On that note, we will now join Blue late in her quest to be the very best that no one ever was. She wandered into Mt. Mortar to find the fabled Karate King after gaining all sixteen Gym Badges, and defeat him. No trainer can go unfought in this journey, no matter how obscure. Unfortunately Mt. Mortar is a huge maze, filled with waterfalls, cliff faces, and huge boulders that you need a Pokemon to get through. And there are lots of two feet bluffs that Blue cannot climb over no matter how hard she tries. When she tries it, her body is forced back by a supernatural power called Bad Game Design, making her walk in place rather than easily step over the bluffs. The great power was currently off sleeping, so it was to be of no help. Clearly this quest was not going to be fun... at all.
But there was one problem in Mt. Mortar that reigned supreme as the worst of them all. It was an annoyance so irritating and frustrating and utterly pointless that it only could have been programmed into the game purely to cause all players pain. Only a sinister and truly despicable person could even consider using this concept in this day and age. And what we're talking about here can be summed up in two fateful words: random encounters*. Every five steps poor Blue made into the confusing labyrnth of Mt. Mortar was immediately interrupted by a sudden attack of a Pokemon, usually a Zubat for some random reason. Of course, all the Pokemon came from a mysterious extra-dimensional well beyond time and space. She would just be walking along merrily in an empty corridor when suddenly she would be teleported to the Battle Dimension to fight a Bat. Where was this Battle Dimension? Nobody knew, not even Oak. Most trainers were either too afraid or too stupid to even ask. After only the first few times, Blue was so tired of seeing Zubats that she could confidently say that she never wanted to see another bat Pokemon ever again for the rest of her life. Soon enough Blue and her Pokemon had lost any interest in fighting these low-level twerps, and she would just run away without incident.
But see another Zubat again she did. And there were many others out to harass Blue after every step. Geodudes, and Gravelers, and Machops, one after another popping up to slow down Blue's progress for no good reason. One after another, each one more annoying than the last. When Blue rode her Milotic through the underground waterwells, there were hoards of fish to bother her. With every wrong turn, Blue knew that she would have to walk back, probably running into eight fights along the way. She even began to avoid treasure as the minutes turned into an hour, knowing that she would be free of these horrible random encounters faster without that Moon Stone or whatever. There was no challenge to be found in the random encounters, only the needless agony of many minutes wasted.
Eventually Blue began to feel the toll of this constant assault. She started mumbling to herself. "Oh dear, should have made a left there... Let's go up. One tile, two tiles, three tiles. Here we go, fighting a Machop. Again. I hit run. Got away safely. Thanks game, I love being told that every time instead of just quickly taking me back to the start... Why does this game have to be so wordy? It makes an already tedious adventure that much worse... Now let's keep on going... Wait, which way was I going again? Was it this way... Random battle! How? I only shuffled my weight to the other foot! Look its a Machop, exactly the same as the last one. Should I fight? Why bother? Hit run... Got away safely... Now let's keep going down this way.... And random battle! Machop again. Is this the same guy over and over? Maybe I'll kill this one... Glaceon, use Bite. Not very effective? Who cares? It sure took out that asshole! Yeah, whatever, gained one shiver of EXP, don't care... Now where was I going again? I'm losing my mind... Great, another random battle! Machop, didn't I just kill you a second ago?"
And this continued for some time, until poor Blue's soliloquy began to break down into beyond the comprehension of the sane: "Machop... yet another Machop... Zubat... Zu... Zu... What? Zubat! That's who! Why Zubat? What did I do to you? HA! I bought you a present for your birthday, Mr Zu-Zu... Zu-Zu-Zoodio! Zu-Zu-Zoodio! HA! Milotic, why are you always following me? Don't you know that the Zu-Zus will only attack again... And the Ma-Mas too? Mil-Mil, go find love someplace... someplace without all the Zu-Zus.... I've completely lost my mind, haven't I, Mr. Zu-Zu? I got away safely... HA! But have I gotten away to safety? Mr. Zu-Zu... I hate you...."
Clearly Blue was in desperate need of medical attention, but she was too far gone to realize anything other than her vague mission to find the end of the dungeon. She had long forgotten just what she came into Mt. Mortar for, and so continued on with the barrage of random encounters and torture. At this point this nightmare was all her fragile psyche could remember. This world of endless suffering was all she had ever known. She wandered around the bends, moving through the same corridors over and over again as her decrepit body shuffled her weak legs along the floor of the cave. Mt. Mortar was a maze difficult for even the sane to make it through, but for the insane... Blue would be down there for days, lifetimes perhaps.
Finally Blue had reached the last bend, the last fork before the short walk to the Karate King. But she turned left instead of going down, and hopped down a small bluff by accident. Suddenly she realized that she had just been knocked down to the very beginning of the dungeon**. Somewhere in Blue's broken mind, she realized that by going this way she would have to go through the dungeon all over again. And it made that part furious. So angry did Blue get that she was shocked right back into sanity, screaming with clear rage over her misfortune. "I HATE THIS AWFUL PLACE!!!" Blue was Blue again. And she knew her mission. She was going to conquer this dungeon, finish this Hell, and go home for a bath. Too much time had been wasted, the Karate King was going down.
After another hour of random battles, Blue reached the Karate King. And she beat him. Actually the Karate King fell in about half a minute, lasting mere seconds longer than the lunatic parade of Zubats that had come before. In gratitude, the King offered Blue a Tyrogue, a baby fighting Pokemon. Blue would have cheerfully taken in the little creature, but apparently the universe demands that this gift Pokemon can only be given if there is an extra slot in the party***. So after all this, Blue was walking away with nothing. The injustice of it all made her break down into sobs. She whited out...
Hours later, Blue awoke only to find the Karate King brutally murdered, and her hands covered in blood. Luckily she was so deep in the caves of Mt. Mortar that nobody could ever possibly find the body. She washed off in a nearby pool, and went home to Mom and that bath, vowing to never speak of this episode ever again.
Needless to say, the Karate King never made it home to his dojo in Saffron City. He was not missed. The Fighting Dojo was eventually shut down, demolished, and replaced with condos. Years later Mt. Mortar was destroyed in a mysterious explosion which Blue may or may not have personally caused - leaving the body buried deep under the rubble, never to be found. The awful location of Mt. Mortar was destroyed forever. In its mere lack of further existence, the world was made a better place.
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* Random encounters are at the moment my number one pet peeve of all gaming. I'm of the opinion is that there is no good reason whats-so-ever to ever keep using this system in modern RPGs. Seriously, give me an excuse. Give me one excuse for having a random encounter these days. The only reason they were implemented in the first place was due to technical limitations: we used to not have the processing power to have enemies appear in the main world environment. Those days are long past. Long past. Why not just have little Pokemon sprites of Zubat run around in the caves which you can easily rush past and continue on your way? Why continue to punish the player for every step they take and every wrong fork they go down? I don't need to be harassed constantly while exploring in my video games! NEVER AGAIN. I'm never playing a game with random battles ever again. If "Pokemon Black and White" are going to keep random battles, you can count me right out. (end of rant)
** I'm not kidding here, there seriously is a bluff that will take you back to the very beginning if you're dumb enough to fall down it, which I was. Getting through this dungeon without any encounters would take at least twenty minutes, but with them its at least a half hour trek. Its absolute evil, there's no other word for it. EVIL. Whoever designed Mt. Mortar is a horrible person and should see a priest to repent their sins.
*** This too is completely unnecessary and exists only to annoy the player. Why can't you just transfer the gift Pokemon to your PC directly? How is this any different than simply catching Pokemon in the wild? For that matter, why can't you carry more than six Pokemon in the first place? Is there a federal law against it? Is having seven Pokemon a capital crime? I even remembered that in original games you needed an extra open slot. But I foolishly thought that since that was such a broken detail back on the Game Boy Color, it had to have been fixed here. It wasn't. And I'm not going back down there for that Tyrogue. You couldn't pay me to make that trip. At times, I really hate this game, you know that?
And this is why I don't play Pokemon.
ReplyDeleteAck, the agony! However, deep down, I have a lov of classic random battles, deep beneath the hate. It's like a scar you don't want to try to remove.
ReplyDeleteWhy didn't you use Max Repels? I always try to carry a large supply of them with me at all times in Pokemon games.
ReplyDeleteWee, a scar you don't want to remove is a scar you like because of it's look. This is definitely something Blue doesn't like, at least at the moment.
ReplyDeleteOh, I'm never going to like random battles. I never liked them in the first place, but I put up with them - for too long. I hear the Golden Sun games are cool. But I'll never know. You know why? Because they have random @$#!ing battles! It ruins games. Yeah, even FFVII or FFIX are ruined because they feature random battles. I said it. SoulSilver was an exception made only because Pikachu is cute, and because the real combat (the trainer battles) are not random at all. Pokemon White and Black are not getting the same free ride. Final Fantasy Gaiden isn't getting away with it either when it comes here.
ReplyDelete(Also I don't use Max Repels because I don't feel like going through all the trouble of constantly using one after 200 or 250 steps. I use the Cleanse Tag. But even though that claims to get rid of encounters, but its maybe 50% effective on a good day.)
Golden Sun is, IMO, the best JRPG game I've ever played, and its sequel was just as good. Of course, I got them when they first came out, though I don't think the battles in Golden Sun are that bad.
ReplyDeleteThe only JRPG I consider to be better than Golden Sun, is Chrono Trigger. Again, that's my opinion.
DO NOT PLAY GOLDEN SUN! Many locations in Golden Sun have more random encounters than anywhere in a Poke'mon game! In some games random battles are bearable (like Final Fantasy IX; there are very few areas where the battles occur so constantly I want to stop playing) but not in Golden Sun. Don't get me wrong, they have very good stories, and the puzzles are well designed, but the battle rate is WAY too high, not to mention not fun. Some turn based battle systems are easy to use and keep you thinking. Golden Sun's does not.
ReplyDeleteReally...tell me when there is a random battle every five seconds. I have the both copies of the games on me, I'll double check and see what your talking about.
ReplyDeleteAnd, in Golden Sun I found the battles to be more entertaining. Can't say the same for Pokemon.
Chrono Trigger came out in 1995, why did any games feature random encounters after that? And another thing, where are my dual- and triple-techs in other games? Chrono Trigger brought so many awesome things to the table that I haven't seen in succeeding games.
ReplyDeleteI forgot: You find using a single item every 200-something steps to be more tedious than a fight every three steps?
ReplyDeleteNicholas, I'll give my attempt at your questions:
ReplyDelete#1: I'm guessing it's because, when you think about it, Chrono Trigger was no where near the difficulty of some JRPG's. Game developer's want more enemies to be attacking you, every second, as a way for you to "grind". To cope with this, they make the game really challenging. Not that Chrono Trigger was easy, but it was easy to dodge most enemies outside of battles if you wanted to.
#2: Play Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2. Theirs double-teaming. Or one of those Dead or Alive games, if you consider popping in and out to hit your opponent "dual-tech".
Of course, those aren't RPG's :)
ReplyDeleteOh, that reminds me, theirs a power in Golden Sun called Avoid that allows you to cast a spell that lowers the encounter rate of monsters similar to the way it works in Pokemon...BUT, it can be mapped to the L+R buttons, and it uses "Psynergy" (which is like mana), but psynergy regenerates quickly over time so that's not an issue.
While I don't suggest abusing it, due to the value of experience, it's very useful, and later on the cost of psynergy is a joke. That, and you still get to fight some monsters.
That's kinda my point: you shouldn't have to jump through 100 hoops to avoid battles. There should be one easy way for you to avoid battles without spending 100 thousands PokeDollars or using a crazy spell or whatever. The best encounter system I've ever seen remains FFXII, and no games since then have ever done it that way. It should be a button you press. Hit R and enemies will maybe be able to get a single attack off if they're lucky. That's it.
ReplyDeleteAnd why do battles need to take place in another dimension anyway?
LMAO, the end made me laugh. I wish I had a chance to play XII before my PS2 broke down. :(
ReplyDeleteStar Wars: Knights of the Old Republic had an encounter system like FFXII. Everything about Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic was awesome. It had the best plot twist ever. Anyone who has played that game knows the one I mean.
ReplyDeleteOr you could just play action games, which don't have random encounters at all. Games like God of War, Dead Rising, Devil May Cry (clearly I like Fantasy), and others are all really fun, and have great stories (though Dead Rising is at times a little campy). There's also the Resident Evil games, and of course, Kingdom Hearts, which is shaping up to be the best series Squenix is releasing right now (fingers crossed for another Chrono game sometime before the decade's over).
ReplyDelete@YKProductions: Also, about the Golden Sun every five second battles, I remember that most of the caves had high battle rates, but the dungeons that weren't, like the lighthouses, weren't that bad. That forest in the first game was a little overwhelming as well.
I don't really mind random encounters too much, unless the random encounter rate is way too high. I loved knights of the old republic, but didn't the enemies usually run about the same speed as you? And another really good jrpg without random encounters is The World Ends With You, where the battles literally do take place in another dimension, but you choose when to fight. Of course you can get underlevelled that way but the combat is fun and grinding is pretty easy.
ReplyDelete"Also, about the Golden Sun every five second battles, I remember that most of the caves had high battle rates, but the dungeons that weren't, like the lighthouses, weren't that bad. That forest in the first game was a little overwhelming as well"
ReplyDeleteThis reminds me of Air's Rock...I was stuck at that shit forever, and the constant attacks by Harpies and shit were a pain. But I thank that part of the game for making me a better jrpg player.
Forest...the one with Trent? And the people who got turned into tree's? Ya, I didn't like that part either. My favorite parts from both games would have to be the Colosso from the first one, and for the second game it's a tie between finally beating the Scorpion at Yampi Desert, the whole 3-parts-of-the-trident-to-beat Poseidon-thing so you could get into Lemuria, and the Mars Lighthouse at the very end.
Well, I like how Chrono Trigger's system took almost twenty years to copy in FFXIII. They technically have the same random battle system: you see the enemy approach you, or you approach them. To be honest I like this system even more than FFXII's, although a combination of the two would be perfect(meaning you don't have a seperate battle screen, yet there is a line between exploration and battle) I guess, lol, sort of like Chrono Trigger.
ReplyDelete@wee187: Square clearly wanted to keep the two series' battle systems different, as there were quite a few games made by Square which used Trigger's encounter system (like it's sequel, Chrono Cross).
ReplyDelete@YKProductions: Yeah, the one with Trent. Also, the Colosso was a lot of fun.
A few Great RPGS that evryone who likes RPGs should play:
ReplyDeleteCHrono trigger, game of gods
FF12
FF7
Lufia(turn based, the actuall duingeons dont have random encountes, in fact they have just what you sugested: Easily avoidaable monster sprites)
Fallout 3
Fallout 2
fallout 1
Fallout tactics
Fallout New Vegas
Oblivion
Knights of the old republic, Oh greatest of all games starwars(both one AND 2)
annnnnnnndddddd.....
Tabletop D@D with some good freinds (yes im a nerd, but im a nerd who plays the best rpg EVER.)
do tell me what you think of this list!