Random battles versus Visible Enemies.

[Benevolent_Ghaleon]

Which do you prefer? I personally can play with either but usually want the latter.

[phyco126]

I don't like random battles all that much. When I first played SSSC, I loved the visible enemies. It was easier to control who you fight, and was far easier to level from grinding, instead of mindnumbing wandering waiting for a random battle.

[Benevolent_Ghaleon]

Yes, but what about when an overwhelming amount of monsters stand around you and bombard you battle after battle?

[phyco126]

Well, I can't say because that has never happened to me before. Sure I got bombarded, but it was still no worse than say, random battles in FFVII. Plus I had a chance to at least run from the monsters that chased me, quite successfully in most cases.

[Benevolent_Ghaleon]

Lunar: TSS truly shows what RANDOM battle means. You may have one every damn step.

[YoshiMars]

I've always been more partial to enemies I could see... that way, like Phyco said, if I don't want to fight I can attempt to outrun them. Or if I've cleared a room of enemies I know that I can freely explore the area without any further interruptions. With random battles I can occasionally get lost and forget what direction it was I was going or where my bearings are... that gets quite frustrating.

[Sonic#]

Though I've only played SSSC, I like how they do the non-random battles. I never ran into the 'bombardment' that you mention to phyco... some of them were unavoidable, but never was it overwhelming.

I'm very tolerant of a random battle system though. Skies of Arcadia, which many people said had a high rate of random encounter, was fine with me. I imagine TSS was about the same... though it doesn't rival every step.

[GhaleonOne]

TSS wasn't as bad as people said. Plus, you could always run in TSS.

[Kizyr]

TSS was a good example of how random battles should work. The thing is, people got irritated that they were actually random, so occasionally you'd get into 3-4 battles in a row close together, but then you could explore half a dungeon floor without running into a single enemy. Plus, like G1 said, you could always run from enemies.

There's really no room for a legitimate complaint on how they do random battles, unless you just don't like non-visible enemies on the screen to begin with. I mean if you actually measure the encounter rate, instead of just harping on those occasions when you run into several in a row, then it's really generous.

Now Lunar: Magic School, that had a miserable encounter rate. It's the one thing that brought the whole bloody game down. KF

[ilovemyguitar]

I must say that I don't have a preference for or against visible enemies on the field map. I thoroughly enjoyed playing through dungeons on both the Sega CD and the PSX versions of the Lunar games.

As a sidenote, I want to add that if the Lunar battle system had been different than it was, I probably wouldn't be a fan of the series, despite its amazing story. I won't say that the battle system is the reason I'm a fan, but I remember attempting games in the Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy series and being turned off by the battle systems because the characters and enemies being stuck in fixed places during battles seemed so unnatural (and not fun) to me. Lunar's location-based battle system was quite refreshing at the time, and I still prefer RPGs with similar battle systems (Star Ocean, Chrono Trigger, etc).

[Kizyr]

...Chrono Trigger also had fixed battle positions. The animations just involved them dashing forward. KF

[GhaleonOne]

You sure about that? I seem to recall characters moving around the battle screen quite a bit, with the exception of certain battles (the two end boss battles).

[Imperial Knight]

I have a strong preference for visible enemies over random battles. If done well, having visible enemies allows the means by which one encounters enemies to become a part of the gameplay, therefore making exploration that much more interesting.

[Silver Phoenix]

I think the whole idea of the random encounter is the surprise factor. I remember playing TSS and going through dungeons just hoping that I wouldn't be attacked constantly. Sometimes you're lucky and sometimes you're kept on your toes. I think the music played a part in that surprise factor when you encountered a battle. I think I was more frustrated by random battles in Eternal Blue because I felt the enemies were more difficult than in The Silver Star. Eternal Blue was a more difficult game in my opinion and worrying about Ronfar killing your party with a dice roll wasn't any help either. If you really want to talk about random battles driving you crazy, Skies of Arcadia is high on that list.

[ilovemyguitar]

...Chrono Trigger also had fixed battle positions. The animations just involved them dashing forward. KF

There were also spells that attacked zones, or on a line.

[Alunissage]

It took me quite a while to get used to the visible enemies in SSSC after years of playing TSS. Once I did, it started seeming very odd to me to have random battles. EB (which I played after SSSC) was particularly frustrating in that running was quite a gamble; while it goes against the grain to run from battles, EB's dungeons were long and complex enough that I might end up pretty depleted and want to head out to recharge, and not being able to run successfully from battles I didn't want to risk fighting was really annoying.

Later, when I saw the then-current FFs, I was astonished that they had random battles... though not as much at that as at the straight-line jumping out to attack and back. I hadn't known then that Lunar's range system was unusual in RPGs, so not havintg range seemed ridiculously primitive.

[Kizyr]

Later, when I saw the then-current FFs, I was astonished that they had random battles... though not as much at that as at the straight-line jumping out to attack and back. I hadn't known then that Lunar's range system was unusual in RPGs, so not havintg range seemed ridiculously primitive.

But they made up for it by having 20-minute long animations for magic spells. KF

[Agawa]

I must prefer visible enemies, I feel they better immerse me in the game, and give me more control over it. Besides, trying crazy tricks to avoid enemies (or even just having them there) make dungeons much more interesting, in my opinion.

As for the battle rate in TSS, it didn't bother me at all. If the battles were annoying me, I could just run away, which was also rather nice.