Best RPG Battle System
 

What do you guys think is the best RPG battle system?

I used to think that Chrono Trigger was the best battle system I've played, but now as I am almost done playing Star Ocean: the second story it is a very close race. I'm also probably a little biased because the SO system is radically different from any other RPG I've played. So if I had to rank my top 3 I'd say:

1a. Star Ocean: the second story
1b. Chrono Trigger
3. FF6

Any thoughts?

Fallout/FFX.

Hmm... FFX was good, with the bar on the side that told you how each move you made would affect the turns to come, The Lunar games had really great ones though. And CT was awesome... I'm gonna go:

1. Lunar
2. CT
3. FFX

Hmm...

1. Paper Mario
2. Lunar
3. FFT:A

If ya'll (Southern twang showing even on internet,crap!) are counting strategy, than I'd go with FFTactics. If only Square put the efforts to refine the system even further with FFTA, we would have had a gem on our hands.

Battle systems?

1. FFX (Been lots of dun so far.)
2. SO: TSS (I thought it was fun, you make your characters run around, everything is in semi-real time.)
3. CT (Holy cow! A game where battlefield position actually matters instead of people just lining up!)

Honerable Mention: FFT (It was a good game, but I thought battles were a bit slow for my blood. However, I liked Advance Wars so I don't know why, I just thought the FFT system was lacking something.)

Good battle systems: FFX, FF6, Breath of Fire II, Paper Mario, Heroes of Might & Magic III.

Crappy battle systems: Pokémon (duh), any Zelda game, FFX-2 (The camera is constantly moving which makes it confusing.)

People seem to think CT is great, but think about it: what's the difference between it and the early final fantasies? don't confuse your nostalgia with your opinion. You could still think it's great, it's just that it's nothing new.

I use to think CT was the best as well and until I played alot of the PSX and PS2 ones, I was right. Then I played Suikoden II. That would probably be in my opinion the 'best' system. However, even with that game, I see a couple things they could have done to make it better (things they did in Suikoden III, but Suikoden III in turn took away some good ideas from II). If I was to say what I think is the best system, I'd say a melding of the best ideas from CT and Suikoden II (which they share many ideas already).

And also, let's not forget some other 'RPG's'. Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, The Legend of Zelda. A large grouping of these games are considered to be partally RPG or to have RPG base systems. Andif either of those were added to the pot, it would be hard for me not to say SotN didn't have the best system. Because it certinly would have the most freedom of movement in battle and wide array of devices and attacks. In theory, SotN is just a more free moving form of say Tales of Phantasia's battle system.

Here we go with not being able to classify RPGs again...

Well I thought CT was great both for being original for its time and I still think it implemented some parts which are still rarely used (at least in the games I can remember off the top of my head) for example:
1. like has been said before, position in the battle matters (at least somewhat)
2. special attacks depend on who is in your party

I'll have to give honorable mention to FFT (haven't played FFTA) since I love the game, but the game is built around the battles which gives a huge advantage to FFT. Other RPGs can't have such an involved battle system since it would take several HOURS to travel between towns on a map like FF6 if it had a battle system like FFT.

On a side note, are there any other games that have the semi-real time system like SO:TSS?

In response to Maxis, wasn't thinking of classified an RPG, but now that you mention it, I was kind of thinking of the "old-fashioned" style where there is a clear separation (i.e. change to turn-based or zooming into a mini-map, etc.) between walking around and a battle. It is probably easier to compare battle systems if we limit it to these types. Just a suggestion.