The Current Challenges Facing Turn-Based Games
The choice between breaking tradition and preserving the classics
With last year’s TGA now behind us, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 ultimately walked away with the Game of the Year award. While much of the conversation has centered on its striking artistic atmosphere and the — at times controversial — sense of narrative immersion, surprisingly little attention has been paid to its combat system.
I haven’t actually played Expedition 33 myself yet. However, while browsing through reviews and player impressions, I noticed a consistent pattern: regardless of whether critics felt positively or negatively about the game as a whole, their impressions of the combat experience were remarkably similar. The most common criticisms point to late-game stat inflation and a combat loop that gradually devolves into rote memorization of parry timings, turning what should be a skill-driven system into a repetitive exercise in pattern learning.
This inevitably made me pause and reflect: what kind of design choices are needed to make turn-based combat stand out, rather than fade into mechanical routine?
The problem with traditional turn-based games
Classic, traditional turn-based combat — best represented by the Dragon Quest series — revolves around a core gameplay loop of repeated battles, leveling up, purchasing new equipment, and unlocking new skills. The strength of this design lies in its low barrier to entry: it is accessible to virtually anyone.
Players mainly compare numerical values between different pieces of equipment or abilities and simply choose the option with the higher stats. The primary point of decision-making comes from strategic choices rather than player reflexes or real-time reactions.
However, the shortcomings of this approach are equally apparent: high repetition and a lack of meaningful strategic depth. While most turn-based games attempt to differentiate characters through unique traits or roles, players often fall into a set of decisions that are effectively “always correct” — use the strongest available skill unless resources prevent them from doing so.
As a result, despite differences in setting or presentation, many turn-based games ultimately funnel players into a single, universal pattern of play that carries them through the entire experience.
Perhaps placing stricter limitations on player resources — forcing players to make real trade-offs through their decisions — is one way to keep turn-based combat tense and strategically engaging over time.
Preserve the core mechanics while enriching the surrounding systems.
A representative example of this approach is the Persona series. Its wide range of daily activities and social systems infused with dating-sim elements give the games a strong sense of everyday life and immersion. However, as a longtime fan of the Persona franchise, I have to admit that its combat system is a clear weak point.
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While players can engage in strategic preparation through Persona fusion before entering battle, the combat itself often devolves into a mechanical loop of buffing allies, debuffing enemies, attacking, and healing — repeated over and over again. The repetition is hard to ignore. As Persona 5 broke into the mainstream, many players began to criticize the combat system as feeling outdated, at least when viewed from today’s 2026 perspective. I may dedicate a future article to discussing the broader appeal and shortcomings of the Persona series as a whole; for now, I want to focus specifically on the limitations of its combat design.
Ongoing experiments in innovation.
At present, the most common innovations in turn-based combat systems on the market tend to fall into two broad templates.
The first can be seen in games like Yakuza: Like a Dragon and Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth. In these systems, characters are given limited freedom of movement during command-based battles, can parry enemy attacks to reduce incoming damage, and deal damage that varies based on relative positioning between characters and enemies. Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 also incorporates parry mechanics, while this year’s Trails in the Sky 1st allows players to adjust positioning to enhance skill effectiveness.
The second template introduces a layer of light real-time combat before transitioning into command-based battles, giving players the option of whether to fully enter turn-based combat — though designers usually incentivize doing so. Notable examples include Metaphor: ReFantazio (2024), with Trails in the Sky 1st adopting a similar approach as well.
Both templates integrate elements of real-time combat in an attempt to make command-based battles feel more immersive and action-oriented. At the same time, these real-time mechanics are intentionally limited in impact — often dealing only minor damage or slightly reducing incoming harm. Since the core of combat still revolves around turn-based commands, these systems are generally not seen as straying from the fundamental identity of turn-based games.
Potential directions for the future.
As the analysis goes deeper, a clear pattern begins to emerge. If turn-based combat is to appeal to today’s potential players, it seems almost unavoidable to incorporate some elements of real-time action in order to make the experience feel more “modern.” On the other hand, if a game aims to preserve a more traditional turn-based structure, it must significantly enhance the strategic depth of command-based combat or offer players a wider range of meaningful options, as seen in systems like Shin Megami Tensei V.
The downside of this approach, however, is a higher barrier to entry. Overly complex systems and dense mechanics can easily overwhelm — and ultimately drive away — more casual players. Interestingly, many games are turn-based at their core, even if they are not traditionally categorized as such. Fighting games, for example, require constant real-time input, yet each decision — whether to attack, defend, or counter — is still fundamentally a strategic choice within an ongoing mind game.
Perhaps future turn-based games could place greater emphasis on simple but meaningful decision-making, rather than attempting to “enrich” the experience through sheer mechanical complexity or by layering on real-time combat elements.
