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Posted: Dec 19 2008 11:20 pm

I'm gonna nominate Shadow Hearts: From the New World and its judgement ring/combo system. The judgement ring appears, and a red line starts rotating about it. In the ring are areas that are yellow, which you have to get to activate anything you do, from attacks to magic to items. There is also the much smaller strike area, which gives additional benefits if you can get it there. Basically, it adds the active to the turn based.

In addition, there is the combo meter. By completing successful actions, you charge up a combo meter. When it gets high enough, you can perform a combo, going straight to another characters turn and inflicting bonus damage. If that character has a bar filled, it can continue till you get to the fourth character. This character then gets access to some powerful combo magic based on the elements of the characters present. You can also use the meter for a double attack, where you perform two different actions in one turn, at the cost of a later delay. If you have two bars filled, then you can perform a double attack into a combo. In this way you can pull of a boss killer of eight consecutive attacks with a combo magic finisher, all benefitting from progressively bigger bonus damage. Of course, if you mess up on the judgement ring even once during this, the tower falls apart. It feels like an achievement to pull out your big assault, and for the big fights its usually worth it.

I'll write more when I'm not as tired.

Posted: Dec 20 2008 01:39 am

I've already talked about it on a couple of threads, but my favorite is Final Fantasy XII. It is a departure from the old turn based fighting and random encounters. Now you can see the monsters in an open world. You still use the command menu like before. But the best thing in my opinion though is the gambits.

For those who haven't played it, the gambits are basically preset commands for your characters that you can acquire/buy along the way. They aren't all available at the start of the game and some of the more advanced ones take longer to get. What you do is assign these commands to each character in a priority list. Rather than worrying about healing, you can have it set up where someone automatically heals anybody who goes below a certain percentage of health.

I've heard some people complain that it is for lazy people. But its not. I don't know where they are planning on taking this, but imagine the potential. For those of you who play World of Warcraft, you probably know what its like to go out in a huge group to slay a monster that takes dozens of players to beat. Now imagine doing that in a Final Fantasy game where all of those dozens of characters are controlled by you. This is possible with the gambit system.

This is why, while a lot of people are complaining about where Final Fantasy is going as a franchise, I am psyched about what the future holds. The only thing I wish is that FFXII would allow you to use all of your characters at once.

Posted: Dec 20 2008 02:23 am

FFXII chased me away from the franchise BECAUSE of the battle system. I thought the idea was okay, but the execution sucked. And, being that every other FF game used Turn Based and/or ABS, there should have been an option for them in XII.

My vote: The battle system used in the Aurora Engine. (used in Neverwinter Nights I, KOTOR I, and KOTOR II.) If you just wanted to hack through the easy creatures, just stand back and watch, need to stop and plan a strategy? Then pause the battle, form a strategy, and queue up all the actions you want your characters to make.

Joined: Sep 17 2007 Location: The Opium Trail Posts: 3475

I've only played FFIV, VI, Chrono Trigger, SMRPG, and Super Paper Mario.

SMRPG was the best with Chrono Trigger as second best.

Posted: Dec 20 2008 02:48 am

scamrock wrote:

For those who haven't played it, the gambits are basically preset commands for your characters that you can acquire/buy along the way. They aren't all available at the start of the game and some of the more advanced ones take longer to get. What you do is assign these commands to each character in a priority list. Rather than worrying about healing, you can have it set up where someone automatically heals anybody who goes below a certain percentage of health.

It also allows you to auto level-up (without even keeping a button pressed down with turbo at the Lette River) by telling everyone to only attack the enemies the monster summons (Negalmurr in the ruins up in the frosty north).

Posted: Dec 20 2008 04:47 am

lordsathien wrote:

scamrock wrote:

For those who haven't played it, the gambits are basically preset commands for your characters that you can acquire/buy along the way. They aren't all available at the start of the game and some of the more advanced ones take longer to get. What you do is assign these commands to each character in a priority list. Rather than worrying about healing, you can have it set up where someone automatically heals anybody who goes below a certain percentage of health.

It also allows you to auto level-up (without even keeping a button pressed down with turbo at the Lette River) by telling everyone to only attack the enemies the monster summons (Negalmurr in the ruins up in the frosty north).

True. Its actually a pretty neat trick for whoever discovered it.

Joined: Dec 06 2007 Location: Connecticut Posts: 11244

Knyte wrote:

My vote: The battle system used in the Aurora Engine. (used in Neverwinter Nights I, KOTOR I, and KOTOR II.) If you just wanted to hack through the easy creatures, just stand back and watch, need to stop and plan a strategy? Then pause the battle, form a strategy, and queue up all the actions you want your characters to make.

While I despise the D20 based leveling system, the battle system for KOTOR was my favorite straight RPG battle system.