A look at the downfall of turn based battle mechanics in the Final Fantasy series and through out the larger industry. Followed with new hopes in recent releases and upcoming ones like Expedition 33
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You can only put “are turn-based RPGs dying?” in the thumbnail if you just woke up from a 10-year coma.
This year alone we got:
- Metaphor Refantazio
- Like A Dragon Infinite Wealth
- Paper Mario The Thousand Year Door (remake)
- Shin Megami Tensei 5: Vengeance (enhanced edition for all platforms)
- Persona 3 Reload
- Dragon Quest 3 Remake
- Fantasian Neo Dimension
Not mentioning a ton of indies probably…
I had to look it up and octopath traveler 2 was last year. I’m never getting my normal sense of the passage of time back, am i
4 of those are remakes. And Fantasian came out in 2021, it’s just now getting ported to other platforms.
Also Metaphor is only half-turn based, you only directly control one character.
Like a Dragon is the only one I would actually count in such an argument
You control a full party in Metaphor. If you only played the beginning of the prologue, the game waits for a certain story event to happen before giving you control of other characters.
I want to get Dragon 8. Dunkey sold me on that shit.
On the indy front, I picked up Terra Memoria, and it’s been interesting so far!
The most popular game in the past 2 years is a turn-based RPG?
In the past 2 years, you’re getting Elden Ring. In the past year, it might not be the most popular, but it’s the most acclaimed.
Only 1 2 3 and 10 were turn based. Even if you consider ATB to be turn based, that was last seen in FF13 which was 15 years ago. This complaint never seems to end.
Also DQ is still turn based and so is SMT
It’s a meme at this point.
“Turn based RPGs are dead!”
points at, well, everywhere
“No, I meant turn based JRPGs”
points at Like a Dragon, Persona, Metaphor
“No, I meant turn based JRPGs developed by Square”
points at Bravely Default, Dragon Quest, countless remasters/remakes
“No, I want AAA mainline Final Fantasy to be turn based!”
🤷♀️
I don’t think these people will ever be happy, even if Sakaguchi came back to Square and brought the whole gang back with him.
We just want a sequel to chrono trigger and chrono cross that is better than both of them combined is that too much to ask
“I just one a sequel to the best game ever that’s better than it and it’s pseudosequel combined”
Me too kid. Me too.
FF 13 was 15 years ago, but it was also only 2 single player titles in the franchise ago if we don’t count remakes. Square Enix is just very slow at making them.
Personally, I don’t like turn based RPGs. Not because I don’t like turn based games, but mainly because the combat occurs too often and that it becomes extremely repetitive. The same battle music, the same battle environment background, the same enemies with the same strategy. In comparison to action combat, even if the enemies and winning strategy is the same, the environment and combat occuring at different times and in different locations mix things up enough to not become overly repetitive. Additionally, I can have an immediate impact on the combat in an action game and not spend 80% of my game time in combat.
I recently started playing Koudelka, and I actually enjoy it except for one aspect: the random combat. It interrupts the gameplay and sometimes I don’t want to engage in combat, I just want to explore a bit. But at least the combat is not so extremely repetitive like when I played Dragon Quest 11. And it seems to happen a bit too often. When i played Yakuza 0, towards the end of it I was actively avoiding the combat because I spent so much of the first 2/3rds of the game in combat that I just didn’t enjoy it all that much anymore.
What you’re referring to are “trash mobs”. They’re usually less incentivized in tun-based games that emphasize tactical positioning, like Baldur’s Gate 3; you won’t find a single encounter that felt like it shouldn’t have been there. If the combat encounters are very quick, the designers are incentivized to put in more of them, which is why I don’t usually like real time with pause (like old D&D games), though Pillars of Eternity II definitely cleaned up the trash mob problem from its predecessor, even when you play it in real time with pause mode.
Well, with regards to Koudelka, I am specifically referring to the mechanic in many JRPGs by which combat is initiated randomly, without the player ever interacting, colliding with, or even seeing a visible enemy. One moment you are walking, and the next you are in combat. You never had the option to not be in combat, you just get vortexed in. Chrono Trigger and many Final Fantasy games operate this way as well. Its not that they feel out if place, they are annoying because they interrupt what I was doing. In BG3, PoE2, and even Dragon Quest, enemies are visible. You basically never enter combat randomly.
Now, with regards to Dragon Quest, I found the music always being the same was too repetitive. Combat always felt the same regardless of what enemies I faced or where. At least I could choose when I enter combat, which is probably why I made it as far into the game as I did (got to the mermaid queen and stopped shortly after).
Enemies are visible in Chrono Trigger as well, specifically so you can avoid them. If you’re significantly over-leveled, they’ll even run away from you, if memory serves. I’m playing through Metaphor: ReFantazio right now, and its solution is to make it so that you can one-shot those enemies outside of battle; and if they’ll actually challenge you, you go into the battle mode proper. That’s certainly one way to skin that cat. Meanwhile, The Thaumaturge (released this year) has a shocking number of similarities in its battle system to Metaphor (and, presumably, Persona), but its number of combats are fairly scarce, in a good way, never really ending up in that situation where you’re super over-leveled, because its leveling system doesn’t revolve around a lot of “number go up”.
Combat is supposed to be the core gameplay loop. If you feel like that’s an unwanted interruption, I think there’s a deeper problem where the game has left you feeling like you don’t want to play its core loop.
No, I understand where they’re coming from. I played the original FF7 for the first time not long ago, and the combat is good, but there’s too much of it, and you can feel disoriented returning to the world map, trying to remember what you were doing and where you were going. I love the combat in Larian’s games, but there’s far too much of it in the first Divinity: Original Sin game relative to the other things you do in that game’s loop. It’s a problem of pacing. There was a really good article on then-called-Gamasutra breaking down the pacing of the X-Men Origins: Wolverine game versus Batman: Arkham Asylum. Even though people pretty unanimously thought the combat in Wolverine was good, we only really still talk about one of those two games today.
It sounds like you’ve had bad experiences with games that just didn’t make their systems engaging enough to not feel repetitive. That was true of some older titles, but modern turn-based RPGs have learned a lot since then.
Perhaps. Its not that I don’t like turn based games, and its not that I am not trying out JRPGs either. For example, I like X-COM, Jean dArc on PSP, and Tuned Hearts on PC98. I suppose these are more tactical or strategic than traditional JRPGs, but regardless I don’t feel bored or tired of the combat in those games.
Ive tried Octopath Traveler, and I really like its art style bu I just don’t enjoy the combat. Admittedly, I felt the same with Chrono Trigger, which is a shame since it is so well regarded. Ive also tried Dragon Quest 11, which I did not finish. Ive even tried playing some of the Wizardry games, but once the combat starts it doesn’t keep my interest.
I like Yakuza but Like a Dragon didn’t appeal to me.because of its combat. Likewise with Persona, I just don’t feel drawn to the game because I know it has a turn based combat system. I did try Persona 1, but I know that game is very different from the more recent Persona games. I tried The Legend of Dragoon, and while I was only in combat twice as part of scripted events, it seemse like maybe the combat will be a bit less repetitive but only time will tell.
I don’t like them because I dont like turn-based combat. Glad the Final Fantasy series went away from that.
