RPG BATTLE SYSTEMS

My favorite's:

1. Grandia 3's ATB System. It had the best system out of the 4 games in this system. Canceling moves are actually important now.

2. World of Warcraft's Systems: Very intricate battle system. I love there design philosophy of Tanks, Healers, and DPS.

3. Baten Kaitos Origins Fast Card System. "RELAY COMBO!" "EXCELLENT" This system would've been even better If this game combined the deck construction elements and some other things from the previous system.

4. Tales of Hearts (*Whatever you call it) System: A very spammy but nontheless fun battle system. The best in the tales series so far in my opinion.

Let's do this, first some systems I like in general

- Non-frontview pure CTB. (Ex: Atelier Iris 3, Final Fantasy X) A heavenly system with so much potential for varied pure RPG-battle goodness without being overcluttered or overcomplicated. It's just the perfect clean slate though - the enjoyability is fully dependent on the design of the systems and fights built around it. Sadly all games I've played have some issues with it - AI3 does best, but it has the cardinal flaw of being way, way too easy. (Non-frontview specified because it's much more intuitive to process the information of a character getting visually hit than just a line of numbers changing on your status window, for the record.)

- CTB tactical map. (Ex: Final Fantasy Tactics) Similarly, the way to go for SRPGs. I consider the LFT hack to be pretty much the ultimate experience in this regard in terms of straight up tactics RPG gameplay.

And talking more specific...

- CTB tactical map, now with summoning and resource control (Vantage Master) A duel of summoners! Figure out which creatures to use and how, secure magic stones to keep up MP regeneration, take a swing at the enemy's forces with your hero itself if you dare, even. Simply brilliant and has online multiplayer as a bonus.

- CTB tactical map, now with summoning and did you just literally hit me with a trainwreck (Phantom Brave) Perhaps the single most customizable system out there, Phantom Brave has seemingly simple rules of gameplay but the ways to interact with objects (and your characters can count as objects as well) make for a large number of out of the box solutions to battles with a dash of delightful insanity.

- Straight up action hack and slash (Modern Ys games) You can't really argue with a game where you hop on a giant centipede's back and start hacking parts off it with an axe to reduce the amount of lightning strikes on the battlefield and oh god it's dropping poison bombs now because I'm hacking off parts okay use the wind shield to spin them away and now it's spinning around the arena as a wheel aaaaa

- Dual screen action THING (The World Ends With You) One character on each screen, control one with stylus, other with d-pad, good luck trying to keep up! Fast and furious system that allows you to ease yourself into it by putting one character on auto and dynamically adjusting difficulty. Only problem is the stylus controls being a bit finicky.

- ATB with charge/recharge times and combos (Final Fantasy X-2) The one good use of ATB!

- Good ol' materia system (Final Fantasy 7) If only this was CTB...an awesome customization system right here, even today.

- Turn-based squad-based WAR (The Last Remnant) No other RPG captures the feeling of duking it out on the battlefield nearly as well. Tactics, positioning, morale, a ton of little touches like deadlocked squads sizing each other up and trying to attack and dodge each other while you're choosing commands just for visual flavor.

I LOVE, love, love, love, love real time, like Star Ocean 2's. Most enjoyable battle system I've ever played.

I don't mind FPS or TPS mechanics (Deus Ex, Vampire BLoodlines, Mass Effect). Though I tend to count them as "lesser" rpgs. But they are great battle systems that work for other genres so RPGs taking them sounds good to me. For some reason it only works for shooting. Though I suppose I just haven't played the right close combat third person RPGs.

For a party real-time is no-no for me. Keeping track of multiple members in a real-time environment is a pain in the ass. (and no the AI is never "that" good. Even in single player tactical shooters it's all about minimizing the damage the AI does on its own)

Some of my favorite battle systems for parties come from squad based tactical games of the older school. (Jagged Alliance 2, Silent Storm).

Somehow it's easier to find what I don't like. Most RPGs I've played have pretty shitty battle systems. At best they're tolerable.

Really? I remember bosses doing very low damage (they needed like 4-7 hits to KO a character) and dying really fast. Two bosses didn't even get a single turn although I was lucky with moves that had a 50% chance to cancel enemy actions

I remember bosses would do things that could kill party members off and do massive damage to everyone (and you didn't have enough time to move people around), and pretty much insane boss fights unless you were very prepared and careful. That really annoying temple soldier guy in the Ruins of Zil Padon and that stupid boomerang comes to mind. It cancels all your party members too.

But I would agree that Grandia III is even harder than that and takes more tactics (even if you get the most insane spells in the game for the fortune teller lady right off the bat). Grandia II was kind of easy, and Grandia xTreme was really boring despite having Mark Hamil as a main hero voice actor. IMDB has it backwards, if you've played the actual game you can recognize him right away when Evann yells.

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Grandia II was kind of easy, and Grandia xTreme was really boring despite having Mark Hamil as a main hero voice actor. IMDB has it backwards, if you've played the actual game you can recognize him right away when Evann yells.

I had grandia x-treme and I couldn't stand to play it, regardless of who it's voice actors were.

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C. Turn-Based/CTB Isometric Tactical Battles a la Final Fantasy Tactics and Front Mission 3
The CTB system and tactical movement added an incredible amount of strategic depth.

E. Indescribably Bizarre Combo/Timing Based ABS (Vagrant Story)
I cannot describe why I love the battle system in Vagrant Story so much, but I do. I suspect as I mentioned initially it has to do with all the other coolass systems in Vagrant Story that support it.

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Anyway, I really like the CTB from Final Fantasy X. It's simple, but has great tactical potential. In particular, turn management is critical if the system is properly balanced. To bad Final Fantasy X screwed up random encounters.

Also, the Shadows Hearts games' battle systems (Judgement Ring), and Mother 3's (tapping the button in time with the battle music--you do that all the time anyway, right).

ok so i also like mass effect 1's battle system more than me2's

To chip in, my favorite battle system is probably Breath of Fire IVs. My only major gripe with it is that the dragon system is kinda weak compared to IIIs. Other than that? Golden.

I'm too lazy to explain why I like it though. If anyone really cares I'll elaborate, though.

Aight, since you asked I shall gladly share!



At first glance the battle system looks standard. In many ways, it is; which is the charm of the series, sticking to traditional stuff that works. However Breath of Fire IV mixes shit up completely different in a lot of ways.

-Lazy backup is nonexistent in this game. There is no such thing as 'selecting your party'; all of the party members you have up to that point participate in every battle (unless you're like, split up or at another location entirely, obviously).

As you can see, while there are only three people visible on the field, if you look, you can spot two unseen party members (there's one more party member that player hasn't gotten yet). Those two party members are right in the back (visible too, if the camera pans that way). You can switch back row party members and front row party members instantaneously; there is no 'switch' function like in FFX, simply selecting a back row party member and selecting his action automatically switches them up with whoever you want in the active party, so actions are seamless and quick. Everyone gets EXP at the same time, but I think it's somewhat proportional to whether or not they actively helped out. Level balancing is really easy though since everyone is useful.

And although back row party members don't get a turn in the rotation like the three active ones, some party members even have support abilities from he back row (like Nina healing and one party member firing a FIST CANNON every so often). Also of course if everyone in the front row dies they're automatically replaced. You can even opt to replace a K.O.ed party member with a fresh one instead and even revive and heal them while they're in the back row!



-The Combo system. This is the real shine of the game and I'm honestly shocked to not see any game do it! Every move in the game can form a 'combo'; that is, moves done in succession has damaged piled on against it, and the more 'hits' you rack up, the more damage you do. You may ask 'if only three people can act at a time, I guess the highest number of hits is three?' WRONG, you dumbass. Not only do comboed moves do residual hits (for example, a two person Fire and Wind combo will accrue another hit for every hit in the combo, which in this case would be...four hits, I think?), a lot of moves, such as 'Double Slash' and a lot of other ones, do more than one hit whether they're comboed or not, meaning that if they ARE comboed, Double Hit is now doing like, three or four hits.

NOT ONLY THAT. Spells can be combed into each other to form new spells! Fire and Wind cast in succession turns into 'Firestorm'. Rock Pillar and Fire turns into Lavaburst, and so on. Doing this is the way to cast the most powerful spells. There are even secret character only combonations as well. Another good part? The effects of comboed abilities stack on as well! For example, if 'Poison' and a move that hits all enemies combo into each other, guess what, now all of the enemies are poisoned. Stack and spread out debuffs as well! It even works for healing! Comboing a spell that raises attributes and an all party healing spell buffs up the entire party, and since combos 'hit' more times than being casted alone, congrats, you got healed and stacked like a motherfucker.

Here's an example! Keep in mind this is end game shit so obviously you're not going to be doing this at the beginning, but fuck it, anything goes.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3YNrfrXrvL8

BTW my highest combo was 144 hits.

There's a few more things, but those are the two biggest!