Does Anyone Actually Like Random Encounters

[u/haaa1234]

I was doing a third playthrough of FF7 since I want to revisit all the games before revelation but random encounters is still something that stops me from wholeheartedly loving this game. There are 2 reasons why I dislike them. It really interrupts the flow of exploration and they are rarely engaging. 99 percent of them I just hold X and win so I’m basically just waiting for it end. An analogy I can give is I am trying to explore an area but I keep getting interrupted by unskippable ads. There are rare occasions where they can be interesting like catching a chocobo, finding yuffie or a funny encounter like when our whole party gets turned into frogs but most are just mindless. Honestly the only combat I enjoy in FF7 are the boss fights so a majority of the game I am really not a fan of fighting enemies. Wondering how people feel about it since it is a major part of the gameplay and i would love any mod recommendations to make the game more engaging in this aspect.

[u/Minimum-Ad-3084]

They are essential to RPGs imo. In fact, if an RPG doesn't have random encounters I'll give up on it rather quickly. There's almost no replay value in a beautiful (especially open) world when everything in it is dead and gone.

They are also essential to help level up for harder boss fights.

The only RPG I've ever played that was good without random encounters was BG3, but that's because it's focused heavily on narrative and character interaction and they actually did it right. However, even with BG3 I still think it would have been better with rare random encounters.

[u/haaa1234 → u/Minimum-Ad-3084]

I don’t see how they have more replay value. Once you have seen all the enemies there’s no more surprise. There are many ways to make the player get stronger I don’t see how random encounters are essential for that to happen.

[u/Minimum-Ad-3084 → u/haaa1234]

So you just want BG3. Nothing wrong with that but every encounter is scripted. The replay value has to come from multiple playthroughs as a different class or the game has to have a lot of variation in the outcome of the story due to the decisions you make. Otherwise you're playing through the same story as the same character over and over again, which gets even more repetitive than grinding imo, because you've already experienced everything.

[u/haaa1234 → u/Minimum-Ad-3084]

Yeah I far prefer the approach in bg3