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[DarienA]

Yes another SO thread but mainly because the other threads seem to be choked with it's boring or the story sucks.

I'm more concerned about the battle system. I haven't played many RT battle system RPG's and they view I've played I didn't get THAT much in to.

Is the battle system broken? Does the AI really go off on it's own? Must you always switch to do the healing? Does the battle system focus simply on physical attacks or does/can magic attacks play a big role in battles?

That's the one thing holding me back from picking this one up and each review I've read seems to say something different...

GAF help me you're my only hope!

 

[belgurdo]

Combat itself is good; it allows for move cancels and juggling, and spells (unlike in the other games) are useful for more than just long distance battling. Also in this game, everybody possesses some kind of decent fighting ability instead of having three amazing fighters, a couple of okay ones, and a bunch of mages that always do like 10 physical damage like SO2. To keep people from just spamming the same move over and over like in the last game, you have a "fury" gauge that empties after a few attacks. Kind of annoying to wait for the gauge to fill up but it's managable if you keep a mind on it. MP kill is one of the more interesting things I've seen in a RPG, since you can kill some bosses in 10 hits that way

Bad things about the battle system are largely the lack of AI on your guys' part-characters built for long distance fighting will just walk up to opponents and try to tank damage or cast spells on top of opponents and get killed in two combos. Plus there are AI bugs where your guys will just sit there motionless or not fight if their MP drops under a certain amount, they are using elemental skills/weapons and they don't work, or you set their AI options to anything besides the default. Feeding them blackberries or changing their AI/weapons fixes this but is extremely annoying

 

[Cloudy]

Is the battle system broken?

Not more than any other similar battle system. When the AI is controlling some characters, you gotta expect some dumb stuff. Changing tactics depending on the situation helps. For example, I couldn't beat one boss unless I set everyone to "attack with all your might"...

Does the AI really go off on it's own?

I don't like how an AI character sometimes attacks the weakest enemy while the tough ones are raping me. Unlike ToS, there is no way to set the tactics to "attack strongest enemey" so I guess that's a problem. I only noticed it when there are only 2 players in the current party though...

Must you always switch to do the healing?

Whoever said that was wrong. As long as you give each AI character the support skill, they will heal themselves and you automatically. In fact, the healing is much better than in ToS (I keep bringing this game up cos it's the only one with the same type of battle system that I've played for a long period of time)

Does the battle system focus simply on physical attacks or does/can magic attacks play a big role in battles?

The game focuses on skills (physical/magic attacks) and if you have them equipped (after learning them), the AI characters will do them with the frequency depending on your tactics. If you have them go all out, they will do the skills a lot. If you have them play balanced, they will melee more and conserve fury and MP. If you don't use skills and try to combo, the battles against tougher enemies can drag on (if you actually survive) so I'd say they play a big role :lol

I don't see where the bashing comes from as this is the best rpg I've played this year. Try it out

 

[Shouta]

One of the nice things is that switching between characters is a breeze and issuing commands is a snap with the interface and the system (it was for me ;p). I'd issue commands and etc mid-battle to characters then switch backed to the one that I would control. The balance between magic and melee is not bad at all. Both are quite useful and can be used in conjunction with each other. Magic characters can equip spells to their Skill buttons are manually use a spell for a bigger and more powerful effect.

 

[Tsubaki]

This was my biggest issue with the Tales series. (Never played a Star Ocean game... from what I'm told, it's just Tales in 3D or like a real-time Grandia)

There is no place for AI-controlled allies in gaming.

If the AI is too strong (like in the case of Guardian Heroes, if you stick the skeleton knight on berserk mode), the game is not fun because the computer will be doing the major work. Why play a game that plays itself?

If the AI is too weak, you end up spending more of your effort correcting mistakes the computer AI did than actually playing the game. This is what pissed me off the most while playing Tales of the World Narikiri Dungeon 2. The AI would wander by itself, attack when I don't want them to attack, cast when I don't want them to cast, etc. Frustrating because you are fighting against yourself.

If Tales were turn-based, it would be an awesome game. If Star Ocean were turn-based, it would be an awesome game. But they aren't. Meh.

 

[ferricide]

i'm really going to have to vote that this battle system is mediocre. between the shitty AI, the crappy hit detection, the imprecise control (tap for regular attack, hold for special -- this doesn't reliably work for me, anyway) and the stupid bonus battle gauge (the only way to raise levels effectively is to fill this thing up, which pads out an already slow game) ... everything good is cancelled out by something bad, ending with something kind of mediocre and disinteresting.

it's kind of like .hack's battles with a high budget. if you could manually switch to the other characters in .hack instead of shouting commands at them, .hack would have a better basic battle system than SO3; it's much more responsive. on the other hand, SO3 has much better special attacks (both effect and design-wise) and more variety, which gives it an edge over .hack's repetition.

either way, it's flawed and i didn't look forward to encounters ... in fact, i just about began to dread them later on in the game. a lot of people who like it just seem to be like "it's realtime; thus it's novel/fun" but really, realtime battle systems aren't that novel if you play a fair amount of the RPGs that came out this gen (dark cloud 2, .hack, tales of symphonia.) i'd rank it at the low end of those systems, and well below the better turn-based systems of this gen as well.

 

[Prospero]

There is no place for AI-controlled allies in gaming.

If the AI is too strong (like in the case of Guardian Heroes, if you stick the skeleton knight on berserk mode), the game is not fun because the computer will be doing the major work. Why play a game that plays itself?

If the AI is too weak, you end up spending more of your effort correcting mistakes the computer AI did than actually playing the game. This is what pissed me off the most while playing Tales of the World Narikiri Dungeon 2. The AI would wander by itself, attack when I don't want them to attack, cast when I don't want them to cast, etc. Frustrating because you are fighting against yourself.

If Tales were turn-based, it would be an awesome game. If Star Ocean were turn-based, it would be an awesome game. But they aren't. Meh.

I agree with this post one hundred percent. The reason I finally put down ToS is because the experience of playing it was almost exactly like watching a drawn-out and mediocre anime, except that while watching it I had to hold a controller in my hand and rapidly tap the A button until my thumb was sore.

 

[Brandon F]

For the past 20 hours of game, I've completely ignored the AI pretty much. This argument is blown WAY out of proportion.

Yes, in the early goings, you are limited to very small health totals(300 or so), and abilities that can shake off upwards 1/5 of that amount each use!(Fayt's first skill Blade of Fury can rip huge dents in his HP) So making sure healing gets spammed early in IS a problem.

But considering your health can eventually reach plateaus in the tens of thousands with a bit of leveling, the fear of micro-manageing your troops dissipates almost entirely. You earn items that can give any character healing spells, and I have been largely impressed with Cliff's propensity to work it in myself. (The man has no other use for MP in combat, so he tends to spam the spell everytime someone hits less than 50%, even backing away from melee)

I've just earned Maria and started working her as my main character, but before then it was purely a focus on Fayt dishing out huge Cancel combos with Sidekick and Shotgun blast. Nell and Cliff were off doing whatever, but I've never felt the need to switch off even in boss encounters for a very long time.

I can't say I am a fan of the actual real-time implementation though. This game doesn't really deliver the same reflex-based action as ToS at all. Instead much of the success in combat is likened to playing Parrappa the Rapper in that precise timing and alternating X and O abilities within sequence is what it's about. It's awkward to condition yourself to the pauses, deadtime, and animation downtime at first, but once you get the hang of things, there is fun to be had.