{"id":1347879,"date":"2025-10-05T23:27:20","date_gmt":"2025-10-05T23:27:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/xWB6v7i3ATM5kfmFV4uyWM"},"modified":"2025-10-05T23:27:20","modified_gmt":"2025-10-05T23:27:20","slug":"after-years-of-being-criticized-as-old-fashioned-turn-based-rpgs-are-absolutely-crushing-it-with-new-ideas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/arcader.org\/news\/after-years-of-being-criticized-as-old-fashioned-turn-based-rpgs-are-absolutely-crushing-it-with-new-ideas\/","title":{"rendered":"After years of being criticized as old-fashioned, turn-based RPGs are absolutely crushing it with new ideas"},"content":{"rendered":"
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For years, the developers of Final Fantasy have fretted<\/a> that a big audience will no longer show up for turn-based games: that to make a flashy, expensive RPG these days, it’s all about the action. Perhaps that’s true when you need a game to sell in the tens of millions, but within the same period of time that both Final Fantasy 16 and Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth have failed to meet<\/a> the company’s lofty expectations, turn-based RPGs in general have been on such a hot streak that they’re making their action contemporaries look dusty by comparison.<\/p>\n

While in Tokyo last week for TGS I played three turn-based RPGs, and I only realized in hindsight that the genre unintentionally represented most of the demo time I was able to squeeze in when not filming interviews for the PC Gaming Show<\/a>. All three were fun, completely different, and embody the hot streak that turn-based RPGs have been on for at least<\/em> the last year.<\/p>\n

I’m specifically thinking of more Japanese-style RPGs, here, though of course if we jump back to 2023’s Baldur’s Gate 3 turn-based games don’t need much defending. But after all the talk back then about BG3 raising the bar for RPGs as a whole, I’ve been delighted this year to see JRPGs of many styles and budgets reaching for new, clever ideas.<\/p>\n

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\"Monster<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>

(Image credit: Capcom)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Take Monster Hunter Stories 3<\/a>: at the same time as Final Fantasy’s been transitioning into all-out action, Capcom has been experimenting with this little side series to see how well it can retrofit action into a turn-based combat system. This time around, it’s confident enough in the game to go much bigger with it, and even in the tutorial I found myself puzzling my way through which weapon to attack which monster part with while summoning the right monster sidekick to fight alongside me.<\/p>\n

The core audience will still be Monster Hunter players, but I’m willing to bet Capcom hooks a whole lot of Pok\u00e9mon folks, too, who just love catching and training up a crew to fight for them.<\/p>\n

The biggest surprise of TGS for me was Annapurna Interactive’s People of Note<\/a>, an indie RPG from a western studio that pastes the timed button presses of rhythm games on top of turn-based combat. In practice it plays much differently from Clair Obscur\u2014there are multiple layers of music nerdery at work here: the common “turn order” UI shows you the literal tempo of the fight, and different abilities can change the musical genre of the battle, giving one of your characters or an enemy a buff.<\/p>\n

Despite the developers saying you don’t need a music degree to play People of Note, it gets surprisingly deep surprisingly quickly\u2014if you have a Pavlovian response to the term “time signature” I think you’ll find yourself drooling uncontrollably while playing this game next year.<\/p>\n

A couple days before TGS I chatted with the longtime Japanese indie developer behind Stray Children<\/a>, a follow-up to the odd but charming Moon: Remix RPG\u2014a game that heavily influenced a young Toby Fox. Since Fox released Undertale, he ended up befriending Moon creator Yoshiro Kimura, and in turn some of Undertale has seeped into Stray Children, which is coming out in English at the end of October.<\/p>\n

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