A lot of the below mechanics aren’t explained well enough in the game, and I had to trial-and-error my way into writing this up.
The game doesn’t allow remapping for the controller, and the inputs for the controller aren’t intuitive for Tales players. On an XInput controller:
- LT (left trigger) for normal attacks
- RT (right trigger) for skills
- X to dash
- B to guard. If you input a direction while guarding, you dodge in that direction. If you dodge past an enemy, you don’t automatically turn around, so be careful.
- A to jump
- Start to enter the menu to use items or rearrange skills
Guarding seem to be directional. You can guard attacks that only hit your front, which negates all damage. If you are hit from behind or by a spell that hits all around you, guarding fails. If you see an enemy cast, you have to use guard plus a directional input to dodge. Try dodging just when their casting bar fills up. With good positioning, you can attack them during their endlag from the spell.
Spellcasting cannot be interrupted. This includes your spells, though you could still get combo’d during endlag.
Unfortunately, some enemy spells are unblockable and fast, making it hard for the player to dodge and find an opening.
Only the attack buff spell is worth using. Offensive spells are less damage efficient than normal combos and healing spells are weaker than potions. Also, Divine Judgement and Stellar Destruction don’t work for some reason. Using them just wastes MP for nothing. Healing spells don’t cost MP outside of battle for some reason. Also, you can cast your attack buff outside of battle and it will apply at the start of the next fight, saving you the trouble of casting it under enemy attack.
Enemies have extremely fast attack speed and can combo you if there are two of them. If you fail to guard and dodge properly, you won’t find an opening and you will die easily, especially when you have only one character.
You can set directional inputs for your skill button like in Tales. You have both a ground skill mapping and an aerial skill mapping. The latter probably won’t get used much, since pretty much every enemy can be hit from the ground anyways. There may be some spells that are easier to dodge by jumping, but I didn’t test enough to be sure.
Enemies cannot break out of combos and you can potentially kill even bosses in one or two combos if you store up enough TP through guarding. Unlike Tales games and Luminous Plume, there is no “staling” penalty for spamming the same move over and over again, and most enemies cannot break out of Kestrel Rush spam. This is probably the only balancing factor against the enemies’ own damage output, frame data, and combo potential.
Normal attacks don’t cost TP, but they are kind of slow and only good if you can push the enemy against the wall and you want to save on TP. You shouldn’t need to use normal attacks if you gather enough TP for a killing combo anyways.
I personally don’t like having to hold X to dash in combat. I would prefer if it was toggle rather than hold.
In the main menu, the second and third row of options are hidden. You have to press up and down to get to them. IMO, the menu should display both rows without hiding them. There is plenty of vertical space to spare!
Overall, I like the story and the ending is very much needed in times like these, but the LMBS gameplay feels kind of scuffed and needs better tutorials.