too much combat!

[rant]
while i generally don’t mind a good fight, this was the primary thing i couldn’t stand in Final Fantasy (and i’ve played all but the last two) – you can’t GO anywhere because every 3 feet you have a random combat which takes 5 minutes to finish. I mean seriously, i went down to the mines and it’s taken me over an hour to run through them, even though no monster does more than 2-3 damage and they all die in one shot, and i should be able to run through everything in under 5 minutes…
[/rant]

so how about adding an option to disable non-quest-related combats, or at least significantly reduce their frequency?

“should” in the sense that if it wasn’t for the combats, the actual zone is tiny, not that i’m owed it or anything :D

It’s not a perfect solution, but you can avoid some battles by basically spamming the “z” button as you explore. If you’ve noticed the exclamation point above your head before a battle starts… the blue ones are skipped whereas the red ones you must fight.

— Well, You can’t really change anything, because (it say this in the help menu) you will become drastically under leveled if you skip too many battles. I know this from personal experience, and grinding is never fun, especially if you can never get into any battles when the setting for battle frequency is reduced! So, if you want to have to grind later on, be my guest.

Really? I can generally make it through about a fourth of a dungeon without running into a single battle (which made filling the chalices very annoying). If they bother you, just press Z for the blue exclamations and have a fast character run at the beginning of the others.

i thought the random battle encounters were just nice. Unless im in a hurry.

You guys… there’s a run away option.

I’m with OP on this one. Ordinarily I don’t mind lots of combat, but the thing is, I did SO MUCH grinding in part 2 that Mardek is vastly overpowered, yet I’m still constantly having to revive both Donovan and Sharla in the VERY FIRST area of part 3! Half the time I have to make one of them wait because their only available attacks would heal the monster. Combine that with how slow this game runs on my machine (and it seems to have been getting slower the further I progressed ever since part 2), and I’ve decided, sadly, to give up on this game. It’s just not fun constantly dying in the first temple, and it’s too slow to grind anymore. I love the story and the characters, but the gameplay is just painful…

“Half the time I have to make one of them wait because their only available attacks would heal the monster.”

Changing area would change the type of monsters you’ll encounter.

“how slow this game runs on my machine”

Setting quality to low is such a bad thing? On my laptop this game runs perfectly, so…

Press Z to skip low level battles. The exclamation mark will appear blue instead of red. Read the help section, lulz.

Jibe, I was still in the first area, there was nowhere else to go. And I WAS on low quality. The graphics were only a small part of the problem anyway. By the end of chapter 2 it was literally taking 15 seconds just to save my game every time. And it got worse at the start of chapter 3. I get the feeling it has something to do with the amount of data it needs to save. I have a very old machine. Even simplistic flash games run somewhat slowly for me. This one is far more complex than most, and clearly just too much for my hardware.
Yes, we all know you can skip battles, but that will make the problem of my characters being too weak and constantly dying even worse if they never get any xp…just not worth the time spent grinding. It saddens me.

Turn off particle effects? Those really make a huge difference, speed wise.

Saving indeed does take a long time, which can be very frustrating, but given the large amount of data… (equipment, stats, inventories, quest plot lines, items, houses, item storage, character equipment, character reactions, character exp/stats/location on the map…), it would probably take longer than the usual flash game that stores only a handful of values.

For the record, the .sol file that stores all your data has a lot of data.

If regular flash games are running slowly on your machine….you really need a new machine. And not just for Flash, but for general performance increases. In my opinion anyways.

Note you can get less lag on MARDEK if you’re doing less things on your computer-that’s where I get a lot of my lag.

Originally posted by beavinator:

I’m with OP on this one. Ordinarily I don’t mind lots of combat, but the thing is, I did SO MUCH grinding in part 2 that Mardek is vastly overpowered, yet I’m still constantly having to revive both Donovan and Sharla in the VERY FIRST area of part 3!

I completed the Sun Temple with no KO’s both from importing and starting fresh, so you probably need to change your battle strategy or skill setup. The only battles you can have trouble with are the ones guarding the chests and the final boss battle with Sslen’ck. You don’t have to get those chests now, and you can always come back later. If you normally have trouble with Sslen’ck, just use Liquid Lightning.

Red battles are generally a good indicator if you’re underpowered for the area, so you shouldn’t flee from them. If you’re overpowered, all the random battles will be blue, so you shouldn’t feel worried about skipping them.

Too much? I honestly thought it was too little, at least if you’re going for the impossible badge (leveling everyone up so they’re strong for the arena can be time consuming).