FF13 was ball-achingly boring. How does this compare for someone naturally averse to standard JRPG mechanics of stats and turn-based gameplay?
It's a weird sort of hybrid between turn-based strategy and a third-person shooter.
The battle system in a nutshell is:
-You alternate between "player" and "enemly" phases.
-Each phase you get a certain quantity of action points ("medals") that you can spend on moving or buffing your units. You can "pool" medals to an extent by ending your turn without spending all of them.
-When you select a character to move, the game zooms in to play somewhat like a third-person shooter in that most enemies will shoot at you while you move if you enter their line of sight, though you still only get to attack once per action. This works for you when enemies move as well.
-Characters can be moved multiple times in a single turn, but their range decreases each time (so you can't just blow all your medals on rushing one unit to the other side of the map.)
I'm not sure how well that came across, you should probably just watch a video of an early battle.
You still have leveling and equipment, but experience all goes into one pool and is then "spent" on leveling up classes rather than characters (so every scout will be the exact same level, same for shocktroopers/snipers/lancers,) and equipment upgrades are also purchased per class. It's not a game where you're going to spend forever in the menus upgrading/leveling/customizing your characters- the idea is that you upgrade each of the four classes evenly and choose your team based on which characters you like.
