Any there any decent hacks to make 8/16-bit RPGS less of a time investment?

[Beefalo]

I grew up with the NES and SNES then stopped following current gaming in the mid-00s, so late 80s to then is my wheelhouse. Ever since I've just played all the stuff I couldn't before or didn't know about, and doubt I'll ever run out of games!

But, now in my mid-30s I no longer have the time (or patience!) for games of that era that might've compensated their memory limitations by artificially-inflated the time to finish. As a result, I find myself avoiding certain genres entirely outside of a particular few games. In addition, sometimes a game I'm consider will get bumped off the list after reading a comment about how excessive the random battles are, or whatever. This goes for both games I haven't played before, and those I remember fondly.

But it's 2022 2023, and every problem now has a fan-made solution!
Any there any hacks you'd recommend that help shorten the time needed to finish a long adventure game or RPG, without sacrificing much content?

[Rodimus Primal]

Some games have less grinding hacks that either turn down the encounter rates while boosting experience and gold while others actually go in the opposite direction making encounters more difficult, especially boss fights. You have to check out if the game you want to play has that available.

For example, Breath of Fire and Lufia recently had changes made to their games for less grinding. In addition, Final Fantasy VI (known as Final Fantasy III in the US) has a Story Edition hack reducing it all down to 1 HP on monsters. This was perfect when I made the last update to my hack, Final Fantasy VI Ted Woolsey Uncensored Edition because I could test every single line in the script to how it displayed in game.

[DragonAtma]

Keep in mind that some of the 'easy mode' mods go far beyond easy and make them nearly impossible to lose. It's true that they would make games quicker to play, but when enemies that should be doing 100 damage instead do 1 damage, any challenge and satisfaction from the battles is gone.

EDIT: Somehow I missed an obvious error; fixed.

[KdstsMgsts]

Any there any hacks you'd recommend that help shorten the time needed to finish a long adventure game or RPG, without sacrificing much content?

Encounter rate hacks are what you'll need, possibly combined with hacks that increase exp (depending on the game's difficulty). Unfortunately, there don't seem to be many of them (although I only did a couple of quick searches).

https://www.romhacking.net/?page=hacks&genre=&platform=&game=&category=&perpage=20&order=&dir=&title=rate&author=&hacksearch=Go

https://www.romhacking.net/?page=hacks&genre=&platform=&game=&category=&perpage=20&order=&dir=&title=exp&author=&hacksearch=Go

https://www.romhacking.net/?page=hacks&genre=&platform=&game=&category=&perpage=20&order=&dir=&title=experience&author=&hacksearch=Go

There are also some emulators that will let you play on fast-forward. Retroarch, for example, allows you to switch between normal speed and fast-forward by pressing a button on your controller (although there are other reasons why it might not be the best emulation solution for people with limited time).

[Jorpho]

But it's 2022 2023, and every problem now has a fan-made solution!

Why not just watch a longplay on Youtube on fast-forward, and cut out the middleman entirely..?

In addition, Final Fantasy VI (known as Final Fantasy III in the US) has a Story Edition hack reducing it all down to 1 HP on monsters.

To be clear, it's sometimes fairly trivial to create a cheat in an emulator with equivalent functionality. I did that for Live-A-Live once to capture the end-game graphics.

[Rodimus Primal]

Why not just watch a longplay on Youtube on fast-forward, and cut out the middleman entirely..?
To be clear, it's sometimes fairly trivial to create a cheat in an emulator with equivalent functionality. I did that for Live-A-Live once to capture the end-game graphics.

If I'm playing a game for fun, I'm not using cheats. If I'm working on a project and need to test it, I'll do whatever I need to.

[FAST6191]

Do not underestimate the humble fast forward/turbo button in an emulator, likewise savestates. Can take much of the sting out of turn based 16 bit efforts (I burned out almost entirely so it takes something very special there, plenty of real time things though on newer consoles).

Depending upon what you are grinding for then cheats might also be worth considering before getting into the rather more complicated rate altering* hacks. Bumping up your money total by enough to get the next round of armour, equips, suitable selection of consumables and whatnot without having to go outside town/to the nearest cave can make the difference. Same for experience cheats that might keep you at, below (leave some challenge which as noted above can be a thing that drains challenge with some easy hacks) or above the curve the game designers expected (or found and then arbitrarily add some things to).

*basic rate altering hacks tend to revolve around any consumables or equips (occasionally more hidden flags). More advanced ones will however speak to something more fundamental.

[KingMike]

For example, Breath of Fire and Lufia recently had changes made to their games for less grinding.

Both SNES Lufia games already had a quad EXP/Gold mode built-in, unlocked by finishing the game once.
It is too bad more games didn't consider that.

[werewolfslayr925]

Why not just watch a longplay on Youtube on fast-forward, and cut out the middleman entirely..?

Because playing a game is a completely different experience from watching someone else play a game, even if that game is an RPG.

[Jorpho]

Because playing a game is a completely different experience from watching someone else play a game, even if that game is an RPG.

And playing an RPG with the random battles removed or whatever is a completely different experience from playing it as the designers intended. I'd say the difference there is considerably greater than the difference between watching someone else play a game and playing a game that has been completely nerfed.

Of course, sometimes the designers really didn't know what they were doing and what the designers intended is actually terrible. But in that case, wouldn't one's time be much better spent with a much better-designed game, one way or another?

[Ok Impala!]

I was looking for random encounter reduction patches for some of my favorite JRPGs a few months ago. I ended up creating them myself. So if you'd like to play Lufia, Breath of Fire or Breath of Fire II again, you are in luck!

Lufa encounter rate fix: https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/7259/
Breath of Fire encounter rate fix: https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/7294/
Breath of Fire II encounter rate fix: https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/7317/

[Ligeia]

And these patches are an excellent idea OK Impala!, I'm planning on trying one of these someday.

I also tend to have less and less patience with grinding and trial & error in games, the last old school RPG I tried is Treasure of the Rudras with god mode cheats, and even though winning battles was not an issue anymore, it seems I just can't take to sheer tedium of exploration constantly being interrupted by random battles anymore. Maybe I'm just not into classic RPGs anymore 

[nesrocks]

I have just started replaying Xenogears on the ps1. I found this patch (The Perfect Works) https://www.reddit.com/r/XenoGears/comments/x7fz73/the_ultimate_xenogears_romhack_the_perfect_works/

Funny thing is, I had no idea if the file patching had worked but it didn't bother me because I set the emulator speed up hotkey to the L2 button.

I later found out that in fact I wasn't playing the patched version, so I fixed that. So yeah, use the speed up button. I wouldn't play JRPGs on a real console for that reason.

[KingMike]

And playing an RPG with the random battles removed or whatever is a completely different experience from playing it as the designers intended. I'd say the difference there is considerably greater than the difference between watching someone else play a game and playing a game that has been completely nerfed.

Of course, sometimes the designers really didn't know what they were doing and what the designers intended is actually terrible. But in that case, wouldn't one's time be much better spent with a much better-designed game, one way or another?

I got pissed enough at Digital Devil Story: Megami Tensei that I figured out how to stop its Billy Mays encounter rate mechanic. Such a crappy feature I'm glad nobody else has done that before or since! That game had ideas for sure but really had a few execution problems, and I stopped at the literal hell world.