Callibretto said:
from the videos, I'm under impression the number of enemies you fight depends on how many enemy is aware of your presence, hence the warning sign above enemies just right before the fight begin.
anyway, I doubt the reason is too avoid large scale battles like your scenarios, they could always make it like the beginning of FF X where you fight sin spawn, they could always add more of them everytime you killed 1.
No that's different. The problems they faced were likely that you would SEE other enemies nearby, but during the fight they would just stand there like idiots while you fought their buddies, continuing their patrols in the distance because they are too far to be linked to the battle. So since it would look dumb, it is better to erase them during the fight. Also if one can run up to you and join the fight so could the others, so your example wouldn't work because it would look dumb if only one of the three enemies far away runs to replace one you defeated.
Also, very important, they use the transition phase to reposition all the characters to a standard formation needed for the battle system to work as designed, something they could not do otherwise because the characters would fight from their starting positions and the battle system is not designed to support that. For example, you can't go behind the boss in FFXIII, something you could do in FFXII. If you could go behind the boss, it would screw up everything. Imagine the big sawblades boss turning around on himself just to strike a character, then turning again to strike another one. Worked in FFXII, but not here considering the way everything it set up. Also it would work poorly with their cinematics transitions.
The transition phase is obviously a design decision that has more to do with how the battle system itself was designed, not something related to memory or some such. I only realized this now after watching the videos again.
