EviLore said:
Here's why I don't like SMT3 (stolen from an old post of mine):
The random battle encounter rate sucks. I fight the same one or two groups of enemies dozens of times before the next area and next batch of one or two enemies hits. I'm used to this in jrpgs, but SMT:N has a higher encounter rate than any other jrpg I've played, coupled with random battles that usually take little else than a pulse to get through and gigantic maze dungeons that have me hitting dead ends and backtracking and falling through holes in the ground for what seems like forever, while those battles hit me relentlessly. I'm not challenged by this in any way, just frustrated.
The bosses end up being trial and error exercises. Without the ability to switch the parasite things in battle or any other way of knowing the alignment of the boss without referencing gamefaqs, your main character will often end up killing off any chances of taking a boss the first time (extra turns and all that), unless you use a gimp non-aligned parasite.
The character customization system isn't bad, but it's also nothing special. I thought the main character's ability pool was pretty small, and getting a set of abilities you want ouf of critters through fusion and all that can feel very limiting without a ton of extra leveling up. Levels themselves are also so important that, yeah, even more extra leveling up. When I find the random battles themselves to be tedious.
Great art/music/death screen/whatever doesn't save this for me. The game is seriously archaic, just like most RPGs in the PS2 gen (with the exception of a few gems like BOFV).
Random battles need to die. Slight variations on the same outdated gameplay mechanics need to die. Dungeon crawling? Excellent with the right gameplay mechanics, but Nocturne really doesn't do that for me.
I enjoyed SMT3, but I still have the exact same problems as you. The Amala dungeons were the worst offenders. Falling through floors, random encounters, maze like featureless dungeons where everything looks the same...all things that made SMT3 a very difficult game to finish. It had nothing to do with difficulty.
I enjoy the world so much, though, that I kept playing. I totally agree, though. Random encounters began as a memory issue, as the it wasn`t possible to show as many enemies as you wanted in the play field. Now that it isn`t a problem on modern consoles, why are we still using this archaic, and downright stupid, mechanic. The saving grace for Nocturne was the RE gauge. It would turn red when you were about to hit a battle. That gave me a chance to stop and check my inventory to make sure i had my good members out, and get ready for an encounter.
If there`s one thing I hate in an RPG, it`s hitting a random encounter when I`m about to hit a zone boundary, and I do not expect it. It`s like a Hollywood movie where you`re trying to run for the exit before the building blows up.
From what I can tell, P3 will use RE as well. SMT has always done it, Persona has always done it, and I imagine that crazy tradition will continue. As much as I love the quirky things that SMT does, there`S something painfully traditional about the way they handle overarching gameplay mechanics.
