Is there a single JRPG with FUN trash mobs?

Every JRPG I play feels like you're constantly encountering the same kind of enemy and approaching them the same kind of way, if not they'd be slightly different or you approach them in a slightly different way. 9 times out of 10 you don't learn anything relevant after the battle. It gets repetitive so fast. Is there a JRPG that actually changes this up? Or is it a problem that's firmly rooted in the genre?

Nope

final fantasy: mystic quest

The better Tales games are fun even against trash mobs, although it's not because of the enemies, it's just being able to play around with the combat system.

Shin Megami Tensei Main Line and Persona.

play Chrono Cross :^)

Persona 5 maybe since you can combo weaknesses and kill trash mobs in 15 seconds.

That's the opposite of fun. You're just doing the same shit over and over.

A REAL shen megoomy game like nocturne or strange journey

Boring battles are a genre staple. You just don't enjoy JRPGs, clearly.

I literally made this thread fresh off of beating Persona 5 and feeling like I finally got through an unbearably long slog. Like said, you basically do the same shit over and over. It's just a matter of throwing out moves until you hit a weakness and/or capture, repeat. Again and again for countless hours. It sure as hell wasn't fun.

You're probably right. I used to tell myself I just gotta get through it all so I can enjoy the story/characters/music but these days I don't got much time to play games so spending hours and hours on something so mindless gets me irritated. I'm considering quitting the genre all together.

Xenoblade 2's combat's pretty good, although most trash mobs aren't interesting. I just like pressing lots of buttons and the battle system is conducive to that.

Do action jrpgs count? Cause if you're talking strictly turn based

Etrian Odyssey

You know I really want to play XB2, especially since I finished the first game last month. But I managed to get through that because I was emulating it with an exp multiplier so that I could skip 99% trash mobs. I don't got that option now so I probably won't be playing it for a while.

I'd say so but not to the same extent. At least the battles are more engaging so there can be different ways to approach them.

Because if you need to use an in-depth strategy to approach every generic nothing enemy, the game suddenly becomes excessively longer and nobody wants to deal with all of that shit to kill a group of three fairies and a kobold. I don't think a single video game in existence has both intricate enemies with dozens of strategic requirements to handle, and having said enemies be trash mobs, while actually delivering an enjoyable experience.

The negotiation system is fucking retarded. I know it's an SMT staple but it's the worst mechanic ever. Is it that shitty in the mainline games?

I couldn't ever get into EO because I need a story and characters. The battles didn't seem terrible interesting though. Isn't it just standard turn based fare, with the interesting stuff happening with character builds?

Paper Mario 1 and 2
South Park: The Stick of Truth
Undertale kinda

I still think Tales does a pretty good job because the trash enemies can be combo exhibitions.

Also do SRPGs count? FFT had interesting albeit infuriatingly frequent random encounters. Something like Fire Emblem has random encounters that play out pretty much exactly the same as the rest of the game, which is pretty good for my money.

>Isn't it just standard turn based fare, with the interesting stuff happening with character builds?
It has more thought put on how enemies interact with each other than most games. Mobs basically work like an enemy party instead of 3~5 enemies doing their own thing. Also conditional drops reward trying different approaches.

In a good game you get to figure out how to effectively deal with trash mobs, and convert them into xp or drops faster as a reward for you taking the time to experiment and figure out what they're weak too and/or what strengths they have that you should counter. In a bad/decent or maybe even good they're just trash it's not like it matters in the larger scale of things game you just use your strongest/most resource efficient attack to dumpster them as quick as you can. Trash mobs are trash mobs, they can't be a whole lot more by definition. You either don't like the inclusion of trash mobs because the concept itself doesn't engage you much, or you're playing games where the trash mobs are excessively easy, which makes things more boring.

Chrono Trigger is a good example of a game with decent trash mobs, especially since you can avoid a lot of them. A good number of the lot have their own little unique gimmick which makes them fun to figure out not necessarily challenging, mind, and makes things a bit more rewarding when you run through an area again and can mow them down with a quickness.

I like when there's a system that lets you optionally get more rewards out of your random throwaway encounter by doing well. Xenoblade 2 does that and it's nice, it's got an overkill system like FFX, but it's a percentage increase corresponding to directly how hard you killed something so there's always incentive to optomize.

I think a good game would have trash mobs that let you approach them multiple ways (with incentive to do so) while also just plain not having many of them. As someone in this thread earlier pointed out, it's hard to make trash mobs fun, so why not just have less of them? I feel like trash mobs are just used by most JRPGs as a way to draw out the game time instead of learning new ways to utilize the battle system or approaching an enemy.

Though I do love games that let you avoid them, generally the level system in most games make it impossible to avoid them entirely if you want to proceed in the game.

Basically, I think a good game would let you avoid the stuff you've already done.

Romancing SaGa games has regular encounters that will rape you in the ass, that also scale with how many battles you fight.

You can try the PS1 remakes of Wizardry 1-3. While the game created the JRPG, in a sense, its archaic nature means that the niceties that allow for efficient play are absent. Some examples:

1) you can never recover MP once in the dungeon, which makes exploring deeper extremely tense and risky, especially if you need to quickly get out because of status effects or a dead party member
2) enemies can permanently one-shot your party - particularly through decapitation (ninjas)
3) encounters can leave you dead in a single turn with a bad dice roll

But the game is all about the grind - small improvements from taking on mobs and mobs of tough enemies, just to get enough strength to go one section of one floor further, before scurrying your ass back to the top like a scared school girl.

>The better Tales games
Name some

Pokemon

SaGa games and its clones
You run into boss tier enemies 80% of the time, and into many little annoying monsters wearing you down in the other encounters

Example: one standard enemy in Genius of Sappheiros is like a boss out of FF3j

Xenosaga 2 you piece of casual trashes.

Everyone hated the game because "combat takes too long even against normal enemies and the battle system is so confusing".

Fuck you guys.

I hate it because it's ugly.

Xanadu Next
Saw it in a steam winter sale haul and while I don't play JRPGs (only have played 5 or so in my life) this one was great.
It's a sort of JRPG meets Diablo with interesting, fun, and satisfying combat. Good characters and a story that actually surprised me a bit.
It's tons of fun.

Dragon Quest might be up your alley. Try 8.

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