See the thing is, I don't think that turn based or ATB is necessarily a lost cause, even though the majority of my experiences with them are bad. See Chrono Trigger is one of my favorite games of all time, and I actually replayed it only two years ago to confirm to myself that I wasn't just seeing it through nostalgia-vision. And I still think it's great! The game is just paced so methodically. You never have to grind, and they limit your ability to overlevel the story because there are finite enemies in the game. No such thing as random encounters, no ambushes, and if there's ever a point where you're allowed to challenge a boss that you are not properly leveled to fight, the game makes it very, very clear that you are going in over your head. Almost all of the bosses are about MECHANICS and not level checks, because the game is designed in such a way that the developers always know EXACTLY the level range your characters are in when they would be fighting said boss. It's SMART, and it allows them to tailor the numbers so that a main-story boss is never too strong for a party that has been intentionally avoiding fights. No level scaling shortcuts. Just SMART GAME DESIGN. I genuinely feel that every scene, every fight, every single part of Chrono Trigger had somebody standing over the shoulder of the playtester asking them "are you having fun?" every few minutes.