Sonic Quest’s Revamped Battle System Idea

After listening to many comments on his original thoughts for Sonic Quest’s battle system, STJR’s Sonikku has changed things around a bit:

What I’m trying to get across is that we want to try and avoid the following:

a) An exact clone of the FF games (or pretty much most RPGs for that example)
b) …While retaining some of the elements of turn-based fighting…
c) …and action based!

From the engine I have in mind, it does have both of these elements, as you get to walk around the battlefield – perhaps we might even be able to add terrain / higher / lower level options so you can jump aroud.

…I’ve not actually been fortunate enough to get a copy (of Xenogears) (Thanks to Sony and Square Europe for not releasing it here in Europe.) – but from what I’ve heard, you can either attack in very, very short bursts, but inflict little damage, but it’s good for ‘quick’ attacks, or power up a huge gauge and inflict a lot of damage, right? I’ll look into incorporating that.

Now, for Panzer Dragoon Saga’s involvement – for those who haven’t got a copy of this awesome game (this time, it’s thanks to Sega for only making about 2500 copies. =P)… you get three gauges – once a single one has been filled, you can attack normally either with Edge’s gun or the Dragon’s lasers.

After two gauges, you can use either attack (draining one gauge, allowing you to use the other one as a follow up attack) or use a Beserk attack (draining both gauges).

You then have a third, final gauge, which can be used to use a Beserk attack and a normal attack, or three normal attacks. If we combine the Xenogears system with this, we’d basically have this:

1/3rd charged gauge: Weaker attack.
2/3rd charged gauge: Can use Chaos Powers or a physical attack.
Fully charged gauge: Can use Chaos Powers or a physical attack, and open up some of the uber-powerful Chaos Powers.

Now for the movement system:

I’ve decided (unless a lot of you really don’t like this idea) that you can walk around freely at the cost of slower gauge charging, and press a key to flip between the characters. Some of the characters will have more distinct movement advantages, for example:

Sonic will be able to tear around at light speed, easily dodging some of the slower projectile attacks, Tails can fly, avoiding some physical attacks, and earthquake magic. Knuckles can dig and burrow around, meaning enemies can’t see him, but if there’s an earthquake, he’ll be thrown out of the ground, inflicting extra damage.

You can move up to enemies and attack them with a physical attack (meaning unlike the FF games, where the character just fling a sword in mid air, and inflict damage, you’ll have to actually close in on the enemy first, and consider them attacking you, although, you’ll probably be thrown back a little with the force of the attack.

What all this adds up to is the freedom in Action games, whereas in turn-based RPGs, you might dodge a projectile attack by raising your hand (!!) or something, you’ll actually be able to physically move out of the way.

This will also help define some of the enemy characters, some will be able to move very quickly, and will be hard to hit, (e.g, the ‘Ghost’ enemies in the Graveyard) but are weak, or have huge enemies that can’t move (e.g the ‘Dark Titan’ boss) worth beans, but inflict masses of damage if they can hit you.

Sonic Quest looks to be a very detailed Sonic RPG indeed. We’ll keep tabs on this for you.