Divinity Original Sin 2 has great turn based combat

And recently SMT V for the Press Turn system

love yoshi-p, but he's wrong about that.

dragon quest XI!!!
yakuza: like a dragon
omori
inscryption
digimon story cyber sleuth
the newer shadowrun trilogy
wargroove
caves of qud
valkyria chronicles
trails of cold steel
wasteland 2 and 3
baldur's gate 3 opted for turn-based instead of a real-time system
total war series
ftl
into the breach

it's also worth mentioning that final fantasy X ain't new, yet it (in particular among ff) remains very popular (more enduringly so than ffXV, as far as i can tell), and people are always playing the hd remaster.

Bug Fables is popular despite its quality

Final Fantasy VII Remake? Wouldn't Yoshida consider that a point against turn-based combat? Considering it was extremely successful despite it's approach to more action oriented combat, rather than turn-based like the original?

@Schmliff0 I haven't tried it yet but VIIR has a "classic" mode where the AI handles movement and attacks and you just use spells and items and special moves, it's essentially turn based

Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia
Fire Emblem Awakening
Undertale
Cosmic Star Heroine
The Banner Saga 1-3
Child of Light
Paper Mario: The Origami King (Okay debatable if its good but the combat IS turn based!)
SaGa: Scarlet Grace
Bravely Default 1 (2 is on here but 1 is also within the decade and seems overall more popular)
Bravely Second: End Layer
Etrian Odyssey Untold: The Millennium Girl (And other EOs from 2012 onwards)
Mario & Luigi: Dream Team (Arguable if the quality is good enough to count, but a M&L game in 2013 felt right here)

Just a few that came to mind.

now we just need to get this on yoshi-p's desk

I have my means, Yoshi P will see this within the next 24 hours

not to quibble with the broader concept but i love the idea that there are tons of zoomers out there who are huge Wasteland 2 fans

wasteland 2 hype squad about to come out in force

Ok, so, that's not what YoshiP said. What he said was that real-time games are much more ubiquitous than when he was younger, and that turn-based games are, therefore, not as immediately intuitive to a younger generation, and that they went with real-time combat with FFXVI because they wanted the game to accessible to as many people as possible. Now, one could certainly raise objections with this statement, but come on, let's have this conversation based on what the man actually said, rather than sensationalist headlines have reported him saying.

Also let's be clear: YoshiP is absolutely not talking about anyone posting on Backloggd. He's talking about the general audience, kids who have never heard of an Illbleed or a Flower, Sun, and Rain. And I think it's fair to say that freaks like us aren't going to feel the same about turn-based combat than someone who's main game they play is Genshin Impact.

Furthermore, YoshiP makes a distinction between Turn-Based Games and Command-Based Games, which is a dichotomy that is crucial to the conversation in Japan, but in the west, we tend to just conflate the two into Turn-Based Games. For example, the Active Time Battle System of FFs 4-8 would tend to be considered a command-based battle system but not a turn-based battle system by many in Japan, whilst in the west, we tend to just think of it as another flavor of Turn-Based. So, I think it's important to keep that in mind when responding to his statement.

Anyway I don't think YoshiP was right but I don't think he's entirely wrong either. Most of the games listed here that I think are popular with the broad audience of children that YoshiP is talking about are not popular for their turn-based combat, with the possible exception of Dragon Quest. Even setting aside the fact that I very much struggle to believe that a good half if not more of the games here are actually really popular with kids (the image of playgrounds absolutely brimming with kids talking about SaGa: Scarlet Grace or Caves of Qud is hysterical to me), a lot of the remaining games I don't think are popular with kids because of the turn-based combat, rather, I think it's something incidental to it, even getting in the way at points. I know lots of young people have gotten really into OMORI but I don't I have once seen them talk about the combat, rather it's about the story and visuals and atmosphere. Deltarune/Undertale is a similar one: I'm sure there are kids who get a kick out of the combat system, but I think in the cases I've seen it's not the main attraction. Persona is obviously a huge thing here as well: the P5 fandom has been shaped as much by Let's Plays of the game as the game itself, and while there's a number of factors for that being the case, I do think it's demonstrative that the turn-based combat is not the thing that resonates so strongly with a huge amount of people. Fire Emblem: Awakening didn't save the franchise because it had the best combat in the series, it saved it because it reframed both it's mechanics and the conversation around itself around relationship elements that have become increasingly popular.

Anyway, I know this list is just "hey here's some great turn-based games" and just using YoshiP's statement (or an interpretation of it, at least) as a jumping board but I do think that the topic is an interesting one. Broad generalizations about Kids These Days are always going to be to some degree inaccurate and a little embarrassing at best, but at the same time, people like YoshiP are not going to be deaf to the fact that Genshin Impact took off with the general public worldwide in a way that even super-successful horrifying gambling nightmare factories like Fate: Grand Order did not. I do think general audiences in the west are more open to turn-based combat than they were, say, 10 or 15 years ago, but I also still think it's still more niche among younger gamers than when YoshiP was a kid.

@woodaba these are great points. I got the idea for the list while my free company was talking about the sensationalist headline, before any of us actually bothered to read what he said. My goal with this list wasn't to showcase popular turnbased games but to counter the talking point of "turnbased combat is outdated game design". I started out with only games where I personally like the combat specifically (except for Deltarune, but my girlfriend likes the combat there). If people suggested good games with mid combat those weren't supposed to be on here but I couldn't verify that

I'd say the combat in Bug Fables was the only thing I liked about it, but I have weird taste in combat anyway so I know my takes aren't really representative of "the younger generation".

Dicey Dungeons!

Wolfstride