Xenogears Battle System
Xenogear's Battle System
Xenogears has one of the most hardest to understand battle systems, but once you realize all of it's new and improved advantages, you'll think everything else, even FF7's battle system is old fasioned.
I will explain it in stages, and I do not want you to continue after the line if you don't understand what came before it, you'll see what I mean:
Now, in Xenogears, the battles look a lot better because they are 3D, but the actual battle system is much much different than anything I have seen before. Now, let's assume the character is Fei, when it comes to Fei's attack, you will notice a bar to the left hand side with a number in it, I think the game starts it as 3, so we'll use that...now, when Fei attacks, he has the choice of 3 attacks, a 1 point attack (triangle), a 2 point attack (square) and a 3 point attack (x). They range like this:
3-point (x) Most Powerful
2-point (square) Medium Attack
1-point (triangle) Weak Attack
...but, remember that bar to the left with 3? It means that you can use any combination of the - point attacks as long as they add up to or are less than 3, so you can do: triangle, triangle trianlge...or...just x...or...square and triangle
You get the idea, BUT IF YOU DON'T, DON'T CONTINUE ON, GO BACK AND TRY TO UNDERSTAND IT!!!
So we have found a use for these buttons: x, square, and triangle...so what does circle do? Ok, circle is the cancel button for the whole game, and this is no exception. It will cancel the rest of your attack, ok lemme explain:
Let's say we have the bar at 3, and Fei attacks, but you only want to do 2 triangle attacks or a square, your turn won't end until you add up to 3 and these only add up to 2, so by pressing triangle, triangle, circle....or....square circle, you cancel your attack after the 2 triangles or after the square. So you actually only end up hitting the enemy for either 2 triangles or 1 square.
Well what's the point of that?! You should hit as much as you can!! Not neccasarily, you see since you only used 2 of the 3 points you had in the bar, the 1 left over actually goes to a seperate bar under the characters name on the battle screen called the AP bar.
do not continue if you don't understand, the next part is really confusing
Now this AP bar, it is a lot like the bar to the left which has 3, except instead of you being limited to 3, you can keep charging it up to 28!! Charging? Well like how you attacked for only 2 points instead of 3 with the 1 left over that transfers over, we say you charged the AP for 1 point, you can continue to do this and charge it to a high high number, and then you can use it.
How do you use it? In the menu bar when you're turn to attack comes, look around for the option that says "combo", I will come back to combos in a second, just one thing we must get straightened out before that...
Just as you level up and you learn new magic, you learn things called Deathblows. I think the first one Fei learns is...I forgot sorry...anyway you use it by pressing triangle, then x when it comes to your turn. Fei will not just do a one point attack then a 3 point attack, he will actually do a special deathblow. So these are deathblows, I will have a list of all of them soon. I think each character has 15 each.
Now, back to the combos (the AP thing before the deathblow part) with the 28 AP you have, you don't make a combo out of regular 1, 2, and 3 point attacks it makes more sense to make a big big combo of 6 or 7 deathblows. This looks really cool, and does a whole load of damage.
That is basically how the character battle systems work
Gear Battles
If you understood the regular character battles, this will be quite easy actually. Just a few notes about gear fighting:
- you CANNOT heal them with healing items and magic
- they have the same 1, 2, and 3 point attacks but instead of 1 point it is 10 feul, 2 point = 20 feul, and 3 point = 30 feul (I will explain feul in a minute)
- they are really strong
- the only way you can refill gear HP is by tuning up the gear
- You can refil the feul in 2 ways, 1) same as HP, tuning it up...2) how characters defend during battle, gears charge, and within that charge they re-charge 30 - 50 feul
WHAT'S FEUL!!!???
Feul is sort of like he amount of energy the gear has. Basically if you run out, you can't do anything except charge in which case you'll replenish it slowly (30 - 50 for each time you charge).
weak gear attacks take 10 feul, medium 20, and strongest 30. Don't worry too much about feul though, you have 1000's but do keep half an eye on it.
make sure you understand!!
Now, gears also have the option of booster. What booster does (FF7 gamers: it is like haste) is it speeds up your turn bar, so you get more turns, except the downside is you use an extra 50 feul per turn. And of course while on booster your attacks are much stronger, booster is sometimes needed for bosses, but don't keep it on too long or your feul will be gone!!
Now, just how characters have deathblows, so do gears. With characters, you can use a deathblow anytime, any turn, not with a gear though. With a gear, you can only use deathblows if you're attack power is at least 1. To get you're attack power to one, you have to use a normal 1, 2 or 3 point attack with your gear and next turn you'll have gone from 0 to 1 attack power then which you can use a deathblow.
NOTES:
*Deathblows do take extra feul, but from the damage they do are very much worth it
*Once you use a deathblow, you're attack power is back to 0, and you must do a regular attack to get it to 1 again.
so that is the almighty battle system of Xenogears...very confusing but very rewarding. You have to actually play it to get the hang of it, and of course there are the usual elements of magic and magic points which I haven't explained because they are quite straight forward.