patapi wrote:
That aside, I have this sinking feeling that I'm subconsciously starting to lose patience over random encounters apparently. After all, my most recent two completed PS2 RPGs were Rogue Galaxy and Persona 3.
Definitely. Same here. After Persona 3, and now I'm finishing up FF12 (I was like 1/3 thru it after it came out intiially, but i was playing it on my ps3 then the ps3 mysteriosuly deleted all my ps2 saves with a firmware upgrade at some point, so i got pissed off and stopped and just recently restarted back on my ps2) and now I don't think I can tolerate random encounters anymore.
Nothing more frustrating than moving toward a goal and having an out of the blue stopping .. um.. stopping you.
I haven't played Growlanser II or III but I did buy the Generations set so I can play them in the future.
Growlanser V doesn't have random encounters, it has enemies that are usually not in your direct path so you can feel free to run through. But like I said, these types of battles that don't really matter can be done really quickly - run over, attack, your allies attack, and you're pretty much done. You can also just attack once and move towards your destination because the allies will take care of the rest. You will have passive skills and equipment with passive abilities that regenerate HP as well, so once you're at a certain point you don't even need to heal or rest at an inn before taking on the next big fight.
If you need money though, the only way I know of obtaining it is a lot of fighting (and a limited number of optional contests but I can't beat them yet)... that's one problem I have with the game. In Suikoden you can just trade around (or in III there was the great easy lottery system) and of course Suikoden's EXP system is built so you beat the game with very few battles (even though there are a lot of random encounters...).
Also, the overhead map and graphics/art looks and feels a lot like Suikoden V, as Suikoden V's art became a lot more bright and colorful to resemble Satoshi Urushihara's works.
I have to add something that kind of annoys me about Growlanser V though... the music is extremely limited. There's 1 song that plays when you're in any town and 1 song whenever you're roaming. I'm used to each area or town having their own unique song!!
