Best games of all time

Yes, that's exactly the Final Fantasy system except Final Fantasy makes it so you can't sit there and plot if you want to use Flare for 40 MP or Quake for 42 MP. The ATB system forces you to make (slightly) quicker actions (I mean there's a damn bar to make the speed slower if you can't handle the lightning five seconds they give to either melee or use magic or a summon.). And Final Fantasy X had your damn turntable deal. EXACTLY the same.

Knights of the old Republic has an excellent battle system.
New Tales of Game for the DS should be out this year,will be looking forward to that.

Eesh, battle systems...

I like "live battle", like Zelda, Grandia, ToS or Kingdom Hearts. I like it even more when your team's reactions are good. If it has to be turn-based, I prefer grid. I like positioning and distance to be factors. I like Shining Force for it, and I like the look of Enchant arM for it.

But then again, sometimes it just does not work; look at land battles in Pirates, which are painfully slow. I remember the infancy of ATB, when the lack of the bars meant it felt very random and eclectic. I remember how hard it was to get used to ToS at first, when the combat seemed hard to do. Battle systems make or break the games they're in, and I would say they've broken many. I know a ton of people put off KH thanks to that combat system, which many deemed "unsuitable for magic use".

The wife's the one who usually plays games that have them; I dabble, but nowhere near as much as she. For her, a bad battle system in a good game makes it more of a slog, but good nevertheless. A really good battle system, however, like that of, say, Jade Cocoon 2, can turn an average game into a fantastic one, and propel a good game to the best evar (spelling intentional).

Whatever. If you're a bigger FF7 fan, why didn't you name yourself Cloud or Sepharoth or whatever? I choose to not choose my name based on videogames. But if you want to consider yourself "hardcore" then go for it.

I find it interesting that you keep asking for examples of better systems, and when they're given to you, you just push them aside, because they weren't made at the same time or aren't the same "style."

I will repeat: The early Ultimas had better systems. Hell, I find Dragon Warrior 1 and FF1 to have superior combat to FF7. The reason? Battles take too damn long to be fun in FF7. They emphasize elaborate animations that make the ATB nearly useless (as you can plan for those 15 seconds you're waiting during the Ifrit animiation, thus taking off all the pressure that the ATB is supposed to create.)

The reason FF7's battles are weak, in my opinion, isn't soley because of the system, it's the length of the battles, which is silly. I don't enjoy having regular encounters take a whole minute, when three quarters of that time I'm doing no thinking, no planning, just watching a damn spell, summon, or break attack. If the battle is going to take me a full minute, let me do more than just tell 4 characters which attack, spell, or summon they use (because in that minute, that's realistically how long it takes to go through your party's actions.) Let me strategize if it's going to take THAT long. Give me an L, an A, an M, and a E. What's that spell? LAME.

In addition to the battle system, the equipment in FF7 is at least as weak, if not more so. how many different weapons are there per character? 5? it's no more 7, and the next one you find is almost without expection "better" than the one before. Not. Cool.

I like having choices in RPGs, either in where to go, what to do, or how to outfit my party. Even if most are on rails, you can have some choices in most RPGs, or at least disquise your lack of options in some way with a story that goes somewhere. FF7, for me, took all those away from me.

Actually Vi is a much better game than VII. There are many things I hate about VII, but it's still a good game.

Anyways, your arguements are almost like apples to oranges. Tactical games like Final Fantasy Tactics or Shining Force are far different than traditional RPGs. Thus, you seem to be telling me you like stragety games more. As for your comments on the orignal Final Fantasy and Dragon Warriors as being better systems, that's your opinion. I personally like a little big of graphics with my text, but hey that's just me. Some of us like fighting small and increasingly bigger blocks of various colors. The red block approacheth. What shall thou do? As for your animation cycle comments, putting a little flash into the moves, there's nothing wrong with that. And your only really using the big moves and spells for the boss battles which are supposed to be epic anyway. So it fits and adds a very dramatic and awe inspiring feel whenever I'm approached with one. Also, there's the option to shorten the summon length in Final Fantasy X which I had mentioned in an earlier post.

As for your weapon upgrades comment, yeah sure I wish the characters had a wider range of options when it came to weapon choice, it seems everyone now can use only one weapon type for animation reasons I supppose. But it is other RPGs who do this too. I don't see why Final Fantasy has been singled out just because it is the most popular.

Erdick swings for 20 dmg!
The red block attacks for 156 dmg!
Thou art slain!

just to clear an issue that dosnt need clearing up.
majin dboy.majin,cuz i like dragon ball z and dboy,was a nickname given to me due to the first initial in my first name.D

OKAY!!!

My name was given to me because I used to be a containment unit for people so they could survive the apocaplyse. I was number 13. There was one guy who lived here, he was the chosen one, or so they claimed. I thought he was just a crazy kook in a blue jumper. I wonder what happened to him.

See, now you've gone and upset me. I always thought your name was a reference to Death Machine in which I'm sure the robot of the title was stored in vault 13. Ah well!