Quote Originally Posted by Vivi22 View Post
The battle system had a lot of good ideas going for it, but in the end it was too simplified, and I'd even argue that it was almost too transparent about what everything's weakness was. And once you knew something's weakness you really weren't going to lose.
The same can really be said of most Final Fantasies. What 10 did, at least, was require a variety of abilities and party member control/switching, as opposed to easily getting away with nothing but "Attack" from beginning to end. Instead of just waiting for a bar to fill up, you could plan tactically around the turns of enemies. A step up from not knowing or caring anything about the enemy, because you can mash attack for the win.

But simplicity is a requirement of ATB, as seen by all the complaints about FF13. People complain about the autobattle... but when you tell them not to use it, to do everything manually, they cry it's a ridiculous request, that it's too hard and complex (lol) to do quick enough (in their opinion).

ATB, on the other hand, offers nothing. In full-real time games you can move around. I didn't mention "watching bars fill up" as a positive of FFXII's battle system, but the seemless combat and movement. Games like Dragon Age improved on FFXII's combat, and removed the silly fill-up bar.

People complain that the ATB of FF4-9 is dead, and it should be dead. It's a battle system that was just a very slow whack-a-mole. You watch a bar fill up, and press X. It was by no means the end-all-be-all of RPG battle systems. The idea of going to some battle screen and waiting for a bar to fill up is beyond dated, and at the time it was in it's prime was still nothing more than an attempt to compensate for limitations.

Other battle systems have places they can go. ATB has nowhere to go except removing what defines it, or adding silly gimmicks like FFXIII's. It's only clung to for the sake of nostalgia by younger FF fans.