Final Fantasy IV introduced players to the "Active Time Battle" (ATB) system, an evolution of turn-based combat where player and enemy characters alike would get their chance to act after an amount of real time had passed, allowing for a more fluid turn order with a sense of urgency. Final Fantasy V refined the ATB system to a gold standard by adding visible ATB gauges for player characters to indicate progress towards their next turn, as well as removing delays for executing commands. Together these changes made the ATB system more responsive and legible, to the benefit of strategic depth.
Final Fantasy VI, while an excellent game in most aspects, stumbled in its iteration on the ATB system. Unlike in prior titles, the ATB gauges do not pause during battle animations, leading to commands piling up on the queue. This makes the Speed stat relatively useless and enables "Wait tricking" abuse, where the player selectively enters a command submenu in Wait mode to pause ATB and gain a turn order advantage. Commands are made even less responsive by the reintroduction of execution delays from FFIV, and the Battle Speed config option counter-intuitively applies only to slowing enemy ATB timers.
RoSoDude's Comprehensive ATB Enhancement patch addresses these flaws, bringing the game in line with other entries in the series. While not the first hack for FFVI to make ATB pause during animations, this patch is unique in that it supports the Active/Wait mode config setting, reworks the battle speed config setting to apply to the player with a new (faster!) ATB fill rate formula, and reworks all battle timers to closely match the vanilla design, as well as removing delays for many basic actions. Players can expect battles to proceed at a familiar pace, but with a greater degree of control and strategy, as well as more robust configuration options to tweak the experience to their liking.
Final Fantasy VI, while an excellent game in most aspects, stumbled in its iteration on the ATB system. Unlike in prior titles, the ATB gauges do not pause during battle animations, leading to commands piling up on the queue. This makes the Speed stat relatively useless and enables "Wait tricking" abuse, where the player selectively enters a command submenu in Wait mode to pause ATB and gain a turn order advantage. Commands are made even less responsive by the reintroduction of execution delays from FFIV, and the Battle Speed config option counter-intuitively applies only to slowing enemy ATB timers.
RoSoDude's Comprehensive ATB Enhancement patch addresses these flaws, bringing the game in line with other entries in the series. While not the first hack for FFVI to make ATB pause during animations, this patch is unique in that it supports the Active/Wait mode config setting, reworks the battle speed config setting to apply to the player with a new (faster!) ATB fill rate formula, and reworks all battle timers to closely match the vanilla design, as well as removing delays for many basic actions. Players can expect battles to proceed at a familiar pace, but with a greater degree of control and strategy, as well as more robust configuration options to tweak the experience to their liking.
