The Final Fantasy Pixel Remaster games on the Nintendo Switch and PlayStation 4 feature random battles. If you find that these frequent encounters are annoying, especially if you feel lost exploring the dungeon or world map, then you can take a look at this tutorial from Seeking Tech to see how you can turn off these fights.
Method #1
Square Enix included a quick shortcut if you want to turn off encounters without using the in-game menu in Final Fantasy, Final Fantasy II, Final Fantasy III, Final Fantasy IV, Final Fantasy V and Final Fantasy VI.
In order to do so, you simply press down on the right analog stick if you are playing these games on the Nintendo Switch, Nintendo Switch Lite or Nintendo Switch OLED.
You should press the R3 button to disable random encounters on the PlayStation 4, PlayStation 4 Pro, PlayStation 4 or PlayStation 5 Digital Edition console.
After pressing down on the right analog stick or R3 button, you should see a message appear on screen that says Encounters Off. This indicates that you should no longer be fighting in any random battles.
If you are seeing the Encounters On message instead, then you need to press the same button again if you want to turn off these fights.
Method #2
For the second method, you need to open the in-game menu any time you are outside of battle and exploring the field. You can do so by pressing the X button on Switch or Triangle button on PS4/PS5.
Afterwards, you need to head over to the Configuration section. From there, you should scroll down and then select Boost. Finally, you can set Encounters to Off from the Boost screen.
It is important to note that, unlike the remasters of Final Fantasy VII, VIII and IX, the remastered versions of the first six games of the series do not offer any battle cheats like invincibility.
As a result, you may need to fight some of the random encounters in order to gain enough experience points, as well as Gil and other points, in order to level up to an appropriate level to have a chance in the tougher mandatory boss fights.
Thankfully, you can use the aforementioned Boost menu to significantly increase the EXP, Gil and the other awards by winning an encounter.
These cheats should make grinding in the Switch and PS4 versions of Final Fantasy, Final Fantasy 2, Final Fantasy 3, Final Fantasy 4, Final Fantasy 5 and Final Fantasy 6 a lot easier.