Summary
The argument has raged since the advent of gaming. Which is better - real-time, or turn-based? It’s a strawman’s debate of course, as both systems have their own merits that let them excel in certain scenarios. Gaming is inventive and artistic like that. But who’s to say both methods have to be separate, either?
While both systems can be wonderful on their own, there’s nothing saying they can’t just be together, lovingly blended. It’s a hard balancing act by all means, but these games took on the challenge to some astounding results.
The Like A Dragon series, having begun in the West as the Yakuza series, have always been known for theirreal-time brawling combat. It’s an exhilarating system, but everything has to change eventually. With the introduction of Ichiban as the new protagonist, the combat shifted to a turn-based one, though with plenty of the typical Like A Dragon flair.
In Infinite Wealth, Kiryu joins the party? And how does our famed brawler work in a turn-based system? Well it turns out, if he gets angry enough, Kiryu can even break the confines of the real-time system, letting him briefly relive his glory days as a real-time brawler. Because of course he can.
All of Supergiant’s games have been based on a very specific idea taken to its greatest lengths. And while Hades might be the studio’s most well-known entry, Transistor features one of its most sombre worlds, and a gameplay system dramatically apart from anything it has done before or since.
In Transistor, you equip abilities to yourself that you’re able to use in real-time, though this lacks grace. You can also stop time and plan out all your moves, letting them happen in an instant. This puts you at risk of not being able to use moves at all in real-time though, effectively letting enemies get a free turn on you instead.
The final boss of the game also takes this system further, to a more literal degree.
The Total War series iswell known for its grand strategy scale, and most games in the series blend its unique turn-based and real-time systems. What makes Total War: Three Kingdoms stand out in this regard is the visual way in which it is represented.
In Three Kingdoms, your actual turns, where you make choices about how to expand, enacting policies, and so on, is all turn-based. When it comes to combat though, your soldiers move in real-time, spreading across the battlefield according to your orders. It’s a fun twist on how a strategy game typically employs these systems.
Every game in the Xenoblade Chronicles series has a dramatically changed combat system from the previous entry, with very little being changed. What does tend to remain though is the real-time auto-battling aspects, and the inclusion of chain attacks. These system is at its purest in the original Xenoblade Chronicles.
The vast majority of the game is real-time, no doubt about it. Your attacks are automatic, with your throwing in an art every now and then. Chain Attacks make the system briefly turn-based, with your and your companions performing arts once after the other. This lets you build up some powerful status effects, employing a more tactical edge to the combat than you could in real-time.
Some enemies, such as Tirkins, are also able to perform Chain Attacks on players which you cannot defend against.
Undertale is a genre-defining phenomenon in its own right now, though acknowledging where it came from is important to fully understand it. Undertale takes heavily fromthe likes of Earthboundand other turn-based classics, though throws in plenty of its own real-time elements to throw you off.
In combat, you must still make choices, such as using items or talking to the enemy, and of course fighting. Fighting itself is a real-time affair though, with your defending your own heart while attacking the enemies. It feels almost akin to a rhythm game, though with a more unsettling edge to it.
Owing to its heritage from both Persona and Shin Megami Tensei, Metaphor takes elements from both while introducing plenty of its own new creations, such as a wonderfully deep job system in Archetypes. What it also introduced, in the most literal sense, is a blend fo real-time and turn-based combat.
In the majority of combat, you take part in turn-based battles that pull mainly from the Shin Megami Tensei battle system. Not every fight needs to be a whole thing though, and you can just as easily whittle and enemy down, and even defeat them entirely, in the overworld. It helps massively for grinding, and opens up a way of weakening powerful enemies.
Unicorn Overlord is a fun system, as it employs a type of combat that is both turn-based and real-time, and neither at the same time. As the player, everything is prep in the game as when it comes to the actual battles, you don’t really have any say in what happens. You just have to hope you planned enough in advance.
In Unicorn Overlord, you need to build a team of units and set tactics for them, in order of precedence. This determines what actions they will take, how they react to actions, and so on. And while they move across the overworld in real-time, the battles themselves are turn-based. Except the turns are taken automatically based on your tactics, without you being able to micromanage. It is an enticing system that demands you understand its systems.
iIf there was ever a series that personified the blend of real-time and turn-based combat, it would absolutely be Final Fantasy. While the initial three entries utilised a more traditional turn-based system, the Active Time Battle (ATB) system was introduced in Final Fantasy 4, and that determined the system for the series since.
The ATB system has characters still take turns once their ATB bar fills, though if someone else has a higher speed stat, they can skip to their turn to attack first. In FFX-2 and FF13, any character with a full ATB bar can attack, even at the same time and potentially cancel each other’s attacks out. The system has had plenty of inventive uses across the series.
Final Fantasy 10 is one of the few FF games since FF3 that is entirely turn-based.
