I’m torn about them. On the one hand they free up the combat design to be as wildly different from the exploration as it wants. Which can result in really creative stuff. Favorite examples are Undertale, MegaMan Battle Network series, and Tales series.
But on the other they interrupt the flow of exploration, the music, you forget where you were by the end of combat and they can be very annoying if they happen to be common or just as you’re about to leave an area. The consolation prize of growing stronger with every battle only helps so much.
FF style? Hate 'em. I’m not a fan of the turn-based combat in those types of games either. Outside of boss fights/special enemies, you’re usually just spamming A to select the first option (attack) until you win. It gets hella old, hella fast and the random encounters happen every so many steps you take.
Fallout style, on the other hand, is awesome. More like Fallout 3 and beyond than 1 or 2 which are still a bit like FF in that you can’t see shit, you just walk the map and then FF battle music fade to black and pop into the encounter.
The Yakuza series does them well. They’re visible when wandering around, but they’ll also just appear at random all over the city walking down streets or chilling in alleys. You can’t always tell exactly what you’ll fight but you’ll know how to get around them if you don’t want to fight.
Of course I also like roguelikes. The entire game is a random encounter.
I agree FF style turn based combat is boring. I mean games that have an auto button that plays it for you are admitting it.
That’s why I like games that have more creative combat that blends different genres. Undertale has some turn based, some realtime bullet hell. Battle network has a real time grid based with card game elements.
There’s so much you can do but so often devs fall back on choose from menu watch cutscene.
Oh yeah, Undertale is gnar. They actually did something new and different with the style, which is what I’m really about here. Octopath Traveller is another good one; the thing that it has going for it is the sheer number of options you actually have. It’s not just “attack, item, magic, defend, or run away.” It also has a lot of other Western RPG elements in it like actually having dialogue choices that matter making it an actual game with branching paths and not simply a story with some minimal interactive elements.
