The release of Honkai: Star Rail recently has reopened discussion about turn-based combat in video games, an area that I’m particularly interested in. As I’ve discussed before, I generally prefer turn-based JRPGs over action-based ones but that doesn’t mean that I can’t see some of the arguments that have made as being legitimate. As someone who has spent a strong portion of their life playing turn-based JRPGs, I thought I’d share how I believe JRPG turn-based combat can be reformed.
I’m going to start by clarifying that my thoughts are going to be specifically on true turn-based combat systems. I adore the Active Time Battle system of many Final Fantasy games and I also have great admiration for the combat system of the Grandia games but the incorporation of real-time elements results in the systems, while still being predominantly turn-based, becoming a hybrid and also opens too many possibilities up to list here. Therefore, I’m going to stick to turn-based combat systems that don’t incorporate any real-time elements seen in games such as Dragon Quest, Megami Tensei, the Legend of Heroes etc.
The first thing I want to touch on is a criticism that I do believe has some legitimacy even if it can be quite reductive “All you do is press attack over and over”. While clearly hyperbole, it is true that I often find myself fighting non-boss battles using only the attack command. To solve this problem, I would institute two changes. The first is to change the attack command itself. An attack can be many different things depending on the situation and I don’t see why it has to be restricted to a single action. As for what these actions that replace it would be, I believe that it would vary from game to game but they would be actions that are situational and reward the player for picking the correct action, thereby making battles more engaging.
The second change I would implement is a small recovery of Magic Points (MP) or whatever the equivalent is within the game. One reason why I tend to use the attack command over and over outside of boss battles is in order to conserve resources. By implementing a small and slow return, it ends up encouraging the player to use magic and abilities more frequently than if I was relying on items and inns. That’s certainly what ended up happening whenever I’ve come across this concept such as in Final Fantasy XII, the Tales games etc. For those concerned, and rightly so, that this may make resource management unnecessary, the solution would be to make average encounters a little tougher, necessitating the use of magic and abilities at a rate that would require careful use to not leave oneself vulnerable.
While I believe that simply implementing these two changes would be enough to address the major criticisms of JRPG turn-based combat, I have another strong recommendation that I believe should be part of any reformed system. The original Dragon Quest games, often seen as the populariser of RPGs in Japan, was a simplification of RPGs in an effort to achieve mainstream success and, while we’ve seen JRPGs grow more and more complex mechanically, I feel that we see too many aspects of this continuing into the present day. Most JRPGs start out with relatively few characters and abilities and I believe that this was to help people learn about the gameplay before introducing them to more complex components. However, we have to remember that we are approaching forty years since the birth of the genre and many gamers have become more and more knowledgeable about game design and mechanics. I’ve seen people get put off by how simple the gameplay of most JRPGs starts out as and I often have to show them gameplay from later in the game to show that it becomes more involved and interesting. Therefore, I think that JRPGs shouldn’t be starting with characters with hardly any abilities and should, instead, start out with a wide variety of basic moves across multiple characters so that tactics and strategy are required from the outset.
I do love JRPGs and the JRPG turn-based combat within them but I can sympathise with a lot of the frustrations people have with it and believe that it can be reformed to be even better. Let me know if you agree with me on how JRPG turn-based combat can be reformed, whether you have any other ideas on to improve turn-based combat in JRPGs, what some of your favourite turn-based combat systems have been and any additional information you might have on the topic.
Thanks for reading and if you wish to seek any of the titles I mentioned, don’t hesitate to use amazon.co.uk or amazon.com for all of your needs! Also feel free to follow my curator page on Steam “JRPG Reviews” for thoughts and opinions on any JRPGs that I play and my YouTube channel “Victory Achieved Gaming” where I guide my friend through challenging games.