The last person’s question got me thinking. How would you feel if pokemon included timed hits in its turn-based mechanics, like in the Mario RPG and Paper Mario series. I personally wouldn’t mind if it included the option to turn it off, but I’d imagine a lot of fans might find this uncomfortable. Your thoughts?

In case anyone doesn’t know what this question is talking about, ‘timed hits’ are a system that gives a boost in power to a move if the player manages to tap a button at exactly the right point in the attack animation.

It sort of has the feel of ‘change for the sake of change,’ which I try to avoid if I can.  You seem to be starting by asking whether it would make the game worse in any respect, which I think is the wrong way of going about it.  Start by asking what it does to improve the game.  If the answer is “nothing” or “very little” then trying to tweak it so it doesn’t make the game worse is a waste of time anyway.  If the best we can say of a change is that we “wouldn’t mind” then it’s not a change that’s worth making.

As to timed hits in particular… I think the main draw to including a system like this would be that it creates an impression of trainer participation in battles.  Your presence and your precise instructions, given as the battle unfolds, are actually allowing your Pokémon to be more effective than it would be if it were fighting on its own.

The downside is that we’re adding an additional dimension to the gameplay which requires completely different skills.  It raises the ceiling for the power your Pokémon are able to reach, but makes that ceiling easier for some players to reach than others.  At the highest levels of competitive play, it slants the game’s balance towards offensive strategies.  At lower levels, it makes things more unpredictable and random, allowing reaction times to influence outcomes at the expense of strategy.  You could include an option to turn the system off, true, but then you’ve got to use some kind of difficulty adjustment for the in-game battles to compensate for the fact that Pokémon with timed hits active are going to be hitting significantly harder.

The bottom line, for me, is that the only potential advantages I can see for this are in the way the game ‘feels’ and the way trainers’ relationships with their Pokémon are portrayed.  There are better ways of doing exactly the same thing without messing around with the battle system, which won’t run the risk of messing up the game balance.  It’s a mechanical change that doesn’t actually improve the game mechanics, so I’d be inclined to stay away from it.