@letsadark

Yes I'm slow at entering commands. I can't keep up with the pace of the game. I'm sorry that I'm not as fast at selecting commands as you. so thank you for proving my point about being forced to resort to the Auto command.

FFXIII & Fallout 3 tied.

Man what can I say about FFXIII, its my first Final Fantasy & blew me away in every way. The CGI Cut Scenes, characters, music, story was so top notch. But the gameplay was the true star of the show, never played such an innovative battle system. Every battle felt like an event, the music in the battles made you feel the rush & got your adrenaline pumping. Paradigms were important, not using proper ones got me killed, or made the battle last 10 times longer than it should. The battle ssytem was gorgeous to look at but also extremely exciting & fun to play. The satisfaction I got from beating enemies is unmatched. In the game hints towards the holocaust & the theory of God leaving his children are explored subtly and just made me pretty amazed. But they should hire script writers next time.

The world of Cocoon & Pulse is unlike I have ever seen in videogames, those guys are really talented. The music, wow the music it sounded so fresh & new. The character development was fantastic apart from Fang who is my only big complaint character wise. Being a WRPG veteran the game was such a different kind of RPG to play & experience.

Then Fallout 3...again my mind was blown away. Betehasda took the concept of Fallout & turned it into something excellent, being an old skool WRPG gamer who still thinks planetscape torment & the old Fallouts are the best I was skeptical with their approach, but they did almost everything right.

The above two games are also my games of the generation.

It's not forceful, and excuse me if I say this, but you must be entering the commands at a real slow pace. Even on the early game, when you have 3/4 ATB bars, you have almost a 3 second window to input commands. Even considering that you don't input them, and your other party members attack in that time span, you'll have another 3 second window opportunity to input the rest of the commands. 

Very few battles in the early game are done with less than three turns, unless you can do a Back attack for instant Stagger, and even then, some Staggered enemies can take more than three attack turns to defeat. Enemies like the Behemots or the Scalebeasts can take you easily over one minute to defeat. And in the case of Scalebeasts, you're not going to defeat them with Auto only.

You can continue to rant all that you want about Auto, fact is you're putting your own opinion as a fact that the option is forced and that's what S-E wanted all along, when in fact it's only an option for playing the game.  

@hatmoza

stop hounding people about their opinions & if you do atleast give out decent arguments.

Well, without flaming the game, I guess I'll end this by saying that the auto command for that one player you have control over, and your two team members completely acting on their own really takes the taste out of the battle (to me personally at least). It became quickly dull and repetitive. Heck even the summons had an Auto select option.

Like I said in my rant, I guess I don't belong to FF's demographic anymore. I simply like to be in control in battle. The manual system was broken in Final Fantasy XIII 

The only question in my post is how did those battles go by so fast?

I honestly must have played a different game as I've only had 2-3 battle in the entire game go that fast. Even then, I always input manual commands. Auto is there to make life easier on you, because the battles are so fast paced.

The strategy is in the paradigm shifts. If inputting the commands was rough, that's why the auto option exists. For people, who can't keep up with the speed of the game and for those who just want to grind.

This was a consideration of mine as well, maybe #2.

My favourite this generation is Dragon Quest 5 DS:
*Simple, yet very solid battle system.
*Commentary - hitting select will generate commentary from your characters in party on different rooms, people, and events that occur. The commentary is different based on who is in your party.
*Story covers a lifetime - Starting as a child, the main character grows through his teens, marries one of the eligible women, and then adventures with his family in the future. During this time, the evolution of the world and its enemies can be seen.
*Fairy tale type setting - gives the game a very mysterious type atmosphere
*Timeless art style - This is the sort of art style that no technological advances will ever outdate, the DS version moved it to polygonal style, but its largely the same feel as the SNES. 
*Interesting settings - from swamp villages, to mountain villages, to castle fortresses and Kingdoms, to farming hamlets, etc.... This game has a nice variety of settings for towns. Not to mention, the dungeons don't actually feel like long boring crawls.
*Lots of extras

For the record, I do not consider Action RPG a true genre, unless speaking of games like Tales of Phantasia and its sequels; mostly because the focus is not role playing, but action and adventure. That's another discussion though (one I have been on about since people started calling the upcoming Ocarina of Time an Action RPG).

I agree that not giving you control over the two other characters was a bad design choice, in my opinion at least. 

But we shouldn't extrapolate that it's going to be continued in the future, as no FF keeps the same battle system for the next iteration. I know that FFXIII broke further away with the FF mold, but what if they make a traditional FF in FFXV? No one can tell the future of the series.  

You only "Back attacked" 3 enemies in the whole game O_o

over 75% of my encounters were back attacks. Yes battles can drag out, but my other two players were always doing all the work. As you said, the pace is too fast therefore relying on manually selecting just isn't enough. And as I already admitted, I'm very ... very slow at selecting commands.

Agreed

*sticks thumb in mouth* you mean, we're going to have  a classic turned-based system again? ^_^