Chapter 1 Intermission: Status Screen and Game Mechanics
Before I explain the game mechanics in detail, let's look at R2's status screen and explain a few terms.
Top-left corner is the character portrait, so you know what everyone looks like and can idly wonder why no one has a nose.
To the immediate left of the portrait are a character's
level,
experience,
HP,
MP, and
CT.
A character's
level is a basic measure of general ability, same as it's been since wargames-slash-Dungeons & Dragons more or less invented the concept.
Experience indicates how close a character is to leveling. When a character acts in combat, they get a little bit of experience if the action was effective (a strike hit the target, a cure spell actually restored HP, etc.). When this reaches 100, the character's level goes up by one.
HP and
MP mean the same things they have in every Final Fantasy game to date: HP measures how close you are to dying, MP is consumed to cast magic spells.
CT determines when a character gets to act in combat. More on that when I talk about Speed, below.
In the top-right corner is a box listing the character's current
job,
zodiac sign,
Bravery, and
Faith.
A
job is what other games might call a character class. Jobs dictate a most of a character's statistics, and their primary skill (below). Jobs are mostly Final Fantasy mainstays you'll recognize from Final Fantasies one, three, and five: White Mage, Black Mage, Bard, Chemist, Thief, Ninja, and so on.
A character's
zodiac sign affects how effective a character's actions are against others, based on the interaction of signs. I'm not really going to go into it, but some signs are effective and some less so. Born January 1, R2 here is a Capricorn. He does more damage to Tauruses and Virgoes, but less to Aires and Libra (and vice-versa). Each sign also has an opposite that they simultaneously are best and worst against, depending on gender: Capricorn (on a male) is most effective against female Cancer, least effective against male Cancer. It's needlessly complex considering most players just ignore it.
Bravery largely affects weapon damage and counter skills, described below. Higher-Brave characters do more damage with weapons and counter more often.
Faith functions much like Bravery, but for magic. Casters with high Faith do (or heal) more damage than those with low Faith. But the character having the spell cast on them counts too! You'll see the biggest numbers with a high-Faith caster zapping a high-Faith target.
The bar in the middle of the screen is chock-full of confusing abbreviations and numbers. Starting from left we have a character's
Move,
Jump, and
Speed.
Move determines how many square panels on the map a character can cover during the Move action of its turn. Water cuts this precipitously, and marshes decrease it even further if it's raining.
Jump covers how far a character can leap up a sheer surface to move into the panel on the other side. Each panel on the map has a given height, and a character can jump as part of a Move action between panels. Half of this value is how far a character can leap horizontally, to hop over a bit of water instead of wading through it, for instance.
Speed determines how often a character can act. Unseen to the player are a number of "ticks" proceeding in the background, keeping track of the passage of time in combat. Each "tick", a character's Speed score is added to his CT. When CT reaches 100, that character gets a turn. R2's base Speed here is 7, meaning that each tick adds 7 to CT. When combat starts, CT is zero. Each tick that passes makes his CT 7, then 14, then 21, 28, 35, 42, 49, 56, 63, 70, 77, 84, 91, 98, then 100 -- and R2 gets a turn after 15 ticks. If his Speed were 10, the ticks would be 10, 20, 30, 40, and so on up to 100, giving him a turn in 10 ticks. Speed maxes out at 50, giving a turn every two ticks.
In the center of the screen is
Weapon Power, determined by the weapon equipped. R2's Ice Rod gives him a weapon power of 3 -- that's really low, but it's a magician's rod, what do you expect?
The percentage beside the weapon power is its
weapon evade -- if the Knight Counter skill "Parry" is used, this percentage is added to a character's evade. A few weapons specialize in having high weapon-evade, namely the dagger "Main Gauche" and the series mainstay knightsword "Defender".
There are two lines for weapon power, in case a character (such as a Ninja) can equip a weapon in each hand.
Middle right of the screen are a character's physical attack power and evade (marked by a sword icon), and below that, magical attack power and evade (marked by a rod icon).
Physical attack or
PA, is factored into a character's... well, physical attacks. The higher it (and Bravery) are, the more damage a character can dish out with physical hits.
To the right of PA are three evade percentages:
Class Evade,
Shield Evade, and
Accessory Evade. Every job has a base chance to avoid attacks; this is Class Evade. For a Black Mage, that's 5%. Characters who can equip a shield add shield evade to that; since Black Mages can't equip shields, that doesn't factor in. Accessory evade reflects the bonus to evade granted by cloaks (which are equipped in the accessory slot, hence the name). Since R2 is wearing boots instead of a cloak, that's 0% too. Fragile Black Mage R2 is very easy to hit!
Minor note: all three evades work for frontal attacks, shields and accessories work from the sides, and only accessories protect from back attacks. Hence why it's easier to hit a character in the back! (Weapon Evade, mentioned earlier, works from the front and sides but not the back.)
Below the PA line is the line for magic attack, or
MA. I'll skip the mechanics, but the higher this (and often Faith) are, the more effective magic cast by the character will be.
The evade lines for magic work the same as they do for physical hits. Classes, shields, and accessories all factor into evasion, and often have different percentages than physical. Some gear, such as the Aegis shield, is far better at blocking magic than physical hits.
The bottom row on the left is
Equipment. There are two hands slots for weapons and shields; one head slot for a helmet or hat; a body slot for armor or clothes; and an accessory slot for boots, cloaks, rings, amulets, and other miscellaneous gear. A character's job determines what they can equip.
Weapons are daggers, swords, rods, staves, poles, bows and arrows, crossbows, even magical harps or dictionaries. Some weapons, such as poles or bows and arrows, use both hands at once. Ninja can equip a weapon in each hand.
Shields go into the other hand slot for jobs capable of wearing them not using a two-handed weapon. Knights can use a sword and a shield at the same time, for example. Archers can use bows (two-handed), or a crossbow (one-handed) and a shield should they so desire.
Hats and Helmets boost HP. Helmets give a larger HP boost, but hats tend to have other beneficial effects.
Clothes and Armor boost HP (no armor in the game actually reduces damage!). Armor gives bigger HP boosts, but clothes tend to have better side effects.
Accessories do various things, depending on what they are. Battle Boots here give +1 to Move (a Black Mage's base move is 3; the Battle Boots equipped makes R2's move 4). Cloaks increase physical and magical A-Evade. Rings and amulets tend to protect against status effects or other attacks.
Finally, on the right side is a short list of
Abilities. The zigzag lightning bolt shape is for a character's
Primary and
Secondary abilities. The deflecting arrow is a character's
Counter ability. The circular arrow is a character's
Support ability. The footprint is a character's
Move ability.
A
Primary ability is determined by job. For a Black Mage, that's Black Magic. For a Chemist, it's Item. For a Samurai, it's Bushido. And so on.
A
Secondary skill can be equipped after training in a different job than the one you're currently in. Thus you can have Knights who cast White Magic or Samurai who can Steal. Mettle, pictured here, is a Squire ability, but having equipped it R2 can continue to use those skills in combat despite being a different job than Squire.
A
Counter ability triggers when the character is hit. Most have (Bravery)% chance of triggering each time. Auto-Potion, pictured here, gives a 71% chance of automatically consuming a potion every time R2 is hit. Not all are curative -- training in Black Mage may earn R2 "Magic Counter", meaning if he is hit by a spell, he automatically casts it back at whoever hit him with it!
A
Support ability is passive but generally "always on". Two I've talked about before are Beastmaster, which automatically grants nearby monsters new abilities; and Beast Tongue, allowing Speechcraft skills to be used on monsters. Defense Boost, as the name implies, reduces damage from physical hits.
Finally,
Move abilities affect how a character moves around the battlefield. The simplest of these are Move+1, +2, and +3, which simply allow the character to go further. Others include Ignore Height (a character may make vertical leaps to any height), Walk on Water (characters do not sink in water), and even Fly and Teleport (which do about what you'd expect). Manafont restores a little bit of MP every time the character moves.
More to come.
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