Battles: A matter of spacetime

Progress is slow but steady on Kadath! I’m developing the battle system at the moment, and wanted to write a bit about my observations.

The Games

I will try to limit myself to the games from Kotaku’s 20 JRPGs You Must Play. They are:

• Chrono Trigger
• Dragon Quest VIII
• Earthbound
• Final Fantasy VI
• Final Fantasy VII
• Final Fantasy IX
• Illusion of Gaia
• Kingdom Hearts II
• Lost Odyssey
• Lufia 2
• Lunar 2: Eternal Blue Complete
• Ni no Kuni
• Persona 5
• Phantasy Star IV
• Radiant Historia
• Suikoden II
• Super Mario RPG
• The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky
• Xenogears

I might include other examples if I find them interesting enough. I’ll also skip Final Fantasy Tactics since I kinda consider Tactical RPGS their own genre.

About Time

How does a game interleave the player party’s actions and the enemies’ actions? This is solved in various ways by games, some of which I’ll try to describe now. We’ll go from the most abstract ones to the more real-like systems.

Round-based

In a game with round-based combat, battle is divided in rounds where the player inputs actions for each of their characters, and then each combatant takes a single action depending on their speed. This means that speed only determines if a characters acts earlier in a given round: the only thing that matters is whether their speed is higher or not. For example, in a battle between two characters, it doesn’t matter if the fastest character has two times or ten times the other’s speed: the action order will be the same.

Some examples:

• Dragon Quest VIII
• Earthbound
• Lufia 2
• Lunar 2: Eternal Blue Complete
• Phantasy Star IV
• Suikoden II

• Super Mario RPG

• Lost Odyssey

In addition to the acting character’s Speed stat, turn order is also affected by character’s Casting Time and the action’s Casting Speed. Some actions might take multiple rounds to execute, and they can be delayed if the character is hit by attacks under certain conditions.

• Persona 5

Persona 5 doesn’t have rounds, but instead strictly interleaves actions between the player and the enemy sides. Roughly, the fastest entity from either side goes first; the highest-agility entity from the opposite side goes next and so on. The system has slightly different behavior for bosses, ambushes, preemptive attacks and battles with an uneven number of fighters on each side, but that’s the general gist of it.

Queue-based

This type of battle system takes into account the relative difference in speed between characters. The battle system has an internal, global, non-real time clock; each character’s speed determines how many clock ticks must pass before they can take another action. In this way, a character that has ten times the speed of another might need wait for a tenth of the ticks, so it can act ten times before the other makes a move. The clock is fast-forwarded programatically to the next action each time, so there’s no waiting actually involved.

Used in:

• Radiant Historia
• The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky

Active-time battle

ATB stands for Active Time Battle. The system adds action gauges for each character and enemy; these gauges refill in real time. Once a character’s gauge is filled, they can perform an action, which depletes their gauge. This, in effect, combines aspects of turn-based combat and real-time combat. Usually, only the player’s party members’ gauges are visible.

A problem with this system concerns menus. If the action gauges keep on refilling while selecting actions or items(usually called ‘active’ ATB), battles can be decided by how quickly the player can navigate menus, since enemies will perform attacks while the player is busy with the UI. This means the UI becomes an extra ‘enemy’ for the player. On the other hand, if action gauges don’t refill while navigating menus (usually called ‘wait’ ATB), it’s easy for the player to resort to opening a menu and planning their next action from there, thereby eliminating the active aspect of the system. Another problem is that sometimes the player can be just waiting for ATB gauges to fill: while it might create moments of tension, it can also get boring.

Used in:

• Chrono Trigger
• Final Fantasy VI
• Final Fantasy VII
• Final Fantasy IX
• Xenogears

In Xenogears, once a character’s ATB gauge fills up, they receive an amount of Action Points which they can then spend. Each action has its own AP cost, and the player can keep inputting commands as long as they have APs left.

Pausable real-time

These games feature real-time combat, but some UI interactions or actions either slow down time or completely pause the action, allowing the player to make more strategic choices.

Used in:

• Ni no Kuni:

The battle pauses while you choose a party member to control and enemies to target, but you can freely move around and perform actions in real time as attacks are performed. Special actions act as as cutscenes that pauses battle.

• Final Fantasy VII Remake

Strict real-time

These battle systems are pretty much stepping into hack-and-slash territory. Since actions and decisions are made in real time, actions tend to be bound to button combinations or simple inputs, to avoid forcing the player to navigate multiple menus.

Used in:

• Illusion of Gaia
• Kingdom Hearts II

About Space

Does the distance between characters affect what they can do? Can they move in the battlefield? Does it matter? Again, games answer these question in different ways. These are some of those, going from the more restricted/abstract to the more free/realistic.

None or very limited

Some games don’t consider spatial positioning at all as a factor. The party is usually rendered in a row facing the enemies, usually also in a row. Attacks target one or multiple characters, but their relative position is not taken into account.

Used in:

• Dragon Quest VIII
• Earthbound
• Persona 5
• Phantasy Star IV
• Super Mario RPG

• Xenogears

• Pokémon

While Pokémon games normally don’t consider spatial positioning, the fifth generation of Pokémon games (Black/White/Black 2/White 2) introduced Triple Battles, where three Pokémon on one side fight against three on the other. In these battles, some moves take into account whether a Pokémon is adjacent to another: for example, Selfdestruct will damage all adjacent Pokémon. If the Pokémon using Selfdestruct is in the left or right spots, it will hit two of the opposing Pokémon and one of its allies, while if it’s on the center it will hit all three opponents and both of its allies.

Row system

Some games use the concept of a front row and a back row, where characters placed in the front row deal more damage, receive more damage, or both; characters in the back row deal more damage, receive less damage, or both. There are usually some ways to circumvent the attack reduction for back row characters: using ranged weapons or spells, for example.

Used in:

• Final Fantasy VI, Final Fantasy VII

Only the party has a front and a back row. A back attack from an enemy starts a battle where the front and back row assignments start out reversed. Additionally, some battles can be a ‘pincer attack’, where the party is attacked by a group of enemies to its left and one to its right. Attacks that usually affect all enemies will only affect one of the groups at a time.

• Lost Odyssey

Both the enemies and the party have front and back rows. The total amount of HP of characters in the front row determines the bonuses characters in the back row get.

• Lufia 2

Only the party has front and back rows, each of them able to hold 2 characters. The second character in the front row also gets damage reduction, but to a lesser extent than those in the back row.

• Suikoden II

Both the enemies and the party have front and back rows. In addition, depending on the weapon wielded by a character, they’re classified as short, medium or long range. Short range characters can only hit the enemies in the front row, and only from the front row; medium range characters can attack the front row enemies from both the front and back row; finally, long range characters can attack both the front and back row of enemies from both the front and back row.

Grids

These games feature a grid where characters are positioned. Usually, this means both party characters and enemies can perform actions that change their position in the grid. Attacks can affect variously-shaped grid areas (lines, crosses, etc) allowing characters to take advantage of their enemies’ formations. This means formations can become very relevant for battle. In fact, a whole genre spawned from this: the Tactical RPG genre.

• Lunar 2: Eternal Blue Complete

• The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky

• Radiant Historia

Curiously, Radiant Historia uses a very small (3x3) grid for enemies, which work like rows. The player characters do not have any sort of spatial positioning, but they do have spatial-related actions that can reposition enemies, damage certain grid patterns, etc.

Free 2D

These games allow players and enemies to be freely positioned in a 2D arena; relative positioning affects attacks. Concepts like range back attacks can become very relevant. Usually used in real-time battles, where the user can reposition freely as they choose their actions.

Used by:

• Illusion of Gaia

• Ni no Kuni

• Chrono Trigger

In Chrono Trigger’s battles, both enemies and the player’s party are freely positioned in the screen. Notably, while most enemies constantly move over the battlefield, and some enemy attacks can move the party characters around, the player has no way of repositioning. Some attacks and techniques take into account spatial positioning: some hit all enemies in a line that passes through the attacker; others hit the vicinity of an ally or an enemy.

Free 3D

In addition to free 2D movement, some games include jumps and other acrobatics that make use of vertical space in order to evade attacks, reposition and attack. This, again, is close to hack-and-slash and action-adventure games.

Used by:

• Kingdom Hearts II

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That’s it! I think I’m going with a Queue system similar to Radiant Historia for time management, and a Free 2D system for spatial positioning similar to Chrono Trigger (but with some way to let the player reposition). We’ll see how that goes!