This may have gotten lost in the other thread so I will leave it here. From Kagari's excellent writer at NC:
http://www.novacrystallis.com/2013/...and-difficulty-details-for-lightning-returns/
Additional information from Kagari herself:
Game is coming together!
http://www.novacrystallis.com/2013/...and-difficulty-details-for-lightning-returns/
Alongside the previously posted Dengeki report, Famitsu has their own report on the systems of Lightning Returns.
The first nugget of information is a comparison of the Easy and Normal battle difficulties. We already know that on Easy Mode you recover HP on the field and your GP consumption and taken damage are reduced, but apparently there’s more. In Normal Mode you can escape battle with a penalty of one (1) in-game hour from your time, but on Easy Mode there’s no such restriction. Furthermore, when you get struck by an enemy before battle in Easy Mode you don’t lose any HP as opposed to Normal Mode, where you also are unable to auto-recover your health anywhere. The game’s battle system is now revealed to be called “Style-Change Active Time Battle”, or “SATB”.
When you start Lightning Returns, you have 5 EP (Energy Points, a multipurpose resource) and can only hold 6 items. Back at The Ark, Hope will give you items, restore your GP, and even give you valuable hints. Once you visit The Ark for the first time you gain access to the customization of Lightning’s abilities and equipment, and this is also where the game’s systems open up to you. For those who don’t remember, you return to The Ark after the Battle Tutorial section that was shown off as the E3 Demo.
In older Final Fantasy games, there was often an “optimize” option for equipment that gave you the equipment with the best stats. This took on a different form in XIII and XIII-2, where you could optimize based on balanced, offensive, and defensive equip sets. In Lightning Returns, this function becomes the “auto-ability” option, which slots a Schema with spells and abilities that fit well with that Schema’s stats and abilities. Although it wasn’t really elaborated on, Famitsu mentions that if you wear “complete sets” of Schema and accessories their overall effectiveness will increase. Different Schema have different starting ATB values you have to pay attention to, as well as differences such as ATB recharge rates, strength of knockout attacks, or the duration of knockouts that you have to keep in mind. Finally, some Schema have “characteristic abilities” that you cannot remove from them.
Next up is shops. There’s a large number of shops in the Luxerion area, near the North Station where Lightning first arrives in the city. There are varying kinds, and of course different shops of the same variety may contain different items. Here is a short list of the kinds of shops you can expect to see around the town, and a short description of what you can find there.
1. Equipment Shop: You can buy Schemas and accessories/decorations at these kinds of shops.
2. Blacksmith: You can buy weapons or shields here.
3. Magic Store: You can strengthen your abilities at this shop by combining the abilities you obtain from enemies. Synthesizing abilities of the same kind and level produces more powerful commands. It wasn’t mentioned, but it seems likely this is where you will also buy battle commands.
4. General Store: Recovery items such as potions are stocked within.
5. Restaurants: You can eat different meals at different prices to restore HP.
6. Inn: You can sleep or rest for chosen amount of time to recover a proportional amount of HP.
7. Information Shop: Here you can purchase secret reports, which detail things like enemy weakspots and knockout methods.
8. Prayer Canvas: The board seen in some of the earlier trailers, which give you quests to fullfill for people across the city. Many of the quests found here are item retrieval or “fetch quests”, and it’s said that completing them will earn you Chocolina’s gratitude.
9. There’s a wandering ‘black marketeer’ merchant named Tenio who you can find all over the world, but his item supply is fairly limited.
Anyone you can talk to will have a white speech bubble over their head, and NPCs will have a small stars underneath that. As previously mentions quests award you with stat gains, but they can also provide you with items, decorations, and gil.
When exploring the field or cities, monsters may appear even in populated areas. If you ignore them they might even start attacking NPCs, although supposedly they will not attack quest-givers. Extra-strong monsters can be found in various places out in the world, referred to as “accent monsters”, which (along with boss creatures) are part of the group of creatures you an upload victory scores of to social sites/SNS. (You can also upload screenshots via SNS, although they make no mention of how you take said screenshots.) One of these monsters is called “Zomokku”, and readers might recognize it as being the green dragon in the header image for this article!
The Famitsu writer (who got a chance to ply the game) said the fight with Zomokku was so hard that he eventually had to escape, losing time and precious EP. He recommends only fighting the creature later in the game once you are prepared, although luckily this dragon only appears once you’ve cleared one of the main-story quests (a tailing mission in Luxerion).
Upon reaching Luxerion you’re set on a main-story quest that involves investigating the murders of women with “rose-pink hair” (like Lightning), but you can also take part in side quests revolving around the religious cult and the murders. These involve investigating and interrogating people. While it’s not mentioned where it is exactly, there is also an area where Chaos has spread more profusely near Luxerion. Sources have translated this area as “Death Border” (or something like that), but there’s no official English name as of yet. In this place, though, enemies are much, much tougher.
Also provided by the report were a list of places and things that halts the progress of the in-game time, and a list of some basic actions Lightning can use on the field. Time stops when you are:
1. Talking to people.
2. In a cutscene.
3. In battle.
4. In menus.
5. In The Ark with Hope.
The basic actions you can take are:
Dashing: Consumes the “action meter”, which is the ATB Gauge of whatever Schema you’ve set as your default for battle. It allows you to move faster while you’re dashing, and when you stop your action meter slowly recover.
Jumping: As far as we know it doesn’t cost from the action meter, but it seems pretty much identical to jumping XIII-2.
Strike: You can attack enemies in the field for an advantage in battle, but you can also break objects which might hide goodies for your journey. You can’t use strike when your action meter is empty, but it doesn’t seem to actually reduce the meter.
Sheathe: If you don’t sheathe your weapon in towns or in the presence of civilians, they will become scared of Lightning.
In the datalog you can find battle tips, such as when to guard, when to perform a counterattack, or how to battle more efficient. One of these battles tips is instead of button mashing during fights, use an attack or guard skill when the attacks connect. For example, if you like to use spells the best time to press the button to do the next magic attack is when the first one actually hits your enemy.
Additional information from Kagari herself:
The latest report out of Dengeki Online focusing on Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII focuses once again on its various battle systems. While somewhat similar in many ways to the systems of XIII and XIII-2, Lightning Returns attempts to combine action-based mechanics into the mix in a style similar to a mix of the former, such as the systems found in Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII and Final Fantasy Type-0. The details of this system – dubbed “Amazing ATB” – are further explained by Square Enix’s own Daisuke Inoue and Nobuyuki Matsuoka.
The keywords of the game’s battle system are “judge and response,” according to game design director Yuji Abe. The systems from FFXIII and XIII-2 have essentially been taken and adjusted to a new one focused on a sole player character. From the beginning, the team had a goal of creating a battle system that allowed the player to feel like they were “playing together with Lightning.” Similar to FF Type-0, pressing a button will immediately cause Lightning to react – whether through button placed skill action or simple movement on the field via the analog sticks, it allows for instantaneous player to Lightning conversion. FFXIII-2′s Requiem of the Goddess DLC offered players the first look at what a singular character experience would be like, so using those concepts as a base, the overall battle foundation of Lightning Returns was formed.
Unlike XIII and XIII-2, however, Lightning’s recovery options will be severely limited this time around. HP will no longer automatically recover after each battle. If the player wishes to heal her, they’ll have to make use of a new resource called Energy Points. Healing can also take place from potions and other items, but the limited nature of those will be made apparent straight away. Resource management is a key element of Lightning Returns – and together with the solo-based combat experience, the team describes adjusting monster difficulty as being sufficiently challenging.
Similar to most action games, using the Guard ability will allow Lightning to lessen damage from enemy strikes. Unlike most action games, however, the use of Guard and other defense abilities isn’t free – ATB allocation will be consumed in the process. One of the newer features to the series is the inclusion of Counterblow, a sort of bonus mode that will allow Lightning to interrupt enemy actions with precision timed attacks. In order to execute Counterblows successfully, the player will need to “judge” the monster’s movements and form a “response” based on what they see. The team has taken steps to adjust movements of enemies that have appeared in the previous two XIII titles so players might experience something a little more fresh. As Lightning has the ability to move around the field during battle, those extra-skillful can lop off parts of specific monsters if they please – the bonus being these broken parts offer up exclusive loot.
One particular ability Lightning can make use of is a decoy of herself that can keep an enemy at bay while the player can maneuver around for a back end attack. This ability will also cost Energy Points, but is just one example of the many useful things Lightning can do in her solo battles.
Final Fantasy XIII and XIII-2′s battle scoring system remains in place – including the player’s battle score, stars earned out of five, and time elapsed during battle. Using the social network features built into the game, players can upload their own high scores for the world to see on platforms such as Facebook and Twitter.
Those wishing to take a more laid back, defensive approach to the game will be able to make use of various items and equipment that will boost Lightning’s damage soak. Being able to customize Lightning is part of the game’s RPG flair – and one similar to some of the party customization from FFXIII and XIII-2. Instead of Paradigms, the player will establish specific equipment sets – or Schema – to lay out abilities and stats Lightning can take into battle. Enemies will of course have various weaknesses, so equipping the correct magic or other attack skill is key. Some abilities will come as rewards for defeating monsters or bosses, including some that combine magics for wider use.
Lightning can make use of healing magic such as Curaga at the cost of EP, although like most things in the game, making use of such resources should be done with caution. Conservation is key and Energy Points will surely come in handy against some of the game’s bosses.
Information on monsters and their weakness won’t come from Libra/Scan this time around but through conversations with a specific NPC in towns. They’ll be able to provide Lightning with information on a monster and it’s potential drop abilities. The bestiary itself is still in its final phases, but around 50% of the enemies appearing in the game will be new to the XIII series. Enemies at night will react differently, possibly with glowing eyes – this is something the team says players really need to watch out for.
The amount of time left in the world of Nova Chrysallia is extremely important, even for monster hunting. As time passes, enemies will gain strength rather than strong enemies being confined to specific areas. After four days pass, enemies will be stronger on the fifth day so it may be wise to plan some of the bigger battles ahead of time to avoid unexpected challenges. Players can avoid normal battles if they wish, although the team has focused a lot of adjustments on enemy appearance on the field and their power levels throughout the story.
Not only will Lightning’s parameters increase through the use of whatever she’s wearing, but also through the process of quest completion. In lieu of battle, Lightning can shoulder some quests should the player find themselves stuck on a particular enemy.
Every day at 6am, Lightning will return to the Ark, where she’ll regain HP and Energy Points – similar to the properties of save points from some of the previous Final Fantasy titles. The team suggests planning big fights around this feature, as it’ll give players that extra security before going into battle. The game will offer an Easy Mode – along with a Normal and Hard Mode – which will allow Lightning to slowly recover HP on the main field. The development team is currently making adjustments for this mode as well as balancing for the other two difficulty levels.
Matsuoka finished the article by saying he wants players to experience the large, content-filled world of Lightning Returns. Inoue said that while he felt there was some resistance from fans by splitting the ATB gauge into three segmented parts, he looks forward to players experimenting with the battle system and gaining some satisfaction from it. He is also looking forward to players customizing Lightning’s outfits and her wide variety of color options and accessories.
Game is coming together!
