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The "Press Turn" System in Megaten and why it's gud

W

warheat

Member
I'm currently on my DDS playthrough and I just died 3 times to the same enemy. I have no one to blame but myself because I choose to conserve MP where I should've play it safe and heal. I fell in love with the risk/reward in "Press Turn" system where things can go off rails really really fast if you don't know what you're doing / you're greedy. I found this post on reddit explaining why it's so good.

courtesy of /u/The0thArcana

What is the Press Turn System? (hence:PTS)

Ok, so the Press Turn System is the Turn Based Combat System used in SMT: Nocturne, SMT: IV and the Digital Devil Saga games. I could explain the structure, but honestly I think watching this little video of the first boss in Nocturne will explain most of it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ayH3ePJcWJ4

For those of you who still want a much more complicated breakdown of the system, it's as follows:

  • The combat system alternates between player rounds and enemy rounds (not always in that order).
  • A round ends when there are no more turns left.
  • The amount of (unpressed) turns you get at the start of a round is equal to the amount of characters in the party (though not always the case with bosses)
  • Hitting an enemy with a weakness or a critical hit will make the turn glow (press it), instead of using up a turn. An easy way to understand this is to see hitting a weakness as costing "half a turn".
  • A pressed turn functions the exact same as a normal turn except that it can't be pressed again.
  • Missing an attack or hitting the enemy with an attack they Void will lose you that turn and an extra turn.
  • Having your attack Absorbed or Repelled in any way will immediately end your turn.
  • If you have pressed and unpressed turns, scoring a critical or hitting a weakness will press an unpressed turn instead of consuming the pressed one, while using a normal action will only consume a pressed turn.
  • Both the player party and the enemy party follow the exact same rules.
Right, so that is the Press Turn System in a nutshell. Now let's look at why it's good.

Why it's gud
So the Press Turn System inherently does one thing and then there is another thing they did that was important. This second thing is luck.

Luck
Luck gets a lot of flack in games. Especially in turn based ones. I've seen many attempts at fixing luck in games. Some only have positive luck (only the enemy can miss), some games minimize it (poison: 10% chance to poison target. 100MP) and some remove it entirely.

The hate against luck comes from the idea that players should have complete agency over their actions and that being at the mercy of luck might create situations in which the player loses due to no fault of his own, thus leading to a frustrating experience.

And honestly, it's a fair argument. Luck in a game creates unexpected situations, sometimes situations which are impossible to deal with, and let me tell you, the games that use the Press Turn System do have those. Sometimes you'll be thrown in an unfair situation. But that's the point though.

Yes, luck can lead to frustration, especially in games with quite a bit of luck like the games that use the PTS. But luck, at it's core creates unexpected situations. Situations for the player to deal with. This is interesting. A game without luck is completely within expectation. How can that be engaging? Note that all games that use the PTS are basically dungeon crawlers. You're at A, you need to go to B, there are heaps of monsters in your way. How then do you keep players engaged in your combat system? How do you not make it a chore to fight that same group Archangel, Power, Archangel over and over again? By introducing luck. Sometimes, you will be ambushed, sometimes the Archangel will get a critical giving it the damage it needed to kill one of your guys, sometimes the enemy party will kill one of your guys and mute your healer. It's up to you to figure out a way to deal with this on the spot. To be able to come back from tough situations.

This is what people whine (read:love) about the PTS. This is why people say it's so uber hard. It isn't hard, it's just uncaring. It won't pull it's punches for you. Chance dictates that the game will sometimes force you into unexpected, difficult situations, simply because that's how the dice rolled. And while this might not be fun, it does require you to stop and quickly find an effective way to get out of it (or you can just die). It's the equivalent of being thrown a puzzle that you can't immediately solve. Solve it or die. Engaging.

However, I believe a game that sololy relies on this luck to create a difficult game isn't good. If a game was just hard because it sometimes murders you and there is nothing you can do about it, then that would suck. Which is exactly why the PTS does give you something you can do about it.

Segway into the thing I mentioned which the system inherently does...

Reward and punishment
What is the most valuable thing a turn based system can give you? Well, obviously more turns.
And how does this game give you more turns? By hitting weaknesses and crits (but you'll mostly get them through hitting weaknesses since that's more reliable).

This is where the system shines. You see, having electric attacks isn't enough, you need to know that an enemy is weak to electricity. And what does the game do once you apply that knowldge? It give you more turns! more damage, more healing, more buffing, more options.

This game greatly rewards you for your knowledge.

On the flip side, this game also greatly punishes you for your mistakes. How? By taking turns away from you for doing badly.

This is what's gud about the system itself. At it's core, the way to beat this game is knowing what you're doing. You can have the strongest party in the world, and still get destroyed if you just do whatever. The game requires you to stop, figure out the weaknesses of opponents as fast as possible and applying that knowledge to beat them down.
The system is also balanced in a way where with good knowledge and good preperation, any team can be beat before they even hit you and without knowledge the opponent may get a round or 2 (which might be fatal depending on your luck).

Mixing reward, punishment and luck
So any given encounter (that you fight) will roughly go one of four ways.

  • You know the enemy's weaknesses, you have a rough idea of their hp, you know how to tackle this encounter, this is always going to go fine.
  • New enemy encounter, but you're not getting ambushed. This will often happen when you get to a new place. These are often harder. You want to have as little of these as possible, so you want to use this battle to find out the weaknesses and attacks of these new enemies.
  • Old encounter, but you got ambushed. This will usually go well. You might get some bruises and might have to think on your feet a bit but because of the knowledge you already have, come your round you'll probably be able to deal it no problem.
  • New encounter and you got ambushed. Well... to bad. These are the "fuck you" encounters and have a high rate of making you go game over. Nothing you can do about it, it's the nature of the game. Sometimes you'll be able to use past, lore or outside knowledge to guess weaknesses but since the series tends to be very wishy-washy with the stats, attacks, weaknesses and resistances of demons, there is no way to know things for sure.
So what this all means if that, getting ambushed is not what is going to kill you, it's not knowing what you're doing. Remember, this game greatly rewards knowledge, which means that even in a bad situation, you can fix it by being good.

Also, even getting wiped is a learning experience. Because of the PTS and the way the game is balanced, the way an enemy will kill you will often be by abusing a weakness a party member has. So if you have a character that is weak to Ice and no party member that nulls it, then you may die because the enemy decided to spam Ice attacks and is getting extra turns which they are using to spam more Ice attacks. What did you learn? Don't use this party member or get someone that nulls Ice.
This segways nicely into...

Preparation
In every game that uses the PTS, preparation is important. The games have an inherent difficulty curve, which I quite like. What happens is that the difficulty is set by your knowledge of the possible encounters, which means that the start of a new dungeon will often be the most difficult part of a dungeon (which is great because that's where you'll lose the least progress if you die).

In every game that uses the PTS, your party is mostly customizable, even mid dungeon. This allows you to choose party members and skills which are better suited for what you will be facing. I think this is a very cool concept.
The game doesn't tell you the startegies that work, it just tells you the strategies that don't. It's up to you to find an effective way to beat the challenge ahead and seeing the party you made do well is very rewarding.
This again ties in well with the luck and reward aspects of the game, since you're essentially preparing to mitigate the unluck you can have by abusing the reward system. (These enemies use Ice. If I can get a guy that drains Ice, I can waste their round.)

There is a guy I like on Youtube who beats every Nocturne boss at a very low level on hard. I watch his videos as I beat bosses in the game myself and he's often not even half my level. The way he does this is by basically creating the perfect teams to fight the bosses. I just wanted to point this out. I really like that you can beat a boss that a level 50 character has trouble with as a level 20 character as long as you're prepared well enough.

Conclusion
That's not all of it. There are many other aspects I could touch on like the high varience in encounter rate difficulty, which really serve to spice up the battles or the fact that not every battle is a battle and can be a transaction or recruiting or how the possibility of missing always keeps you on your toes. However, if I did, the post would start to lose focus and I would have a more difficult time explaining how everything ties in together.

For now I believe these to be the main point of what keeps the press turn battle system that you spend hours (days) in fresh and exciting every time, even if you've already seen a group of enemies before. Any group of enemies that I know to have Mudoon still keeps me on my toes every time. So in summery:

  • Luck and the severe punishment of mistakes set the difficulty.
  • Luck makes sure to create interesting and unexpected situations that require you to find an answer for.
  • Getting rewarded for your own knowledge feels good every time.
  • It feels especially rewarding getting out of a jam with your own knowledge.
  • The high rewards you get (extra turns) for playing well allows you to dispatch enemies with ease or come back from a bad situation.
  • The game is hardest at the start of a new dungeon, closer to the save point.
  • This allows you to build an effective team and only advance once you feel prepared.
  • The feeling of building an effective team is rewarding.
  • The dungeons often have mid-bosses which require you to change up your strategies a bit, which offers a nice change of pace.
  • The system is very easy to understand and never changes (like duel-type attacks or something).
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That being said, I personally think "One More" is a downgrade from the "Press Turn" system and hope that modern Persona title should stick with the "Press Turn" instead of "One More". One of the biggest impact in "One More" is "Sukukaja/Sukunda" become irrelevant because you don't get punished for missing your attack. In "Press Turn", "Suku" skill is arguably more important than "Taru" spell because missing your attack means you lose the next turn which is a disaster, also one of the reason why
Matador
can wreck your whole party really fast because he has a really high evasion, going in without Sukunda/Sukukaja is dangerous.

I'd like to hear your opinions on this, I also really like to discuss about "Status Ailments / buff and debuff" in Megaten series but that's probably for another thread.

Note: Any story spoiler should be marked.
 
Oh, yeah... that smirk face when Press Turn triggers...

Loved pulling that off in SMTIV.

But when bosses did it....
 
My experience with most of the original DDS was quite cool. Biggest problem probably were save points. Whenever I lose 1-2 hours of progress because of dying, I tend to not come back in a few days.

It happened my twice I think. The second time (quite near the end) I didn't went back. Because life got in the way and now I'm afraid I'd be lost when it comes to the story. The "luck" factor kind of reminds me how in most role playing games that use D100, getting a 01-03 means that you misserably fail. Like, you can just miss, or fell down to the ground, or maybe your sword breaks and the enemy you're fighting gets a direct hit that leaves you in the verge of dead. But lucks works in both ways, just like in real life.

I think Persona 5 was a lot more engaging with its One More battle system compared to previous entries. Batton Pass was great (and necessary in Hard where just downing everyone with the MC + All Out Attack didn't kill most mobs), and Sukujaka/Sukunda was more useful than in P3/4 because somehow it was the only buff that bosses didn't erase as soon as it was up.

In Persona 4 you could drop to the floor if you miss a hit. Maybe keeping that would have been good.

Both systems would have worked though. Both systems are based around knowledge. For a game about thieves going into heists, I think both could have been quite fitting.
 
I didn't play the game but i dunno, i can already see using always the same strategy for the entire game.

Anyway if you are into similar turns alterations mechanics you could try:

-Lost Dimension: when a character attacks an enemy all the allies in the range will also attack that enemy, also a character can give his/her turn to an ally.

-Natural doctrine: this is a REALLY hard game, so hard that i quit it rather early(and i'm not used to quit a game because of the difficulty), now i don't remember exactly the mechanisms but if one of your characters moves or attacks near an ally then the ally can move or attack too, trust me if you don't plan carefully every single move the enemies will inevitably start acting one after another and you are inevitably dead. I consider it a puzzle game disguised as a strategy rpg because like in puzzle games you don't have freedom of action, do the correct moves or you'll lose.
 
warheat said:
That being said, I personally think "One More" is a downgrade from the "Press Turn" system and hope that modern Persona title should stick with the "Press Turn" instead of "One More". One of the biggest impact in "One More" is "Sukukaja/Sukunda" become irrelevant because you don't get punished for missing your attack. In "Press Turn", "Suku" skill is arguably more important than "Taru" spell because missing your attack means you lose the next turn which is a disaster, also one of the reason why.
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While i agree mostly with that, and i personally like the press turn system more.

That is not quite true, in the original persona 3 (and FES) where you don't have control of your party, in some cases you could get knocked out ( i think it could even happen when you failed ) and since you didn't control your party ... i could take a long time until you recovered control ( and that could be frustrating ).
 
Yeah, press turn is the best. So good that I have a hard time playing any other turn based JRPG these days. Makes the combat much more satisfying and interesting.
 
Didn't know it's called Press Turn, but yeah, it's good. I like it better than Persona's battle system.

warheat said:
That being said, I personally think "One More" is a downgrade from the "Press Turn" system and hope that modern Persona title should stick with the "Press Turn" instead of "One More". One of the biggest impact in "One More" is "Sukukaja/Sukunda" become irrelevant because you don't get punished for missing your attack. In "Press Turn", "Suku" skill is arguably more important than "Taru" spell because missing your attack means you lose the next turn which is a disaster, also one of the reason why
Matador
can wreck your whole party really fast because he has a really high evasion, going in without Sukunda/Sukukaja is dangerous.
Click to expand...

Maybe it's different in other Persona games, but in P3 I thought missing was too punishing. Not only do you not hit your move, wasting your turn, but you also lose your next turn and the ability to adjust your teammates actions for 2 turns. Sure this only happens with physical attacks, but a lot of the time you want to be using physical attacks so you can go for crits.
 
I'd argue that a better way to not make it a chore to fight the same enemy group over and over again is to not make a system where you're likely to fight the same enemy group over and over again.
 
Crayolan said:
Didn't know it's called Press Turn, but yeah, it's good. I like it better than Persona's battle system.

Maybe it's different in other Persona games, but in P3 I thought missing was too punishing. Not only do you not hit your move, wasting your turn, but you also lose your next turn and the ability to adjust your teammates actions for 2 turns. Sure this only happens with physical attacks, but a lot of the time you want to be using physical attacks so you can go for crits.
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I don't really remember the exact mechanic because it's 10 years ago but if I'm not mistaken, in P3 you only lose your turn and your next turn for the same character is a lot less punishing than your next teammate lose a turn.

I'll take DDS for example, in a scenario where your 3rd position is suppose to heal the whole party but your 2nd position is missing their attack, that means your 3rd position will not get their turn at all.
 
warheat said:
I don't really remember the exact mechanic because it's 10 years ago but if I'm not mistaken, in P3 you only lose your turn and your next turn for the same character is a lot less punishing than your next teammate lose a turn.

I'll take DDS for example, in a scenario where your 3rd position is suppose to heal the whole party but your 2nd position is missing their attack, that means your 3rd position will not get their turn at all.
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Correct, you only lose 2 turns for your player character, but since you can't directly control the rest of your team if something goes wrong during those two turns there's nothing you can do about it.
 
tumblr_o5reukztem1urjbwuo1_500.png


The only reason I don't like Press Turn is when the CPU puts dumb AI on your side.
 
warheat said:
That being said, I personally think "One More" is a downgrade from the "Press Turn" system and hope that modern Persona title should stick with the "Press Turn" instead of "One More". One of the biggest impact in "One More" is "Sukukaja/Sukunda" become irrelevant because you don't get punished for missing your attack.
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That's seems inaccurate from my experience.
 
WrenchNinja said:
That's seems inaccurate from my experience.
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I should've been more specific or just say Persona 5 version of "One More", you don't really get punished in P5 for missing your attack beside missing your attack. I finished the game on hard and I can count with one hand how many times I cast Suku spell, it's only relevant in the secret boss fight.
 
warheat said:
I should've been more specific or just say Persona 5 version of "One More", you don't really get punished in P5 for missing your attack beside missing your attack. I finished the game on hard and I can count with one hand how many times I cast Suku spell, it's only relevant in the secret boss fight.
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I found it was pretty necessary throughout the game against bosses and Red Shadows.
 
The press turn system is great. Only problem i have with it is I've played so many games with it I just kind of ready for something completely new. Or at least a big change to it... That is not One More, which I wish was just press turn instead. Combined with the terrible choice to have only the MC customize-able, it makes you party members little more then meat shields who are hopefully not a liability due to weaknesses(and occasionally SP batteries if their one element is the one the enemy is weak to).

Worst part of either game though, is when they remove the system entirely for the enemy, giving them no weaknesses and crit immunity(or at least incredibly reduce chances of being crit). some of P5's boss fights(off hand, I believe this is a lot less common in the PTS games) made up for it by at least adding other mechanics, but I feel like if you have to remove the main machanic in the first place there is clearly a problem that needs to be addressed.
 
Press Turn is sooo good. Honestly Apocalypse has my favorite iteration, but good old PS2 Press Turn is also amazing. Vanilla IV is good at Nakaru ... but it fails later because, outside Minotaur and Kenji, the bosses are really awfully easy. It doesn't help the fact you can create an army of powerful demons with whatever skill you want for them.

That is why I like Apocalpye so much, in a battle it's not only how it's implemented the Press Turn system, it's how the enemies are designed and how you can acces to your tools to overcome them.

I have mixed opinions about One More System , because Vanilla P3 and FES share in common with Press Turn the fact if you fails your attack the game punish you even more bad than Press Turn, but you can never achieve the same feeling of reward Press Turn gives you.

Persona 4 is easier, and accesible, but really is my least favorite iteration. Persona 5 One More System is good, but the boss designs are a bit plain in the final dungeons and when you can create better Personae the huge tension you felt at the beggining of the game is gone.

I like Strange Journey battle system, even if it's simple and the gimmick it's not about gain or lose turns, the battle system and the enemies are damn good designed. Devil Survivor battle system is a good twist about the Press Turn, but I feel it can be better.
 
Also there's no way this would work with the current persona battleflow where they give you charactera who specialize in like two types of damage and a buff or two types of recovery and one kind of damage

if Sukujaka was "cheaper" to put on a skill list then masukaja and i could give everyone at least the self buff version to counter the possibility of missing then missing could still stay as a missed whole turn

The couple games I have tried seem to be missing a charge/concentrate equivalent for agi, next attack used ignores defense up ignores attack up and wont miss maybe?
sacrifice an action to ensure you wont miss and sac an entire turns worth of actions
 
2+2=5 said:
I didn't play the game but i dunno, i can already see using always the same strategy for the entire game.
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Lol, no. Unless you consider exploiting the enemy's weakness and protecting from theirs a strategy. It's easier said than done when there are 6 elemental, two weapon and two status affliction weaknesses (to exploit or protect from), and high agility that can turn standard attacks into criticals or consume two turns when avoided.

In DDS, you can freely customize skills you can use in battle from those you've learned. So party planning is important. Still, you have to find out the enemy's weakness before you can exploit it and that can give them more actions while your turn prematurely ended because they repelled your attack.

In SMT press turn games, your party members can only learn 4 to 8 skills, Pokémon style. The slot number increases during the course of the game but you still have to give up old skills to learn new ones. Having a party that can attack effectively and is well protected is not automatic, you have to scout or fuse to get the right ones.

And there are always special skills that can change how an attack would normally behave. DDS, because you can so easily customize your party, had some real deep boss variations that required you to use the PTS to the fullest. Even in SMT4, which had the easiest press turn battles, you had to adjust to the enemies. And SMT4A has some real nice boss battles. It's closer to SMT3 than to 4.

Between enemy negotiations, demon fusing and PTS, SMT3/4/4A really have the GOAT RPG gameplay. Even before PTS, the other two systems made SMT special. Nothing comes close to SMT for RPG gameplay. DDS1&2, while lacking demon party members, have the best and most varied boss battles of any PTS game.
 
SMT IV was my first experience with the series, I was surprised how fast and savage the encounters were because of the system.
 
tsundoku said:
Missing shouldn't lose you the rest of your actions or evasion should only affect physical attacks and not spells
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You won't lose all your turns, unless there are only 2 on the team. Additionally, it's a nice punishment, especially if the enemy lowers your accuracy. Why not spells too?
 
Syril said:
I'd argue that a better way to not make it a chore to fight the same enemy group over and over again is to not make a system where you're likely to fight the same enemy group over and over again.
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Yep.

I've always found that the JRPG is so concerned with such a narrow definition of gameplay that it's necessary for JRPG developers to come up with sophisticated machinations like these to make up for basic deficiencies.

I mean, this is great for you if you like JRPGs, but for everyone else it's some mix of confusing and disheartening. It's tough to care about the boring thing being done in a new way but with the same boring core.
 
It's good and I certainly miss it in some ways, but Persona 5 made me realize how it can be a little over powering in the other games. If you masukukaja everyone 3 times, your enemies misses will turn into lost turns for them.

It also makes going for those low-accuracy skills not really worth it unless you're buffed with agility.

However, after recently finishing P5, I would love to see the return of this system and a more gameplay focused SMT game on consoles.
 
It's been a long while since I played Nocturne, but I'm confused as to how, essentially, is the Press Turn system is different from 1 more.
 
Afrocious said:
It's been a long while since I played Nocturne, but I'm confused as to how, essentially, is the Press Turn system is different from 1 more.
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1 more turn you have an order similar to say Final Fantasy X where there's never really an enemy turn and there's never really a player turn. It's just a matter who who's speed is greater who goes first. If a fighter hits a weak point or a critical, the fighter themselves is given another chance to hit.

Press Turn you have an enemy turn and a player turn. Each is given one press turn icon per character in play at the start of the turn. The press turn icons are how many times you can make a move during that turn. If you hit an enemy's weak point or a critical, you only use half an icon and that half can be used by someone else. When a half of an icon is used it moves on to the next character, rather than the character who hit the weakness. Additionally if you miss an attack or hit a null attack, you lose two press turn icons instead of just one. If you hit an enemy with something they repel or drain you lose the rest of your turn. Your press turn icons can stack up to double the amount you started with because you can only chop an icon in half once. If you hit a weakness or a critical when the next icon is half, it will cut the next icon in line in half instead.
 
Press turn is probably the best turn based system I've ever seen. The only exception I can think of is Sanctuary RPG, and that system wouldn't really translate well to a console rpg [it has branching moves... 'starter' moves that begin different combos, etc]... it's kind of comparing apples and oranges since Press Turn is more about turn order generation.
 
Hell yes, it's the GOAT turn based battle system for me. I have to admit modern SMT has lost many of the things I loved about the series, but I still play them all because at worst I'll play a bad story with god like combat.

Incidentally I feel like P5 added enough tweaks to One More to make it feel deeper and closer to Press Turn, which I was very happy to see and didn't expect at all. Still not even close obviously, but modern Persona is at least exciting to play now.

snow in jamaica said:
Skipping a character's turn costs half a turn as well, allowing for extra flexibility. It'd be neat if enemies passed turns.
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Passing turns strategically is one of my favorite aspects and I've wanted demons to be able to do it too for a while. It'd make battles much more tense than they already are.
 
This is a real nice breakdown. I always appreciated this battle system, but this explanation puts it into words better than I could.

I think there are flaws in the system too, mainly around techniques that don't work. You need variety on your team, and physical-focused characters are inherently flawed. Physical attacks don't cost mana, which means in order to balance things few demons are weak to it. Most SMT games let you build your own protagonist, but if he's not an all purpose caster you're doing it wrong.

I don't remember if Devil Survivor used this system exactly, but IIRC it was similar.
I built my Devil Survivor character with an Agility focus, but Agility feels like the most throwaway SMT stat and it created problems in the late game. As previous posts state, accuracy and evasion is important, but those are generally good enough without the stat focus and having a mana focus lets you throw down Sukukaja skills anyway. With regard to turn order, within the SMT battle system it's almost always either your turn or it's not. When the game has to decide whose turn it is based on agility, you've probably made the first mistake already.

There are also skills that are terrifying on enemy characters because of the stakes (Mudoon) but next to worthless for heroes because there are more efficient ways to kill demons. I'd rather have a normal curse skill for the accuracy and second turn than Mudoon.

I'm hard pressed to think of a better turn-based system when you play PTS the way it wants to be played for all the reasons in the first post. The perfect example of this is the puzzle fights in SMT4, where you have a pre-set skillset and a certain number of turns to wipe out an enemy wave. But there are definitely cracks that show if you try to get creative.
 
Mazeltov Cocktail said:
There are also skills that are terrifying on enemy characters because of the stakes (Mudoon) but next to worthless for heroes because there are more efficient ways to kill demons. I'd rather have a normal curse skill for the accuracy and second turn than Mudoon.
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Speaking of which, I love what they did with Mudo/Hama skills in Apocalypse. They do damage like a regular elemental spell and (usually) instakill when the user is smirking. Found myself using those skills a lot more, since there were also bosses weak to them (which couldn't be instakilled, of course).
 
I mentioned that I dislike the press turn system in my thread about why SMT IV is such an awful, awful game and got pretty much eaten alive for it. And when I say press turn, I really mean any of the standard MegaTen systems including 'one more' in Persona. They're all very similar, press turn is just more punitive.

Oh well, I'll regurgitate it here anyway, maybe spark some discussion:

Press Turn is a boring battle system because it relies almost totally on preparation for the battle rather than on strategic decisions in the battle itself. Once in battle your best move is almost always apparent. If you can hit your enemy's weakness, the benefit of getting an extra move is way, way too much to add to the advantage your already have. If the enemy can hit yours, the reverse applies. This means that the system tends towards quick, one-sided battles that end before any kind of interesting strategy can be put in play.

Most fights are utterly trivial. If you can load up on every element + reflect and not be challenged for 90%+ of the game, that's not 'strategy'. That's triviality.

When you fight a new enemy in an SMT - one where you don't know the weakness - here's your rotation:
Try the most likely elemental spell depending on their appearance. Weak? Hit them with this in perpetuity. They will probably NEVER get a chance to attack you.
Not weak? Try the next most likely. And so on. This will work for 75% of the enemies in the game.
No elemental weaknesses? Try physical or gun skills. Now we're probably up near 85% of the enemies.
No weaknesses there? Try insta-kills.
Now you've almost certainly discovered something to use, and you can just check the weakness chart every single time you fight this enemy for the rest of the game. Once you hit their weakness, your free turns will essentially guarantee your victory.

So that's a braindead rotation that works for almost every enemy in the game. It's hardly strategic. If you had to manage mana you might have some choices to make but I essentially never ran out during SMT IV, anyway. There's always a demon to fuse or recruit to top up your mana and the MP restore app is cheap as chips.

Now, if a demon enemy has no weaknesses, congrats, the fact that press turn is removed from your options means that you might have an interesting battle, and you have real choices. Just shows the flaws in press turn, imo. Once you remove weaknesses and extra turns from a battle and lengthen the amount of time the battle takes, suddenly you're faced with all kinds of interesting decisions regarding buffing, reflecting, healing, SP conservation etc. But the vast majority of the time you simply don't have to consider any of this... because of press turn.
 
It's a bad system that makes battles extra swingy. Getting an extra turn + more damage is dumb, and dealing less or no damage and then losing another turn on top of that is dumb.
 
Mazeltov Cocktail said:
This is a real nice breakdown. I always appreciated this battle system, but this explanation puts it into words better than I could.

I think there are flaws in the system too, mainly around techniques that don't work. You need variety on your team, and physical-focused characters are inherently flawed. Physical attacks don't cost mana, which means in order to balance things few demons are weak to it. Most SMT games let you build your own protagonist, but if he's not an all purpose caster you're doing it wrong.

I don't remember if Devil Survivor used this system exactly, but IIRC it was similar.
I built my Devil Survivor character with an Agility focus, but Agility feels like the most throwaway SMT stat and it created problems in the late game. As previous posts state, accuracy and evasion is important, but those are generally good enough without the stat focus and having a mana focus lets you throw down Sukukaja skills anyway. With regard to turn order, within the SMT battle system it's almost always either your turn or it's not. When the game has to decide whose turn it is based on agility, you've probably made the first mistake already.

There are also skills that are terrifying on enemy characters because of the stakes (Mudoon) but next to worthless for heroes because there are more efficient ways to kill demons. I'd rather have a normal curse skill for the accuracy and second turn than Mudoon.

I'm hard pressed to think of a better turn-based system when you play PTS the way it wants to be played for all the reasons in the first post. The perfect example of this is the puzzle fights in SMT4, where you have a pre-set skillset and a certain number of turns to wipe out an enemy wave. But there are definitely cracks that show if you try to get creative.
Click to expand...

Actually, physical is considered the best build in Nocturne due to Freikugel, an almighty physical attack.
 
Griss said:
I mentioned that I dislike the press turn system in my thread about why SMT IV is such an awful, awful game and got pretty much eaten alive for it. And when I say press turn, I really mean any of the standard MegaTen systems including 'one more' in Persona. They're all very similar, press turn is just more punitive.

Oh well, I'll regurgitate it here anyway, maybe spark some discussion:

Press Turn is a boring battle system because it relies almost totally on preparation for the battle rather than on strategic decisions in the battle itself. Once in battle your best move is almost always apparent. If you can hit your enemy's weakness, the benefit of getting an extra move is way, way too much to add to the advantage your already have. If the enemy can hit yours, the reverse applies. This means that the system tends towards quick, one-sided battles that end before any kind of interesting strategy can be put in play.

Most fights are utterly trivial. If you can load up on every element + reflect and not be challenged for 90%+ of the game, that's not 'strategy'. That's triviality.

When you fight a new enemy in an SMT - one where you don't know the weakness - here's your rotation:
Try the most likely elemental spell depending on their appearance. Weak? Hit them with this in perpetuity. They will probably NEVER get a chance to attack you.
Not weak? Try the next most likely. And so on. This will work for 75% of the enemies in the game.
No elemental weaknesses? Try physical or gun skills. Now we're probably up near 85% of the enemies.
No weaknesses there? Try insta-kills.
Now you've almost certainly discovered something to use, and you can just check the weakness chart every single time you fight this enemy for the rest of the game. Once you hit their weakness, your free turns will essentially guarantee your victory.

So that's a braindead rotation that works for almost every enemy in the game. It's hardly strategic. If you had to manage mana you might have some choices to make but I essentially never ran out during SMT IV, anyway. There's always a demon to fuse or recruit to top up your mana and the MP restore app is cheap as chips.

Now, if a demon enemy has no weaknesses, congrats, the fact that press turn is removed from your options means that you might have an interesting battle, and you have real choices. Just shows the flaws in press turn, imo. Once you remove weaknesses and extra turns from a battle and lengthen the amount of time the battle takes, suddenly you're faced with all kinds of interesting decisions regarding buffing, reflecting, healing, SP conservation etc. But the vast majority of the time you simply don't have to consider any of this... because of press turn.
Click to expand...

You know Press Turn it's not just about hit weakness, right? (and you ignore the fact Press Turn it's also about cover you own MC and demons weakness) If feasible, hit a physical (or gun) attack and if it's critical, you gain a new turn. Raise your evasion, lowers the enemies accuracy, and very likely they will won't hit you, so they will loss two turns.
 
asagami_ said:
You know Press Turn it's not just about hit weakness, right? (and you ignore the fact Press Turn it's also about cover you own MC and demons weakness) If feasible, hit a physical (or gun) attack and if it's critical, you gain a new turn. Raise your evasion, lowers the enemies accuracy, and very likely they will won't hit you, so they will loss two turns.
Click to expand...

Yes I didn't deal with criticals, because I personally think that they tend to be rare enough that the award of a new turn doesn't unbalance the system so horribly.

But the fact that criticals also award turns does not make the battle system any less 'swingy' or any more strategic. Sure, you can go for criticals and use accuracy buffs / debuffs etc, but when you can just hit the lightning weak enemy with Zio and the ice-weak enemy with Bufu etc for almost the entire game, why would you bother?

Again, when you fight bosses - who don't have weaknesses, typically, or have mechanics designed to hide them / deal with them - then the rest of the system sings and you can have a great fight. But it's just proof that the press turn system itself is unbalanced and boring.
 
I don't really like it because it ends up making a boring gameplay loop. You hunt for a weakness and hope they don't hit yours. It's very "win instantly" or "die instantly" and not much in between. SMT IV is good, but it overstays it's welcome in part because of the problems with such a swingy encounter design.

Elements end up being the be all end all.
 
Only press turn game I've played is SMT4 and it seemed to boil down to spamming whatever the enemy was weak against for an easy win, and maybe making sure the demons you bring have the right resistances. I was not impressed at all.
 
I don't like it very much, tbh. It punishes the player so much just for getting unlucky that it's not entirely uncommon for me to just reset and load a recent save before the battle even ends when that happens.

I get that it prevents battles from getting too samey and thus boring, but it can also make me feel like the game's being unfair to me, and that's frustrating. I also have a pretty high tolerance for samey-ness, so repetitive battles are not an issue for me very often in any game.
 
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