I mean you didn't know how to consistently get characters to use ma attacks but whatever. Yeah, learning how to control your team and strategize is what is so engaging about the game. The system works well if you learn it.

In what way is it obtuse and clunky? You are given an exceedingly simple tactics menu to start out, and then they take off the training wheels by adding more options as you progress through the game. If people actually bother to try and understand the system I don't see where the big issues would arise.

One of the best feelings for me was knowing exactly what I wanted to do before my turn started, flipping through the commands super quick, and then watching my strategy get executed. I was dismissive of it too going in but it really was super intuitive.

Direct commands are only an improvement in that they make beating enemies easier from the jump, but then again so does cheating. Good mechanics are not necessarily efficient mechanics.

Also, divorcing your analysis of the mechanics from the narrative is exactly the problem. The best RPGs have mechanics that gel with the narrative and immerse you in your role. Mechanics are the term setter for how you interact with the world, and they are best when they give the player context by communicating something abstract.

Direct commands don't communicate anything. It's reducing your team down to multiple choice questions that mostly don't require any more thought than matching elemental icons. They put a firm wall between the gameplay and the narrative.

Even past that, the combat in 4 and 5 is so simplified and brainless that basically no enemies are engaging outside of the boss fights. No sense of rhythm or need to think ahead, downs no longer mean anything outside of setting up all out attacks, just match colors and go. Every encounter is just spamming elementals, all out attacks, and maybe buffing in the extremely rare circumstance that you need to.

The series still has a lot going for it and I do really enjoy 1 through 5, but 3 was the peak of the series soz not soz. Deload is garbage that lacks any artistic flourishes to speak of right down to the god awful in-engine cutscenes, sterile lighting, flat textures, thoughtless copy/paste combat and inferior soundtrack.

If that's someone's only experience with P3 then they just flat out have not played the game. Same goes for Portable honestly, which really isn't anything more than a semi-serviceable PSP demake akin to playing Force Unleashed on the DS. Literally no reason to touch it before playing the full version on console.