Let's Learn About End of Eternity's Battle System

So we've seen the pre-rendered teasers for tri-Ace and Sega's upcoming multiplatform RPG, End of Eternity (pointlessly renamed to Resonance of Fate for North America), and we've heard a little bit about how it plays, but we're still pretty out in the dark on the whole thing.

Famitsu, however, has recently run a feature giving us a little more detail on exactly how the battle system works. I thought this might be revelant to some of your interests, so I took the liberty of translating it.

In the spirit of JRPG developers naming their battle systems with random acronyms, EoE's battle system is reportedly called t.A.B. (short for 'tri-Attack Battle'). At least it's short.

Despite it's real-time elements I detailed for you from the last article, t.A.B. reportedly functions in a very turn-based style, with each of your friendly characters getting a limited amount of time to move around and perform actions (think something along the lines of Eternal Sonata).

During each character's "turn," you are free to move around the battlefield and change up equipment as you please. However, once you attack, your turn is over, regardless of how much extra time you may have.

Once you have told your character to attack, they enter a "charge" mode, where they take a specified amount of time "charging" their attack before actually inflicting any damage. Your charge time for each attack will differ depending on your distance from the enemy/enemies you have targeted. Being closer to your target will allow for shorter charge times, but will leave you more open to receive attacks. These charges can reportedly be "saved" and added on top of each other to facilitate bigger attacks, though exactly how this works has not been made known.

Finally, it is interesting to note that enemies do not have turns of their own. Instead, they are permitted to move and act while your characters are doing so. Thus, charging your attacks will certainly leave you vulnerable to your enemies.

To show the game off in motion, Sega has also released a new trailer for the game showing off some brief battle footage. Though it doesn't do much in the way of explaining much, it gives you an idea of how the game will look in motion. You can check it out below.


End of Eternity will be available for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 sometime this winter in Japan, and sometime next spring in North America as Resonance of Fate.

[Famitsu]