Switching who you control in mid-battle...

[BlackDragon]

For a long time, I thought it wasn't possible to change who you were controlling while in mid-battle - you're just stuck controlling whatever character is at the top of your formation. I've certainly tried every button on the controller! But I recently saw mention in an FAQ about switching characters while in battle, as part of a boss-strategy, which suggests that it IS possible...

So - how the heck do you do it? I'm using an X360 controller at the moment, but I could always switch to keyboard if necessary, just for that...

[Kaezen]

Do you still have the link? Was it for the Gamecube? Because there's no actual in game method to switching characters. However with the gamecube you could technically turn your controlling character to auto, switch your controller port then set your new character to manual and that would allow you to switch character in battle. That's the only way to do it though, so unless you have multiple controllers hooked in and ready, I don't think you could do it on PC.

[BlackDragon]

Uh... I could find the link - it was an FAQ from GameFAQs that covered both the GC original and the PS3-version, which this one was ported from. But that's irrelevant - I searched through a bunch of old threads on this board and found someone else asking the same question. Turns out, all you have to do is bring up the battle-menu (Y on a X360 controller) and then press 'Start'. Hardly obvious, never mentioned in the game AFAIK, but there you have it.

[Kaezen]

Huh, I don't know how I've played this game for so many years without ever knowing that.

[Kaldaien]

That's a good question, you'd think you would have accidentally pressed start once :) I knew about this, forgot about it, and was reminded of it while trying to remember the button for Auto / Semi-Auto / Manual.

[Kaezen]

Yeah you'd think so. Perhaps I knew it at one point and forgot about it too as I've admittedly not done a run of this game in a long time. Either way it doesn't seem this was something I needed to do too often.

[BlackDragon]

I mostly find it handy for switching to a character who goes into Overlimit in order to activate the more complex Hyper Artes...

[vollbrudas]

Originally posted by BlackDragon:

I mostly find it handy for switching to a character who goes into Overlimit in order to activate the more complex Hyper Artes...

There's no need to switch the character in order to do so. You can just choose the respective arte in the characters tech menu and tell him to use it (with X-Box Controls: Y -> Tech. -> *char in overlimit* -> *arte you want* -> choose target).

[BlackDragon]

For the SIMPLE ones, yeah. But what about Lloyd, Kratos, Precia or Regal? Their Hyper Artes are not so simple as 'use Arte X while in Overlimit'...

[vollbrudas]

Originally posted by BlackDragon:

For the SIMPLE ones, yeah. But what about Lloyd, Kratos, Precia or Regal? Their Hyper Artes are not so simple as 'use Arte X while in Overlimit'...

That's true. I'm sorry.

[Kratos Aurion]

Open the mid battle menu and press back or start. Any character on auto will cycle into your player slot.

Edit: It is the start button.

Edit 2: And I just realized someone already answered this question XD

[Hi, I'm Daft]

It's a year late to the discussion, but just to note, you actually cannot switch to a character in battle if they're not the first member in the party and you set them to Manual control. I would assume it's a sort of leftover or guard if you're playing with multiple people, to keep one person from stealing a character from another. But, a real PITA if you don't realize it's set that way.

[Homeless Attorney at Law]

I'm from the future as I come a year later to tell you that you CAN SWITCH CHARACTERS. The only trouble that I encountered was doing it at the beginning while entering a battle I tried changing to manual some characters but after I pressed space to switch, I decided to switch to Colette and put her on semi-auto, suddenly y pressed space and noticed that I could cycle every character around during battle while on the battle menu when you press enter. After that I could just keep switching between characters as I pleased , consider your question solved .

[logrhythm5225]

You don't need multiple controllers to swap characters mid-battle.
In the Gamecube version, you could quickly switch characters with the Z button, while in the menu (outside the menu, this would trigger the Unison Attack).

Since we're all playing the PC version on Steam, you'd press the Start button while in the menu. On keyboard, the equivalent would probably be Space or Enter.
I'm guessing it was the Start button on PS2, and any other port that's based off of that. Maybe it was Select.