Thoughts on Seiken Densetsu battle system?

[CREATER]

I'm making a game and I was wondering what people thought of the battle system in the SNES Seiken Densetsu games, such as Secret of Mana. What are the weaknesses? What do you like about it?

 

[Poryg]

I don't know, never gotten far enough to see the battle system

 

[CREATER]

You should play it more, its great.

 

[Poryg]

I know, I liked it when I played it on my tablet, but playing on android is unreasonably difficult... And I'm not going to try my luck with my potato PC Do you want to recreate the battle system?

 

[Basileus]

I've thought about getting into the series, but Secret of Mana was a complete turn-off when I tried it.

Likes:

Not much really. Smacking enemies after getting the sword was pretty cool since you can move out of the way of a lot of attacks. The sense of position mattering is nice, and the ability to coordinate the party to surround and enemy and beat them down is fun.

The stamina gauge and the sort of rhythm you need to maintain attacks is also nice, and I like that you can keep going if you really want to but lose damage to encourage you to not spam quite so much. It feels like you can attack in bursts and focus on dodging when in the "rest" phase which sort of simulates turns but gives you a lot more control over the pace.

Dislikes:

The melee combat does sort of run into the Skyrim problem where the only decent tactic is to get a quick attack in then back out of attack range, repeat until dead. Also ranged enemies are a pain since much like Morrowind the actual attacks are controlled by dice roll so blocking isn't up to you. It's not bad in melee combat - the boy dodge-rolling in place looks cool and I'm fine with enemies dodging sometimes - but against projectiles it really, really sucks to have to run up to archers and have no way to block on purpose.

The multiple weapons also feel pretty superfluous. The boy not getting magic isn't too bad since you can order the girl and the fairy kid to cast spells from the menu. But his "compensation" is pretty garbage since the other weapons are nothing special and the charge attacks are useless (I found them even worse than Cyan's Bushido skill in FFVI).

Also magic is overpowered to the point that it breaks the game in half. When magic is being cast the target is locked in place and effectively stunned. A boss that can use magic will literally nuke your party to death while you are perma-stunned and can't do anything to prevent it. And the only way to stop it is to stun-lock the boss to death first. Overall, I found the game to be completely tedious once magic started being a thing.

Verdict:

Needs some special attacks that are actually practical to use to spice up melee combat. Being able to block intentionally is also pretty essential - or if you really want a dodge stat, at least give a skill that massively boosts the dodge rate for a split second. Something to incentivize the player to actually stay in melee range would also be nice, like a combo chain to boost damage or slightly restore some stamina so you can keep going if you do well.

Also fixing magic is a must.

 

[Tehprince]

I'm actually a fan of the Secret of Mana/Seiken Dentetsu 3 battle system.

Likes:

Being able to fight, dodge, and run away in real time makes the system a lot more gameplay intensive. You actually have to pay significantly more attention to how your enemies are moving, how to position your party members, and what weapons (Melee, Mid-range, and Long-Range) you are using. The progression feels fairly natural, and going back to earlier areas really gives you a sense of how much stronger you've become.

Dislikes:

Magic is absurdly broken. Bosses become a chain-spell DPS race with the boss, and just pray you don't run out of MP, because your weapons do literally nothing. Most of the regular enemies have very simple A.I. and can be stunlocked indefinitely. If you know what you're doing, and are abusing magic to its full potential, the game is way too easy, if you tried to play without ever using magic, you would most likely have to grind 5-7 levels per boss.

Verdict:

The battle system in itself is fun and challenging, but needs major balancing changes. Giving players any good reason to care about their physical attacks would definitely be priority number one.

 

[vico]

I've requested this before:
https://forums.rpgmakerweb.com/index.php?threads/secret-of-mana-style-co-op-arpg-not-netplay.85638/