For this post I will talk about the battle system to be used in Innocence Seekers: Akari of the Light. I have opted against a traditional JRPG turn-based battle system, as I don’t like the idea of having to give orders at the start of a turn only for the enemy to potentially go first (and potentially ruin my tactics). I’ve also opted against a real-time battle system, as I find such battle systems harder to program (especially with regards to AI), and I’ve decided not to adopt the ATB battle system from the Final Fantasy series (as I haven’t really seen that battle system outside of Square Enix games). Instead, the battle system will involve giving specific orders to a specific character when that character’s turn comes up, and once the order has been given, the character will immediately act out the order (and since I don’t like delayed action, I will not be implementing spells or techniques which require charging). The turn order will be decided by the characters’ SPD stats, and characters with higher SPD will get more turns than those with lower SPD.
What makes this battle system unique is the concept of panel colours and elements. You may have noticed that I’ve listed the magic colours of all characters whose bios I’ve posted onto the blog. While it has been inspired by the Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha series, the magic colours actually serve a gameplay purpose. The effectiveness of any spell is dependent on several factors, which include the magic colour of the caster, the magic colour of the target, and the colour of the panels on which both the caster and target are standing. If the colours match the magic colour of the caster, then a 25 per cent boost will be given to the raw power of the spell (before taking into account RES) for each match (so, if both the caster’s and target’s magic colours are red, and both are standing on red panels, then the raw power of a spell will increase to 175 per cent). If the colours oppose each other (e.g. red vs. cyan), then this reduces the raw power by 25 per cent.
Elements have a similar effect, but only affect power by 20 per cent. On the other hand, elemental effects also affect techniques in addition to spells, and changes in power as a result of element depend only on the elements of the panels in relation to the element of the spell/technique. The combination of colour and element effects can increase a spell’s raw power to 215 per cent, or it can reduce the spell to only dealing one damage (only DEF/RES and elemental immunities can reduce damage to zero).
Each panel can have one of ten colours and one of ten elements. In addition, a panel can be “colourless” and/or “non-elemental”. Spells have a 15 per cent chance of changing the target panel’s colour and/or element, depending on the magic colour of the caster and the element of the spell (the probability increases to 50 per cent if a panel is targeted directly). If the caster’s magic colour is the same as that of the target panel, then the panel’s colour will not change. Conversely, if the colours oppose, the net effect is to turn the panel colourless. Otherwise, the net effect is to convert the panel’s colour to that of the caster. Elements work similarly; same elements have no effect, opposite elements tend towards non-elemental, and other elemental interactions tend towards the spell’s element.
The colour pairs are as follows:
- Red – Cyan
- Green – Magenta
- Blue – Yellow
- White – Purple
- Orange – Pink
The first three pairs are simply opposites on the colour circle (one can obtain cyan by mixing blue and green, likewise magenta from red and blue, and yellow from red and green). The fourth pair can be justified by thinking of purple as “black” (note that many demons have purple as their magic colour; this is also the default magic colour for witches by blood, before forming a contract). The last pair is only justified by the mythology of the Innocence Seekers setting, something I’ll explain later. One thing to note, though, is that magenta and pink are different colours (pink is closer to white than magenta).
The element pairs are as follows:
- Fire – Ice
- Water – Earth
- Metal – Thunder
- Wood – Wind
- Light – Darkness
The elements which don’t feature are Poison (which is a meta-element only relevant to gameplay), Ether (which is the magical equivalent of “non-elemental”) and Void (an exceedingly rare element, only found in such powerful spells/techniques as Black Hole, and which nothing resists).
Another thing which sets this battle system apart is the ability for units to move into the enemy’s formation. Moving into the enemy’s formation allows a unit to attack enemies with increased accuracy (as units suffer evasion penalties whenever they are attacked from the side or back); however, they will also suffer the same disadvantage. Any protection the front row grants to the back row is nullified whenever an enemy in the home grid is the attacker, allowing units in the enemy grid to attack back-row enemies with no penalties to accuracy or damage.
As for the effects of position within the home grid, units in the front row deal and receive full damage from short-range attacks with no penalty to accuracy or boost to evasion. Units in the back row only deal and receive reduced damage from such attacks depending on the position of front row units. If a front-row unit is directly in front, the amount of damage taken and dealt will be reduced to 50 per cent, accuracy is reduced by 30 per cent, and evasion is increased by 30 per cent. If no front-row unit is directly in front, but there is one diagonal to the back-row unit, damage taken and dealt will be reduced to 75 per cent, and there will be no changes in accuracy and evasion.
That’s all for now. Next time, I’ll talk about Full Burst and its effects.
P.S. The period between the 8th and 12th of August is full of birthdays of characters and people I’ve been interested in. I won’t mention them all, but here are a few:
- August 8: Rikako Aida (now 24), Natsuko Kuwatani (now 38), Maya Jōga (Is the Order a Rabbit?), Chinatsu Kuramoto (Flying Witch), Maron Yanagiwara (High School Fleet); fairly popular choice for birthdays, being 8/8
- August 9: Nozomi Yamamoto (now 28)
- August 10: Chinatsu Akasaki (now 29), Ari Ozawa (now 24), Mitsuki Sonoda (Sakura Trick)
- August 11: Kaori Fukuhara (now 30), Kokona Aoba (Encouragement of Climb), Yōko Nishikawa (Three Leaves, Three Colors)
- August 12: Kana Asumi (will be 33)
On the 15th, it will be Yui Ogura’s birthday. And since I chose Yayoi’s birthday to coincide with Ogura’s…
Another interesting thing is… will Japan’s new holiday (Mountain Day, August 11) be associated with Kokona (given that she is a character of an anime/manga series based around mountain climbing)?
P.P.S. Tomorrow, Comiket 90 will commence. I’d like to be there, but I can’t really afford to fly to Japan right now.
P.P.P.S. I wonder why the water turned green… It’s not algae, that much I can figure out.