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Phantasy Star

MRY

Wormwood Studios
Developer
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Aug 15, 2012
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Hard for me to suss out what's going on in a Japanese SNES remake of DW. I'm not sure how responsive speed runs are, nor how "one uses the Silver Harp to attract Silver Slimes to rocket from level 9 to level 16, and the other uses a slight exploit by failing the Princess Rescue multiple times in order to fight and kill the Green Dragon multiple times for the same purpose" is evidence of non-grinding in the game, since those are actually both definitionally grinding.

Still, I guess I should be tentatively open to the possibility that these games really had robust tactical combat systems that everyone overlooked because they were fairly opaque. But I dunno. I'm looking at this list of spells and there are only two possibly tactical spells (sleep at level 7 and stopspell at level 10) and from this list of items only one possibly tactical item (the flute). Given how late these come into the game, and given that all battles are 1v1, I am somewhat at a loss as to what tactical depth I was missing. (To be sure, there might be something there in later games with multiple party members, multiple enemies, and a wider array of spells.)
 

Jason Liang

Arcane
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For the purposes of speedrunning, Outside, Return and Repel are all invaluable.

Gold from treasure chests and selling stuff negates any need to grind for gold. Fights against much higher level enemies are doable with superior equipment bought with said gold. Hence the speedrun doesn't really grind for long- most of the xp needed to beat the game is picked up en route to completing main game tasks. The only real "grind" is from lvl 9-13 via either Silver Harp or Dragon loop- which takes around 15 minutes?
 

newtmonkey

Arcane
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Aug 22, 2013
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Goblin Lair
Maybe, but I'm not persuaded. To some degree it depends what you mean by "grind" -- if you mean walking in a circle leveling up in order to advance I still think this is a major part of those games. But I think what many people mean is just the endless churn of random battles against low-difficulty enemies that operate as a slow attrition of short-term resources balanced against a slow addition of long-term power. You may be right that the battles are less miserable and marginally more tactical if you use your spells and items (though IIRC, many of these games had nothing other than healing items), but that is certainly how I remember playing them at the time -- particularly Dragon Warrior and FFI. It wasn't really until the 16-bit era that it made sense to stockpile spells for bosses because the 8-bit era didn't really have as many bosses. To me, the problem was that the battles were too frequent and too boring. Thus, for instance, the idea of playing Phantasy Star for 12 hours on a speedrun or 18 hours in normal gameplay is hardly appealing...

It's not that games like DW/FF/PS are tactically rich, it's that they are more about resource management (your second definition of grinding).
I can tell you from experience that Phantasy Star, Final Fantasy 1-3, and Dragon Warrior 2(*) require no grinding (as per your first definition) to get through the games.

(*)DW2 is the exception, where, through normal play, you will not be a high enough level to get through the final area. However, considering how massive the game is, it is balanced really well considering you can get through 90% of the game just by carefully choosing your battles, etc.

With Final Fantasy 1-3, a lot of magical equipment can be used in battle to cast spells, and while debuffing spells do not work reliably enough for them to be worth it, the buffing spells do work great, and they are a major component of getting through the game at lower levels.

Dragon Warrior is admittedly more about resource management, where you are literally sitting there determining the best order to take enemies down based on your damage output vs their defenses. A big part of this is the fact that characters will simply miss if their target is killed before they attack. A lot of people find this annoying now, but it was a crucial part of the resource management aspect of combat in those games. Getting out of combat with 10 more HPs due to choosing your targets wisely can often be enough to get you out safely. The man who developed these games was a hobbyist gambler, and a lot of the game can be explained that way. The dungeons in the early DW games are not funnels to take you to the next boss, but places full of treasure and danger, and the point is to push your resources (and a little luck) as far as you can, get the valuable stuff, and know when to get out and survive the trek home to regain resources. You aren't meant to take these dungeons down in a single attempt.

I mean, these games are not Wizard's Crown or even Pools of Radiance. However, they do have this reputation now of being linear games where you just go to town, go to dungeon, kill boss, go to next town, repeat, as you just hold down A or B during battle, then walk around in circles gaining levels when it gets too hard... and this is simply not true for a lot of the 8-bit console RPGs (as you mentioned, few of them even have very many bosses).

*The first DW/DQ indeed requires grinding (per your first definition) as no matter how well you know the game and how far you stretch your resources, you will hit a point (roughly 1/3rd into the game) where you are simply not powerful enough to make any progress. Note that the speed run Jason Liang linked is for the SFC remake, which "balances" the game to make it easier, from what I understand.
 
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Jason Liang

Arcane
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Oct 26, 2014
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8,337
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Crait
Yeah I was having a lot of trouble figuring out how the speed run worked given the xp rewards and requirements from the original game data. Since the player went from lvl 4-9 by killing two metal slimes. And even if you just target high xp enemies, getting to 13,000 xp for lvl 16 and 16,000 xp for lvl 17 would still be a serious grind if metal slimes are only worth 115 xp each.
 

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