Other people already described the game better than I could hope to, so I will just drop a few numbers to make you realize how terrible the random encounters can be.
After defeating a miniboss I recorded the path to the exit of his cave.
It took around 3 minutes, 180 seconds.
In these 3 minutes I had 8 random encounters, one every 3~8 seconds on the map. Imagine trying to do anything and being interrupted every 3~8 seconds, for hours... how close to a torture would it be?
I spent ~52 seconds navigating the map (29%) and the other 128 in useless mob fights (71%), more than twice.
From another point of view, going from point A to point B takes triple the time due to random encounters, in the best of circumstances (I was over leveled and had already explored the cave).
Repeat that on a 16+ hours playthrough... thousands of filler mob fights... for me it was painful, and I'm just a few hours in.
That is the base game, as intended. I read that if you cheat (or after you complete the game) you can get an item that blocks the random encounters; while I appreciate the possibility, maybe it should have been more accessible and more integrated with the default gameplay, like the switch for real time / turn based fights.
After defeating a miniboss I recorded the path to the exit of his cave.
It took around 3 minutes, 180 seconds.
In these 3 minutes I had 8 random encounters, one every 3~8 seconds on the map. Imagine trying to do anything and being interrupted every 3~8 seconds, for hours... how close to a torture would it be?
I spent ~52 seconds navigating the map (29%) and the other 128 in useless mob fights (71%), more than twice.
From another point of view, going from point A to point B takes triple the time due to random encounters, in the best of circumstances (I was over leveled and had already explored the cave).
Repeat that on a 16+ hours playthrough... thousands of filler mob fights... for me it was painful, and I'm just a few hours in.
That is the base game, as intended. I read that if you cheat (or after you complete the game) you can get an item that blocks the random encounters; while I appreciate the possibility, maybe it should have been more accessible and more integrated with the default gameplay, like the switch for real time / turn based fights.