I'll take persona, although it's been way too many games with the same setup. Ditto for the Trails series.
Honestly, I don't think it got any better than ATB systems in FF 6 and 7. Everybody else is either riffing on those or spending so much money they think they can't be those and need to be Devil May Cry instead.
Grandia series. I’m partial to the leveling systems but the battle system is fantastic. There’s ATB, field movement, charged attacks/magic incantations that can be canceled, a light combo system. I just love it
The more I play, the less I enjoy games that have active combat systems, from the Mario RPGs’ timed attacks to even Final Fantasy’s ATB. I really want to have time to think my turns and just select and use the skills, no reason to try to make it more action-based. So the MegaTen series and Trails series are the ones that cater to my current tastes.
Xenogears for the PS1 had one of the best combat systems I’ve ever played. Tied with Star Ocean 2 for the PS1. There’s a remake which I think they overhauled the combat system, so I’m not sure if it still is as good as the first edition, but the customizability was amazing.
After that Grandia was fun, but I played it far less than the aforementioned, so have less to say. Chrono Trigger was very good for what it was, and IMHO was only matched by FF6 in that category (heavy turn based combat systems). Chrono Cross is an honorable mention in that category as well.
Lastly, very recently the Sea of Stars game had a very good combat system.
Ultimately these games have great stories, and that’s all I really cared about, but the combat systems could either make or break the monotonous grind to get to the plot points, so they had to be at least decent to make the games playable.
I highly recommend any of these games. Chrono Trigger in particular is highly regarded as possibly the greatest JRPG of all time, and personally I’d put Xenogears at 2nd place, with Star Ocean 2 at 3rd. But I might just be nostalgic.
I can’t say I have a favorite, but I do strongly favor anything strictly turned based. I’ve been playing Divided Reigns and its combat system is stellar imho, so there. Lots of weapon types, lots of attacks for each types, lots of skills, lots of magics. Makes non magic users at least as satisfying to use as spell casters.
Turn-based: Bravely Default. A stellar evolution of FF5 that gives you so many toys to play with, and the titular Brave/Default mechanic opens up a lot of cool ideas just by giving you flexibility in when to take your turn. Specifically BD1 and Second though, I felt like BD2 was a massive step back by trying to introduce a turn order system at the expense of no longer queueing everyone together at once.
Action: Tales. Hard to pick just one, and there are still a bunch I haven't played, but I think I'll go with Vesperia specifically for all the advanced tech it allowed for.
Honorable mention to CrossCode as well, but I know someone's gonna debate whether it counts as J or if it's just sparkling Secret of Mana.
There’s no other system that quite captures the feeling of, “Shit, that was a lot of damage. Do I try to heal them before it rolls to 0 or just spam attack and hope to end combat before they go down?”
Legend of Mana, although it was broken, I never got bored with encounters. didn’t have to worry about items or mana, only health. if they added a mana system (ironic) and fixed the stunlock, would’ve been more balanced
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