Any Combat tips?

[Placek]

I wanted to ask about fighting system. Is there any combat guide anywhere? Game works like a charm on my PC and I'm in chapter 2 near the lake but it took me 25h to get there cause I don't quite understand fighting system. How to get the highest possible damage? I connect skills but I get dmg between 2-10k and defeating bigger enemies take long time. How exactly Chain combo works? And which buttons should I press after initializing Party Skills (LB+X and after that?). Right now I have to defeat giant flying whale and I'm not sure how to defeat it without cheesing. Any tips? PS. I fight with 1H Sword.

[Tiasmoon]

Larger enemies have huge hp pools. If you want to get them down in a reasonable amount of time you have to use Burst, Finishers, etc and pretty much Skill-Connect all the time.

1H Sword doesnt deal much damage, but its moves are easy to learn and (Vertical aside) pretty easy to combo as well. They are also pretty fast.

I''m not sure yet how to active Burst exactly. Seems to be from a number of good amount of skills/attacks hit close to each other. You cant activate it solo without a special ability, tho.

One party tip I can give is to remember that the party members have their own SP bars. If you run out of SP on one character you can switch and use skills on them instead.

Party ''all out attack'' is good for maxing the hazard bar so you can start launching, or you can use it after a down for higher damage.

[VarBear]

So far what I've found out is to just get all party members to use a skill at the same time. L1 + X, then d-pad left/right to switch character and repeat for all 3. Time in your own skill before/after you slow time, though even if you don't you'll get a chain burst Lv.2 anyway.

It's pretty cheesey, but this is what the developers intended, making Bursts do 20x more damage than solo play, combined with high HP enemies.

[Cakku]

1. Your enemy has risk bar which gives easy 3x dmg multiplier just from hitting it continuously
2. You have your own risk bar which gives also 3x dmg multiplier, but you need to spam skills and dodge to keep it up
3. Downing a foe allows you to do extra dmg, but you need to watch your risk bar so it doesn't reset.
4. linking skills with your allies, you can command them directly, or set their "mode" to always link skills from L1> Dpad to highlight mode and L3 to activate it. I think we can train them to do this on their own too.
5. Using battle skills to buff atk. Some equipment has seemingly stronger versions of learned buff skills.
6. perfect dodge/deflect to get your super arts bar up quickly and use team attack

Still learning myself so probably missing some things.

[GinMaou]

i just chain link as much as possible :P

[Gbaby]

yea I'd argue the hardest battling is the one-on-one fights where you move like molasses. What does everyone recommend for those fights without party members? I have been winning, but I can't help but feel like the cpu's always block and dodge every damn move. Is there an efficient way to fight one-on-ones?

[Mr.Hmm]

Originally posted by Gbaby:

yea I'd argue the hardest battling is the one-on-one fights where you move like molasses. What does everyone recommend for those fights without party members? I have been winning, but I can't help but feel like the cpu's always block and dodge every damn move. Is there an efficient way to fight one-on-ones?

Block in time or deflect.

Deflecting increases their break bar by a huge margin.

[Kiara-Cos-Shop-VN]

I think you should try to open Ex skill on the left side which there is a skill let you do the chain skill combo yourself, try to chain skill as much as possible to knock them down and remember to level up your basic skill to make better link combo. That what i did and now im in 3-1 chapter

[Mokona]

Combat tip. Activate one of your abilities. Immediatly hold L1 then spam square and right on the d-pad over and over until everyone ques up a skill. If it wont select a new character with right on the d-pad release L1 and then quickly hold it down again. This happens because the ai is mid action and for whatever reason that means you cant select another one.

[chaoticWolf17]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-ldON0LacE

[korsobar]

As others said, doing the chain burst activation by direct command party members to use skills will lead quickly to hazard state. Then spam jump attacks until the enemy is down state, then queue all your party members with skills that do extra damage to down. Sinon's arrow raining attack is very good for this.

Eventually you are supposed to have them develop their own triggers to automate this stuff but since those fill in with only what you have assigned to them and you need to unlock stuff so slowly the system doesn't work well.