Quote:Originally posted by Alex

I think with the "bosses healing" thing I mean with more of a PS/FF style battle system. I don't know what FF Tactics is like, but with a Shining Force style battle system it obviously isn't a problem.
I can't remember what it was called, but I played a SNES rpg ages ago where you would attack the boss for a few rounds, and he would attack you... Then in one fell swoop he'd heal himself, undoing all your work over the previous rounds. To me, that's just plain annoying. And this would happen time and again, presumably until his magic points ran out. I'm not against hard battles at all, they're absolutely necessary and desirable in every RPG. But bosses that can heal themselves up like that annoy me. Still, that's a matter of individual preference. I just happen to prefer bosses that don't cheat. :)
But the point is, in most Final Fantasy type games, the PCs cheat all the time. :P Why should PCs get healing and even worse, revive magic, and the enemy can only attack randomly and hope it strikes something important? Think how the monster must feel! "Haha! I used my mega power-attack to damage all the party down to like 10 HP! Next round I win! What...? Cure3 on all? AGRRAGA! NOT AGAIN! Bloody cheaters!"

@Alex: You may be thinking of the original Final Fantasy. I remember fighting Chaos once....I got near the end of the fight, and he cast CUR4. Now that's cheap. On the other hand, it didn't happen very often, he could only do it once per fight (maybe twice...maybe) and you could even beat him with FADE if you were lucky. I've seen bosses (and also normal enemies) heal themselves in Lufia/Lufia 2 as well, although that's usually just a last-ditch effort to keep from getting killed (they're already almost dead by the time they cast it, and just prolonging the inevitable). The only other games I've seen this in are in the Dragon Warrior series, and then you have 2 types: Healers (they almost always heal their buddy - target the healer first), and others (again, usually just a last-ditch survival tactic).

Back on topic....Easier games do tend to be more fun than hard games, but there needs to be a balance point somewhere. I enjoyed the Lufia series on the SNES, with its fairly easy battles - and challenging puzzles. That's not to say that the battles were a cakewalk (they weren't - look at Amon if you need an example), but you could get through the game without having to wander about the world map for hours on end leveling up, if you didn't run from too many battles.

My idea of a balanced RPG is this:
Battles should be of easy to medium difficulty if you're at the correct level for the area you're in; boss fights should be challenging, but not require you to go out of your way to level up for them.
Puzzles should be plentiful in the game, but not overdone, and they should be challenging but not frustrating. 1-2 challenging puzzles per dungeon/area is great. Making every puzzle a "world's most difficult trick" and/or putting a puzzle in every room isn't going to be very fun.

--Arek

P.S. I actually like FFT, and from the site's title, I don't think I'm the only one here who does. :D

I was ignoring this thread since it's a discussion I've had 500 times with 5000 people, but grenideer posted so I had to. However, I'm not going to read the thread, so I will instead attempt to intuit the nature of the topic from things grenideer said! Let's watch.

Revisiting places is strictly de rigueur nowadays, and I'm big on it, since it helps flesh out those places as dynamic environments rather than just as the conceit needed to justify one particular plot point. However, it can lead to laziness in design which can be problematic -- I'll cite PS3, which has you doing many of the same dungeons twice or more. That sucks. The trick, in my mind, is to balance familiarity and novelty. A lot of players (most definitely including me) like to get to know a place in a game and follow its evolution throughout the course of the plot, and multiple quests centering around such an area help that a lot. However, nobody likes doing the same shit over and over, which is why virtually every game has an airship or warp spells or something to aid in backtracking, and why most don't make you do the same area (or task) over and over.`

As for the difficulty in DD, it depends how you look at it. If you think of the save system as being a part of the whole game system, it's not too hard -- like many early RPGs, you save constantly because one in three fights will either kill you outright or weaken you so much that you can't continue. There were at least a few places, most notably the early overworld, the outpost, and the lower level of the mines, where I saved every five steps and reloaded at least once every three to five minutes. That's just the way you play these games. On the other hand, if you look at the save system as being wholly secondary, it's way too hard, since there are fights you can neither win nor reliably escape.