RPG Maker Forums

So for one of the projects I'm on we've been discussing using something different than a standard turn-based RPG battle system. And it kind of got me thinking of a two-part question on battle mechanics.

1. What different types of alternative battle systems have you seen that you liked?
Me, personally - one of my favorites has always been the combat system of Ar Tonelico - with 3 front-line fighters and a rear-line mage. They work in an asynchronous fashion in that they are both commanded differently: The front-line warriors are just like a normal RPG combatant, but the mage works on a developing power-bar kind of system. The longer she (they are always women in the games) sing their songs to build up their magic abilities - the stronger their magic becomes.
Aside from that I really like tactical rpg battle systems, but at this point since they are their own genre, I guess its not really an alternative combat system.

2. What different kinds of interesting battle systems have you seen used in an RPG Maker game?
MV has both front-facing and side-view turn-based battle systems, I've seen a few ATB plug-ins. I was hired onto a project where the combat was front-facing but used an elemental system and allowed the player to combine different elemental gems in order to create skills, rather than just selecting them from a list. But that was still essentially just a turn-based, front-facing rpg battle system, really.

So what good alternative battle systems have you folks found? What have you witnessed being done with RPGMaker, in particular? You know what, I'll even go a step further - not just good ones, interesting ones that may or may not be good.