Been playing Legaia 2 - Duel Saga instead of continuing Resonance of Fate. Quite hokey game. It still has PS1 written all over it (released in '01). It's hackneyed and banal, even for JRPG standards. The fighting system is quite different though, mostly due to its non-standard input method. Instead of picking attacks, skills and magic directly, you 'dial' them with the dpad or analogue stick. You can find out new combos just by experimenting, but the strongest ones are locked until you've found a special scroll or had a character teach them to you. Every additional input slot you gain opens up more possibilites. Inputs can even overlap. Say "up, left, right" results in one combo, and "right, left, up" in another, "right" would count for both, so you get a 6+ hit combo out of only five inputs. Normal combo attacks generate AP, Super and Hyper "Arts" spend them. The first you learn cost as much AP as you can generate with a single normal combo, later ones cost more than you can generate in one or two. The meter thankfully doesn't deplete between fights, so you don't have to waste a turn generating AP. Not in a regular fight, anyway.
An additional spin on this dial a combo thing is that there are low, mid (not sure on that) and high attacks, corresponding to the inputs. If you try to attack a slime that doesn't reach to the characters knees with attacks that don't hit low, you are going to whiff every hit and do no damage. Likewise, fyling enemies will take no damage from low kicks, so you have to avoid combos that hit low a lot or just a string of normal attacks that all hit high and avoid combos altogether.
It feels very familiar despite all this cleverness. Also quite slow. A single combo can kill an enemy outright, but you still have to watch every hit, complete with superfluous "I've killed this enemy" animations for every character that lands a killing blow on any monster, first or last. The boss fights are also full of annoying mini-cutscenes and like to waste your time doing zero damage for a few turns waiting for some deus-ex machina.
I like it though. It's charming.
