Hell yes. Final Fantasy 6. Fallout 1 & 2. Just a couple off the top of my head. This question is weird.
Transistor has an interesting real-time/turn based combat system. You move around in real time, the set your attacks and movement for the attack phase, then back to realtime controls again while the meter for your next turn charges up.
Not to mention the depth of weapon combinations you can put together; it’s one of my favorite games. Might be time for another playthrough.
Fallout and Fallout 2, natch
Brogue, Hoplite, Stone Soup and other roguelikes
Final Fantasy Tactics Advance
Battle for Wesnoth
Heroes of Might and Magic
various card games
basically, any game with significant tactical depth can benefit from well-done turn-based timing
Baldur’s Gate 3
Divinity: Original Sin 2
For the King 2
Fire Emblem series is one of my fav turn based tactics games. Other ones I’ve really enjoyed are Advance Wars/Wargroove, XCOM, Shadowrun, Wasteland series.
Deltarune mixes traditional JRPG turn-based combat with bullet hell action, which is fun. I also like the rock-paper-scissors system from In Stars and Time and Omori, but encounters in those games tend to become repetitive quickly.
chess
X-Com Enemy Unknown & X-Com 2, Baldurs Gate 3, Expedition 33 are all wonderful turn-based games. I like games where I can set up and execute a plan of action.
Advance Wars 1 and 2, absolute bangers
Yes.
Anything by Julian Gollop (all the way back to Chaos, Rebelstar, and up to Phoenix Point)
Fire Emblem
The ancient war games by CCS
Theatre Europe
Slay the Spire 2. You start from being able to deal 6 damage per card and scale your way up to crazy numbers, each play gets you to choose different playstyles based on what cards you get and pick.
I prefer it personally. I’m not a fan of games where combat is decided by reaction times and is high energy. I prefer to use proper preparation and strategy to win fights. And turn based is best for that. I’m also not a fan of “dice roll” style game mechanics for the same reason. Like Fallout New Vegas’s speech system > Fallout 3’s speech system. Because its based on a set skillcheck instead of a dice roll adjusted by your skill.
Chrono Trigger comes to mind
I play JRPGs a lot, but the best one to do this right is Etrian Odyssey, mostly because you can make combat (inputting + animations) really fast, and make even normal enemies interesting challenges. People don’t complain about having to wait for your foe in chess, and that’s because it doesn’t take you 5 seconds to move a pawn, and the foe is usually a fair challenge. (Arguably, video games can be even better at this than chess, because the AI doesn’t need time to think. Instead of smarts, it usually has the stat advantage)
SMT(including Persona) generally does this fine, and Fire Emblem can either look decent with animations off, or speedy enough even with them (most of the time is spent thinking than waiting, either way - the goal). Those are my top 3 series.
On the opposite end, mainline Pokemon might be the worst turn-based combat I ever played, even if the mechanics are solid. I don’t want to wait 3 seconds just for “crit + effectiveness + fainted” to display, even more so if most of trainers and random fights aren’t challenging.
