Baten Kaitos II Battle System

[E-Wan]

Can somebody explain Baten Kaitos Origin's battle system to me?
This is my first time playing it and I have no idea who gets to do what when...
How do I see whose turn it is or who's next or when they will act? Is this like some kind of old-school Final Fantasy ATB type thing? Do I have infinite time to choose cards or do I have to move fast? What happens when you discard cards and how does classing up influence that? Are elemental weaknesses still super important?

I'm just pressing buttons and sometimes I win, sometimes I get mulched. I feel like I'm playing Pachinko here! Help!

[「Lukja」]

BKII battle system was so weird to me. I don't know how people preferred it more compared to BKI.

[gadesx]

Just use 1-2-3 like
weak attack, medium attack and strong attack. After that there's special attacks

Elemental equipment works like:
Fire sword (with number 5)
5 hits with Fire element.

The same with armors for defense.

Try to make combos with each character.

[NoNeckKota]

Originally posted by gadesx:

Just use 1-2-3 like
weak attack, medium attack and strong attack. After that there's special attacks

Elemental equipment works like:
Fire sword (with number 5)
5 hits with Fire element.

The same with armors for defense.

Try to make combos with each character.

Definitely this, and once you get good at combos later on in the game, MP Bursts can be your best friend. You can easily one-shot regular enemies if you get a good MP burst combo (usually up to 18 attacks with all 3 characters) but sometimes it is also good to keep it going with just relay combos depending on the situations.

I also recommend trying out different ways to make a combo and finding the hidden EX combos and that way they can reward you with special buffs such as extra elemental attacks or even healing buffs.

[terry309]

Been playing for nearly 30 hours and still don't know how Relay Combos work, it just feels random, this whole combat system feels like pure RNG so far.

[E-Wan]

So, near the end of the game, I have found a workable strategy (meaning I found a Wordpress blog from around 2013 that told me this...)

Have two decks, one for normal encounters, one for bosses.
The regular deck has about seven of each level of attack (7xLvl 1, 7xLvl 2, 7xLvl 3) and one level of each super for each character (so 1 level 1, 2 and 3 super for Sagi, Guillo an Milly each), prioritizing multihit supers with Guillo and Milly. Then have two or three weapon cards for each character and maybe one or two healing items.

For the Boss deck, do the same, but add more healing items and maybe one or two defense cards, while prioritizing single-target supers for your characters (unless the boss fight has adds).

Don't clog your deck with too many supers, healing or equipment items and don't roll with a full 60/60 card deck. You will ideally have mostly Normals, one equipment card and maybe one or two supers in your hand at any time. The game bizzarely loads you up with multiples of the same super, but you don't actually want that at all.

The thing with Relay combos, is that the next character in line has to be able to act BEFORE you finish selecting cards for the previous character AND they need a Level 1 normal attack.
So you can go Lvl2>Lvl3>Supers >Relay to Lvl 1>Lvl2>Lvl3>Supers >Relay to Lvl1. The second and third characters MUST start their relay attack with a level 1 card.
The counterintuitive thing is that the MP gauge goes up when selecting cards, not when hitting the enemy.

I'm torn about actually telling this, because this strategy basically makes it so that you have a fine setup at about the halfway point and never have to change it, save for replacing equipment and healing cards, which makes combat very samey for the rest of the game...