During the course of the game, you will have to face a number of enemies, all of which will require different tactics to defeat, thus ensuring constant challenges and offering refreshing diversity.

Terminology

Action - The actions a character can carry out in a turn.
Clash - A basic physical attack. Equipped weapons, and some other items, affect its power.
Anima - The collective term for special abilities (skills). May also be referred to as Soul Control. Most abilities of this type cost Soul Energy (SE).
Defense - A basic blocking technique. Lowers sustained damage significantly.
Hidden Skill - Advanced skills that can be activated by chaining anima into a specific combo.
Guardian - Special relics that possess souls of their own. These souls may be summoned and given use of abilities only they can use.

Turn Based Battles

During battles your goal is to reduce your enemies’ LE (Life Energy) to zero, before he they do the same to you. To achieve your goal, you will need to perform actions. In this battle system, one character may carry out two actions per turn by default. After one of your party members have finished their actions, you may move on to the next party member, then the next, etc. When your entire party is done, the enemies take a turn and perform their own actions. Certain factors can influence how many actions a character can carry out, some items may increase this value, or certain enemy spells can decrease it. It is important to point out, however, that in the case of more than one party members, you need not perform all your available actions for a character before moving on to the next. This method allows for even more, team-based combos!

Anima

Anima, or Soul Control refers to the wide range of special abilities you can cast for SE (Soul Enerrgy). There are some exceptions, however, that cost not SE but another resource, like Life Energy (LE). Different characters can obtain entirely distinct abilites: some specialize to healing skills, some affect enemies’ SE pool to lessen their casting power, some deal elemental damage, and so on. Learning new abilities will cost AP (Action Points), which can be earned by winning battles.

Guardian

Guardians not only have an effect on the story but the battle system as well. To be able to call forth such a legendary being during battle (after successfully obtaining the relic that contains it, of course), you will need two things. First, a character who has the Summon ability, and second, to pair the Guardian to this character. Guardians also possess Anima, and can also learn abilities. Furthermore, there are certain skills characters can only learn if they are paired to a specific Guardian.

Hidden Skill

Beside the basic abilities in the game, there are also hidden ones. Hidden Skills are practically a combo system, which you can activate by casting a specific ability with one character, then casting another specific ability with another. This way, instead of the ability cast second, you get a different one, usually far more powerful. And the combo chain doesn’t necessarily end here, some Hidden Skills can be turned into other Hidden Skills by casting specific abilites after activating them. These combinations may come very handy for defeating tough bosses.