Retro What are your thoughts on Final Fantasy's ATB?

[Yzz]

The ATB meter, that little bar that gets filled over time and determines when a character can act, is one of the most iconic aspects of the classic Final Fantasy games and other Square RPGs like Chrono Trigger. Introduced in FFIV and used all the way to FFIX in 2000, the ATB system was the start of Square's tradition of fusing classical turn-based combat with action elements, which led to the creation of similar battle systems; however we are not talking about those today.

Many, if not all the ATB games allow you to activate "Wait" mode, which pauses every time meter when you are choosing a command from the menu, thus giving you all the time in the world to decide your next move. If you choose "Active" mode, every second is precious and enemies can attack you while you choose a command. There has been discussions about whether Wait mode or Active mode are the best way to play the games. Many people, myself included, play in wait mode because it's easier, the games feel more strategic, and/or because the length of the menus can negatively affect your performance in active mode. Active mode stans argue that said mode is the way the game was intended to be played, because it adds urgency to the battles and tests the player's ability to make quick decisions.

Just like there are discussions about wait vs active, the ATB system itself has its defenders and critics. The defenders claim that the system is fun and that Square successfully married the strategic aspect of turn-based battles with the thrill of action games. Most ATB critics, on the other hand, argue that the battle system is just a regular turn-based system with extra steps.

Chrono Trigger
Ok, so I'm pretty much a critic of the ATB system as a whole, because I feel that the real-time element adds almost no strategic value to the battles. I think that some FF games trick you at the beginning by making you think that waiting has strategic value in battle, when in most battles you are going to give commands as fast as you can. The mist dragon in FFIV and the whelk in FFVI, both boss battles at the beginning of their respective games, are tutorials about how some enemies have time windows during which you shouldn't attack them, which is a very cool concept! The problem is that at least 90% of the enemies on those games don't have any sort of time window that alters the rhythm of battle, so you are better just rushing and attacking instead of waiting.

Because of this, I think that Chrono Trigger has probably the best implementation of the ATB. Although some of CT enemies are able to change the rhythm of the battle, like the mist dragon or the whelk, the game improves on the ATB system with the addition of the combo techs. CT's combo moves add strategic value to waiting, because it makes you think "should I attack right now, or should I wait for a super attack?". Unlike FF which sought to give depth to the ATB system via enemy design, CT gives depth to the system with a core mechanic that is always present.

CT's area of effect techs, which require the player to pay attention to enemies' positioning, movement and patterns, also add strategic value to waiting. When fighting multiple enemies, the player must ask themself if they want to use the cyclone tech ASAP, or wait until all the enemies on the screen concentrate on a single spot. However I feel that there was some wasted potential in this particular aspect.

What do you think is the best implementation of the ATB, and what do you think about the system in general?

 

[Mekanos]

I've never liked ATB, even in my favorite FF games like 7 and 9 I would much rather just have a normal turn based system. I don't think turn based system needs to have a ticking clock element to be interesting or good.

Though I actually really liked how FF7R uses it, it makes a lot more sense in an actual action game.

 

[Yamanoi]

I like proper turn based or proper action. ATB always felt weird to me. What user Mekanos posted above about FF7R I 100% agree with.

 

[xghost777]

I love ATB and wish it came back more often. It’s fun to queue up attacks and then be able to react when something goes wrong. I play in Wait mode since I like being able to pause the action if needed, but still be able to listen to the music and sometimes let attacks already happening play out. Chrono Trigger and Final Fantasy VI are my favorite games with ATB.

 

[chocolate_supra]

I loooooove ATB. I agree Chrono Trigger was the best implementation of it, and when thinking about why I prefer it to straight-up turn-based, I think my brain likes having some visual mechanic show me which character is up next and when. I'm in the middle of Chrono Cross right now (another battle system I love) and I notice myself watching the Stamina gauges the same way I'd watch the ATB gauge to sort of plan slightly ahead depending on who's next. I think it's a great system.

 

[Party Sklar]

I like ATB, but in retrospect it was probably more limited than the developers would have liked and feels a bit gimmicky. It was supposed to bring dynamism to the fights, but in the end I don't find the fights in FFVII more dynamic than, say, those in FFX. That's why I liked the combat system in FFVIIR so much: it felt like we finally had ATB that works.

 

[freedomseekr]

ATB's best implementation, as far as I'm concerned, didn't even come from a Square game. Rather, it was Game Arts's Grandia series and specifically, Grandia II, that really made the system work by making the ATB bar more interactive through the possibility to cancel attacks that were incoming and adding positioning to the battle system as an element (though the game does a poor job teaching you how to use it).

That being said, I still enjoy Final Fantasy's version of ATB a lot, even if its version is a bit more limited than what others did with it afterwards - but this has generally been an issue with Square's - or, more precisely, FF's - combat systems where they invent a system but do little to evolve it internally and abandon it some time down the road and it usually takes another studio to pick up ideas they pioneered and revitalize them with a new spin.

 

[PixelKnight]

I really dislike it in FFIX. As the combat animations are so long that, once you’ve got regen on units, they are regenerating multiple times between actions, and the bars fill up completely while long summons play out anyway. I much prefer turn-based like FFX or Trails where all units sit on a timeline, and stats like speed make their turn come up faster, and you can directly see where ‘slow’ and ‘haste’ mechanics are having an effect on friendly and enemy units.

 

[Brock Reiher]

I think it ranges from bad to horrible. In FF7 you can mostly ignore it, but it makes games like FF6 outright bad as far as I'm concerned. My favorite final fantasy battle system is 1 where it's properly turn based and you can speed everything up really fast.

 

[Gabev]

Genius design.

 

[JazzPotatoes]

The thing that ATB has over regular turn based combat is that it punishes you fit sitting on your hands and taking too long to decide on commands. You still have to be reactive and balancing offense and defense while playing in a turn based manner.

Frankly, FF should go back to a turn based ATB system. Not everyone has the reflexes or motor skills for fast paced action combat, and ATB offered a combat system that allowed a wide variety of people to get into those early games and become fans. It's not realistic, but then, these are games where you ride Chocobos and summon gods and demons to fight sentient cacti.

 

[chocolate_supra]

Frankly, FF should go back to a turn based ATB system. Not everyone has the reflexes or motor skills for fast paced action combat, and ATB offered a combat system that allowed a wide variety of people to get into those early games and become fans. It's not realistic, but then, these are games where you ride Chocobos and summon gods and demons to fight sentient cacti.

And in addition to the "reflexes and motor skills" bit, not everyone can digest what's going on in a battle where you're having to constantly control a character. Turn-based allows you to watch the battlefield, watch what attacks/spells are being used, and strategize instead of having to constantly move around and attack. And like you said, ATB offers a way for that to still feel kinetic.

 

[JazzPotatoes]

The other benefit of turn based/ATB is that it gives you a way of directly controlling different characters during combat. This is great because it means whatever connection you're trying to create with the characters through the story gets reinforced by allowing that player to play as them during the combat, choosing which spells to use, who to heal etc.

My connection to Vivi was so much more emotional in FFIX because I picked all his spells and commands in battle and know just what a cute little ball of world ending destruction he is.

AI controlled companions fighting in real time don't offer the same connection.

 

[chocolate_supra]

The other benefit of turn based/ATB is that it gives you a way of directly controlling different characters during combat. This is great because it means whatever connection you're trying to create with the characters through the story gets reinforced by allowing that player to play as them during the combat, choosing which spells to use, who to heal etc.

My connection to Vivi was so much more emotional in FFIX because I picked all his spells and commands in battle and know just what a cute little ball of world ending destruction he is.

AI controlled companions fighting in real time don't offer the same connection.

Exactly
I don't even know what Ignis, Gladiolus, and Prompto fight like because, like, I've never actually seen it.

 

[SammyJ9]

I used to not mind it, and I guess I can just say I'm 'indifferent' to ATB systems. I'd much rather it just be full turn-based like FFX or Octopath. If you want to use ATB to be a way to show how fast characters are by their bars filling up faster, that's fine, but I'm always going to use the 'wait' system anyway so I don't have to worry about time passing while I'm in menus or deciding.

 

[PixelKnight]

I used to not mind it, and I guess I can just say I'm 'indifferent' to ATB systems. I'd much rather it just be full turn-based like FFX or Octopath. If you want to use ATB to be a way to show how fast characters are by their bars filling up faster, that's fine, but I'm always going to use the 'wait' system anyway so I don't have to worry about time passing while I'm in menus or deciding.

Yeah I vastly prefer the precision of turn-based with showing upcoming turns on a timeline, and the benefits of high speed, buffs/debuffs in play etc, to any kind of sense of interaction offered by ATB bars filling up. As you can’t see the enemy ATB bar so it’s still a compromise involving guesswork, and at the point you’ve got multiple fast characters in the party, their turns are effectively making you queue anyway, just with less information. At that point I’d rather be playing a modern turn-based game (where they tend to give you much more info these days, something criticism of TB as dated can often ignore) or an action rpg, rather than something in the middle that gets the advantage of neither.