Typical [ATTACK/SPECIAL/ITEM/DEFEND] games, your average Atlus game, Persona, Pokemon, Atelier, Neptunia, Dragon Quest, Shin Megami Tensei, Final Fantasy, I could go on.
Do you even care about the combat mechanics? Is it style over substance? Is the tiny bit of interaction granted to you between attack animations even worth it?
If there genuinely is any meaningful amount of thought, strategy, timing, awareness, or mental investment of any kind that goes into flailing your way through these combat systems I really don't see it. The most strategy I've ever seen out of these games involves item use and management, which is something I (personally) consider to be a crutch.
If you strip away the flashing lights and animations, would you even have an interesting combat system? Beyond the basic choice of fighting enemies for money/loot/exp or avoiding them to save items/health for future conflict, is there any actual investment in the combat? If boss enemies (the only true roadblocks in suck a game) weren't fundamentally designed to require you grinding hundreds or even thousands of mooks before them just to be able to barely scrape by them, would you bother with the battles?
Don't get me wrong, I can see the appeal up to a point. If you stripped all the regular mooks out of the game so that you wouldn't have to see the same attack animation thousands of fucking times before you get to a meaningful battle, there could be some manner of entertainment in it simply for wanting to see all the various attack animations and interactions.
And yes, I can see the argument for many action-oriented games going a similar route, especially in games with enemies that are quickly dispatched and don't have complicated AIs. Yes, there are some action games where the only reason for you to attack an enemy is to either remove them as an obstacle or to achieve the pure catharsis of a satisfying animation. But in a good action game that is truly memorable and worth recommending to anyone, combat with enemies is a learning experience that teaches you not only how to deal with certain aspects of enemy AI behavior, but gives you a more forgiving opportunity to try out alternative approaches and tactics than boss enemies.
In turn-based RPGs I can't see any difference. Every top-100 list of JRPGs is full of the same core gameplay, the same enemies that take no thought to deal with, the same kind of bosses that are huge damage sponges that require no more strategy than "have enough levels/defense to be able to deal at least some damage in between healing item/skill uses" and are propped up by literally every other feature of the game (story, music, aesthetic, etc.) instead.
I'm asking out of ignorance because I'm not intimate with this genre, is it actually significantly different from just reading a VN and/or playing a puzzle game instead? It seems like the only standout feature of this genre – the extremely basic combat system – just isn't enough of an attraction to be enticing by itself.
Am I wrong?
Am I missing out?
I'm not proofreading this, just tell me whether turn based RPGs are a shit genre for shit people or not