Steven wrote: ↑Mon Dec 16, 2024 4:58 amThis is the one Tales game that is least like all of the others. It has one of the most complex battle systems in the entire series or possibly/probably the most complex one, and reading the mechanics in the Battle Book makes my brain hurt... I know this battle system becomes super chaotic and a lot of fun later in the game despite being relatively slow by series standards, so I'm looking forward to that.
Rebirth's a fun game. Mechanically it seems daunting at first, but it's not too bad. You assign 4 techs to 4 corners of a cube. Each corner of the cube has a minor bonus ability; these trigger whenever you use a skill with a full skill meter. You don't have to use it when it's full though, and minor techs can be used with it empty if you want to go for stagger etc. The benefit of using a tech when the meter is full is you get the extra bonus (such as increased stun time, extra juggle height) when you hit, and you get HP recovery when hitting with the skill that's scaled to the big rush meter on the side.
The Rush meter on the side can be manually increased or decreased by holding guard and pressing up/down, and will increase as you attack and decrease as you guard. It serves as a guard meter, and when it's at about 70% or so, using any tech (even when the cube is not full for it) will then allow you to follow up any tokugi with an ougi, a higher level tech on any cube that's full. Use a skill, see your cubes change colour briefly, and that signals you can use an advanced tech as a followup.
Maxing the rush meter puts you into an angered state that ups damage a bit temporarily, minimizing it puts you into a cool state, making the next hit you deal a guaranteed stagger (which is necessary to stagger some bosses that are in an otherwise perma anger state).
Offensive spellcasters serve as your best healers; if they keep their Rush meter low, any spells they hit with when cast with a full cube/FG meter will heal any nearby allies. Annie's a weird exception, she's not a direct healer but rather provides powerful buff circles such as Life Materia that greatly increased the HP bonus from hitting with techs.
Every character learns two techs that can only be used when the meter assigned to it is totally maxed, and don't get cube bonuses when used. These mostly consist of self buffs, but also include two fairly direct spells for Annie including Drag Leben, a slow but effective health drain attack spell, and Rise Elixir, which resurrects all dead members near her including ones on other lines. There's no limit to how often you can use these in battle, there's no TP or anything like that.
tl;dr, keep your Rush meter low when you need to heal yourself (or if you're playing as a spellcaster, when you need to heal someone else by hitting with spells), and keep your Rush meter high when on the offense
Hiougi, the flashy finisher skills, just kinda happen on their own, they always end the fight and you don't really need to worry about deliberately trying to trigger them as if the conditions are right they'll activate when an enemy's low on HP.
