I normally find turn-based combat really boring but I find Shin Megami Tensei games so engrossing in part due to the combat. You need to pay attention to mechanics and properly prepare for each boss fight if you want to overcome them. It’s not about just gathering enough exp. Do you know any games similar to SMT when it comes to gameplay?
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SMT and its spin-offs like the Persona series are known for turn-based combat systems that emphasize strategy, exploiting enemy weaknesses, and team composition. Some suggestions:
- Persona: especially Persona 3 onwards offers a mix of life simulation with combat that’s similar to SMT.
- Etrian Odyssey: dungeon crawlers where you map out dungeons as you explore.
- Octopath Traveler: “2.5D” art style from Square Enix.
- Digital Devil Saga 1 & 2: spin-offs of the SMT series (have you played them already?).
- The Legend of Heroes: Trails: combat system with positioning on a grid.
- Divinity: Original Sin 2: Western RPG, but its combat system is deeply strategic. You can use the environment and elemental interactions.
- Darkest Dungeon: challenging roguelike that focuses on stress and psychological trauma.
- Fire Emblem: TRPGs where you move units around a battlefield on a grid. The combat is more about positioning.
- Bravely Default and Bravely Second: characters can “Brave” to take multiple actions or “Default” to defend and save actions for later turns.
- Final Fantasy X: You can reorder actions in battle. I always found this annoying but you seem to like it.
These RPGs vary in their execution, but might give you a similar satisfaction to what you’ve found in the SMT series.
Just to add my opinion on this list:
The Etrian odyssey series is uniquely ds/3ds style gameplay with the touchscreen map that you must make yourself. Highly recommend.
Divinity: Original Sin 2 does turn based tactics better than any game I’ve ever played, and I’ve played so many. If you like heavy world building rpgs and turn based battles that are as developed as they come, you owe it to yourself to grab this one on sale. Also, d:os2 is the precursor game and engine that eventually spawned Baldurs gate 3. So there’s that.
Bravely default and bravely second are both lightning in a bottle mixes of story telling and turn based combat. They are spiritual successors to the older final fantasy games by the same studio. The class/subclass system with the brave/default mechanic is absolutely sublime and unlike any other turn based game out there. Plus the story itself is amazing. Definitely worth picking up.
OK, that’s all I wanted to say.
I’ve played Persona 4 and 5 and am really looking forward to P3 Reloaded but it’s not quite the same enjoyment I found in those games as in the mainline SMT games. Party composition is not as much of a thing in Persona. I’ve seen Etrian Odyssey mentioned a few times before in the Megaten fandom so it seems like something I’d be into. The mainline games I’ve played are Nocturne, SMTIV and SMTV. I’m definitely playing Strange Journey next and then maybe Digital Devil Saga.
Nocturne is my jam. I loved a review that called it something of a isolating, lonely and claustrophobic feeling of a game. And indeed when you are walking around the curved corridors of the kalpas, you feel like you are indeed deep deep below the earth.
Since you’ve played P4, Persona Q might be a good on-ramp into Etrian Odyssey. It’s essentially EO’s gameplay with personas, characters and skills/spells from P3 and P4. Q2 has the P5 characters as well but only the Japanese voices (which is why I never got around to it).
Does it have to be a JRPG? If you want tactics in your turn-based games I recommend looking into cRPGs as the genre originally started as adaptions of tabletop games and has way deeper tactics compared to most JRPGs. Stuff like the Baldur’s Gate games, Dragon Age, Wasteland, Divinity: Original Sin 1+2 or Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura are all turn-based or real-time with pause which work similar enough to count. As a plus point most of them allow you to be rather creative in the way you play from stuff like talking an opponent into killing themselves to turning opponents into chicken and letting them bleed out with another skill.
imo it’s worth it to play the megaten spinoffs in general, just like what helix said in another comment here. In particular I would like to recommend Devil Survivor because of a lot of things: has a skill steal (skill crack) system so you progressively get better skills for yourself and your demons, makes you think about how you make your team, the first game has the best alignment ending choices in the whole megaten series, the demon auction system, and more. Also: Octopath traveler and its sequel are good
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tri-Ace games have fantastic combat mechanics, imo. Give the original Valkyrie Profile, any Star Ocean (later games have more intricate combat), or Resonance of Fate a spin.
This is the first I hear about tri-Ace games. Thanks!
