Once youre on the battlefield, the basic battle system plays like a very well-disguised SRPG. Now, I should mention that I tend to dislike SRPGs in general, but I thoroughly enjoy Sakura Wars: So Long, My Loves battles because theyre very much based around strategy and coordination with your teammates, rather than levels and stats.
The camera is in 3D and fully controllable. The number of actions each mech in your party can make is governed its mobility metre. Each step or action that you take depletes the mobility metre. Once its your turn to attack, you control your mech in realtime, and you can perform actions until the metre is depleted. At your next turn, youll begin with a fully-charged metre again.
As far as movement is concerned, the metre depletes on the basis of how far you move from your current position. So, for example, I could be standing at a particular spot and then, circle around the battlefield, around obstacles, and return close to my original location, and the metre would only deplete by one or two units, depending on how far I ended up from where I started. You can see points being depleted and refunded to the metre in realtime, which really helps you figure out what path of movement would be best, and which enemies you should target first to make the best use of your resources.
The moves available to you in combat consist of regular attacks (which can be chained into combos or used one at a time, depending on how you want to manage your mobility metre), healing, joint attacks with a teammate standing within range of you and the enemy (the strength of which are governed by how close you are to that particular teammate), defensive positions and special moves. In addition to this, you also have three different battle formations: flexible, offensive and defensive. Each one has an impact on your offensive and defensive aptitude in battle, and depending on the strengths of your enemies, youll want to switch between these accordingly.
