Time for a general rant. So yes, I hate what's known as the Action Command. It's basically the whole "press X to do more damage" sort of ordeal. Quite frankly, it ultimately depends on what game it is used in, and some games of course will do it better than others. But it is just so much more frantic overall to just have a randomized critical hit rate, rather than having it possible to always do the additional damage with each successive button press. Or in quite a few cases, multiple times. Theoretically, the best attacks would go to infinite amounts of damage, assuming you are clearly save-scumming after each and every success in action command, making some games basically impossible to lose if you are a massive cheater. Then again, that's pretty much nobody anyways.
The term Action Command actually stems from Paper Mario, where a key item actually grants the usage of one. It's quite silly how it started with that, but it makes sense and the tutorial for it thankfully is not ridiculously hard to follow. Basically, the best way to do damage, whether it's by Mario jumping twice, or doing the most damage with a hammer, is to follow the prompts, which isn't gonna be too difficult. Your partners in-game also have them. It's when you get to the other abilities that it becomes somewhat difficult, especially for emulator users who are playing via keyboard and are using the commands that involve the control stick (in other words pressing left on the control stick repeatedly, which doesn't work sometimes). Hell, even defending via action command can be hard to predict, which is also a reason I'm not a fan of the defending action command in Paper Mario anyways.
And of course, action commands become prevalent in the Mario & Luigi games, where they are considerably much easier to utilize. Again, the tutorials, while largely unnecessary for veterans of the series, explain things well enough. And then you get used to it quickly enough that it's second nature. The ability to dodge via action command is much better than defending, since you can completely mitigate damage as opposed to potentially halfing it at the very worst. Some enemies, of course, make this not a possibility in some circumstances, but overall, even a not-so-skilled player gets the hang of just about anything in the Mario & Luigi games to not have major issues in the long run.
And then we get into the non-Mario games that use the action command, and they are pretty mixed. Not a whole lot of these games utilize it, but many do so in different ways. Squall in FF8 naturally has one with his physical attacks with the gunblade, where eventually most players get the hang of pushing R1 pretty well to always hit critically, as opposed to every other character. Pretty neat. Vagrant Story seems to do the commands alright for an action RPG, depending on which chains you use naturally, and the defense actions are unique for once. Again not too shabby. Heck, even Breath of Fire 2 has action commands, this time for spells, and it's something that even some veteran players don't even know about. It's hard to pick up of course, since there's only a few that know about these commands, but they DO work, that's what I know, and the best damage dealing spells can incur even more with them. The next two Breath of Fire games have one in the Super Combo ability, where again, it goes on for as long as you keep the action command up, and while hard, this one thankfully isn't a necessity for either game, unlike another game I'm about to rant about.
At the low end of the spectrum? The Legend of Dragoon. This has simultaneously the most annoying and the most boring action command system, utilizing the most damage out of attacks via additions. That includes Dragoon abilities, by the way. The only other really decent method of damage dealing in that game are throwing damage items, which involving button-mashing like crazy. Somehow it's a lot more reliable than the additions, because the timing for each one tends to be iffy. Also these additions level up, so you pretty much HAVE to use them to get the most of the damage. Also these additions gain more potential hits, which basically means having to time X even more times. Also they end as soon as you screw up, including the Dragoon additions, meaning whatever you were hoping for is moot upon one slip up. Also the inclusion of enemies countering additions is even more aggravating in so many ways, since you have to switch to circle, and sometimes the counter comes straight out of nowhere. It doesn't help that the game makes you focus on that square in the middle and the rotating one coming in to it, rather than the nice-looking additions that you honestly should be focusing on. The fact that this game has the most annoying use out of the action command is almost entirely the reason why I hate the mechanic, since it's pretty much the best way to deal damage in that game. As opposed to Breath of Fire's Super Combo skill, the Mario RPGs, or even Vagrant Story, this game pretty much entails you to utilize action command timing if you really are gonna go anywhere, as opposed to the aforementioned games in which they are just a faster way to go about things but not entirely as necessary.
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