What's the best turn based battle system?

Ashtear, 6 months ago

Seconding Final Fantasy X and Trails. Turn-based systems that remove the concept of turn cycles governed by rounds are great. These systems allow for speed stats to actually mean something and make things feel dynamic even though there are pauses every turn. It’s so much more interesting to give a ninja-like character multiple turns instead of multiple attacks to present the illusion of speed. The Atelier games have a similar system too (although I’ve heard Ryza went to something like ATB now).

If we’re including ATB and ATB-like systems, Final Fantasy X-2 and Panzer Dragoon Saga are my overall favorites.

TheOakTree, 6 months ago

Have you ever played Valkyria Chronicles? Not the smoothest or greatest experience by far, but I remember it standing out to me.

tamlyn, 6 months ago

I have played it, but i don’t see it as turn based game. Quite good game, like it a lot.

TheOakTree, 6 months ago

I consider it of a hybrid than either fully turn based or fully realtime. Need to revisit sometime.

RaineV1, 6 months ago

Final Fantasy X and Shadow Hearts Covenant have had my favorite battle systems. Especially Shadow Hearts since the judgement ring is a good combination of strategy and skill.

trslim, 6 months ago

I LOVE Shin Megami Tensei’s press turn system. On critical hits, or attacks that the enemy is weak to, you essentially gain an extra turn. It really encourages you to build your team wisely, with a large variety of spells.

Persona changed it a bit with the One More system, and it’s very similar.

dvdnet89, 6 months ago

Octopath Traveler and Bravely Default is the best

Secret300, 6 months ago

Bravely default made me like turn based. Shit slaps, never finished the game tho. Might pick it up again

tamlyn, 6 months ago

Ohh i have thought about the boosting system of those game as well, just barely not make it for me to mention it, but for sure a very nice system.

oddspinnaker, 6 months ago

I loved the system in the first Bravely Default! It made battles go by so quickly and was so fun

pimento64, 6 months ago

For me, it’s Dragon Quest, it’s perfect and I want them to keep it unchanged for centuries

echo64, 6 months ago

I don’t know if there can be a best, but yeah, the Trails games being effectively ffx, but with positioning and even faster is so satisfying.

But then you can go way back to ff1. That battle system is flawed, to say the least. But once you know the ins and outs you can really push it in fun ways.

It’s good to mention radient historia too, making the entire battle system be about positioning and moving enemies around on a grid was super fun, it just starts to get really puzzly and fun by the end

But the actual answer if I had to pick goes to Etrian Oddyssy, any of them. When you make a modern game and base it entirely around dungeon crawling combat, the gameplay better be good. And they just nailed it. It’s the perfect traditional line based combat it really is. Job systems to keep things fresh, a lot of strategy and the game will kick your butt if you just go in and push attack

tamlyn, 6 months ago

Ff1 is a good example. A battle system doesn’t need to bo perfect we justneed to have fun in any kind of way. And it’s nice they all different.

slowd0wn, 6 months ago

Just started playing it, but I’m loving the combat in Sea of Stars. You get that traditional JRPG turn-based combat, but you also get “skill-based” timing to do additional damage or block some damage. That and the way they handle the turns, and the ability to “stagger” with different attack/magic combos makes the combat very engaging

tamlyn, 6 months ago

That was already a long approach of mario rpg games, but that’s also the reason i avoid them. I don’t really know if i wouldn’t like it since i haven’t played such a game, but i will with sea of star or mario rpg for sure at some point. But i guess just good a strategy and don’t care about messing up some timing things is rather my way to go.