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I don't remember what SRPG gave me the idea for this positioning-based Attack Of Opportunity system but more people should play Fire Emblem-like games besides actual Fire Emblem and ask themselves how they could improve upon the mechanics of that game and integrate it into their own SRPG. A varied pallet of influences is important for preventing stagnation, that's advice given to me by one of the many many books out there at over 600 WPM. I've lost count of how many books I've read. I've lost count of how many animes I've watched at 2x speed, 4x speed, even 8x speed. Those programs that flash a book before your eyes at ludicrous speed are amazing. The Pokemon romhackers who try to prevent players from speeding up their text/traversal/battles are morally and artistically indefensible, not even the most infamously egotistical narcissistic movie directors of all time tried to make their videos/DVDs/Blu-Rays impossible to speed up, but that's neither here nor there. Those who emulate games on superior hardware to let the world complete games at 150% speed, 200% speed, even 999% speed and higher are doing God's work. So many stories, so many worlds, so many characters and songs and sounds and sights and thoughts and ideas. I've lost count of everything in my pallet. I can feel the primordial essence of art transcending time and descending from the heavens to come inside of me. I feel like Chuck with the Intersect but I decide what I flash into my memory. I feel like I've broken the constraining chains of time that hold back art. It's just that the world feels so, so wonderful right now. Take my autism and my ADHD, then smash together those two different expressions of infinity to create and push out imaginary time.

I loved how Persona 5 Tactica gave you so many tools for controlling the positions of enemies during your turn but I wish the game was harder and more interesting and less grindy and I wish the story sucked less. RPG mechanics in SRPGs should really be tied to story progression more often. Going back to retry a level because I missed an optional objective shouldn't give me any kind of RPG grind numbers advantage or allow me to break the challenge in half with characters recruited after that level was cleared unless this is a New Game Plus run.

Could you imagine if Fire Emblem implemented a system like that? It would be very possible, you'd just need to save before and after every battle and store these autosaves within the main save file so when you redo a map you've already completed, you tackle it with the units and items you had at the time, but unlocking new things in this chapter (or keeping units alive during that chapter) will unlock them in maps you can redo afterwards. Yay, alternate timelines! Give it a Lore Reason like "Naga blessed you with visions of the future, whenever you go to sleep in your Base Camp the player chooses from a menu when to wake up and then in-universe everything until that point was part of a vision". The character can't decide when the visions happen, noncanonizing every failure, the player does that, fixing story problems like "Why didn't Byleth try harder to Divine Pulse all her losses away?". No stupid time travel that breaks story structure and stakes. No stupid time-controlling item. Just a challenge to the player. Think you could have done better back then? Prove it. Find a better solution to the puzzle. No RNG. Only thought.