A temporal (sort of) question

Play Valkyrie Profile...Full control over your entire party once combat starts. The possibilities for combos are crazy. At the same time though, it retains some of the "normal" turn-based qualities (magic-users need to recover, use a turn to use a healing item). Same for Chrono Trigger, which has the ATB bars going at the same time and takes positioning/team attacks into account.

I agree with the Star Ocean thing from earlier...Better AI is needed for games where the CPU has control over the party. The AI in 'Till the End of Time was atrocious.

I personally like turn-based battles. I only dislike them when they get stale via the game, either by not having enough characters to control (3 characters in a straight-forward battle system isn't nearly enough...I would've loved to have seen Chrono Trigger with 4-5 characters) or stupidly repetitive actions with little challenge involved (I had to stop playing Wild Arms 3 because it got to be mind-numbing). Suikoden is probably my favorite example of turn-based battles: LOT's of stuff going on with six playable characters and an auto-battle option.

When I picture straight-up real time RPG combat, I just think of something like Final Fight or Gauntlet, where the combat gets stale after a couple of minutes and just resembles more of an action game. Someone mind explaining the X-Men Legend mechanics?

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