Marvelous and Xseed are teaming up again to bring Flower, Sun, and Rain and Arc Rise Fantasia in North America 2009. I tried out the battle portion yesterday and similar to Tales of Symphonia there aren’t any random battles. Enemies appear on the screen. You choose who or what you want to fight. I ended up fighting a lot of tiny birds since they were the staple enemy in the zone. Walk up to an enemy and you start the battle with a fair amount of action points (AP) used to determine actions for all three party members. If you try to flee and get caught you start out with less AP which gives the monsters an edge in the first round.
Time freezes during battle and you get to pick all of the commands for your party members. Spend all of your AP on L’arc and he does a tandem attack, a five or six hit combo in the demo. Alternatively you can split up your AP to take advantage of Ryfia’s area affecting water spell or have her heal while another party member steals. The combat system maximizes versatility and I liked that. However, there are some elements not well explained like elemental shields. Ryfia can summon a water shell that increases resistance to water, but this was useless in the Tokyo Game Show demo. Also, the turn order on the bottom right isn’t shown in advance. It appears after everyone takes there turns so it’s more like an order of what attack you’re going to see next than something you can strategically use.
We’ll be talking more about Arc Rise Fantasia and Imageepoch soon… ;)
Images courtesy of Marvelous Entertainment.
