Either each individual battle is a single 'atom' of challenge, or an entire dungeon, delve, or outing is the atom of challenge.
The former tend to have battle retries, heals between fights, and far harder combat since attrition is not a concern. The latter tend to focus on attrition, traps, and resource conservation.
I strongly prefer the former TBH.
longish, thoughts on a series that kinda combines these
@trysdyn I think--and yes i bring up this series a lot but it's good okay--wild arms has an interesting combination of the two. Attrition is less of a concern but still a concern because while there is healing between battles, that healing is a limited resource and there are pickups throughout the dungeon to restore it, so you have to keep progressing and managing healing and stuff but also there's less of a worry about going into a boss fight on 1 hp remaining. the pickups are pretty generous but not to the point of completely obviating the mechanic (think coins in early super mario bros games, perhaps 1 or 3)
the later games also bring the focus onto single battles by having your equivalent of MP be something that starts at zero every fight and has to charge up over time, so there's no worry about conserving MP (this feature exists in the early games too but is used exclusively for special moves, alongside a conventional MP bar for magic)
-F
@trysdyn 1 and 3 are definitely worth playing; 3 especially. 2 is kind of worth it but kind of let down by its bad translation (oh, 2 is also where the mechanic I was talking about was introduced, forgot that wasn't in the first one), and we have yet to have the time to play 4 or 5 but we've heard that 4 is disappointing and 5 is really good
-F
longish, thoughts on a series that kinda combines these