turn-based combat I love turn-based combat.
Here is what I like in a video game: I like having a small crew of playable characters, each differentiated by innate or cultivated skillsets, who face off in combat against other characters, ideally on a two-dimensional playing field with all of my characters standing in a line on one side and all the opposing characters standing on another. I like selecting my character’s attacks one at a time from a list of skills, which may vary in accordance to the equipment they’re wearing or the skills they have cultivated. I like these attacks to be executed all together in a phase following their selection, and then I like to repeat that process until the enemy has been defeated. I like to get a variety of points and items and money and etc. after the battle has been completed. And I especially like it if I can use those points and items and money and etc. to further cultivate my characters' skillsets. I’m a slut for a job tree, a whore for a class system. I don’t want an active-time battle system; I want to plan out my attacks slowly, methodically, to be able to go back and recorrect my strategy as I see fit. I know this is an old-fashioned way of playing games, but I’m recognizing as I grow older that I’m a pretty old-fashioned person, at least where my art is concerned. I like things slow. I like things that build bit by bit until you look up and you realize you’re somewhere new. I think it’s why I’ve mostly replaced video games with weightlifting these days, which satisfies the same neural desire to grind away at monster after monster with the added benefit of I can look sort of hot in the end.