Best battle system (not character buildin) of the main series?
The question is simple: which battle system from the main series would you say was the most compelling for you among the installments you played. However, please note that in this case we're only talking about specific systems, not individual games, so character building mechanics such as Materia and Junction don't come into play. With that established, here's a rundown of them all:
- Regular turn-based: The most basic of them all, and for that matter I'm pretty sure FF didn't invent this one. Present in Final Fantasy I-III, the Dragon Quest series, most RPG Maker 2000 games, and many others. It's basically a two-step process: You pick a command for each of your party members, and once you're done every participant in the fight unleashes an action in an order that depends on their respective speed and possibly a small randomness factor. Go back to step one, then repeat until one of the two sides has no characters left alive. Not my favorite, it works well but there's really nothing special about it.
-Active Time Battle (ATB): we all know how this works, but I'll explain it for the sake of exhaustivity. Present in Final Fantasy IV-IX, Chrono Trigger with a couple twists, FF10-2 in a modified version, most RPG Maker 2003 games, and probably countless others. Each participant has an individual timer, often symbolized by a gauge, that fills itself faster or slower than those of the others depending on their own speed stat. Once it is full, they get a turn and can perform one action, then it has to fill itself again. Then there is the additional factor that some actions take a charge time even once selected, such as magic spells, and thus will further delay that character's next turn in relation to everyone else's. And let's not forget surprise attacks: if you take the enemy by suprise, you begin with all your gauges full. If the enemy takes you by surprise, you begin with all your gauges empty.Tried-and-true, and rather widespread. I'm a fan, but it's really nothing special anymore these days.
-Conditional Turn-Based (CTB): Simple in its presentation but intricate in its depth. only Final Fantasy X uses it to my knowledge, which is an utter waste of potential. It's turn-based, but instead of using rounds, it uses separate turns for each participant. This means that any character's turn freezes the game until an action is chosen for them to perform. Also, participants with a higher speed stat get more turns, while those with a lower one get less (even more so than with ATB). But more than than, actions that are performed quickly (for example items) will make your next turn come earlier, while those that cost more effort to perform (such as Overdrives) will delay your next turn further.Another thing is that you can swap a character that is currently on their turn out of the active party and replace them with someone from the sidelines mid-fight, as many times as you want.
And now for some FF10 specifics: should you summon an Aeon, it will replace your whole party and fight alone, under player control, until they either get killed or you call them off, in which case the fight will resume as normal. Aeons have the particularity of being impervious to any and all status aliments. The last thing is contextual commands, which sometimes let you spend a turn to interact with a specific environment. Examples would be spoilery, but some of those are almost useless, others quite useful, and a couple imperative to victory. One of my favorites, it's one of the most straightforward but also one the deepest.
-Real Time Battle (RTB): It' called "real time", but there's nothing real time about it. Used in Final Fantasy XI and XIV, and most MMOS really. You control one character, who automatically performs an action you pre-selected once their timer is full. Functional but in my opinion extremely boring. Good for team work only, and even then it's not all that thrilling.
-Active Dimension Battle(ADB): How do I explain this exactly... it's like ATB, but in a seamless environment which you can freely navigate and take advantage of. Used in Final Fantasy XII. So, the fact that you can move around will let you get away from certain attacks(though not always, since your characters tend to stick close to each other), but on the flipside, monsters that you never targetted may come after you anyway (just like MMOs). But wait, controlling three different characters on your own in a pseudo real-time situation? seems to walk the line between tedious and unfeasible. Luckily, Gambits let you pre-program what they will do in which situation, and in what order. But for further strategic depth, you can override them at any moment and pick a manual command instead, for any of your party members. Just like FF10, you can swap characters in and out at any moment unless they're currently targeted by anyting, but unlike FF10, you only get a Game Over if *all* of them are down. As for Espers, they fight alongside witht their master while the other two active members go away. If either the Esper or their summoner gets taken down, the summon sequence ends. Impractical to say the least. Quickenings are worth a mention, since they can indefinitely chain into each other until the timer runs out, regardless of character turns save the one who initiated the chain in the first place.
I hated this system at first. I went something like "ATB timers with pseudo-real time, three characters and only one player to control them? What sense does that even make? How can that in any way NOT be inconvenient? And why on earth would I want the game to play itself without me?" Then I played and I got used to it, and grew not only to enjoy it a lot, but to see the immense tactical depth it holds. Stuff like Immobilize, Disable, Enrage, or Needle Traps? Only possible in FF12. Easily the one I like the most so far.
-Combat Synergy Battle (CSB): Keep in mind that I have never played Final Fantasy XIII or XIII-2, so I may get some of this wrong or not make it very clear. Basically, you control one party member manually, while the other two ara AI-controlled. Now, what this system has in common with X-2 is that it IS in fact real time, as in nothing any participant does will freeze the actions of the others. Which is crucial in understanding how this is played. For your leader character, a segemented ATB gauge fills itself over time. Instead of costing MP, skills cost ATB slots, which means the more powerful a move is, the bigger a part of the gauge it will use. First you chose which moves to assign to each slot, and then at what moment you want to execute them. Consumed ATB slots have to refill themselves before you can use them again. As for your AI-controlled characters, they make their own automated decisions through the same process, based on their knowledge of the current situation.
Except it's not that simple. Only a specific job can execute specific skills, for example cure spells are only for medics and debuff spells are only for saboteurs. To remedy to that, you can switch everyone's job on the fly. However, two differences with X-2 are that you switch from one party configuration to another instead of changing an individual character's job, and that doing so will not interrupt the flow of the combat, meaning for example that you can get hit while switching. And I think it gives you a free ATB slot unless you already activated your next one, but I'm not really sure how that works. The last element is stagger: most enemies have a gauge in the top right corner which fills itself whenever you hurt them, but also decreases constantly. If you manage to get it full, they will be in a posture of weakness and thus easier to attack until the gauge is empty again. Then there's the summoning mechanics,but I don't know much about that. Well, what can I say. Once you understand most of it and watch someone else play it, it looks quite awesome. However, if there's one battle system you can't properly judge without trying it first hand, it's this one. So I can't evaluate this one, but what I will say that does look good, if not necessarily superior to CTB and ADB.
Winner in my eyes: CTB (X) and ADB (XII). Your turn!
