The Continuing Adventures of Musing About Turn Based Battles

Last time when I talked about turn based battles I got a little too mushy with the “it’s all how you feel, man” stuff which I’ll hope to avoid this time. Although the point remains that someone who doesn’t like them probably never will, I hope to at least offer some insight into why they are liked and why shouting out for their abolishment is rather silly.

A few weeks ago I was playing The Last Remnant while waiting for some friends to arrive. As people started coming over, I continued my play and my friends were watching. One asked how I could stand playing the game as I “wasn’t doing anything.” Before I could reply another friend said something that I had never thought of. “It’s like coaching a game.” While I am not, and probably never will be, much of a sports aficionado, this actually made sense to me. I was making the plays. Sometimes it turned out really well and I just kept pushing for victory. Other times I had to pull back and go on the defensive. I don’t have to worry about the doing, per se. I trust my players will handle that. But they need my guidance.

There’s a certain gambling aspect that goes along as well. Will it be okay to forego healing this round to possibly finish the battle sooner? Or do I need  In an era heavy with FAQs and guides, it is far easier for us to know the optimal ways of beating enemies, and that reduces the feeling of the gamble. Checking a guide tells me that this enemy is weak to fire, there is no point in spending my time using water on it. But if it can easily be thwarted without hitting said weak point, is there even much of a point?

For a good while now Megami Tensei games have incorporated given bonuses for hitting weak points and getting critical hits. As getting the bonuses for the weak points only requires knowledge, often knowledge that is freely available in the game itself, the games have developed to the point where the bonuses are practically required to have a chance of success at all. At this point it is not so much a bonus but a requirement, which of course makes managing the whole affair more of a challenge and in most cases more fun.

But the latter is more interesting. Scoring critical hits, hits which cannot be guaranteed in most cases, adds a delightful and necessary bit of randomness to the game. While many people seem to decry randomness, in order for these games to present a challenge an element of randomness is required to achieve the risk that helps facilitate the “gambling” aspect. If I know that every time I enter a certain room, a fire weak enemy appears and I cast fire and it dies, there becomes no gamble. I know from the start there is no risk. Action games balance this out by having the enemies capable of dodging or blocking, and this concept can easily carry over. But let’s say I were to enter that room again and nothing happened, this is confusing. Will something happen soon? What if a fire resistant enemy came up?

Coupling this with resource management (i.e. magic points, items and so on), the player has to be ready for everything. But if it is difficult for the player to be ready for everything, they have to chose. If they have to choose, some situations will be more deadly than others. The problem here is that usually the resources are so freely available that there is a lack of difficulty. That, or the solution is not readily obvious to the player so they spend time “grinding” to get their characters more powerful that the challenge diminishes. Then by their own choice the game has become “repetitive and easy”. So the issue here becomes quite complex. By putting in challenging fights, the player may not see a way of completing it without over-powering their characters to brute force through. If there is no challenge to begin with, we end up with the same situation only potentially less wasted time. 

Clearly the first situation is better as it allows for some people to find an enjoyable challenge. Yet this may not be good enough and there can be improvements. Next time, I’ll jump into some of my ideas on how these can become more solidified.