Combat

So, the big focus of the game is the combat system. It's elegant and simple, but has a surprising amount of depth. I think the best way to explain why I think the system is clever is to describe what you can do with it. So I will be posting short descriptions of the various character classes, describe what you can do with them and discuss how they fit in the game. First though, I have to do a quick overview of the combat system.

Each character has three stats, action points (AP), hit points (HP), and mana points (MP).
AP: Action points determine turn order and the actions the character can perform each turn. Each turn, every characters AP is refreshed. The character with the highest AP goes first. Each action uses a certain number of AP. When a character runs out of action points, the next fastest character may go.
HP: Hit points are refreshed at the start of a match. When a character reaches 0 HP, they die (there are no revivals in combat, but no perma-death either)
MP: Almost every action takes some MP. It is refreshed at the start of a match, and can be partially replenished through meditation.

Characters each have 4 attacks, mostly unique to that character. All characters may also move, mediate, or block. Mediation uses the remaining AP points and converts them to MP. Blocking gives the character a one turn guard buff, which reduces damage.

There are a number of status effects and buffs that may be applied to each character as well. A character can only have one status effect (blinded, weakened, poisoned, etc) and one buff (guarded, healing, faster). A new buff will overwrite an old one, same for status effects.

That's it. That's all there is. Next post, I'm going to take a look at the monk class to give you an idea of how the system actually plays.