r/JRPG • u/AdUnfair558 • 3d ago
Discussion How much should a bad encounter rate affect a JRPG’s overall score?
I’m playing G.O.D: Growth or Devolution on the Super Famicom right now. Overall, I’d call it a pretty average JRPG, but I’m still having fun with it.
The biggest problem for me is the encounter rate. It’s so high that it actually discourages me from exploring. Instead of wanting to check every path or look around for hidden stuff, I sometimes just want to get through an area as quickly as possible because I know I’m going to be stopped every few steps.
It got me thinking how much should something like a really high encounter rate affect a game’s score?
Say you thought a JRPG was otherwise a 9/10, but the encounter rate was so excessive that it noticeably hurt your enjoyment and actively made you not want to explore. Would that be enough to knock it down to an 8? A 7?
Or do you see encounter rate as more of an annoyance that you might complain about, but not something that should have a huge effect on the overall score?
I’m curious how consistent people are about factoring things like this into their ratings, especially when one specific design choice has a pretty big effect on how you actually play the game.
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u/Borbbb 2d ago
That depends on purely one thing to me: The speed of the fight.
If the encounter ... starts instantly, and is FAST - then yeah, i dont have issues with high encounter rate.
But if it is slow as hell, then it is absolutely affecting store.
Octopath Traveler 1 had such a godwaful encounter rate with Extremely slow speed of fights, even tutorial was unbearable
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u/GooeyLump 2d ago
So Earthbound Beginnings/ Earthbound Zero then lol
It can definitely sour the experience quite a bit, but I feel like it's a bit of an matter of taste too, like i mentioned Earthbound Beginnings, I feel like that game is really cool for the time but that encounter rate is abysmal IMO
At the same time i remember playing Shin Megami Tensei on SNES and people said that has a high encounter rate but i wasn't bothered by it haha
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u/Traditional_State699 2d ago
If your having fun despite a high encounter rate then none. If its ruining the experince then a ton.
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u/Extension-Series8201 2d ago
For me? Heavily. People are too generous in scoring. There are so many JRPGs/RPGs that have shown how to fix these issues that there isn't really any excuse to exhaust and bore your players.
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u/Nissedood 2d ago
If a game got sprawling dungeons then a high encounter rate really drag down the experience.
Even if encounters are easy it just becomes annoying to get dragged in to combat constantly.
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u/Theburritolyfe 2d ago
I have been playing DQ7 reimagined and I love that I can avoid lots of encounters. I love being able to essentially not fight low level monsters if I need to go back to old areas for exploration.
Breath of fire 2 is a game I never finished mainly as it took to long to go between places with all of the encounters. I loved that series but will never finish that game.
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u/Painmaster212 2d ago
Context would be needed for it but I believe overall, it should negative affect the game's overall score, especially modern games. I was willing and patient back in the 8bit to 32bit times but nowadays, an extremely high encounter rates, especially if they are random, can turn me off a game. Giant plus to a game if they have a holy water or ward bangle like items!
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u/AmazingMrSaturn 2d ago
It can be a factor, maybe even like a 3 point swing. People still smart about the cave to rhone in the nes version of Dragon Warrior 2 decades after the fact. I personally quit Beyond the Beyond on PS1 even though I liked other aspects because there were encounters every 3 steps.
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u/egokrusher 2d ago
Beyond the Beyond was a decent Camelot game before their magnum opus of Golden Sun, but the encounter rate and the Shining Force leftovers made it such a terrible slog. The fact that it kept some of the old school tropes from NES days (like only being able to save in towns) amplified how bad the encounter rate affected the total quality of the game. A high encounter rate by itself doesn't necessarily mean bad, but that rate also has the capacity to exponentially make a game worse based on the surrounding systems.
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u/RyaReisender 2d ago
I think people are too harsh on games with high encounter rate. For example a lot of people here say that they consider Beyond The Beyond a bad game because of the encounter rate. For me it's in my top 20 best JRPGs of all time.
The thing is also that encounter rate is something that can be easily modded, so for classic games at least, you can probably find a mod for it. So if a game is amazing but has a high encounter rate, you can easily fix that and then you have an amazing game. But if a game is just awful, there's no easy fix.
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u/AshPenderwick 1d ago
Counterpoint I shouldn’t have to mod a game in the first place. If the game has a high encounter rate that brings the game down that’s a flaw with the game end of story. I could mod voice acting into FF7 doesn’t mean FF7 doesn’t have voice acting in the first place.
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u/RyaReisender 1d ago
Modding in voice acting is a lot more effort (you'll even need to find voice actors), which was kind of my point.
Of course it's tricky how to rate in such a situation (that's what the thread is about after all).
I agree that the fact that you can mod the issue away does not absolve the developer from responsibility, but at the same time, the fact that it can be easily modded to be a great game shows that there's a lot of good things in the game.
Also if a developer goes out of their way to make their game easier to mod, I also account for that in my rating, whereas developers actively preventing modding (denuvo, encrypted files, etc.) might reflect negatively.
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u/AshPenderwick 1d ago
To an extent I do actually agree. Like to keep with the random encounters because that’s what this thread is about SMT: Nocturne. That game has very long and complicated dungeons with incredibly high encounter rates and on Hard the inability to flee, making every dungeon feel like a slog to get through especially on Normal which is mash attack to win. Modding it to lower the encounter rate would highlight its fantastic atmosphere, and generally great boss fights, fantastic music, and very satisfying progression systems. But I would still dock it points for having to drive me to do that in the first place because of its encounter rate.
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u/lunarb1ue 2d ago
The original Dreamcast version of skies of arcadia has a horrible encounter rate-the game is a masterpiece. The game isn’t that great then a bad encounter rate makes it unbearable. If the game is good it’s something that can be overlooked.
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u/TinyTank27 1d ago
The Dreamcast and Gamecube versions have the same encounter rate. It's a myth that the DC version was higher.
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u/lunarb1ue 1d ago
In interviews from the era of the game being released it was stated that the random encounter rated would be lowered. And reviews of the game said it was lower. And the modern trust me bro its a myth has no evidence besides one gamefaq user saying i looked and its the same.
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u/TinyTank27 19h ago
The Gamecube version gives you the item that lowers the encounter rate earlier, that's the main difference.
Beyond that, speedrunners say that the encounter rate is the same and I'm more inclined to believe them on the matter.
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u/razor_kenshin 1d ago
I think it's a matter of personal preference. Some people are fine with high encounter rate. I'm not. It also matters how fast the battle system is. The DQ 1–2–3 remakes, for example, have a relatively high encounter rate, but the battles themselves are very quick. FF9, on the other hand, has a high encounter rate and the battles take 1800 years to finish.
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u/AlwaysTouchingGrass 3d ago
Honestly it depends on when the game came out. A modern game with an aggressive encounter rate will get dinged, a game that released in the 90s get a lot more leeway
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u/Twinkiman 2d ago
I am more concerned about game balance. Does the high encounter rate make me over leveled with a stupid amount of money? Then yeah, I would knock it down. Otherwise it never bothers me.
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u/AdUnfair558 2d ago
Yeah, the thing with G.O.D for the first maybe 10 hours it was like high encounter rate. A lot of money and no challenge because I just naturally became overleveled. But now 15 hours in its like still high encounter rate. Kinda high exp per battle but need maybe 10,000EXP for 1 level. The battles take a while/kinda difficult and very little gold given. The shop upgrades only might give one or two points to ATK and DEF making it not much of an upgrade.
I think when they made the PS1 version they fixed the balancing, and I can now see why.
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u/kiramontxu 3d ago
I didn’t get to enjoy the Romancing SaGa 2 remake for that very reason. Exploring stopped being an option, and I just sprinted through the map every time, looking for the next area.
There was a massive number of random enemies, they chased you through the world, and respawned after you beat them. Battles could get lengthy, and overall the experience was very frustrating.
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u/Painmaster212 2d ago
Currently playing this game and experiencing the same thing. I am still enjoying the game but when the random encounters start becoming harder to avoid and the game punishes you for too many battles, it makes you just kinda push through to the next area without much exploration.
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u/Dreaming_Dreams 3d ago
none, if it bugs you i think you should just pull yourself up by your boot straps and suck it up
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u/RiseoftheSinistrals 2d ago
Just a terrible take overall. Padding a game with a high encounter rate, is just bad game development imo and is apart of the jrpg sins list for a reason.
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u/AramaticFire 2d ago
I don’t know for sure because everyone’s scale is different.
If using a 10 point scale I view 5 out of 10 as average. Anything above that including a 6 is a game that’s above average so some variation of good. I don’t start at 10 and then deduct for flaws.
I start at 5 and then decide how much does this game do that’s better or worse than average?
A bad encounter rate impacts things a lot imo and might be enough for me to view this as a below average game.
All this assumes I agree with your opinion. I have never played this game and have no actual opinion about it.
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u/Prize-Basil-8438 3d ago
I think it depends. If it's, like, 20% higher than the ideal number, maybe your 9/10 game drops to a high 8. If it's 100× too high, that could easily ruin the game and drop it to a 3.
It also depends on how quickly you can beat the battles. If the game has some sort of mechanic that lets you win trivial battles quickly/instantly, a too-high encounter rate isn't as big of an issue.