I got through FF4 DS. But when I bought that game I had a lot of downtime (like being stuck in a car) to level up. My sister tried playing it and, like you, she dumped the game when the monsters got ridiculously hard and she didn't feel like spending hours just leveling up.
The thing that ticks me off the most is the fact that the high encounter rate was obviously put there just to pad the game's length. The FF4 sequel was a cell phone game when it came out in Japan; and I really wish they had toned down the difficulty when they localized it for American Wii systems. Each character chapter had a bonus dungeon that would have been an acceptable place to put difficult monsters and sadistic encounter rates. But stuff like that just made the main game frustrating.
I wish more JRPGs would handle enemy encounters the way the Tales games do (i.e. making it easy to avoid enemies when you just want to get from point A to point B).
no subject
The thing that ticks me off the most is the fact that the high encounter rate was obviously put there just to pad the game's length. The FF4 sequel was a cell phone game when it came out in Japan; and I really wish they had toned down the difficulty when they localized it for American Wii systems. Each character chapter had a bonus dungeon that would have been an acceptable place to put difficult monsters and sadistic encounter rates. But stuff like that just made the main game frustrating.
I wish more JRPGs would handle enemy encounters the way the Tales games do (i.e. making it easy to avoid enemies when you just want to get from point A to point B).