Personally, I thought the battle system in FF12 was an absolute joke. And random battles are completely fine. Quit whining when you encounter too many and be thankful for the extra EXP that'll help you against the next boss.

That being said, while I do enjoy the classic Dragon Warrior/Classic Final Fantasy turn based RPGs, I think some more action RPGs like Skyrim or Kingdoms of Amalur would be nice. (The class system in KoA was also amazing)

And yeah. Star Ocean TLH was a god-awful game.

This seems like a thread about star ocean, which i don't think that many ppl play and I don't know what have your complaints are even about

too much random encounters that too same gameplay too

I want random battles back in my jrpgs and a roundbased gameplay, but more advanced, with more tactical elements

Here's my list

- Less dialogue, especially in the beginning. I'm playing a GBA Rom of Summon Knights 2. And it actually took over an hour of "gameplay" (including two very short scripted battle sequences) before I was able to roam free and fight monsters. There's the golden rule of entertainment where if you don't capture your audience within the first 15 minutes, you've lost them. Final Fantasy VII got it right. Barely 2 minutes after starting a new game and not a word of exposition, and you're set into battle exploring a reactor on a mission to blow it up.

- Full control of characters in battles. I know you said that you like the FF12 battle engine, but I hated it. The way that I see it, any game that takes interactivity away from the player has failed in design. And the idea that you can set every character up with combat AI just meant that when I got into a battle while grinding, I could actually put the controller down and go do something else until I've won. Now, I know that this is done to make the battles more realistic as opposed to old-school RPG battles where everyone forms in ranks and takes turns. But look at the battle system of the Grandia series where they take turn-based combat where you do have full control over every character's actions, and it looks like a right proper brawl.

Freakin more intelligent AI. Seriously, don't use an attack if you already used it and proved it wasn't effective in the first place. You're making the game easy for us.

Oh and I am sick of all the typical nerdy twinky settings. Stop using those.
But what if I want to look at the map? Like what if I want to zoom in on something?

-Get away from the "Fantasy" setting.

You don't have to be all stereotypical science-fiction or Ye Olde British Isles. How about something like an Urban Fantasy? Or maybe something set in an African looking area? How about Dieselpunk? How about something set 20 minutes in the future like in Moxyland? How about something more globalized, too? What about ripping off Skies of Arcadia and setting it in some kind of weird Jules Verne like world?


-Quit just carbon-copying Dungeons and Dragons or d20.

Seriously guys, that's getting old. At least you've been making your own systems for awhile where I can't import a party from one game into another and still work. Also, don't go "Because your skill in swords is too low, you can't hit something that is four cm away from your face." If I'm missing something that's right in my face, then I expect it to be because I'm blind - not because I'm that bad with something. Seriously, pick up some weapon you're not familiar with in real life and try swinging it at something htat's two feet away from your face. -_-; IT does not work that way. It didn't make sense in d&D, and it doesn't make any sense now, especially if you're trying to be realistic.


-Don't overcomplicate things just to make it more complex. There comes a part where it just starts to become tedious. If I'm having to slog through four menus just to equip a weapon or have to take out the manual just to find out how to drop things, then it doesn't really start being a game, does it? It just starts to be annoying.


-Actually fucking tell us where we're supposed to go.

It's just fine and dandy if you're telling us to talk to all the people...but if the only person who knows where this location is happens to be that old man huddled in a corner, then that's just inviting us to go to GameFAQs. If you're putting in something like a quest marker? Allow us to shut it off just so those self-proclaimed "Thinkers" can act like they're feeling smart by "Figuring it out yourself". If you want us to figure something out ourselves, then provide us with the necessary information. Don't just expect us to flat out divine where something is supposed to be because the directions you get is incredibly vague.


-RPG players: Sorry, if you want to tell a story, you're gonna have to be linear.

Sorry guys, but if you notice a lot of games that give you the illusion of non-linearity, when you get down to the plot, it's actually pretty darn linear. Reason? Because that's how storytelling works. When you read a book, you don't just go to whatever page you want and start reading. Know why? Because it wouldn't make sense. In fact there is a reason a lot of games don't have the plot progress until you yourself trigger an event flag - because if you just hop into the plot whenever, it'll just not make any bit of sense when you do and they're talking about stuff that happened when you weren't around.
There's a reason they're handing the plot and the challenge right to you instead of just letting you find it out yourselves: Because you'll inevitably just skip it or go "tl;dr, what're they talking about?"


-Give me a reason why I can't just walk to the end if it's right in front of us.

Why am I being forced to take the scenic route? Why do I have to do a bunch of errands for someone before he'll let me in this zone? When I enter some zone and are told "oh hey great, it happens to be here but you have to go through this dungeon before you can accomplish what you can here to do", it starts to get annoying. Is there a reason we can't just waltz right in, apart from "Well, then you'd have a 10 hour game"? Explain why there is no ships going to the continent where I have to go, not just "oh sorry there are no ships there".


-Try and give alternate ways to accomplish a particular goal. And make them as equally rewarding.

So give me a reason for engaging in corporate espionage when I can get more experience by just shooting everything that moves. Give me a reason for taking this path if the only reward is gear that I'll never ever use since I am a warrior. Give me a reason for completing a puzzle if I can get more experience by just blowing it up.


-Cut back on the arbitrary plot barriers.

Why aren't you here waiting for me at the castle? Oh! Because I didn't speak to everyone in the village first. Seriously, stuff like this is just annoying. -_-;