What do you prefer HP bars or scan?

[Harmill]

It depends on the game for me. I like the suspense in a Dragon Quest boss fight because you don't know how close they are to dying. I find that it makes the fight more intense and being able to tell that the boss is <20% HP would only drop that tension as I know the boss is almost dead. There are some RPGs where having an HP bar is essential for the strategic elements of the battle system. Pokemon would not be the same if you couldn't see your opponent's HP. If you do cool things with your HP bars, such as in Kingdom Hearts, HP bars can actually be really cool. I loved finding the first enemy/boss whose HP was high enough to give him part of his yellow (second) health bar. It gave me a drive to see what the third HP bar's colour would be, and then what the fourth HP bar's colour would be. Some people probably don't bat an eye at that, but the way Kingdom Hearts presented their HP bars actually affected me quite a bit more than the inclusion/absence of HP bars in other RPGs.

As for scanning: In a Tales game, I like that once you've scanned a particular enemy with the Magic Lens, those enemies will always have their HP stats visible when you next fight them (well, in some cases like Symphonia, I think you have to go into Targeting mode to see their HP but you can still see when you need to).

 

[Kyutaru]

Depends on whether you can one-shot enemies or not.  If you can, then it's imperative to NOT provide HP bars.  Reason being that you can create interesting enemies that need to be beaten in specific ways beyond just smashing the attack button.  A weakness becomes apparent when you hit the enemy three or four times and it's still standing, encouraging the player to try something else since most enemies can be one-shot killed.

If you can't one-shot enemies, then having an HP bar is okay because it shows the player at what point they need to upgrade their gear or powerlevel a bit, gradually showing enemy difficulty increasing and lengthening fights unless they upgrade.