dtgreene: I disagree with your notion that using abilities should require extra work, as it discourages strategy. I could cite Phantasy Star 3 being one game that has this issue; the battle system makes it *much* easier to auto-attack; it's typically faster to just auto-attack than to target your attacks to win the battle quickly, and the game gives you infinite healing in the second and third generations, so conserving your healing resources is irrelevant (even then, multiple healers with good TP works well enough, especially given how boss fights are not common in this game).
Normal attacks are boring; combat is a lot more interesting when abilities other than normal attacks are used, and making them more cumbersome to use makes things significantly less fun.
I actually think that, rather than automating normal attacks, that perhaps they should go away entirely.
RyaReisender: Well, Phantasy Star 3 for example is a game I can easily play through many times, just using auto attacking and grinding the whole game (and healing up). It's simple and thus enjoyable to play. I don't find that boring personally. Though of course it doesn't require playing skill.
On the other hand "Cthulhu Saves Christmas" is a game that did away with normal attacks completely and offers you a large amount of abilities that are all good in different situations. Every single attack for every single character you need to think which skill to use, making combat slow. THAT is boring to me.
I actually found Phantasy Star 3's combat to be more fun, albeit more tedious and time-consuming than it ought to be, when any of the following were the case:
* I use a melee technique (but that's only worth doing so for one particular 1st generation character)
* I choose targets more optimally for my attacks (but even that usually makes the battle take longer, even if it would end a round sooner)
* I use the Forza technique (this tech is underrated; for just 1 TP it has a chance of killing an enemy outright, and you still get the XP and Meseta for killing it)
The problem with PS3 is that the interface does not encourage using strategy. If you don't want to auto-attack, you need to press three inputs (up, right, than one of the buttons), then choose the character you don't want to just attack, *then* choose the action (typically a command and technique) from that character, and this needs to be repeated for *each* character.
For contrast, in Dragon Quest 3, you just choose commands for each character in order. Auto-attack is still just pressing "A" 8 times (aside from the lack of retargeting when a group dies (a problem fix in the SFC and subsequent versions)), but if you need to do something else, like cast a spell, you only need to choose the command and spell. Phantasy Star 4 isn't much worse than this; you just have to choose to enter commands, and you then choose the commands for every character, and PS4 still manages to be fast in the auto-attack case (provided you set up a macro beforehand).
If anything, the main things that make combat slow to me are either:
* Long animations (modern Final Fantasy games have this issue; is there a reason FF7 needs summons with animations that last 30+ seconds?)
* Having to deal with positioning; this is why I prefer non-tactical RPGs to tactical RPGs. (Unfortunately, the IE games do have you deal with positioning, only you don't have as much control due to forced pathfinding.)
I could also point out that PS3 is one game that I have trouble replaying immediately after a playthrough; I currently have a playthrough stuck at the end of Sean's route, which I did right after a Generation Skip run (have you tried that route?).
On the other hand, SaGa 1 is a game I can immediately replay after finishing it. In that game, there isn't a basic attack, but rather you select the weapon you want to attack with from what you have equipped, and spells are treated no differently from weapon attacks (you even have spellbooks having durability as their only limiting factor).
Edit: It's worth noting that SaGa 1 is also much shorter than Phantasy Star 3, so that's another factor in the game being easier to repeatedly play through.
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