What is the Press Turn System? (hence:PTS)
Ok, so the Press Turn System is the Turn Based Combat System used in SMT: Nocturne, SMT: IV and the Digital Devil Saga games. I could explain the structure, but honestly I think watching this little video of the first boss in Nocturne will explain most of it.
For those of you who still want a much more complicated breakdown of the system, it's as follows:
- The combat system alternates between player rounds and enemy rounds (not always in that order).
- A round ends when there are no more turns left.
- The amount of (unpressed) turns you get at the start of a round is equal to the amount of characters in the party (though not always the case with bosses)
- Hitting an enemy with a weakness or a critical hit will make the turn glow (press it), instead of using up a turn. An easy way to understand this is to see hitting a weakness as costing "half a turn".
- A pressed turn functions the exact same as a normal turn except that it can't be pressed again.
- Missing an attack or hitting the enemy with an attack they Void will lose you that turn and an extra turn.
- Having your attack Absorbed or Repelled in any way will immediately end your turn.
- If you have pressed and unpressed turns, scoring a critical or hitting a weakness will press an unpressed turn instead of consuming the pressed one, while using a normal action will only consume a pressed turn.
- Both the player party and the enemy party follow the exact same rules.
Right, so that is the Press Turn System in a nutshell. Now let's look at why it's good.
Why it's gud
So the Press Turn System inherently does one thing and then there is another thing they did that was important. This second thing is luck.
Luck
Luck gets a lot of flack in games. Especially in turn based ones. I've seen many attempts at fixing luck in games. Some only have positive luck (only the enemy can miss), some games minimize it (poison: 10% chance to poison target. 100MP) and some remove it entirely.
The hate against luck comes from the idea that players should have complete agency over their actions and that being at the mercy of luck might create situations in which the player loses due to no fault of his own, thus leading to a frustrating experience.
And honestly, it's a fair argument. Luck in a game creates unexpected situations, sometimes situations which are impossible to deal with, and let me tell you, the games that use the Press Turn System do have those. Sometimes you'll be thrown in an unfair situation. But that's the point though.
Yes, luck can lead to frustration, especially in games with quite a bit of luck like the games that use the PTS. But luck, at it's core creates unexpected situations. Situations for the player to deal with. This is interesting. A game without luck is completely within expectation. How can that be engaging? Note that all games that use the PTS are basically dungeon crawlers. You're at A, you need to go to B, there are heaps of monsters in your way. How then do you keep players engaged in your combat system? How do you not make it a chore to fight that same group Archangel, Power, Archangel over and over again? By introducing luck. Sometimes, you will be ambushed, sometimes the Archangel will get a critical giving it the damage it needed to kill one of your guys, sometimes the enemy party will kill one of your guys and mute your healer. It's up to you to figure out a way to deal with this on the spot. To be able to come back from tough situations.
This is what people whine (read:love) about the PTS. This is why people say it's so uber hard. It isn't hard, it's just uncaring. It won't pull it's punches for you. Chance dictates that the game will sometimes force you into unexpected, difficult situations, simply because that's how the dice rolled. And while this might not be fun, it does require you to stop and quickly find an effective way to get out of it (or you can just die). It's the equivalent of being thrown a puzzle that you can't immediately solve. Solve it or die. Engaging.
However, I believe a game that sololy relies on this luck to create a difficult game isn't good. If a game was just hard because it sometimes murders you and there is nothing you can do about it, then that would suck. Which is exactly why the PTS does give you something you can do about it.
Segway into the thing I mentioned which the system inherently does...
Reward and punishment
What is the most valuable thing a turn based system can give you? Well, obviously more turns.
And how does this game give you more turns? By hitting weaknesses and crits (but you'll mostly get them through hitting weaknesses since that's more reliable).
This is where the system shines. You see, having electric attacks isn't enough, you need to know that an enemy is weak to electricity. And what does the game do once you apply that knowldge? It give you more turns! more damage, more healing, more buffing, more options.
This game greatly rewards you for your knowledge.
On the flip side, this game also greatly punishes you for your mistakes. How? By taking turns away from you for doing badly.
This is what's gud about the system itself. At it's core, the way to beat this game is knowing what you're doing. You can have the strongest party in the world, and still get destroyed if you just do whatever. The game requires you to stop, figure out the weaknesses of opponents as fast as possible and applying that knowledge to beat them down.
The system is also balanced in a way where with good knowledge and good preperation, any team can be beat before they even hit you and without knowledge the opponent may get a round or 2 (which might be fatal depending on your luck).
Mixing reward, punishment and luck
So any given encounter (that you fight) will roughly go one of four ways.
- You know the enemy's weaknesses, you have a rough idea of their hp, you know how to tackle this encounter, this is always going to go fine.
- New enemy encounter, but you're not getting ambushed. This will often happen when you get to a new place. These are often harder. You want to have as little of these as possible, so you want to use this battle to find out the weaknesses and attacks of these new enemies.
- Old encounter, but you got ambushed. This will usually go well. You might get some bruises and might have to think on your feet a bit but because of the knowledge you already have, come your round you'll probably be able to deal it no problem.
- New encounter and you got ambushed. Well... to bad. These are the "fukk you" encounters and have a high rate of making you go game over. Nothing you can do about it, it's the nature of the game. Sometimes you'll be able to use past, lore or outside knowledge to guess weaknesses but since the series tends to be very wishy-washy with the stats, attacks, weaknesses and resistances of demons, there is no way to know things for sure.
So what this all means if that, getting ambushed is not what is going to kill you, it's not knowing what you're doing. Remember, this game greatly rewards knowledge, which means that even in a bad situation, you can fix it by being good.
Also, even getting wiped is a learning experience. Because of the PTS and the way the game is balanced, the way an enemy will kill you will often be by abusing a weakness a party member has. So if you have a character that is weak to Ice and no party member that nulls it, then you may die because the enemy decided to spam Ice attacks and is getting extra turns which they are using to spam more Ice attacks. What did you learn? Don't use this party member or get someone that nulls Ice.
This segways nicely into...
Preparation
In every game that uses the PTS, preparation is important. The games have an inherent difficulty curve, which I quite like. What happens is that the difficulty is set by your knowledge of the possible encounters, which means that the start of a new dungeon will often be the most difficult part of a dungeon (which is great because that's where you'll lose the least progress if you die).
In every game that uses the PTS, your party is mostly customizable, even mid dungeon. This allows you to choose party members and skills which are better suited for what you will be facing. I think this is a very cool concept.
The game doesn't tell you the startegies that work, it just tells you the strategies that don't. It's up to you to find an effective way to beat the challenge ahead and seeing the party you made do well is very rewarding.
This again ties in well with the luck and reward aspects of the game, since you're essentially preparing to mitigate the unluck you can have by abusing the reward system. (These enemies use Ice. If I can get a guy that drains Ice, I can waste their round.)
There is a guy I like on Youtube who beats every Nocturne boss at a very low level on hard. I watch his videos as I beat bosses in the game myself and he's often not even half my level. The way he does this is by basically creating the perfect teams to fight the bosses. I just wanted to point this out. I really like that you can beat a boss that a level 50 character has trouble with as a level 20 character as long as you're prepared well enough.
Conclusion
That's not all of it. There are many other aspects I could touch on like the high varience in encounter rate difficulty, which really serve to spice up the battles or the fact that not every battle is a battle and can be a transaction or recruiting or how the possibility of missing always keeps you on your toes. However, if I did, the post would start to lose focus and I would have a more difficult time explaining how everything ties in together.
For now I believe these to be the main point of what keeps the press turn battle system that you spend hours (days) in fresh and exciting every time, even if you've already seen a group of enemies before. Any group of enemies that I know to have Mudoon still keeps me on my toes every time. So in summery:
- Luck and the severe punishment of mistakes set the difficulty.
- Luck makes sure to create interesting and unexpected situations that require you to find an answer for.
- Getting rewarded for your own knowledge feels good every time.
- It feels especially rewarding getting out of a jam with your own knowledge.
- The high rewards you get (extra turns) for playing well allows you to dispatch enemies with ease or come back from a bad situation.
- The game is hardest at the start of a new dungeon, closer to the save point.
- This allows you to build an effective team and only advance once you feel prepared.
- The feeling of building an effective team is rewarding.
- The dungeons often have mid-bosses which require you to change up your strategies a bit, which offers a nice change of pace.
- The system is very easy to understand and never changes (like duel-type attacks or something).
I didn't even know Madarame was supposed to be some kind of gatekeeper until I saw people crying about him online. Beat him in one go.
Why can't I get a good racing game on Ps4?
