Really interested in End of Eternity (aka Resonance of Fate) because of its setting (read more about the game’s world here). Weekly Famitsu’s second report of the game focuses on the battle system, which now has an official name and it’s t.A.B or tri-Attack-Battle (the acronyms in Japanese games are getting crazier everyday). Read on for full details, including an interview with tri-Ace’s Takayuki Suguro (director of the game) based on the mag report.

The basic flow for the battle system is explained first and there are five steps.

1. Pick a character to perform your actions.
2. Move around and attack your enemies.
3. Your turn ends once all your party members have make their moves, repeat step 1.
4. Repeat step 1 -3. If you want to skip a character during this action phase, you can do so.
5. Battle will ends when all the enemies are eliminated or their bosses defeated.

This is where the term t.A.B starts making sense. There is no enemies’ turn. They will simply attack you all the time but they will only target the character you’re controlling. Enemy encounters are random when you are on the Field but they are visible when inside dungeons (the differences between Field and Dungeon are explained here). Also, if any of the character in the party died, it’s game over.

Once a character is selected, there is a time limit for you to perform actions like movements, attack, change weapons and others. As long as there is still time, you can perform any of these actions again except attack. The green colored gauge underneath the character’s name is the indicator for the time limit. However, Famitsu says players don’t need to worry about this gauge too much as it will be paused if players are standing still.

Once a target is picked, pressing the attack button will first initiate Charge, which is indicated by a round meter in front of your opponent. When the meter is filled up, the attack can be launched, you can speed up the meter by getting closer to the enemy, which is obviously more risky. You don’t have to launch your attack immediately after the Charge meter is full as you can wait for the Charge process to repeat a few times to launch a more powerful attacks. It’s the same process for the enemies too. A yellow colored gauge will appear above the head of the enemy you locked on to. Planning your actions while keeping an eye on the gauge will be crucial to winning battles.

The red colored blocks at the bottom of the screen is explained. It’s called I.S. Gauge (Invincible State Gauge) and can be used to perform “Invincible Action”, which will trigger a spectacular sequence that features your character moving to a spot on the stage while performing cool looking moves. The space you are moving into need to be carefully considered too as it shouldn’t be too far from enemies so hitting them become harder or too close with them that you’ll be immediately attacked after your turn ends. The concept of charging your attack applied here as well but your can charge and move at the same time in this mode. However, if you happens to run into an enemy or objects while moving around, your “Invincible Action” will be canceled. To avoid that, you can choose to jump right before coming into contact with the obstacle, which will triggered another sequence.

Apparently, players should avoid relying on I.S. Gauge entirely as it will put your party into difficult situations if it is emptied. There are three ways to recover I.S. Gauge:

1. by making enough “Direct Damage” (recover one block, more about damages below)
2. by making Armor or Parts Damage (recover one block, more about armor damage below)
3. rest in the hotel (recover all your I.S. Gauge)

Direct & Scratch Damage

These are the two types of damages you can make to your enemies in End of Eternity. Hits from hand gun and grenades are considered Direct Damage. Although it causes smaller damages to the enemies, Direct Damage are permanent. On the other other, Scratch Damage are large but temporary damages cause by machine gun. Your enemies’ health will slowly regenerate if you don’t follow up with more Direct or Scratch Damage.

Armored Enemies

Some enemies will be heavily armored and they are surrounded by a green line that indicates the durability of their armor parts. In order to defeat them, players need to first destroy all their armor parts. Besides recovering your I.S. Gauge, breaking armor parts also earn you special items and prevent them from using it to attack you.

According to Suguro, t.A.B was created for players to enjoy cool-looking moves easily based on a solid battle system. This system and things like Invincible Action were decided from the very beginning and there won’t be any new changes to it. One of most difficult aspect of creating t.A.B is the use of guns as they would like to retain the realism of gun battles. Compare to other games that use weapons like swords, it’s very hard for players to realize that they are actually attacking the enemies when using gun. This has created a lot of issues for them in the beginning.

They also spent a lot of efforts to present the cool-looking sequences for “Invincible Action”. Although there is not much weapons to choose from, they make sure that each of them has a variety of actions for use during Invincible Action. Suguro says another difficult to achieve effect is to make sure that enemies are appropriately positioned during this mode.

So what do you think? It looks complicated enough at first (although Famitsu says players can enjoy cool and satisfying actions with just one button) but seems easy to understand after writing this article. Another aspect of the game that I really like but not covered in this round of report is the story, which seems to has a lot of potential. The game is set for this winter in Japan.

Posted in News on Monday, June 1st, 2009 at 10:42 am | Tags resonance of fate rpg tri-Ace
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