HOW DO YOU MAKE SOLO COMBAT INTERESTING?

A lot of the more successful turn-based RPGs with one character either have some sort of action element to them (i.e. Undertale) or don't really emphasize combat much at all.

You could always pull the OFF thing by having artificial party members, such as having a main character and several weaker "satellite" characters that have fewer abilities or mechanics than the protagonist.

I ran into a lot of trouble basing a turn-based combat system around two characters for Soma Spirits, which I ended up stretching a bit thin. It feels like working with anything fewer than three characters for turn-based is much more challenging.

I made a single-character RPG a while back and it became interesting just to stay alive against tough opponents (or groups of opponents). They key was giving the player a swath of good, useful skills. In this way, a lot of the game became like gambling, anticipating enemy movements to use the most effective skill for the situation, and to sometimes take risks. And we all know how addictive gambling is to the brain.

Couple ways I've dealt with it.

From my half of the game The Shore, each encounter the enemy faced was a puzzle, whether it was a large group of weak enemies that were vulnerable to AoE, an enemy that regenerated health but could be set on fire to even out their healing (and having to refresh that fire), to an enemy that was physically tough but could be weakened with lightning. It didn't have too many battles, but people generally agreed they were short, sweet and enjoyable. The boss fights involved using a few of these skills to figure out the pattern. As you mentioned, it relied on rote memorization, but the point of my game's battles were simply puzzles, and if you keep the number of battles small enough, it won't wear out its welcome.

Another project I started but dropped, involved the player barely being able to land a blow, and had to buff themselves and debuff the enemy just to land a hit. The game never left development, but it was fun to have to use skills to "dance" around the enemy's peculiarities in order to take it out. Of course, in this game the character you controlled was not a fighter, and was intentionally very weak, so I made the battle system play into that.

I did the "two moves per turn" thing with another battle system, but it didn't turn out too well. Hard not to release two attacks in a row, or two damage skills in a row. A surprising amount of balance has to be considered for that kind of system, because the player's skill set and attributes are effectively doubled every turn.

Well, I've thought of a few ways in the past.

One is making left arm/right arm (basically, duo 'heroes') and each have different skills that play off each other. So left arm might block any attacks incoming, whilst right arm attacks, or left might use 'grip' which powers up the attack from the right. That kind of thing. It's cheating a little but it's one way.


Extra turns is helpful. I have one game where I added an 'item use' turn so that if healing was needed they could do so without expending their turn, making healing non-wasteful (to note, they could only use items in that turn - it wasn't a real turn in that they couldn't effect the enemy).

Skills that change over repeated use is a good one, which Marrend pointed out above.

You could also have skills that unlock over time, so that the longer the battle goes, more spells come into play.

There's also skills that lead to combinations based on what you used. So if you have a fire and ice skill to start with, using the fire skill unlocks a blast or buff spell. Using the buff unlocks access to the berserk or healing spells, and using the blast unlocks access to the explosion or apocalypse spells. If you wanted you could make it that switching to the initial ice spell resets the fire path and unlocks only the ice paths, or just keep them open once unlocked. Sort of like an in-battle skill tree.

You could have an MP pool that grows allowing you to chain more attacks the longer the battle goes. Think something like you start with 1 MP and it grows +1 per turn. You have a fire (1MP), ice (1MP) and Confuse (2MP) spell to start with. First turn you can either use a fire or ice spell. Second turn you could use two fire, two ice, a fire and ice or a confuse spell. Third turn you can use three fire, three ice, two fire and an ice, two ice and a fire, a fire and a confuse or an ice and a confuse spell.... and so forth. Perhaps some skills can chain together to give an extra benefit as well, so if you use, say, three fire you can cause burn to the enemy, or if you use three ice you can freeze them. Say you use ice/fire/ice on an enemy that has metal, you can break their metal armour (super cooling/heating over and over can warp and buckle metals. do it enough and they can become brittle and break).

You could steal enemy abilities to use against them in battle, or summon spirits of enemies you've killed to give you their battle skills. Say a skeleton gives you skills like bone-toss, grave intensity, skull cackle and bone dust, whilst a bird type would give you sharp peck, wing slap, whirlwind and screech.

Just a few ideas.

I don't know if this fits with the setting you're using, but on the subject of allies, I really loved the way it was handled in one of the chapters of Live A Live.

You play a ninja who has to infiltrate an enemy estate, which is basically one big non-linear map and multiple approaches. You can complete the mission on your own (either by by stealth or combat) but there are also a couple of allies you can enlist on-site - one is a prisoner, another is a sort of... clockwork robot thing, and there might be a third but I'm not sure.

This leads me to think that you could have the meat of the game feature a solo character, but you could have minor recruitable allies depending on the nature of the mission at hand - trained animals, rescued prisoners or allied moles, mercenaries, or even an enemy that you've blackmailed or struck a deal with. You'd have to make decisions about the risk versus reward of trying to recruit an ally, whether taking one on board would limit your stealth options or represent choosing a side in a mission. It can keep combat fresh by giving you options without sacrificing the solo stealth theme, and it keeps the experience tight by definitively tying your combat ability with your story progress.

You can do the same thing with your character's abilities. If they rely on available equipment or resources, then you have to hunt for weapons or choose which to bring with you. Combine that with having to choose whether to engage in combat at all, plus the actual battle mechanics you have in mind already, and I don't think combat will get stale any time soon.

I don't think I can really add much other than what's been said already, at least regarding what to do. What I could suggest NOT doing, however, is some stuff I've been struggling to figure out for a game idea I had.

Essentially, I feel that balancing for single-character combat in JRPGs makes for kinda boring play if not handled well. It really boils down to a few actions, as far as, say, Dragon Quest 1 handled things. Combat options really feel like a) converse MP by slogging through with weapons, b) bail out a sinking ship by healing, c) try to do extra damage with a spell, or d) completely shut down an enemy with a paralysis/mute spell.

Then again, maybe I'm over-analyzing things, especially for one of the first JRPGs; the genre's come a long way since then, and I'm definitely gonna be following this thread for tips and tricks on such.

PS - if you're looking for some single-character RPG Maker games for examples of what to do and what not to do, try these: Cope Island, One Night at the Steeze, and Monochrome.