OK so i was an ATB hater — my childhood final fantasies were FF3 and 4 heroes of light on the ds (both turn-based) and my only interaction with ATB was bemused emulation of FF6 where my attention span fizzled out somewhere around the opera house.
in FF3DS i was exposed to the idea of needing to cast curaja on my entire party even at full health, because due to turn speed shenanigans you'd be risking too much delaying heals until characters were already hurt; 4 heroes of light has the crazy cool AP meter and auto-targeting meaning heals were a significant investment of resources AND you had to plan around who the AI would decide is worthy of receiving the spell; in ff6 i saw edgar spamming autocrossbow and drill and steamrolling fights singlehandedly. that was enough to turn me off for a long time.
but really the problem with FF6 (and FF5) was not ATB, but that the design seems to believe pouring skills onto each party member somehow means they're not going to be using one or two of them almost exclusively. every character has a main function that is their Most Effective Way of ending fights as quickly and as alive as possible, whether that's attacking or spells or healing.
and that's perfectly fine! that's not any different in the turn-based games; i was casting party-wide curaga and curaja almost every turn in FF3DS and at least two of my characters weren't doing anything more than attack round after round. but the problem in FF6 is that your Most Effective skill is in some submenu, or you have to do a hadoken input every round ad nauseum, or maybe (FF5) you haven't set up your dudes's jobs for the situation so really you need to leave the fight entirely before you can choose the correct Most Effective skill!
and it turns out that they got this right in the very first ATB game, where every character has two to three things they can do, they're all easily accessible as main-window commands, and the game is balanced around knowing exactly what kind of stuff you have available to you at any given story beat. playing the japanese version of FF4 was so, so fun the entire way through, because ATB battles finally felt like a dance instead of a nervous shuffle where you're not sure if you've got the right limbs equipped to be moving like this. this game is awesome and i love it how edge and cid do a 360 degree spins in cutscenes when they do just about anything.
(the other funny thing about ATB is that FF14 succeeds where FF6 and FF5 fail in giving your character more than two or three options by simply having an entire keyboard's worth of easily accessible buttons to press. neat!)
in FF3DS i was exposed to the idea of needing to cast curaja on my entire party even at full health, because due to turn speed shenanigans you'd be risking too much delaying heals until characters were already hurt; 4 heroes of light has the crazy cool AP meter and auto-targeting meaning heals were a significant investment of resources AND you had to plan around who the AI would decide is worthy of receiving the spell; in ff6 i saw edgar spamming autocrossbow and drill and steamrolling fights singlehandedly. that was enough to turn me off for a long time.
but really the problem with FF6 (and FF5) was not ATB, but that the design seems to believe pouring skills onto each party member somehow means they're not going to be using one or two of them almost exclusively. every character has a main function that is their Most Effective Way of ending fights as quickly and as alive as possible, whether that's attacking or spells or healing.
and that's perfectly fine! that's not any different in the turn-based games; i was casting party-wide curaga and curaja almost every turn in FF3DS and at least two of my characters weren't doing anything more than attack round after round. but the problem in FF6 is that your Most Effective skill is in some submenu, or you have to do a hadoken input every round ad nauseum, or maybe (FF5) you haven't set up your dudes's jobs for the situation so really you need to leave the fight entirely before you can choose the correct Most Effective skill!
and it turns out that they got this right in the very first ATB game, where every character has two to three things they can do, they're all easily accessible as main-window commands, and the game is balanced around knowing exactly what kind of stuff you have available to you at any given story beat. playing the japanese version of FF4 was so, so fun the entire way through, because ATB battles finally felt like a dance instead of a nervous shuffle where you're not sure if you've got the right limbs equipped to be moving like this. this game is awesome and i love it how edge and cid do a 360 degree spins in cutscenes when they do just about anything.
(the other funny thing about ATB is that FF14 succeeds where FF6 and FF5 fail in giving your character more than two or three options by simply having an entire keyboard's worth of easily accessible buttons to press. neat!)