15 Best Video Game Mechanics From Recent Years

ATB (FINAL FANTASY 7 REMAKE)

Final Fantasy as a series has been trying to strike the perfect balance between turn-based battles and action-oriented combat for a few years now, and with Final Fantasy 7 Remake, it finally found the right recipe. It did that by tweaking the series’ well-known ATB mechanic in an absolutely ingenious way. Tying healing, spells, and abilities to the ATB gauge while allowing players to freely switch between characters meant that the game essentially turned into a turn-based affair, with the downtime between the menu-based commands characterized by real-time action. It makes for one of the strongest combat systems we’ve ever seen in a Final Fantasy game.