RPG with the best encounter system?

I gotta go with Chrono Trigger, Some of the encouters were able to be seen ahead of time, but some, kinda drop down from above on ya. They switched it up depending on the story, which I think was great....though granted I think everything is great about that game....

Phantasy Star 4, while the story was the awesome, the grinding of baddies seemed a bit.....annoying at times, not that there wasn't any grinding in Chrono, there was a little.

Gotta like Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 4's random encounters- you see the Shadows in the dungeon, so you can avoid them if you want to (your friends are spread out behind you, so fights only start when you touch the Shadow). The trick is, Souji (or whatever you named yourself) can hit the Shadows with his katana to get the first round in combat (if they touch Souji, the Shadows get the first strike instead.)

Combat itself is pretty standard RPG fare- use magic and attacks to kill the Shadows, but with two catches: If you (or a Shadow!) exploit an elemental weakness, you get an additional combat turn.

The other, and slightly more aggravating catch, is that if Souji dies, game's over, even if one of his friends has Recarm ready for casting or a Revive Magatama handy. There is a plot reason for this that I shall not spoil. (SMT is popular for this- Nocturne, Persona 3, and SMT Strange Journey also end if your character gets killed off, though Nocturne and Strange Journey's revival items/magic explicitly say they don't work on humans.)

Ah, Chrono Trigger. That did have some interesting encounters. Having some avoidable and others surprising was a great idea.

Persona 4's extra turn on elemental weaknesses is an idea I've not seen elsewhere. That must definitely encourage paying attention to the elements being used.

Game over on the death of a main character is always an annoying thing to me. It often makes me hold those characters back from combat, so that I have less risk of losing to a lucky or cheap shot. I remember in Shining Force games, my main character would often be one of the weaker units because of this.

I liked SaGa Frontiers encounter system, the enemies were just on the field wandering around and would chase you if you got close to them. Its easy to dodge them cause while running your character runs super fast but you can zig zag past one enemy fast enough to get caught easily by another one if you don't pay attention, then the enemy you dodged jumps you for another battle.

Yeah, the whole "main character dies, we all lose" thing is kinda annoying (Final Fantasy XIII, I'm looking at you!!) but you don't have much of a choice in Persona 3 and 4- you're always forced to be in the party, and... well, let's just say if you play on harder difficulties, the game starts playing "Let's Gang Up on the Human!"

(There are two instant death elements in the series, Hanma and Mudo. One is holy, one is dark. Guess what two elements you're not initially immune to.)

Ugh, that sounds unpleasant. Instant death is bad enough, but making it a game ender by one person getting hit and forcing you to look for outside immunities... stuff like that is what can kill the enjoyment of a game sometimes.

Kaloes wrote:

Its easy to dodge them cause while running your character runs super fast but you can zig zag past one enemy fast enough to get caught easily by another one if you don't pay attention, then the enemy you dodged jumps you for another battle.

Ha, that's a good one! Intelligence in enemies is always nice. Dodging enemies can leave you too weak to progress in many RPGs, but this seems like a good way to counter that.

It's not too unpleasant, shockingly enough- Souji's the only character who can actively change his Persona, which affects what spells he can use in combat and what elements he's weak/resistant/immune to- his initial Persona, Izanagi, is weak to Wind and resistant to Lightning. (There's much better Personas available for him, some of which are immune to Holy and Unholy attacks.) Even then, the most powerful instadeaths- Hanmaon and Mudoon- only hit 70% of the time. And even then, you're at the point where you're friendly enough with some party members that they'll take one attack that would kill Souji.