It’s also the reason I could never get into Final Fantasy, as a series. A bunch of random encounters to make the game last 100+ hours and to level you up so that you can survive boss encounters. Ridiculous game design. Maybe it’s gotten better since FFX but I wouldn’t know. I only played 7 (never finished) and X (also never finished).

Agreed, I can’t stand it when killing trash mobs takes more than 60s. If I get the opportunity to skip those fights I always take it (menu toggle cheat in Phantasy Star on the megadrive for instance!), but the catch is that often what you are skipping turns out to be 90% of the gameplay. Sucks!

Hmm, I’ll have to disagree with that, both in it being the classic turn based flaw and a flaw of Fantasy Wars.

For some decent Fantasy TBS that almost nobody played, Ascension to the Throne was surprisingly good, once you got past the stupidest difficulty curve (difficulty cliff, more like) known to man. They must’ve missed the part in playtesting where your hero could be easily killed in the first turn of the first battle, ending your game, unless you were very, very lucky/careful. Still, it opened up nicely after that.

I am glad there is another game from the Fantasy Wars guys, I enjoyed FW for the most part, though the increasingly cruel lack of units if you lost some and extreme lack of money to buy new ones unless you were somehow able to complete a mission in 3 turns with an already diminished force to get the extra bonus made it a slippery slope if you had a close game.

I still want to play more of that. But the new titles feel inferior to MoM or Tie. I can’t play stuff like X3 because to me feel inferior to Tie Fighter. For some crazy reason.