I'm about 8 hours in to Vesperia, and I can't get a hang of the combat system. I just mash buttons. I have 4 random Artes assigned to the left stick (it doesn't seem practical to assign any to the right stick, I'd have to twist my hand in all sorts of directions; unless I'm misinterpreting how the commands are inputted). I don't know what I'm doing, how to build combos, how to exploit anything, or what Artes are worth using.
Tips?
Also, does this game have good character development?
First of all, as for character development, I would say Yuri is actually a pretty stoic character. I don't mean that witha negative connotation at all, he's one of my favorite MCs of any game. His personality and morals just don't change all too much throughout the game, maaybe a little bit with regards to trusting other people. However, I would say the rest of the party has decent character development in terms of growing/changing throughout the course of the game, namely Estelle, Rita, and Karol (the younger characters).
As for combat, have you played any other Tales game before? To start out, Yuri has a 3 hit regular combo, without using artes. These are done using the normal attack button. You can change which one of his regular attack Yuri does by holding the stick a certain direction when you press the attack button.
Then you have artes. You can use arte by using the arte button and the left stick or by using the right stick. The right stick doesn't take a button press other than moving the stick. You can't easily go from an arte to a regular attack, but you can go from a base arte to an arcane arte.
So a combo might look like: attack/attack/attack/base arte/arcane arte at first.
Eventually you'll get skills for more regular attacks and more linking between artes. IIRC it's eventually possible for Yuri to link something like 6 artes together eventually. Something like:
attack/attack/attack/attack/attack/base/altered/arcane/base/arcane/altered
(I forget exactly what the arte linking skills are)
