Can someone explain to me the appeal of this combat system over something like pure turn-based? What is the point of the waiting between turns?
ATB combat
Thomas Jenkins
Wyatt Williams
The point is to give the illusion of an RPG with some action elements. Only midwits like it.
Brody Jackson
Fpbp
Caleb Diaz
It brings timing into the equation and can influence your strategy. Only 5 and 7 used it well.
Joseph Jenkins
is that the GBA version? it looks hideous. ISHYGDDT
Elijah Parker
The PSP version is worse: inconsistent internal asset resolution.
Isaiah Barnes
Speed influences how many actions they can take instead of turn order.
Eli Smith
RPGS combat is an abstraction. What looks like slowly choosing attacks and taking turns attacking is actually a real time brawl, with attacks happening in tandem and chaos all around. RPGs just need a way to slow it down and let you choose what you want to do. So as a kid you would imagine the battles happening in real time. To make the games closer to this, they added ATB so that time actually becomes an element in battle. FFXV and FFVIIR are the first games to really realize the combat they've been trying to accomplish since VI.
Benjamin Cooper
It introduces some more elements such as the ability to act more than once in a single "round" and in FFIV you had cast times for skills.
Gavin Moore
This. The ATB system allows characters to actually have a speed stat that affects how many actions they can take in battle. Think of it like in DnD how your DEX affects your turn order because the fastest character is probably going to move first.