously OP Metal Crawlers that give ~1450xp, but are twice as hard to hit as the scorpions, do far more damage, can set you on fire (which prevents you from moving or acting) and cast Wall (aka magic reflect) on themselves as soon as they see you, for good measure. And of course, the stupid mook spawner that spawns them, the kimono birds, are even harder to hit and damage with physical attacks (but they don't Wall themselves thankfully and die in 1 hit to Gem Missile). This seems a bit out of balance; why are the Metal Crawlers giving almost the same as the Scorpions which are way easier to kill, again? And then there's Final Fantasy X. Right near the end, you fight Sin and that battle isn't too hard. Then you step inside of Sin and you are barraged by extremely annoying and difficult enemies who only give a mildly decent amount of XP, but you can always run, right? Well, the last boss will make sure you can't kill it until you do your grind. You'll do your grind and LIKE it, or you'll never see the ending. It has a support mob that can out-heal your damage done to it or the main enemy and it is literally impossible to win until you go about a slow and boring grind, when the previous boss was actually a reasonable fight. I've yet to actually beat this game, because of it. One, I hate how you have to rotate in every group member before finishing the enemy (otherwise you're wasting XP), and Two, nothing gives enough XP that actually feels rewarding enough to continue grinding on it (I don't like taking half an hour plus for one level). Given that there aren't many decent JRPG games these days, and one must go and play retro games, it is kinda sad to see so many parts in otherwise great older retro games have such black marks on them, because they tend to be so annoying when you run into one. Nine times out of ten, an FF4 run ends at the Evil Wall, for example, because I just can't justify sinking 10+ hours into a grind session fighting boring, unrewarding mobs just because the game is so ridiculously unbalanced at that point. I just wonder how these issues ever passed QA, because surely other people had to have noticed these things while testing the game. Anyways, I just thought I'd post my musings, and also my wish that people would make decent J-RPG style games again (that are not RPGMaker, though I know some decent games have been done, most seem bland and rather boring). It seems to me that many of the newest RPGs always try to re-invent the wheel and come up with more and more and more complex statistics and battle mechanics, and that's just a huge turnoff. I don't feel like having to read a wiki for hours before even playing the game so I don't make a noob mistake and end up discovering halfway into the game that I really need to restart the game all over again because of poor choice made early-on due to lack of knowledge of how the mechanics REALLY work, or the difficulty of envisioning the ramifications of everything you do ahead of time (Xenosaga 2 was kinda like that for me). Sometimes, at the end of the day, I just want a good fun game that reminds me of the past, but doesn't have all the complex subsystems that I need to research just to be mildly successful at the game, nor am I looking for a game with "BEST GRAPHICS!!!", either, because those are usually $50+. If that $50 were put into gameplay instead of graphics, well, that might be different.
Sadly yes, the problem you describe happens in most old J-RPG and there's nothing we can do about it at this point. What I usually do is try to run trough the game without (mostly) any grinding, but at the same time trying to not avoid any random battle. I'm usually able to beat all the bosses with a proper strategy that way, though for some bosses I do a little grinding, but never more than one hour. About the more complex system in new RPG, I partly agree. I agree in that some are stupidly complex and I sometimes can't avoid feeling stressed with the huge amount of info of the battle mechanichs and shit that could have been made easier, and I've actually left a lot of games that could have been great in the beggining just because I don't feel like studying a fucking complex battle system just to play a game. After all, the reason for playing is to have fun, isn't it? But I also like some originality. Times changes. People get tired of always the same things. I kinda understand it. They probably sell more that way (or they wouldn't do it).
I kind of have a related issue with P4G. I actually enjoy the game, but I've gotten to a place in the story where I need to grind 10+ levels to be able to beat the next boss. It's just tedious >_< It also seems like there are a few demons that are absolutely essential to have for their skills, but it's kind of opaque and hard to figure out how to actually get them (at least if you prefer not reading strategy guides ).
Hmm... never played any FF until 12th, so I cant say I had much of a grind experience, cept for a very optional boss that took me 5 days to defeat (he wasnt hard, he had like 50m health tho) as of old Jrpgs... I guess I played Chrono Trigger, and even that didnt feel grindy at all, since most of the fighting I remember doing was via exploring/finding secrets, which made fighting usually a very colorful situation that was most enjoyable... mostly. I do remember getting stumped a few times, but mostly due to puzzles, getting some endings required either you grinding for an eternity to defeat certain boss "when you werent suposed to" or just beating that boss in ng++ so it all would normally fall on how you wanted to approach a challenge.
I assume you talk about Yiazmat. Did you know it can be done in less than 2 hours? It took me around 5 hours, but I think this boss is so boring... Edit:
Ooooh yeah thats the one, haha I was so chill back then, thats probably the main reason it took me 5 days to beat xD "oh im dying... fine ill walk away, save and try tomorrow"
For the most part I avoid the hard monsters who give little xp. Especially when I know where easier mobs are who give about the same. The only exception is if the harder ones drop items I need, large amounts of gold or are needed for quests. I do like grinding but I'm also very lazy about it. If I can't kill it in 3 or less hits I go somewhere else to grind. Regardless of the xp payout. A side note on FFX, I found all the bosses & mini bosses to be extremely easy. Starting about the first time I fought Seymour. Though I'd already done much and more grinding because I was dead set on getting every character 100% of the way through that skill/job grid thing. Which I never did as I got impatient to finish the story. Anyway I always figured FFX to be super easy as everyone else in my family who played did about half the grinding as I did and still had very little trouble with all the bosses. eta: Rotating party members in mid battle was an improvement over FFVII of only being able to level 3 at a time, and being stuck (mostly) with Cloud as one of the 3. Or was it 4? Don't remember, but it was a hassle having to grind than switch party members out to grind more and all the while Cloud kept getting farther ahead of everyone. At least the way FFX did it we didn't have one person grossly over leveled.
I remember leveling up to Lv60 on Wutai Island near the end of Disc1 while trying to get everybody's limits unlocked. I bought a bunch of tents and just gave everybody the Fury status and used AoE limits (because every other time a bird used the AoE attack, multiple people got limit breaks LOL). It was very fast leveling and I didn't mind swapping in people because they had to learn limits anyways. It was actually rather fun.
I've always done grinding as I go for the most part. I didn't mind too much having to swap party memebers outside of battle. What I hated about it was that Cloud had to be in the party. At least as far as I remember. My memory is pretty bad and it's been a while. I do remember that by the time I got to the crater Cloud was something like 20 levels higher then everyone else. So either I didn't know he could be swapped out or he actuality couldn't be. Except for a few cases. I remember other people being party leaders for short times but can't remember why they were.
