I still think the need for perfect IVs is vastly overstated, especially on the official formats which only run at level 50 where there's no real effective difference between a 30 and 31 or a 29 and a 28 and so on
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Are there any other turn based jrpgs with battle systems as fun as Pokemon's? Or is Pokemon the best in its genre.
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Yeah Pokemon Showdown/Online is where I first got my appreciation for Pokemon Combat
I used to be like many here and thought the game was "Baby's first JRPG" then I heard about PO, hopped on, got wrecked into oblivion, sat down and went on Smogon to learn, came back and did slightly better
It was wayy too much involvement to actually get good, so I stopped, but from then on I realized there's no contest between Pokemon and other JRPGS, there just isn't
Octopath Traveler (boost system is so satisfying)
Shin Megami Tensei (similar to Pokémon on the monster raising mechanics)
Shin Megami Tensei (similar to Pokémon on the monster raising mechanics)
It's funny how OP is arguing complexity, but the thread title is making a statement about fun.
Single player Pokémon is enjoyable when it's tuned properly, but I still prefer games like Dragon Quest, Etrian Odyssey, and mainline SMT.
I think Pokémon's metagame is busted. It's very bloated and unbalanced.
The process of getting Pokémon to a competitive level alone is the antithesis of fun, and that instantly makes the post-game of other RPGs better.
Single player Pokémon is enjoyable when it's tuned properly, but I still prefer games like Dragon Quest, Etrian Odyssey, and mainline SMT.
I think Pokémon's metagame is busted. It's very bloated and unbalanced.
The process of getting Pokémon to a competitive level alone is the antithesis of fun, and that instantly makes the post-game of other RPGs better.
Pokemon combat is not simple at all, it's just the encounter design for the campaign is ludicrously easy and doesn't make full use of it at all
It never was and most likely never will be. It's way too shallow, IMO. Stuff like Final Fantasy and Breath of Fire was always better than Pokémon, IMO.
In terms of moment to moment fun, I'd take Bravely Default or something like Octopath for the playing they do with building up saving/expending turns . I also really like the SMT/Persona mechanics of strategizing your knockdowns.
Pokemon does have the crazy breadth of moves/combinations though.
Pokemon does have the crazy breadth of moves/combinations though.
People in this thread are mixing battle system design and encounter design. It's like saying chess is not fun because you only play with AI opponents and they suck. Look, no matter how stupid the AI is, the battle system itself is a separate thing and should be judged as such. The game gives you a choice to explore it to the fullest, you just choose to play with dumb AI. That's not the battle system's fault.
Please play a few matches on showdown and then continue to tell me it's shallow because the pokemon metagame is ludicrously deep
Dang this is crazy, this is legit the first time I've heard anyone say that pokemon's turn-based system is the best in its genre.
This is a great reminder that no matter what kind of game is out there, there will always be one person who will think that game is unmatched, even if the rest of the world disagrees
This is a great reminder that no matter what kind of game is out there, there will always be one person who will think that game is unmatched, even if the rest of the world disagrees
To answer your question, OP, there are no games that I know of that come close to Pokémon's battle system. What you need to look at instead are competitive trading card games like Magic.
I guarantee you most of the people disagreeing have barely even explored the single player post game battle facilities, let alone playing against other people who know even remotely what they're actually doing
Not really, the whole "down them and hit them again" or the all out attack stuff is something that I can see being easily broken
Plus how would you balance having 4 personas + their users vs another team of 4?
It'd be a mess
Hmm Should I hit the enemy Ryuji,Ann,Joker,Morgana, or their respective personas etc
I think it could actually work if they changed up some stuff but as it is now it would be terrible
I do agree that the IV requirements are overstated.
My main issue with the current system is that you can pretty much see each different EV distribution/nature combo for a mon as a separate mon to "build" with how tedious it is to modify those.
I do wish they got rid of the stupid 100 per stat limit on EV boosting items. No reason I shouldn't be able to use proteins to raise a given pokemon's attack ev to max for instance
I stopped following competitive Pokemon a decade ago, because I simply didn't have time to keep up with it. This thread blows my mind. Like, most people who buy Pokemon don't even know Pokemon.
SMT Dx2 has a rudimentary multiplayer battle system. With some modifications, I don't see why it couldn't work. Also, not four personas. Each has a team of four demons, like SMT. I was referring to the Megaten battle system, not Persona's version.
I can't think of any other turn-based JRPGs with competitve multiplayer, so how the depth of Pokemon's multiplayer gameplay would compare to something like Persona 5 if it had multiplayer is just speculation... but I personally imagine that such a comparison would be favorable towards Pokemon.
I think this would be pretty likely. There are tons of really cool features in other JRPG battle systems that would not work all too well in competitive PvP settings.
A lot of other JRPGs also have battle systems where the enemy and player having distinctly different properties. The most common and basic one being the enemies have huge amounts of HP compared to the player.
Like I've been saying, just because Game Freak doesn't put hard battles in the main story doesn't mean you should dismiss the battle system as something stellar. It goes so deep and takes literal hours to plan and train a team according to how you want the battle the play out.
Mario RPGs. Pokemon and Mario RPGs were the games I gravitated toward in the genre when I was younger and thought other RPGs were too complicated, and they're still timeless classics to this day.
Super Mario RPG
Paper Mario series
Mario & Luigi series
What makes these games fun is that they take inspiration from the their roots and implement platforming in the overworld, making land traversal part of the fun and not just about the battles. When it comes to the battles, however, there is a lot more influence in how you fight than with traditional RPGs, especially in Paper Mario and Mario & Luigi. You can influence the outcome of a battle at the very start of the match by getting a preemptive strike before the battle transition, or they get one on you. In battle, instead of just pressing a button and watching the attack play out with a random chance of hitting or missing, every attack is guaranteed unless there is a perfectly explained reason for why an attack would miss (for example, a grounded attack will miss an airborne enemy), and you have direct player inputs as the attack happens to influence the damage output and potential of the attacks (when Mario jumps on an enemy, you press A right as he lands to do extra damage.) You can also block attacks on the enemy's turn with perfect timing to lower damage, or in Mario & Luigi, completely avoid attacks altogether. There are certain special moves in every game that require action commands or timed button presses to unleash their full potential, and they're easy to learn and never too complicated. Because of these elements, there is more emphasis placed on reaction skills, like a Mario game, than raw strategy. That's what makes them fun.
What also makes Mario RPGs a delight to play is the world building and the characters that inhabit it. These games are the only times where you see classic Mario characters in a more intimate light. They talk to you. Some of them talk smack to you. Some of them become your partners. You explore locations and meet characters you would never see in any other Mario game. The humor in these games are consistently top-notch as well. It's so much more than Mario rescuing Peach from Bowser. In fact, most of time, Peach and Bowser aren't even in their usual roles. Sometimes there are bigger villains. Other times, Peach and Bowser are fighting alongside you. Mario RPGs are awesome because it takes a beloved and established franchise and goes places with it that the traditional games would never explore, and I treasure them for that.
Recommended games list:
Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars (SNES)
Paper Mario (N64)
Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door (GCN)
Super Paper Mario (Wii) (Not turn-based, but tells a great story.)
Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga (GBA and 3DS)
Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time (DS)
Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story (DS and 3DS)
Super Mario RPG
Paper Mario series
Mario & Luigi series
What makes these games fun is that they take inspiration from the their roots and implement platforming in the overworld, making land traversal part of the fun and not just about the battles. When it comes to the battles, however, there is a lot more influence in how you fight than with traditional RPGs, especially in Paper Mario and Mario & Luigi. You can influence the outcome of a battle at the very start of the match by getting a preemptive strike before the battle transition, or they get one on you. In battle, instead of just pressing a button and watching the attack play out with a random chance of hitting or missing, every attack is guaranteed unless there is a perfectly explained reason for why an attack would miss (for example, a grounded attack will miss an airborne enemy), and you have direct player inputs as the attack happens to influence the damage output and potential of the attacks (when Mario jumps on an enemy, you press A right as he lands to do extra damage.) You can also block attacks on the enemy's turn with perfect timing to lower damage, or in Mario & Luigi, completely avoid attacks altogether. There are certain special moves in every game that require action commands or timed button presses to unleash their full potential, and they're easy to learn and never too complicated. Because of these elements, there is more emphasis placed on reaction skills, like a Mario game, than raw strategy. That's what makes them fun.
What also makes Mario RPGs a delight to play is the world building and the characters that inhabit it. These games are the only times where you see classic Mario characters in a more intimate light. They talk to you. Some of them talk smack to you. Some of them become your partners. You explore locations and meet characters you would never see in any other Mario game. The humor in these games are consistently top-notch as well. It's so much more than Mario rescuing Peach from Bowser. In fact, most of time, Peach and Bowser aren't even in their usual roles. Sometimes there are bigger villains. Other times, Peach and Bowser are fighting alongside you. Mario RPGs are awesome because it takes a beloved and established franchise and goes places with it that the traditional games would never explore, and I treasure them for that.
Recommended games list:
Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars (SNES)
Paper Mario (N64)
Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door (GCN)
Super Paper Mario (Wii) (Not turn-based, but tells a great story.)
Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga (GBA and 3DS)
Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time (DS)
Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story (DS and 3DS)
It seems that you haven't played a Pokemon game in 20 years, and it shows. You might as well open your posts on the subject by admitting that, so that people know you're posting in good faith based on your (woefully incomplete) understanding of PKMN's battle system, and so they don't just assume your posts on the subject are just attempts at trolling Era
I think good analogy would be this:
SMT/Persona/etc. have very flashy and fun battle systems, but depth wise they're akin to checkers. Buff, debuff, hit weaknesses, rinse and repeat.
Pokemon is closer to something like chess, but the single player campaign pits you up against opponents who only have pawns.
SMT/Persona/etc. have very flashy and fun battle systems, but depth wise they're akin to checkers. Buff, debuff, hit weaknesses, rinse and repeat.
Pokemon is closer to something like chess, but the single player campaign pits you up against opponents who only have pawns.
You're basically handicapping Pokemon in these comparisons if you factor out the online. It's not Pokemon's fault these other games couldn't make a decent multiplayer.
Purely as a battle system, not taking into account story, game design, anything else, Pokemon is the best. That what OP and many people are arguing
There's a reason there exists online battle simulators so there's no need to grind and play a game. You can jump right into the battling. I am positively, 100% sure, there is no market for such simulators for other JRPGS.
That should speak for itself.
Hmm, for me, what comes to mind when this question comes up other than Pokémon itself is stuff like Grandia and the Etrian Odyssey games. Grandia, because of stuff like the action gauge, and having to keep an eye on what the enemies/boss are doing, and what you should do in response. Are they charging up some devastating magic attack or skill, and should you use a critical attack yourself to cancel it? Is it safe to use a skill magic yourself, or would the boss be able to crit you and it's better to go for a normal attack or combo? It's all about paying attention to what's going on when, and knowing when's the right time to use the right kind of attack, when's the perfect time to go all out and when's the time to play defensive until there's a huge opening, you can cancel the boss and start piling on, etc.
Etrian Odyssey, on the other hand, because of just for one example stuff like the bind system, and having to learn which parts of enemies are responsible for what attacks and what kinds of binds you need to use to stop those attacks from happening (and of course, in the process of figuring that out, also learning how resistant those different body parts of the enemies each are to binds). And of course being cautious of how enemies can do that right back to you, so being aware of what kind of binds each of your party members is most hindered by and taking precautions as necessary to guard against that if you suspect a given enemy might be capable of using binds. And binds are just one of the game's systems, nevermind other kinds of ailments and all kinds of other stuff to consider. It all comes together really well.
Cooldowns in Xenoblade, like other RPGs that use cooldown systems, are there as an alternative to mana points and the like to balance different tiers of skills, that's all, so I can't really consider that.
Edit:
And as for bosses, who tend not to really have elemental weaknesses as such, the pattern there is buff your team's stats, debuff the boss's, then just use your strongest attacks possible, heal as necessary and reappy buffs/debuffs as necessary, repeat until boss is defeated. The same exact strategies that can be used in Pokémon. The key difference being that, in the main game, you rarely need to resort to stuff like the equivalents of Matarukaja and Marakukaja in Pokémon but the equivalents of stuff like Swords Dance, Nasty Plot, Quiver Dance, Shell Smash are all there. And of course just using your most powerful attacks whenever possible or otherwise exploiting elemental weaknesses is standard fair in Pokémon.
So SMT is something I can easily let slide, especially since I don't know much about the series and its intricacies, but Persona definitely doesn't have more depth than Pokémon, that's for sure. Especially since Pokémon not only has the same focus on weaknesses and strong attacks, buffs and debuffs and the like as Persona, not only its own status ailments which are also a huge deal (especially stuff like Burn due to lowering the Attack stat, Paralysis lowering speed, stuff like that), but it also has stuff like Weather and Terrain that Persona doesn't really have an equivalent to off the top of my head. Stuff like Psychic Terrain, which prevents priority attacks from being used while its in effect for instance. And then you have stuff like Trick Room, which completely reverses turn order and has teams entirely built around that. Stuff like that.
And that ain't even touching on the concept of Hold Items in Pokémon, which is the closest thing Pokémon has to armor and equipment, but instead of offering stat boosts (though some items have a stat-boost effect, like Life Orb, Choice Items, etc), they can have all kinds of other weird effects, like the Red Card forcing the first Pokémon that makes direct contact to be swapped out with a random Pokémon, the Eject Button which is pretty much the opposite situation (let's you get a switch if you're hit with an attack), Rocky Helment (does chip damage to any Pokémon that makes direct damage and that direct damage can easily add up, let me say that much), Weakness Policy (doubles attack and special attack if hit by a super-effective move), berries which restore half your health when you're in critical HP, and all kinds of other stuff, with part of the depth coming form how there are so many possibilities but yet you can only have one hold item on each Pokémon at a given time meaning you have to choose carefully which item you want to give each of your Pokémon and think very carefully about which item each of the opponent's Pokémon has equipped, as it very easily could be something that makes it faster than normal like a Choice Scarf, something that makes it hit harder than normal like Choice Band/Specs something that's guaranteed to let it survive one attack like Focus Sash something that can power it up if you use the wrong move and it survives like a Weakness Policy, or something else, and each of those items potentially demanding a different course of action depending on which one's being held (like using a Priority move or even faster attacker to deal with something holding a Choice Scarf, but using a multi-hit attack or counting on weather damage at the end of a turn to help deal with a Focus Sash).
Now, you might not need to use those systems in Pokémon, but to be fair, you can get away with not using a lot of stuff in Persona as well, even on the higher difficulties, and hardly ever need to min-max your Personas or go for the strongest ones possible, or anything like that possible either. That being the case, I really don't get what Persona's battle system has on Pokémon's.
Etrian Odyssey, on the other hand, because of just for one example stuff like the bind system, and having to learn which parts of enemies are responsible for what attacks and what kinds of binds you need to use to stop those attacks from happening (and of course, in the process of figuring that out, also learning how resistant those different body parts of the enemies each are to binds). And of course being cautious of how enemies can do that right back to you, so being aware of what kind of binds each of your party members is most hindered by and taking precautions as necessary to guard against that if you suspect a given enemy might be capable of using binds. And binds are just one of the game's systems, nevermind other kinds of ailments and all kinds of other stuff to consider. It all comes together really well.
Eh, not the first time I've heard that comparison, but no, Xenoblade is an ARPG through and through. Cooldowns don't make it turn-based or act like turns in any way. Especially since they're not meant to function as the equivalent of turns, but if anything meant to be the equivalent of PP in Pokémon or MP/SP/whatever you want to call it in other RPGs since Xenoblade doesn't have that either. The point of cooldowns is to keep you from being able to just spam stuff over and over again, which can be seen in particular by what's chosen to have the largest cooldowns, such as Sharla's healing arts (to such an extent that Sharla's Talent Art is a global cooldown of her other Arts you have to keep on top of), Shulk's more powerful Monado Arts, etc. And just how there's such variation in cooldowns in general between different Arts, that doesn't lend to game acting much like turns at all.
Cooldowns in Xenoblade, like other RPGs that use cooldown systems, are there as an alternative to mana points and the like to balance different tiers of skills, that's all, so I can't really consider that.
Edit:
Now this is a "hell no" to me personally. Because I don't know much about the SMT games, so I can't speak to much to them and could easily be missing something fundamental when people bring them up as I really have no clue how exactly they differ from the Persona games in terms of combat, but as someone who is familiar with Persona 4 and 5 I definitely can't say they have a better battle system than Pokémon. Stuff like Persona 4 and Persona 5, especially against the mob enemies, come down to elemental weaknesses even more so than Pokémon. Either you know what they're weak to, and kill them super quick by being able to exploit that, since not only does exploiting elemental weaknesses in Persona games do more damage like in Pokémon, but it awards you with an extra turn so you can do even more damage and repeat or buff/heal if you need to instead. Only difference is, it's not necessarily obvious what type of stuff enemies are weak to, especially at first, and part of the trick is figuring that stuff out before they exploit your own teammates weaknesses. But it's the same rock-paper-scissors stuff driving those encounters.
And as for bosses, who tend not to really have elemental weaknesses as such, the pattern there is buff your team's stats, debuff the boss's, then just use your strongest attacks possible, heal as necessary and reappy buffs/debuffs as necessary, repeat until boss is defeated. The same exact strategies that can be used in Pokémon. The key difference being that, in the main game, you rarely need to resort to stuff like the equivalents of Matarukaja and Marakukaja in Pokémon but the equivalents of stuff like Swords Dance, Nasty Plot, Quiver Dance, Shell Smash are all there. And of course just using your most powerful attacks whenever possible or otherwise exploiting elemental weaknesses is standard fair in Pokémon.
So SMT is something I can easily let slide, especially since I don't know much about the series and its intricacies, but Persona definitely doesn't have more depth than Pokémon, that's for sure. Especially since Pokémon not only has the same focus on weaknesses and strong attacks, buffs and debuffs and the like as Persona, not only its own status ailments which are also a huge deal (especially stuff like Burn due to lowering the Attack stat, Paralysis lowering speed, stuff like that), but it also has stuff like Weather and Terrain that Persona doesn't really have an equivalent to off the top of my head. Stuff like Psychic Terrain, which prevents priority attacks from being used while its in effect for instance. And then you have stuff like Trick Room, which completely reverses turn order and has teams entirely built around that. Stuff like that.
And that ain't even touching on the concept of Hold Items in Pokémon, which is the closest thing Pokémon has to armor and equipment, but instead of offering stat boosts (though some items have a stat-boost effect, like Life Orb, Choice Items, etc), they can have all kinds of other weird effects, like the Red Card forcing the first Pokémon that makes direct contact to be swapped out with a random Pokémon, the Eject Button which is pretty much the opposite situation (let's you get a switch if you're hit with an attack), Rocky Helment (does chip damage to any Pokémon that makes direct damage and that direct damage can easily add up, let me say that much), Weakness Policy (doubles attack and special attack if hit by a super-effective move), berries which restore half your health when you're in critical HP, and all kinds of other stuff, with part of the depth coming form how there are so many possibilities but yet you can only have one hold item on each Pokémon at a given time meaning you have to choose carefully which item you want to give each of your Pokémon and think very carefully about which item each of the opponent's Pokémon has equipped, as it very easily could be something that makes it faster than normal like a Choice Scarf, something that makes it hit harder than normal like Choice Band/Specs something that's guaranteed to let it survive one attack like Focus Sash something that can power it up if you use the wrong move and it survives like a Weakness Policy, or something else, and each of those items potentially demanding a different course of action depending on which one's being held (like using a Priority move or even faster attacker to deal with something holding a Choice Scarf, but using a multi-hit attack or counting on weather damage at the end of a turn to help deal with a Focus Sash).
Now, you might not need to use those systems in Pokémon, but to be fair, you can get away with not using a lot of stuff in Persona as well, even on the higher difficulties, and hardly ever need to min-max your Personas or go for the strongest ones possible, or anything like that possible either. That being the case, I really don't get what Persona's battle system has on Pokémon's.
Then Game Freak should design better games that take advantage and show off their battle system because not everyone is playing multiplayer.
This thread can't possibly evolve more absurdly than how ResetEra has evolved the phrase 'Hot Take' to mean "literally anything I've ever disagreed with" like the expression makes any sense at all anymore
It's basically 'fetch' now
a group of words that are now all but interchangable with the word 'opinion' and thus have no descriptive purpose anymore except as a Spongebobian sentence enhancer
I don't know why the overuse of that phrase (resulting in its meaninglessness) bothers me like it does, but it do
It's basically 'fetch' now
a group of words that are now all but interchangable with the word 'opinion' and thus have no descriptive purpose anymore except as a Spongebobian sentence enhancer
I don't know why the overuse of that phrase (resulting in its meaninglessness) bothers me like it does, but it do
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I played 8, it is more simplistic than Pokemon single player
What? You obviously haven't delved into it. Theres basic attacks, but then there are special attacks (not including the joint attacks) where you balance mind games with resource management of special energy. There's a breeding and fusing mechanic that streamlines the hours of egg breeding in Pokémon. I'm a huge Pokémon fan, but there is a depth and team building freedom in MHS that sets it apart from Pokémon and makes it something more people could engage with competitively.
You don't even need to know Monster Hunter to enjoy Stories.
PVP is really fun in Stories. Like, finding synergies and how things interact and using items in combat is something Pokémon is still struggling with imo
Lots of people really seem to be mistaking difficulty for the fundamentals of the combat system themselves, which are two different things. How easy or hard a game is, has nothing to do with the depth that is or isn't present in a battle system, or its intricacies or lack there of, or anything of the sort. Those are two different discussions.
And Pokémon's battle system doesn't only shine in competitive multiplayer. You don't need to play multiplayer to start to see it shine. Engaging facilities like the Battle Tower (Gens 2-4)/Battle Subway (Gen 5)/Battle Maison (Gen 6)/Battle Tree (Gen 7), which are in most Pokémon games post-game areas these days, achieves much the same result. The point of those facilities, for those unaware, is to fight one AI trainer battle after another, with your team being healed between rounds, and seeing how many wins you can get in a row before losing and having your win streak reset. And those facilities tend to start using competitive teams before too long, and get especially nasty once you get past a 50-win streak (but before then, will still very likely catch those doing it for the first time, with no familiarity with competitive battling and the like completely off guard).
And that's in-game, single-player content in most Pokémon games. It's just as fair as say bringing up super-boss fights like the Reaper or Velvet Room attendants and the like in Persona games, if not more so. That most people choose not to engage it doesn't mean it's not there. And either way, there's the separation of difficulty of the game vesus the fundamentals of the battle system and whether those systems and depths are there or not, which are two separate discussions.
And either way, difficulty or no, I still don't gather what's the big difference between Pokémon and Persona, since the fundamentals are the same: exploit weaknesses whenever possible, otherwise use your most powerful attacks, and heal when necessary. That's the core strategy in both games. Persona might be harder, especially given that it actually has difficulty settings to begin with, but in terms of mechanics, your usually doing the same thing in Persona games that you would be doing in Pokémon games in those situations, so people acting like its leagues above Pokémon is just always confusing to me when that in particular gets brought up.
And Pokémon's battle system doesn't only shine in competitive multiplayer. You don't need to play multiplayer to start to see it shine. Engaging facilities like the Battle Tower (Gens 2-4)/Battle Subway (Gen 5)/Battle Maison (Gen 6)/Battle Tree (Gen 7), which are in most Pokémon games post-game areas these days, achieves much the same result. The point of those facilities, for those unaware, is to fight one AI trainer battle after another, with your team being healed between rounds, and seeing how many wins you can get in a row before losing and having your win streak reset. And those facilities tend to start using competitive teams before too long, and get especially nasty once you get past a 50-win streak (but before then, will still very likely catch those doing it for the first time, with no familiarity with competitive battling and the like completely off guard).
And that's in-game, single-player content in most Pokémon games. It's just as fair as say bringing up super-boss fights like the Reaper or Velvet Room attendants and the like in Persona games, if not more so. That most people choose not to engage it doesn't mean it's not there. And either way, there's the separation of difficulty of the game vesus the fundamentals of the battle system and whether those systems and depths are there or not, which are two separate discussions.
And either way, difficulty or no, I still don't gather what's the big difference between Pokémon and Persona, since the fundamentals are the same: exploit weaknesses whenever possible, otherwise use your most powerful attacks, and heal when necessary. That's the core strategy in both games. Persona might be harder, especially given that it actually has difficulty settings to begin with, but in terms of mechanics, your usually doing the same thing in Persona games that you would be doing in Pokémon games in those situations, so people acting like its leagues above Pokémon is just always confusing to me when that in particular gets brought up.
I'll throw in The Last Remnant.
You can make squadswith 6 members each. Depending on the abilities of each member of a squad(which in turn are dependent on their set up, and their effectiveness on how you elveled them up), you'll have access to different attacks; the make up itself of the squad will influence its stats. Add to that a "flow of battle" that'll influence how you do, and the possibility to intercept ennemy squad to prevent them to attack a weak swuad, and you have a pretty complex system.
You can make squadswith 6 members each. Depending on the abilities of each member of a squad(which in turn are dependent on their set up, and their effectiveness on how you elveled them up), you'll have access to different attacks; the make up itself of the squad will influence its stats. Add to that a "flow of battle" that'll influence how you do, and the possibility to intercept ennemy squad to prevent them to attack a weak swuad, and you have a pretty complex system.
OP, play Shin Megami Tensei Nocturne or IV.
SMT is like Pokemon except more customizable, more focused on strategy over grinding, and the single player stuff is tuned to actually encourage the player to take advantage of all the systems.
SMT is like Pokemon except more customizable, more focused on strategy over grinding, and the single player stuff is tuned to actually encourage the player to take advantage of all the systems.
It's not the battle system itself that is complex, in fact, it is one of the most simplistic of them all. It is the sheer size and variety of the possible movesets and characters (pokemon). The battles themselves are very generic turn based, no time limit, your turn then mine fanfare. Building your team, breeding abilities, natures, IVs, EVs, move pools, etc is where the complexity comes in. I think this is where the disconnect between people saying it is basic shit and people that are saying it is super deep is coming from. The bolded isn't considered part of the battle system by most as it doesn't take place in the battles.
Grinding? I know it's not the main point here, but people really shouldn't ever be grinding in Pokémon games these days. Especially with the Exp Share, which makes it so all your Pokémon get experience at the same time and you don't have to alternate or level each one individually anymore. Plus, with stuff like stat-boosting moves, and X-Items, even if you're underleveled a bit, there are usually ways out of those situations. Grinding really should never be needed in Pokémon though, unless one really messed up somewhere.
Pokémon's failure to encourage players to explore additional strategies in a genre that's been defined around stratrgizing for each battle / area / enemy is not something to gloss over.
One of the foundations of proper JRPG pacing is how you scale enemies, the degree of challenge, and the curve balls that force the player to rethink.
One of the foundations of proper JRPG pacing is how you scale enemies, the degree of challenge, and the curve balls that force the player to rethink.
Thanks for pretty much saying what I was going to say.
Pokemon battle system is simplistic, but the build your team aspect is where it shows it's complexity.
If we're talking only the battle system, yes, there's probably a ton that are more complex and fun than Pokemon.
What a tiny percentage of Pokémon's user base considers fun has no bearing on what most people consider the best rpg battle system. This is like Smash pros saying it's the most fun fighting game.
SMT in general, Octopath Traveller's turn-based combat are a lot of fun. Radiant Historia's is unique but it gets repetitive fast.
I agree with OP that Pokémon's combat system and team planning is some of the best in the industry, it's simplistic at first glance but there's lots of options if you want to spend time wirth the games.
I agree with OP that Pokémon's combat system and team planning is some of the best in the industry, it's simplistic at first glance but there's lots of options if you want to spend time wirth the games.
There is depth but it seems the community is the only ones that know it because the games are a chore being so easy qnd requiring zero thought or even comprehension of the mechanics.
For all the people downplaying KH3 by saying is too easy, pokemon games should be punished for that too because there aren't even difficulty modes.
