Quote:
Originally Posted by
Formalhaut
Quote:
Originally Posted by
ScottNUMBERS
I like the active dimension battle system. Although I think FFXII's take on that type of system can be spoiled by gambit abuse. I personally try to limit gambit use to a necessary basis but the fact that you can abuse this system means that people will, and then become annoyed with the game because it "plays itself". It would have been better if your party leader's gambits deactivate to force interaction.
I like this. If the current Party Leader's gambits are turned off, then it makes things alot less automated. But then you can turn gambits off anyway. While people bemoan the gambit system, you don't have to use it.
I'm very interested in Type-0's battle system. Could someone explain it to me?
Sure. I'm playing through it and loving it right now, so I'll take any excuse to gush.
The battle system is that of an Action RPG, closer to Kingdom Hearts than your traditional Final Fantasy (and quite possibly a preview of what we'll get in FFXV).
Movement is based around the Analog stick, and you can lock on to enemies by holding the R Button.
There are plenty of ways to actually attack, so we'll go through them now. A character's basic attack is triggered by Triangle. And every character has a different attack and combo setup, based on their unique weapons. King wields two pistols, giving him high range, but he has to stop to reload every so often. Ace wields a deck of cards, which he throws for mid-range attacks that come fast, but do little damage. And the list goes on and on. There are fifteen playable characters that I know of (Class Zero starts with thirteen members, one for each of the cards in a suit, and picks up two more after the prologue), and each wields a different weapon and fighting style. Attack speed, combos, timing, damage, attack movement (such as lunging with a sword)... These all change between characters.
Next up is special abilities. As a character attacks, they build up a gauge that can be triggered to activate the character's special moves with Circle. Again, these are unique to a character.
Ace's Special (collapsed for brevity)Ace, in keeping with his card motif, summons forth a card each time you press Circle. He can summon up to four at a time (though they vanish if you're hit), and when you perform a Triangle attack with Cards out, the effect of the Cards will trigger instead of a normal attack. Which cards are out determine the effects. Red cards make the attack a heavy hitting fireball. White cards cause the attack to deal damage and freeze the enemy. Blue cards restore health instead of attacking, and Yellow restores MP (I believe, it's hard to track sometimes, and I'm not sure what Black Cards do). And if you have a mix of various cards, it will activate one of the effects and power it up (not sure of exact calculations for which effect is used, but they don't seem to combine effects, only power). Queen summons a spinning cross of magic that surrounds her and tears through enemies and heals allies while you hold the Circle Button, and until she's hit. So these vary greatly, and look as though they can be upgraded and possibly exchanged out (but, unfortunately, I can't read Japanese, so no details on that yet).
Then we get the X Button, which controls dodging and blocking. As with Kingdom Hearts, dodge when moving, block while holding still. Get used to this button, you'll use it a lot.
And, finally, the Square Button, which is used to control Magic. Each character starts with a particular spell setup, but these can be exchanged (if you can find where in the menu to change them and what to change them out with). Each spell is actually a combination of spell type and effect range. For example, Ace starts with Blizzard magic with Bomb attack range. Blizzard is an ice spell that can freeze enemies (or, y'know, just destroy them), and the Bomb range means it's a short range attack that hits every enemy in a circle around Ace. Great for when you get surrounded. Then there are other ranges like Missile (which fires homing shots), Rifle (fires straight forward but travels really, really fire), Shotgun (spreads at close range, and can hit multiple enemies and at multiple heights), and Rocket Launcher (creates a reticule for you to aim with, then travels to the target and blows up for area damage).
That's just the basics of spells though. Higher level spells, like Blizzara and Blizzaga, require you to charge the spell for a time before releasing to get the extra power. And there are unique spells like Quake and Tornado, which don't follow the normal area rules. There are also, of course, Support spells like Cure, and each character can carry one of those in addition to an attack spell. I think. I haven't figured out how to use them yet, even on characters I know have them (Queen has casted Cure on me plenty of times when AI controlled, but I haven't figured out how to cast it myself). And, finally, there's a customization system called the Alto Crystarium that can supposedly change how powerful spells are and how they work (charge speed, projectile speed, power, MP Use, range, etcetera). But, I haven't found it yet, and wouldn't understand it if I did, so we can ignore it for now. Oh, and supposedly you need a particular proficiency in a spell's element to use it on a character, but I don't know the details of that yet.
Yeah, magic's complicated.
That's it for the basics, now, on to the more advanced techniques. First, Countering (my name for it, no clue what it's actually called). As you fight while locked on to enemies, you'll occasionally notice a yellow or red reticule pop up on them. This is a Counter indicator. If you land an attack while that reticule is up, it will deal massive damage. Color is a simple indication of effectiveness. If it's Red, it means that landing an attack in that time frame will do enough damage to kill the enemy (as far as I can tell). Harder enemies have harder to hit Counter reticules. You do a
lot more damage with Counters, but going for them can open you up to a lot of pain if you screw up.
Then there's the Phantoma system. When an enemy dies, if you target their corpse (or just keep targeting them), you can press an action button to rip Phantoma from their bodies. This replenishes MP, does decent damage in a small area around the corpse, and collects Phantoma which is used to level the Alto Crystarium for your spells. It's also involved with the plot, as Phantoma manipulation is one of Class Zero's specialties, and is at least part of why they can use magic even when in the field of the Crystal Jammer.
And, finally, summons. Each character apparently has a summon monster, which you can choose to summon at the cost of sacrificing (temporarily) the summoner. Not sure how effective they are, since the only one I've used is Odin (riding Sleipner this time, not a transformer), and he's part of the prologue/tutorial, so it's probably not balanced that way for the actual game. But he had the ability to charge a Zantetsuken. The longer you charge, the higher the percent chance to one hit kill things. Normal enemies were 100% very quickly. The boss? Yeah, it took a little time, but you can charge him to 100% on that boss too. Odin is a beast.
That's pretty much all I can think of off the top of my head, hopefully it gives you a little bit of a feel for the systems.
