RPGs with the best combat systems

[Bat Vader]

The Witcher 2 has a very good combat system. One of the best I have ever played in an RPG. I enjoyed the combat in the Mass Effect games as well. While the combat in Dragon Age: Origins can be slow at times overall I enjoyed the combat in it; especially the finishing moves. I love the combat in Kingdom Hearts 2. The combat in KH1 was good but KH2 had a much better combat engine. I wish more JRPGs had combat like Kingdom Hearts 2.

I wanted to like FFXII but the thing that kept me from liking it and made me stop playing it altogether was the combat. I absolutely hated it. FFXIII should have had the combat system of Kingdom Hearts II but instead it got something that was terrible.

 

[elvor0]

You could just run through Baldurs Gate with 6 auto attack machines with different elemental weapons, if you want it even easier stack up on potions and scrolls.

Yeah...sorry I'm going to have to join the other people tearing you apart for that one. Which is precisely what would happen to you if you were to play BG 1/2 like that.

Mindflayers man. Mindflayers. Vampires and their fucking life drain, wizards will melt your brain before incinerating your freshly demented warrior. Bilbo Baggins would have more of a chance against a Red Dragon than a group of 6 auto attackers. Beholders would tear any buffs you had a new arsehole before making Medusa proud with their stonework.

Nevermind the fact that different weapons have different effects on different types of armor.

You /might/ just might be able to do that with the game on easiest settings, and even then I find it would be almost improbable on the final parts of BG1 and a good portion of BG2.

Yeah I know that statement wasn't supposed to be taken literally, but don't make points like that because you know it's going to come back to bite you in the arse.

On Topic?

Hack n Slash - Kingdoms of Alamur, fucking supurb, really enjoyed it, every way to play felt vastly different and some of the kill animations where fucking brutally beautiful. Like feeding a spike tailed lizard thing its own tail and watching it split open. The only problem I had with the combat was some encounters were obviously left over from its days as an MMO. The Maid of Windmere for a start. And the final boss was shite.

First Person - Dark Messiah of Might and Magic. /THAT/ is how you make a first person combat system, proper blocking, technique, weight, destructible environments, environmental weapons. I once fought some one in a library, a huge multi-tiered one. I knocked him to the planks and because they'd taken too much damage after having caught fire from a torch we knocked over mid fight, they broke, he fell through several stories and I followed him down to impale him as I landed. Because it ran on a highly modified version of the source engine it came with all the loveliness that that brings. Move over Skyrim!

"Turn-based" FF - X2, again, whatever other problems that game had going on, the combat system was the best of the genre, fast, fluid and fun.

 

[Eliwood10]

Unpopular opinion: Final Fantasy XII's system was very fun. it kept a traditional FF feel while improving and streamlining what came before. Biggest complaint I hear is that it makes the game play itself to which I say the gambits are completely optional, but very helpful even if you only want to streamline your tactics. And the fact that it removed random encounters entirely was a godsend.

The World End With You deserves special mention because there really is no system like it that I can think of. It's fun and challenging to use. The mechanics explicitly tie into the larger game as a metaphor to the main themes of the story. Just brilliant overall.

Fire Emblem is great for it's simple, easy to understand approach to turn based strategy.

 

[EstrogenicMuscle]

Every single Tales game.

Everyone who hasn't played Tales or Tales of games needs to go play them now.
It is one of many reasons Tales games are so great. They need more notice. It's sad because the West seems kind of at odds with experimenting with jRPGs outside of Final Fantasy. Tales has long been one of the big three in Japan along with Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy. And Tales is currently doing better in Japan than Final Fantasy. But here in the West people only seem to know Final Fantasy.

Tales long, long ago did away with random battles. One of people's most common complaints with jRPGs. They've also never, ever had turn based combat. They also consistently contain some degree of open exploration. Far more than Final Fantasy XIII. Tales of Vesperia has a much bigger world to explore than Final Fantasy XIII. And Tales of Xillia has a much, much bigger world to explore than Final Fantasy XIII. And people have been also complaining about a lack of fast travel in Japanese RPGs for years. Tales of Xillia has that, too. They also still have engaging characters and plot twists and plot twists that Final Fantasy games have long been without.

What are you waiting for, Tales of Xillia is calling your name if any of these criticisms apply to you. Fast travel, no random encounters, good action combat, explorable worlds, good characters, and good plots.

But especially for this thread is the combat good. Some of the best in RPGs period, Eastern or Western. If you don't like turn based combat, something like Tales of Graces or Vesperia is absolutely the game for you. Tales has crafted an constantly evolving and improving battle system that is quick, and engaging. With multiple difficulty levels, being brutally difficult at the highest. Hardcore gamers will be extremely satisfied with fighting

Spoiler

Nebilim

in unknown mode/difficulty in Tales of the Abyss.

Tales combat is exceptionally great and puts most combat in both jRPGs and wRPGs to shame. It is a quality that needs to be experienced by most RPG players.

Tales games in general,especially Vesperia and Graces
A combo video speaks better than a thousand words

YMMV on which is better,Vesperia has Judith,and doesn't have that stupid accuracy system Graces had(if you don't have a high accuracy,your attacks won't stagger enemies with high evasion),Graces has the awesome quick step system(you can quickly dash in a direction by blocking and moving your stick where you want to go,or just press your stick twice real fast,if an enemy attacks you while you are doing this,you will get some CC and you will nullify all damage,even healing it if you have the right skills,this might seem broken,but it isn't),and the CC system(you can chain attacks as long as you have CC,it quickly regenerates when you are not attacking)

Right, well put. I'm glad someone else knows. The word definitely needs to be spread. A lot of people who hate turn based combat don't even know of Tales games.

Also, whether one likes turn based combat or not, this is objectively high quality. There are a couple of broken strategies in Tales of Vesperia if you know what you're doing like Rita Mordio's Tidal Wave. But aside from that combat is solid. Tales of Graces is arguably even better in some ways. Having no broken characters. I know that some people don't like the stamina system, I don't much either. But the Graces system has its own great benefits and can't be abused in the same ways as the Vesperia system.

If you don't mind spoilers, here are some examples of other entertaining battles in Tales games.

Graces optional fight(pre-after-story):

Spoiler

Tales of the Abyss optional boss(SPOILER!):

Spoiler

 

[Chris Tian]

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Its a little funny how you all act as if i did not play the Baldurs Gate games on the hardest difficulty more times than I care to remember.

The full meele runthrough is totaly possible, I did that, so that point stands.

I am also not trying to say DA:O is harder or whatnot, but most people keep listing points they like more about Baldurs Gate so I will try to make my point from a different angle.

If game A is vastly more complex and/or tacticaly challanging than game B, it would force every player to think alot more about what he does in the game.

This statement would be true if you compare CoD with a Total War game on a strategic and tactical level. The same would be true if you compare CoD with Baldurs Gate or Dragon Age.

This statement seizes to be true when you compare Baldurs Gate and Dragon Age.

I did not have to put more thought into playing Baldurs Gate than in playing DA:O, the two games felt remarkably similar to me.
In both games the Warriors do their hacking and slashing and fire a special abilitiy every now and then, the Casters would always use the same handfull of spells to do their job and the Rogues disarm traps, open locks and do their backstab or archery thing.

If Baldurs Gate were so much more challengeing, I too would have been forced to put much more thought in playing Baldurs Gate than into Dragon Age.

Since both games felt similar to me, the different level of challenge and complexity you feel between the two games is one of personal preference and not a universal truth. If it were the later everybody would feel the same way.

 

[The Madman]

Its a little funny how you all act as if i did not play the Baldurs Gate games on the hardest difficulty more times than I care to remember.

The full meele runthrough is totaly possible, I did that, so that point stands.

You haven't actually refuted anything any of us have said, all you've done is said "I say it isn't, which makes it true!" which frankly isn't much of an argument.

And honestly I'm not sure I do believe you played it. In BG2 there are, as I recall, only two pure class fighters in the entire game: Mazzy and Korgan. Then if your PC is a fighter as well that would make 3 melee classes. A full group is 6. So unless you played the entire game multiplayer then right there it's already impossible to have done what you said.

Still I'll give you the benefit of the doubt. For some reason, I assume boredom, you started up a multiplayer game and created an entire party of fighters... because. How did you actually beat any of the challenges the three of us mentioned then? I'm curious. Fighters have a few priest scrolls they can use but that's about it and few wands will allows fighters to use them either. So how exactly DID you beat the vampire sections? How did you get past the mindflayers, who only take a few hits to kill any fighter regardless of level or armour class? How did you beat the Beholders or Dragons?

I'm curious, I've never heard of anyone beating the game on its hardest difficulty with just fighters. I can think of a few tricks that might have worked, but on the hardest difficulty it would definitely have been tricky to pull off and required a hell of a lot of quickloading.

Also why? Having the characters interact both with you and each other is half the fun of Baldur's Gate. It must be dreadfully boring to complete the entire game without any NPC dialogue and a group of just fighters.

I'm also going to assume you've played through BG multiple times since you mention casters while also talking about a full fighter group.

 

[Chris Tian]

You haven't actually refuted anything any of us have said, all you've done is said "I say it isn't, which makes it true!" which frankly isn't much of an argument.

Well, no and somehow yes. My point is:
That Baldurs Gate is so much complexer than DA:O is not a universal truth, that is the same for everybody, if it were such it had to be true for me too.
So my feeling that BG1/2 and DA:O are equal, basically disproves that claim.
That means, my feeling BG and DA are equal and your feeling BG is more complex/challening are now opinions, none of which can claim to be fact or universaly true.

I can't refute anything else any of you said, because all of it are opinions and that makes everything besides the claim that your opinions are fact totally valid.

I thought I made my point very clear in my last post, but somehow you choose only to respond to the, for my point completly irrelevant, matter of the melee-run.

And honestly I'm not sure I do believe you played it. In BG2 there are, as I recall, only two pure class fighters in the entire game: Mazzy and Korgan. Then if your PC is a fighter as well that would make 3 melee classes. A full group is 6. So unless you played the entire game multiplayer then right there it's already impossible to have done what you said.

Yes, because you would not know how to do something, that makes it clearly impossible. And I totally argue about the differences between two games, one of which I havent even played, because that makes sense.

I never said "pure fighter class", I said "meele-group" and "auto-attack-machines", for me that means everybody who uses autoattack for more than 90% of the time. That includes Paladines, Kensais and whathaveyou.
I dont really know how to answer your question as to "how" I did it, since its not actually all that difficult. You can even solo the game, just google "Baldurs Gate 2 solo Kensai/Mage", so doing the same with six melee-mostly-auto-attack-users seems really easy in comparison.

Edit: I meant Barbarian... "Baldurs Gate solo Barbarian"

 

[Stray Samurai]

I wouldn't call this the best but definitely was the best when it came out. Revenant. A must play!

Here's a link to a bit of early gameplay:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UU2TCIf1k0U

It would be great if the new Torment game had a combat system like this.

 

[Pulse]

Dragons dogma.

I've praised its combat enough times on this site.

It's pretty damn close to perfect combat wise.

 

[Aircross]

I'll have to go with the Tales series as well, especially Tales of Destiny Remake, which arguably has the fastest combat system.


Heck, even spell casting is fast.

...and yes, I'm a sprite lover.

 

[DementedSheep]

Dark souls I'd say. I've played the demo for Kingdoms of Amular and that was quite good too (and I intend to buy it at some point) but I can't really judge that form a demo alone.
Mount and blade for mounted combat.

Baldurs Gate is fun once you get some tools...until you get high enough for instant death spells that is. I hate them, I hate having party member die to them because it always feels cheap and you can be completely dominating a fight and them all of sudden you have to restart because of it and hate using them because winning with one is always very unsatisfying.