I recently tried Breath of Death 7, a parody game filled with references to retro JRPGs. It had great music and visual design. Unfortunately, I overall didn’t enjoy it. It did get me thinking about random encounters, and the difference between difficulty and the frequency of battles.
Random encounters are one of those features that, despite being nostalgic, are an archaic mechanic. Even in the SNES era with Chrono Trigger, games were drifting away from surprise battles that popped out of nowhere. Random encounters did linger for a couple console generations, but now they are mostly found in games trying to tap into nostalgia.
I noticed that my frustration with random encounters is not consistent. Some games I find to be slog, while other I thoroughly enjoy. This made me stew on what the difference is, and why is it in certain games I become engaged with the random battles, but in others I become frustrated. I don’t have an ironclad answer, but I think I’ve gotten close to parsing it out.
High encounter rates
I’ve started to really dislike high encounter rates. They create a frustrating sense of interruption. Recently, I started to wonder why. A RPGs combat is one of its main features. So why would more fights tip over into annoyance? I think it’s dependent on the difficulty of each fight and how much time you spend popping in and out of battle.
If the fights are difficult, and a battle is triggered once every few steps, then the dungeon turns into a slog. Having to intently focus on each fight while making minimal progress doesn’t feel satisfying. Often, our goal in a dungeon is to reach the end, constant interruptions every few steps impedes our progress. It doesn’t feel like solving a puzzle, but instead like wading through mud.
Making the encounters easy doesn’t change much either. In those instances, the player is likely to button mash their way through fights. It’s not engaging to have auto-battle turned on for an entire dungeon, with the only interesting encounter being the boss.
The longer, more maze-like, and puzzle dense a dungeon is, the more a high encounter rate becomes infuriating. If we’re trying to find our way through a maze, or backtrack to solve a puzzle, constant surprise battles at a high encounter rate become a hindrance. If surviving battles is a tertiary goal, then their inclusion takes away from our primary and secondary goals—in this case solving the puzzles and getting to the end of a dungeon. An example of this is Final Fantasy II, which had long maze-like dungeons, but with an encounter rate so high it made navigating each map a pain. There’s a reason common sentiment is to avoid the original release and instead play the pixel remaster, which allows you to turn off encounters.
Later entries in the series caught on to this. In Final Fantasy X, there are no random battles in any of the trials, which were areas dedicated to solving a series of puzzles. If there had been, I guarantee it would’ve become a recurring complaint from players.
Low encounter rates
I prefer low encounter rates. They make each battle more impactful, and allow you to engage in the mechanics of the fight without the pace feeling bogged down. Final Fantasy IX is a good example of this. In FF9, you’re likely to only have one or two battles per screen. Often, there are no encounters over multiple screens as you navigate the environment. This gives you freedom to explore, with the fights being more engaging because of their infrequency.
And there are whole segments of FF9 where the random battles are turned off, instead opting for planned encounters. These integrate with the narrative far better, usually having enemies deliver dialogue or take an action before initiating the battle. This gives extra context, adds to the sense of verisimilitude between gameplay and story world, and creates build-up that excites us to partake in a story moment via the game’s battle system. It’s a far better and more immersive way to engage players in combat.
Why I didn't like Breath of Death
Breath of Death has great visuals and music. I also like the combo system, where certain abilities increase your combo modifier, the higher the modifier the more damage finisher attacks do. It’s a simple and clever way to get the player to use all their abilities instead of defaulting to the biggest damage ones.
Unfortunately, I did not enjoy the game, and ended up not finishing it. The most frustrating part for me was the dungeon designs and high encounter rate. The dungeons are long and maze-like, with winding corridors broken up with little bits of impassable debris that you have to zig-zag around. While trying to navigate these long dungeons, the player is bombarded with constant battles at a far too high frequency. This turns dungeons into a frustrating experience of constant interruptions while trying to find where the exit is.
It's made worse by the fluctuating difficulty of each fight. Some fights you can button mash through, others you have to stop and pay attention or you’ll die. And dying boots you back to your last save. Since there’s no autosaves, not remembering to save regularly could mean you lose a large chunk of progress.
The high encounter rate mixed with long, maze-like dungeons created an unenjoyable experience for me. It felt like a slog grinding through so many fights while searching for the dungeon’s exit, doubly so with the fluctuating difficulty of battles.
There’s a “Fight!” option in the menu that lets you initiate a battle whenever you want. Each dungeon has a set number of encounters, about a few dozen. You can park next to a HP/MP replenishing save point and grind through all the dungeon’s battles. This ends all battles and lets you roam the dungeon freely. I wasn’t keen to sit in one spot and grind out fights, and the option to do so seems like a band-aid solution to larger problem. I’d much rather have the encounter rate lowered, so each fight could still be difficult but not feel like a constant hindrance while trying to navigate the labyrinthine dungeons.
Just recently, the creators released a remade version, Breath of Death VII: The Beginning: Reanimated. This new remake has updated visuals, music, and quality of life changes. I haven’t tried it, but it looks like an impressive revamp of the original. Despite my frustration with Breath of Death, I’m very interested in trying this reanimated version.
Conclusion
I have a lot of nostalgia for the format of retro JRPGs, including random encounters. But, I can’t deny that it’s an archaic design choice that modern games have drifted away from entirely. Opting instead for planned encounters or having enemies visible on the map, which I think is better overall.
When random encounters are present, I think the best mix is to have a low encounter rate with higher difficulty. This means that each fight can feel more impactful and force players to use all their abilities. Less, more engaging fights means dungeons shouldn’t feel like a slog, hitting the right mix of forward progress and challenge.