Bloody is a troll of trolls, and he's one that says that if you fight any amount of battles other than the absolute minimum, you are grinding and wasting your time.
In the past, he's even said that this horrible "grinding" goes against how the game was "intended" to be played. See, the phantom army of "everymen" he commands must've been looking over the designers' shoulders when they made the game. Of course, the simple existence of the following things suggest that
maybe, just maybe the makers wanted you to "grind":
- Every Colosseum match-up aside from the one needed to recruit Shadow.
- Corollary: Snow Muffler, Tack Star, and any other unique things won in the Colosseum.
- All the available Rages that aren't possessed by Gau on initial WoB recruitment or learned upon reenlistment in the WoR.
- The Water Rondo dance. The only way to get it on SNES is grinding, so the makers must've put it in the game by accident ... unless they wanted you to grind.
- Arguably, the Desert Aria dance. (The desert is a few steps out of the way while trekking from Maranda to Vector, and if you alter your path to cross it [which is verboten and abhorrent behavior in the kid-diddling Cult of No-Grind], the 3 steps you take are unlikely to trigger an encounter.)
- Arguably, the Forest Suite dance, for reasons similar to Desert Aria.
- GreaseMonk teaching Step Mine: early in the game for Strago, and a breeze to get. Same deal for lots of other Lore-wielding overworld enemies that the plot doesn't "bring" Strago to.
- (Likely) Ultima via the Paladin Shield, as it'll require roughly 300-350 total battles. The designers must have attached the spell to the shield by accident.
- Crawler. The single most ubiquitous enemy on the WoR map, yet it's unlikely you'll ever meet it unless you do "unnecessary" walking after getting the Falcon. Apparently, the designers regarded ubiquity as somehow synonymous with obscurity, perhaps poking at the impersonal, fleeting nature of fame in modern society. That, or they expected you to run into Crawler via grinding.
- Intangir, and gobs of airship-accessible WoR enemies. None are as abundant as Crawler, but they're all still curiously in the game.
It amazes me that someone who is so knee-jerkingly averse to "wasting time" in a video game is posting on that game's messageboard 14 years after its release. Does rabies blind one to hypocrisy, or is some other disease responsible?
Also, his near paranoid refusal to have the party walk around had made me wonder whether he understood the difference between video games and interactive movies. His recent topic relaying a discussion on the
Final Fantasy XII board accounts for the confusion. :P
Furthermore, he's claimed that the designers didn't "intend" for you to use status ailments against bosses (because once again, he knew their plans). A cookie for anybody who can tell me what self-evidently refutes that claim.
Anyway, I.S.T. summarizes that FF6Adv board thread best. I hadn't even seen it until now; wow. I haven't played MMORPGs myself, but it's pathetic how BE says "only you like to level up" (because once again, he's accounted for the rest of humanity's tastes), then spins and pouts when confronted with the immense popularity of MMORPGs.
