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Much to my delight, I recently got my girlfriend to start playing Final Fantasy VI. The way I phrased that probably sounded like a trial, but really it was pretty easy. I had just finished playing all the Phoenix Wright games which she adores and in an effort to get her involved in something I like, I asked if she would play it.
My girlfriend isn't really an RPG fan. Her favorite game is the Sims 2 and thus far her greatest delight in FFVI has been renaming the characters of the game's large cast. An act which caused me much chagrin, especially when Cyan became "Beardy" and Gau (despite his uselessness it still caused me pain) became "Mousy." Nonetheless she seems to be having fun and that has pleased me as FFVI is by far my favorite RPG.
This said, she has had a consistent complaint throughout her time with the game. She hates the random encounters. She has played a few RPGs before this; Super Mario RPG for the SNES and another Mario Brother's one for GBA, and in those she became used to seeing her enemies on screen and being given the option to fight or flee at her own discretion. All the times I've heard her grumble while playing, it has been because of the random encounters. Scaling the tower in Zozo was of particular annoyance to her.
It got me wondering about random encounters and their place in RPGs. For me playing an RPG has generally always meant working my way through random encounters. Even now having become more acquainted with different styles of role playing, when I think of an RPG, I still picture sprites strolling across a map to some traveling music, and then every few steps the screen flashes and I enter into a fight against whatever beasties happen to populate the area.
It's an old system and one that a lot of people wish would come to a close, and to some extent I can see why. Many people find not being able to travel even a few steps without being dragged into an unpredictable fight simply annoying. I can understand that. There were times playing FFIV Advance where I was almost tempted to throw the game across the room from the seeming inability to take a single step without being assaulted. It was particularly bad in the final dungeon when every step would yield an encounter with a Behemoth or some equivalent monster. My stock of Hi-Potions could only go so far.
At the same time, however, I feel reluctant to denounce random encounters entirely. They carry with them some experiences that can't be reproduced by other styles. When playing a game based around random encounters you really never know what you're going to come across. It adds an element of unpredictability that forces you to think ahead about the characters and supplies that you bring with you. You can't just put together a party of random characters and hope to survive, real thought needs to be put into it. This can be said of course for other styles of gaming but I feel it's more imperative for games reliant on random encounters. There is an unpredictability that isn't as present in other types of RPGs.
Furthermore random encounters can at times be very effective in creating tension that visible enemies cannot. The example I love the most is the final room before the boss in the Sky Castle of the NES version of Final Fantasy. There is a narrow, long walkway along which you run the risk of encountering the Warmech, an enemy almost impossible to run from and equally impossible to beat. I can still remember the hair standing on the back of my neck as I made that walk. The sigh of relief I let out was equally intense as I reached the end. Upon challenging the boss (Tiamat) I was of course decimated, and on my second approach encountered the Warmech, but you get my point.
An experience like that could never happen in a game like Final Fantasy XII where encounters with lesser monsters are essentially optional. If you see a tough monster that you'd rather not fight just yet, you have a good chance of avoiding it. While that can obviously have its advantages (I would have run from the Warmech if I could), had the original Final Fantasy made such encounters predictable, I wouldn't be able to write to you now about how cool an experience it was would I? That memory is something I would never trade for a slightly easier game experience.
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