Final Fantasy 10 Has A Perfect Encounter Rate

thegamer.com:

I recently started playing Final Fantasy 10 properly for the first time. I say recently - it’s probably been a month or two since I started it, but I’m terrible at finishing RPGs, so I know this is going to be a marathon, not a sprint. Part of the journey that a lot of RPGs necessitate is grinding - the worst part of many games. Amazingly, Final Fantasy 10 has such a good encounter rate that I haven’t had to grind for a single boss fight so far.

Grinding really grinds my gears. Even fun combat loops can become boring if I have to spend an hour or so between each boss fight leveling up my party members. If I were to run from every single encounter, then that’s on me, and I understand that missed XP is going to come back to haunt me. But if I’m taking on every opponent in my path I should be appropriately leveled - surely that’s what the encounter rate should be tailored towards?

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Unlike other RPGs I’ve played where I either steamroll everything or find myself grinding in the wake of a huge difficulty spike, Final Fantasy 10 nails the difficulty and frequency of encounters. Until I learn an enemy’s weaknesses, I’m rarely, if ever, able to one-shot it. Instead, new enemies at the beginning of an unexplored area consistently pose a challenge, gradually getting easier to beat as I learn their strategies and level up along the route. If they gave more XP but appeared less, I wouldn’t learn as much. If they gave less XP but appeared more often, I’d be falling over enemies and quickly grow tired of combat - the current balance is perfect.

A big part of this is due to the game’s linear structure. Final Fantasy 10 sets you on the path of a summoner and affixes some blinders