RPGamer 2024 Awards – Best Battle System

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2024 Best Battle System -- Unicorn Overlord

First Place

Second Place

Third Place

Unicorn Overlord’s battle system feels like the culmination of years of developments in the genre. It takes everything great about the old Ogre Battle games, and modernizes these features in a variety of fun ways. Moving units around the battlefield is intuitive and easy, and the game presents ample information about expected battle results when going to send a unit to attack. Unit-to-unit battles, though automated similar to Ogre Battle, can be heavily programmed with Final Fantasy XII-style gambit properties to set parameters for how units act. Characters can be moved and organized into different squads allowing the player to make the most optimal configurations of their army.

Best of all, there are constant new upgrades and new characters to find, meaning there are always ways to fiddle with the player’s army to find new ways to optimize combat results. The amount of depth is truly astonishing. For those that still want to play the game but find all this too intimidating, Unicorn Overlord thankfully provides ample difficulty options to help tune things to the player’s liking. This also works in the other direction, providing harder options for those who are able to fully optimize their units. Unicorn Overlord’s battle system seems to have an answer to almost everything and caters superbly to RPG players of all experiences.

 

 

The mainline Final Fantasy series has been experimenting with action combat ever since the release of Final Fantasy XV, and in a lot of ways Final Fantasy VII Remake’s combat system seemed like the perfect compromise, taking the ATB gauge of the original and tying it to real-time attack combos. This approach was largely successful, which is why it should come as no surprise that Final Fantasy VII Rebirth opts to take the foundation laid by Remake and expand on it. Characters who were playable in Remake have their movesets expanded, while brand new characters are added that feel just as deep and interesting to play as their predecessors. Synergy skills and abilities add even more depth, making every team combination unique. All of this without sacrificing the game’s stellar presentation and fidelity, which is really just another feather in Final Fantasy VII Rebirth’s cap of astonishing qualities.

Metaphor: ReFantazio’s turn-based battle system is a special joy to play, and this is primarily due to the inclusion of the Press Turn battle system, which heavily punishes sloppy play but greatly rewards strategic execution. Where the game truly shines is in its underlying job system that allows every character to adopt any role. Skill inheritance across jobs and combining them into “Synthesis” skills that can turn the entire tide of a tough battle feel incredibly rewarding to execute. The sheer number of tactical options that Metaphor affords the player is a testament to how much care and effort went into creating a challenging, satisfying combat experience.

 

by Michael Apps, Ezra Kinnell, and Jordan McClain