New Battle System

It's pretty new. Destiny used the same general idea, but that was a long time ago...second Tales game if I remember correctly. There's also the switch characters feature, which is very nice for comboing...I don't know. It's new to a 3D game with all of the movement and whatnot.

Well, Graces f and Destiny both use a thing called Chain Capacity (CC), which replaces TP from the old games. This allows you to chain ALL of your different artes together instead of the break in chains that TP caused. I personally prefer CC, since you can regain it even easier than you could large amounts of TP.

There's also side-stepping, which is sometimes the easiest way to regain CC...guarding against an attack and sidestepping at the same time gets you a pretty big CC bonus. It's a nice little gift.

Then there's the new Alpha/Beta Artes tree. Every attack you use is an arte - EVERY SINGLE ONE. The more basic ones are called Alpha, and the flashier ones are Beta (if I remember correctly - I don't have the English version yet; only played the Japanese demo). These both cost CC, but you can chain them together to make awesome combos.

If you need me to verify anymore on any of these, I can. Have you ever played a Tales game before, The Pursuit?

Oh then yeah, this game compared to those is vastly different. It's really hard to put into words though. ;D It's pretty easy to get used to from my experience however.

Pretty much all the main differences in the battle system come as a result of switching to the CC system. With no more TP, using what was formerly considered an arte cost the same thing as attacking regularly. Using one Demon Fang costs exactly the same as attacking regularly twice does.

To compensate for this, the basic attack system has been completely revamped and all turned into A-Artes. After the initial attack, depending on which direction you hold the analog stick, your next move will be different. Like, if you hold left and press the X button, you'll do Sword Rain, but not holding anything would do a completely different attack, with stronger attacks costing more CC than others. This creates a lot of different combinations you can do with your attacks. You can also use one CC to switch between this mode and using B-Artes, which are more the traditional "press circle while holding a direction". Of course, these can be chained as well, which makes things really interesting. You can also switch characters with the touch of a button, leading to some really crazy combos if you can position people right.

The other difference in battle is how the camera has been changed so that moving towards the enemy is always necessarily left or right, but Semi-Auto mode can get you used to that pretty quickly before you decide to be daring enough to move into manual. You can also switch characters with the touch of a button, leading to some really crazy combos if you can position people right.

I love this system, everything moves smoothly. The combos last for so long, and you have so many artes to work with, so you can have fun mixing and matching things. Not to mention they streamlined the ability to switch between characters which make the combos even longer and more varied.

At first it was hard adjusting from mashing the attack button and hitting artes, but this system is definitely more fun than the standard Tales game.

It actually feels more like a fighting game than a Tales game, because of how well everything flows.