I've gone back to this for a little bit for some reason (Tales of Vesperia, so yep! I just restarted it--looks like a gem and I like how this looks WAY more than Xillia).
And, wow, I... kinda don't like how inflexible it can be at the start. Going from Xillia, Xillia 2, and Graces to this is weird as heck because you can sidestep and backstep right away in those games. Here, you have to wait to learn it from a weapon. I haven't played Vesperia since 2010, so maybe it's the case that I'm rusty at it? I'd forgotten that you can free run in this game, but you know how I feel about that mechanic in the first place. I like evade/block/backstep/sidestep. Eager to put Judith in my party since I main her anyway.
But man, going from a deluge of skills that just factor into stats and artes like this:
(Tales of Graces' title system is where you learn artes, stat increases, certain passive skills, etc. from titles acquired; you have most of the mechanics (outside of Alpha/Beta artes being unavailable as a child) at the beginning of the game, like backstep and sidestep since that's essentially the foundation of the battle system. That is, being able to dodge and time your dodges, blocks, and counters correctly in order to facilitate being able to deal more damage and create higher combos as a result. You do get penalized for free-running willy-nilly, and that's why I love it so much.)
And this:
(Tales of Xillia's skill system is called the Lillial Orb system. You use a grid system to level up, somewhat similar to, uh, FFX, I guess. Or FFXIII. I dunno. You can level up six stats: Strength, Agil, Intelligence, M. Def (Spirit), P. Def (Vitality), and Dexterity. So, what you want to do is put GP into levelling up stat bulbs that create a trapezoid around nodes in the centre of them to activate those arte/passive skill nodes (so just connect the dots to activate the nodes in the centre). In the end, you're just trying to get stat-ups and passives. There are some battle mechanic things in Xillia like the Item Ball and the Artes Ball, but outside of that, you can backstep and sidestep to your heart's content (and thank goodness for that because Jude's Vanish skill is broken as heck). To be fair, you do get some skills like Stepper, Moving Assault, Aerial Guard, Aerial Jump, etc. but I wouldn't consider those basic of the base battle mechanics here.)
And this:
(Tales of Xillia 2's skill learning system (the Arrowcell Orb/Arousal Orb--I'm not sure how that's romanized anymore) is kind of similar to Capacity Cores in Abyss, where you equip different capacity cores in order to learn new artes or get stat upgrades. The orb has six elements: Light, Earth, Water, Darkness, Wind, and Fire. Depending on which Absorber you have equipped, you can get points for that element with elemental cores obtained from fights or harvest points. Regardless, what you're equipping here is stat ups, passives, and extras that make battle more fluid, not necessarily base battle mechanics.)
...to having to learn even the simplest of battle mechanics in Vesperia is plain weird. Having to learn how to backstep is kind of insane at this point, and I'm glad further games in the series don't have that.
