What is your favorite jrpg battle system?

What is a good example of your favorite jrpg battle system?

Resonance of Fate

It's more active and weird than a typical JRPG mechanic but it's really cathartic when you learn how to use the mechanics effectively.
It's complicated to explain but basically the goal is to position each of your party members in a triangle around the enemy where they can perform a special move and all attack at the same time, if they move between party members it increases the duration of this attack, and jumping allows them to attack from above and get through enemy shields at the cost of accuracy.

There's A LOT more to it than that and it's a daunting system to learn at first, but unlike most JRPG's it's the crux of the combat in the game so there's nothing else to worry about, you aren't assigning skill points and customisation is minimal, your success is entirely on how you use the combat mechanic and when it clicks it feels really good, it's also stylish as hell.

I tried to find a decent video that shows it off but most of them are from 11 years ago and look terrible, so have some of my screenshots instead :P.

I was thinking of picking Eternal Sonata because from what i remember most of the characters have their own little mechanics going on and Mario RPG style combos where you have to hit the button with the right timing to keep it going, the game also forces you to use certain characters at various points so instead of ignoring characters throughout the game you kind of get to use everyone, but Resonance of Fate sticks with me, i'm always thinking about playing it again.

@cikame: Ooh, i didn't know this game (Resonance of Fate sounds like a Castlevania subtitle to me).

It sounds & looks interesting.. i should check this out too!

I will do a shoutout to the FF13 battle system. I just love the idea of building meter with certain attacks, and having to prevent the bar from decreasing fast with other attacks. There's also a lovely ebb & flow between building this meter up carefully while the enemy is agressive and going all out during the stagger phase. And naturally the game has plenty of airjuggling fun to be had as well, so that's a great bonus to have. The idea of putting multiple attacks on the ATB bar was also a great touch to make the combat look more dynamic instead of a turn-based chessmatch. It helped to bring the action closer to the combat people know from the cutscenes & anime FF entries, while still keeping the game menu-driven. The combat in FF15 might be even more action-y, but i think that the balance they found in FF13 was superior to the combat in that game.

@cikame: Now you say customization is minimal but what about all the time I spent trying to fit two dozen scopes onto a single handgun.

@onemanarmyy: So I've been playing through 13 (it's on gamepass, I didn't play it when it released) and the battle system is super neat. It's weird that they don't explicitly say that after two rounds if you swap to another squad configuration your bar will be filled instantly (if they did say it in one of the 300 pop up paragraphs somewhere in the first 10 hours, I missed it). But the battle system, combined with the way XP and battles work (you can't really grind so every encounter is tuned for where you're gonna be for it, you start every battle with full health) incentivizes a much more aggressive and dynamic playstyle that I find super engaging.

I don't really play a ton of JRPGs but Tokyo Mirage Sessions ♯FE (A game I did not finish because it's grindy as hell and the dungeons are booooooooring) does have a cool system where a character can free attack if the previous attack is a specific element/attack type. It incentivizes picking equipment/characters/attacks that balance enemy weaknesses vs. what will lead to longer chained attacks, I thought it was super clever.

@kyary: Yeah i think that there's something in that game that does mention that the gauge fills faster when you do a paradigm shift, but you kinda have to do it and realize yourself that this bonus in practical terms pretty much means that the bars fill near instantly :D I remember i expected it to be like a 5% boost, but it feels more like a 40% boost in speed.

I've always felt Tales of ... was kind of the best battle systems in genre, but it's also cheating a little bit because they eventually evolve into just action games whenever a fight starts.

For a more traditional turn based approach I was always partial to Shadow Hearts. Every action you take in combat in those games brings up a specific Ring that sweeps around and you have to stop at a specific point. The better your timing the more effective the move is going to be.

And as a Trails superfan I have a lot of love for that series combat although there is very little that's particularly novel about it, it's just extremely refined traditional turn based for the most part.

The Trails series is great. While it's true that is just a really refined and well put together turn based battle system at face value, I think that overlooks the build options that are available. The Orbment/Quartz system gives you a lot of room to build your characters in specific ways, and it only gets better when things like Master Quartz are introduced in the Crossbell series. To me, the freedom to create interesting character builds is as important as the moment to moment mechanics of combat, and the Trails series does that incredibly well.

@ll_exile_ll: I do love the quartz system, and in particular I love the Forever War of Falcom trying in vain to balance the games around all of the broken shit you can do with it.

I especially like Bravely Default's system of taking extra turns or banking them for later. And I think they updated it even more in Bravely Default 2. It really helps the grind when you can just spam moves 4 at a time to beat enemies before they can attack, but then is super fun to figure out the strategy to use during boss battles.

Does FF Tactics Advance count? I think I just like anything with a solid job system to make it seem like I'm not just doing the same stuff every battle if grinding is necessary.

@kyary: it probably won't surprise you, but TMS#fe just used a similar combat system as the Shin Megami Tensei/Persona games (like that system where you attack again if you crit/hit a weakness)

Also honorable mention to Legend of Legaia which is kind of a slog of a game and I don't recommend it however the combat used fighting game inputs for all of its attacks which I always thought was a really neat idea.

Valkyrie Profile 2, which built on the original VP in some cool ways. The ability to run around a 3D area made it feel a bit more tactical, where positioning was just as important as picking your attacks and timing for combos.

I still like FF X, too, always been a fan of battles that show the turn order and let you jump in with other party members. And Chrono Cross, just the variety of options with all the different party members. I beat that game so many times in so many different ways.

@cikame: When I saw the title of the thread I immediately thought of this game. The game is amazing and its a great feeling when you set up multiple triangle attacks on a single massive boss in an area with multiple levels and watch all your characters melt every health bar in the room. I will say it's also one of those games that manages to frustrate new players that don't know that they need to kill something every other turn or they will be stuck in a weakened state. I think GB did a quick look of this and they ended up in the weakened state often. From the perspective of people not familiar with the game it looked like the game was broken.

Resonance of Fate is one of those games where the combat swings really hard in either direction. When you understand what's happening and are in control of it you destroy everything and feel badass doing it.

But when you fall behind it's a sheer mountainside sometimes to be able to regain your footing.

Give me a modern JRPG that uses Grandia's timeline-based combat system.

Thank you very much.

call me basic but the last combat system i remember having fun with is Fire Emblem: Three Houses. though i'm not sure if tactics games count. otherwise basic turn-based with a little bit of time pressure is basically all i want...over-complicating usually doesn't net me fun.

The basic-ass turn-based system of Final Fantasy X is what I think of when people mention JRPGs. But, if our definition of "JRPG" is more broad than just turn-based gameplay, meaning that we're also including action-RPGs by Japanese developers (which I prefer over turn-based and Final Fantasy's various iterations of Active Time Battle), then my real answer is Nier: Automata. But, if most people would describe Automata as character action, then I'll go with Kingdom Hearts II.

The battle system in Xenoblade Chronicles 1 is fantastic, and rewards strategic use of character abilities, attack order, and positioning. The main character can also see into the close future and you can warn your party members about impending attacks or protect them with a shield or other support magic to help them avoid their impending doom. It's great fun and I beat all the optional content mostly for the battle system (and music).

Grandia's/FF 13 is a toss up for me. Love em both dearly.

I know it's sacrilege but I'm still partial to Final Fantasy VIII. I enjoyed the idea of magic as a sort of character infusion since I've never been the biggest magic user in RPGs unless it's a core part of the combat design (managing HP is enough for me, thanks) so for someone like me who hoards magic in pretty much every classic RPG it was the one time I felt rewarded for doing so. Likewise, because this was my comfort game in my teens and I beat it around 15 times (plus once more a few years ago when it was re-released on PS3) I appreciated that you were essentially able to set your difficulty based on how often you engaged with the combat. Somewhat paradoxically the game was in many ways easier if you avoided the combat and mostly just drew magic, ran away and fought bosses. But it didn't necessarily feel easier because you had a vastly more limited tool set. Whether you were on Disc 4 at level 20 or level 99, you could have a pretty different experience while the challenge remained despite almost completely different parameters defining that challenge. That's just cool, y'know?

I don't just have one. Chrono Trigger for the cool cross attacks, Star Ocean/Tales battle system. Final Fantasy 12 because you could create a character play style and then set them to AI and watch them do an awesome job following your battle tactics. I haven't seen another RPG be able to do this yet. Legend of Legaia because of the input combo system that was awesome to watch. I'm sure there are more, but those come to mind off the top of my head.

Edit: Actually, I remembered Persona 5 Royal coming very close to having an tactics based auto-battle system as good as FF12. In fact, it was good all the way up to the true final battle, where I had to take over to win because of how that battle played out. Those in the know understand what I'm talking about. And Persona's battle system in general is also one of my favs. Just finished Strikers a couple of days ago and that was a fun experience.

Seeing these Legaia mentions reminds me that Xenogears is also way up there for me. Like FFVIII’s limit breaks and smashing that square button, I guess I really had a thing for battle systems that also had you engaging with them in more ways than just mashing attack in even the most simple random battles. I also legitimately kind of loved how obscure the learning of new moves was. It made it genuinely exciting when you suddenly unlocked a new combo and kept you experimenting with different combos hoping you’d stumble on something.

Plus - mechs! Managing fuel! Exciting!

@nodima: I'm still convinced to this day that everyone only thinks they know how new deathblows are unlocked in Xenogears.

@efesell: :P it is really funny how many attachments you can fit onto a gun and where, and i did look at some guides online to see just how nuts it can get but i usually didn't have the right connections to copy them, i attached what i could without trying too hard and it was enough to easily beat the game, "minimal" is the wrong word but that's what i meant, the game doesn't require you to make choices or think hard about it anything will do really.

I googled this 1911 with a sniper scope, a reflex, two red dots, an extended barrel with a barrel on the front and 18 various other barrel parts attached, then 4 foregrips, one of which is attached to an extended mag and has two muzzle breaks on it, to anyone asking no this is not represented in the game.

@merxworx01: I was frustrated when i first played it, i got to the first "dungeon" (i think it's a power plant) and just felt like the game was way too hard and stopped, 8 YEARS LATER i tried again when the PC version came out determined to get further and that's all it took to figure it out, it's probably the biggest yet smallest hurdle i've ever got past in a video game.
Like you say when it does go wrong it goes really wrong, it can feel like it's impossible to recover when you're getting ripped apart, then you try the fight again and just dominate everything without taking a hit.

@zombiepie: There are two Penny Arcade games and Child of Light that do exactly that.

I'm going to go extremely vanilla and say Dragon Quest. Probably DQVIII if we're being specific. There's something to be said for doing something simple but doing it very, very well. The problem with so many JRPGs these days is that they either try to needlessly complicate their mechanics or they have it in their head that turn-based systems are somehow automatically "bad" and then end up making an even worse action-based system instead.

(Disclaimer that not all action-based systems are terrible. I rather liked Tales of Arise's combat. The bosses were too spongy for my liking, but that was more of a problem with the leveling system being out of whack than the underlying mechanics).

Honorable mention to the original Valkyria Chronicles, which had an interesting attempt at a blend of real-time and turn-based combat, even if things kind of go off the rails about halfway through.

The Trails series also has this system. It also has buffs and debuffs that appear on the timeline that often require using the various ways of manipulating the turn order to try to get the buffs to land on your turns and the debuffs on the enemy turns.

@zombiepie: the first thing that popped into my head when I read the question was Grandia II.

Was looking for this. Grandia 3 had a weaker story vs the others but the combat peaked. Slashing someone into a 30 hit combo was so much fun. The game felt like the perfect blend of real time and wait for someone who enjoys a waiting battle system on a lazy Sunday morning. I also love skies of arcadia focus meter you share with the party, for spectacular (at the time) supers. Honestly, most games that don't just have the default, have some fun stuff as long as they don't annoy you to get to the fun. I think it's easier to name systems in games I don't like. Say anything that is just attack, magic run, and absolutely nothing else but grinding and one-hit kills/most of your health and repeats dungeons limited story and party and just plain average. I also had a hard time getting into FF12's combat, after loving it at first. Something about it being so autopilot early on made me at the time pissy and hearing all the love for it at release turn to hate over the story being more political and not about your main character...lead me to stop playing it at the tutorial first kingdom after things open up. Hope to go back one day...Seems like a good game.

A few others already mentioned Grandia. It's soooo good. Grandia 2 was the first jrpg I ever finished, and it's because the combat is a lot of fun. My biggest problem with the genre is that the battle systems usually can't hold my attention more than 50 hours.

The second jrpg I completed was Baten Kaitos: Origins. Both BK games have interesting battle systems where attacks are on cards, but BKO is my favorite. It's simpler than the first, but you have to react much more quickly to chain your attacks. Might be the only card-rpg that requires fast reflexes.