What strategy elements does this game have?

[Marikhen]

After mentioning strategic combat and building your strategy all the video showed was clips of combat which had no discernible tactical elements much less strategic.

[Melodia]

Well the battle system is pretty unique. You have a limted number of points per turn in which to spend on abilities across your team -- there's no 'normal' attack. This is increased each turn based on your current formation setting. So you can for instance either have four characters doing a 1 star abilities, or one doing a 3 star and 1 doing a 1...stuff like that. Enemies also have this same restriction.
Plus, there's counters and interrupts which you can attempt to get around, learning what the enemy will do can help here.
Status effects are also quite effective (for you AND against you!).

So...plenty of tactical/stratigic elements to go around (not really sure how you're differentiating them here)

[Marikhen]

Originally posted by Melodia:

So...plenty of tactical/stratigic elements to go around (not really sure how you're differentiating them here)

Tactical elements are at the micro level, squad-based combat and management elements. Strategic elements operate at the macro level and are more about directing long-term and/or resource-intensive goals such as researching new weapons or retooling your army. There is a degree of interchangeability between the two terms, but so far as I can tell it ultimately boils down to the macro/micro split.

From what I've played of the SaGa games it wouldn't have surprised me to find that there are strategic elements implemented and that the video was a matter of "list the gameplay elements while we put up a bunch of flash, don't worry if any of it matches" type advertising.

From what you're describing this is more a case of the promotional material going back to the bad old days when tactics and strategy were used interchangeably or incorrectly. That's not any sort of deal-breaker; I just like to actually know what I'm looking at because any time a company uses the word "strategy" my brain goes right on to games like Civilization and moreso Heroes of Might & Magic which encompassed both strategic and tactical elements thanks to how it implemented combat.

[Melodia]

Well if you've played previous SaGa games you somewhat know what to expect from the....feel....of the game. You're free to wander (sometimes more than others, depending on your scenario), you lose LP if you die which a character has to sit out to revive (outside a couple healing spots) and techniques are randomly sparked in the middle of battle. The big thing about the game is that you completely choose your battles, the overworl has no enemies, you simply enter points on the map to initiate battles.
As far as getting new gear, there's a synth/crafting system. Pretty standard 'find X materials to upgrade this to that' sort thing.

Yeah for sure it's tactical rather than strategic going by that definition (I actually prefer the term 'tactical RPG' over 'strategy RPG' when refering to grid-based combat, though this game isn't one).

[⭕TheSodaman]

The strategic level is relatively light or can be adjusted by investing in other units and play styles.

The monsters get progressively stronger as you fight more battles and on that scale, you have to consider if you want to explore outside your main objectives for the region, how you want to develop your alternate party members, and go about gathering resources needed to expand the gear selection (blacksmith rank who can craft either higher tier gear or horizontal gear progression). You can also send characters out on mercenary assignments (expeditions) where they develop a stat or two while acquiring resources that can be used for the blacksmith, but can't be used in battle while doing this. There is a rubber band effect, so the further behind a character is, the more they develop on these mercenary assignments.

To another degree, there are recruiting characters to learn new party formations that may give you a team or setup you like more than others. Or taking the time to learn techs with different styles of the same weapon (e.g. one sword may teach a standard set of techs while a curved sword may offer some other techs.) Unlocking techs and improving the rank of certain techs can unlock roles (passive traits) that further develop what your character can do. So you might try to face off against enemies who you have a chance to learn that tech off of (e.g. you want your tank character to learn how to counter pierce attacks, so you face off against enemies who use pierce attacks just for the chance to learn that tech and maybe acquire a role that maybe reduces the damage they take in some way to do their tanking job better, etc.)

There will be times where your characters are defeated in battle and lose LP (life points). Lose them all and you can't use them until they recover. They can recover LP if they aren't used in battle, but if you didn't balance out training those back ups, you take the risk of fighting battles with an under developed team which can result in each more LP loss for your regulars. And as you continue fighting those battles just to recover LP, you gradually make the game a little bit harder unless you discover resources to recover LP out of battle (e.g. hot springs, a plant in the desert that if you use the wrong one - you lose an LP, etc).

Then deciding which gear gets upgraded or side graded for the characters you have. For weapons, some upgrades don't offer the same techs to learn from or you may not have resources to craft the weapon you want. This may lead you to wielding a statistically inferior weapon just to learn a tech or deciding to progress the game with a stronger weapon and without that tech (maybe learn it later when you have enough resources to make another weapon or maybe never). Some blacksmiths also offer variations of an item or may be the only group of blacksmiths that know how to upgrade your gear (e.g. maybe a natura smiths know how to work with dragon scales and golem-inspired heavy armor or the water smiths using some rare ice to make a mini-glacier of a great sword, etc.) On a resource management scale, you can acquire discounts as a repeat customer to the same smith, so you may start spreading your business around a variety of smiths to get a discounts for future expensive high-end products instead of just using one smith that you gained discounts with, but maybe doesn't offer the same selection as the other specialists.

And on a less consequential scale, there is a build a trade network that involves running non-combat goods across the world with rewards of blacksmithing resources and lore. This doesn't seem to affect your story or character progress that I've seen. And it's possible that some of your decisions may even prevent you from completing the trade network (e.g. if you prioritize certain objectives when addressing a conflict within the region that may result in losing access to a city or its facilities).

As Melodia mentioned, I believe this was a case where the marketing used the terms tactical and strategic interchangeably. Similar to the way that in Japan, the term Strategy RPG is used to describe the genre that Final Fantasy Tactics and Fire Emblem are part of. Where outside of Japan, a Strategy game may make people think of Warcraft 1~3, Total War, Civilization, etc. (and maybe Strategy RPG with a leaning of, a Strategy game with heroes that can level and acquire gear maybe).

I think where the game shines, for me, is on the tactical scale and due to potential character limits, will post in a separate post.

[⭕TheSodaman]

On the tactical level, each battle lets you preview the enemies, the terrain (element) you're fighting in, and some optional objectives that yield blacksmithing resources.

You decide your units, their roles, their formation and positioning to take advantage or risk of that formation, their weapon, and the remaining gear. You can decide if you want to risk the optional objective (e.g. counter an enemy at least once, use a different party for a consecutive battle, defeat an enemy with a team attack, use an all male party, etc.) And you can also decide if you have a preference for using units of the same element as the terrain you're fighting on for that statistical boost. Or if you even want to optimize for one encounter and just make use of who you have.

And the good thing is, for a SaGa game, there is a LOT of in-game tips between the loading screen and the tip compilation inside the game. And then there is a lot of specifics that are not available to the player such as, "Well... how much less damage am I going to take from this role or buff?" or "What did ranking up this ability that puts the enemy to Sleep do now that it only costs 1-star instead of 2-star? Does that increase the chance of making them go to Sleep, does it just do nothing, was it used to unlock something?" (The answer is the middle one in this specific case). But a large portion of what I'm saying in this post and the previous is available in the in-game help somewhere and then some.

For the combat, while I do not personally like it, I do acknowledge there is a potential depth between just consistently clearing the battle, consistently clearing the battle without casualties, consistently clearing the battle without casualties and meeting all the objectives, and having setups and tactics capable of completing optional brutal battles.

Your team shares a pool of stars (action points) that you decide what techs or spells you want to do with them. Most formations generally grant additional stars as combat goes on, up to the formation's max stars allowed. And your units where some pre-battle choices (formation, speed) can influence their starting position in a random roll. Not taking an action will improve their turn order the following round, reduce the damage they take during the current round, and increase their chance to evade or block if applicable. Performing an action that required many stars can delay their turn order the next round. Some techs can make a unit perform earlier and other techs after. Or techs that can delay an enemy's turn, try to stun them to cancel a turn, or focus on killing an enemy who is preparing a multi-star attack to waste their turn altogether. There are also techs that interrupt and change the line up of the battle. That is to say, the next mechanic...

Unity attacks / team attacks (I forget the exact name) takes place that triggers an attack by eligible units on the same side, reduces the star cost of techs/spells, and accelerate the casting of new spells the following turn. Looking at the battle's turn order in a horizontal queue, if a party member dies in between the turn of two enemies, those two enemies will perform a unity attack (a free attack) on your allies with all the advantages the next turn. To make matters worse, if they happen to target another party member positioned between two enemies and kill that hero, they get another unity attack. It can be a domino effect since some enemies love targeting your heroes to trigger unity attacks. Similarly, you can position a party member who is about to die between two other party members. When your OWN wounded party member dies in this scenario, you get a unity attack against the enemy and your own surviving members get the unity benefit next turn. In this way, you and your enemies may purposefully alter the turn in order to position wounded units and make killing them a high risk move.

To add another component to this, causing one enemy to sleep may deny that enemy from taking action (maybe it was an enemy who always stunned your caster, maybe called for reinforcement, or some high HP enemy with high damage attacks). However, now that the sleeping enemy isn't using stars, the remaining have access to more stars, which generally are higher damage attacks, area attacks, or attacks with additional status effects. Some status effects such as Confusion can cause party members (or enemies) to randomly choose an action or target that uses up valuable stars and may mess with your positioning. Then Paralysis that sometimes prevents you from taking an action, so you might not risk using up your party's pool of stars on that unit that turn.

Most of the status effects remain relevant throughout. Poison? Great for taking down high HP enemies / bosses. Horrible if your team gets afflicted in a drawn out battle. Or Frenzy, which is essentially a taunt. If your units get afflicted with Frenzy, you can't target other enemies who may be about to take actions that will distort the flow of battle. Or you can have your tank afflict Provoke or Frenzy on the enemy to keep your other party members safer. Maybe your caster casts an AoE damage spell that causes Frenzy and you have your tank cover / intercept attacks on that caster instead. The tank can cover even if they are slow, so that may be preferable if they can't Frenzy the enemy toward them in time, but risks the caster if the tank is otherwise occupied (or dead by the time the caster's spell goes off.)

Going back to the interrupts, these are generally actions that cost fewer stars and pack a punch IF the condition is triggered. For the enemies, you don't know WHAT the enemy is planning to interrupt with, you only know that they're trying to with the "???" over their upcoming action. A high defense, high HP enemy may just be protecting another enemy. Or they're preparing to counter a slashing attack or a bludgeoning attack or a melee piercing attack... or counter ANYTHING if you target them directly. And you can often use a ranged attack to interrupt and pin down the enemy tank or prevent the other two types of attacks, but if you trigger the direct counter, you may risk your archer getting hurt or even triggering the enemy's area attack interrupt. Or you can choose to maybe start casting a spell, attempt a non-attack status effect, or wait out a turn to improve your turn order the next round, and not risk the enemy interrupt, hoping they don't interrupt again.

Then there are these seemingly random benisons, strategems (random blessing from one of the game's deities) that can trigger. Some formations, roles, and conditions can influence the triggering rate of these benisons. Such as, "your team sustained enough damage" and you're using a formation favored by a deity who likes to heal their wounded. You might receive a random healing blessing just after one or more units are brought to low HP. Or instead you're using a formation of a deity known for construction and fortifications, so the same condition of sustaining damage causes them to offer a blessing of defense for damage reduction.

Other formations may alter your speed, increase damage for front line members, increase the probability of being targeted for a center character, reduce damage received, increase the number of stars you start battle with - but have fewer max stars, increase the max number of stars, change how you get additional stars, reduce the star cost of certain weapon types, increase the frequency of certain types of benisons, and so forth.

On a more straight forward level, there are about six damage types (three physical, three magical). Even without spells, you have techs / weapon attacks that carry a magical/elemental property. You may have a great sword that is generally capable of slashing attacks, but some bludgeoning attacks as well (or an ice attack if you have that ice-based great sword referenced earlier). Or bows that do piercing attacks, but also have a flaming arrow to do fire damage. Most of this depending on what techs you've learned to this point to be versatile with one weapon without having to learn the techs, improve your unit's skill level with that other weapon, and upgrade a weapon of that type. So if your team gets wiped out to a giant slime boss that uses a bunch of lightning attacks, you might adjust your gear for that lightning resistance. Or if you know the enemy is a swordsman with access to fire attacks, you may favor slashing and fire resistance.

And this is where some of the strategy element overlaps a bit. You don't need to prepare for every possible situation as the game since the enemies do get a little stronger as you battle more, but only up to a point. The enemy's power levels cap out, but you may be so far behind that curve that one or more party members are dying even on the easier battles (worse case, don't have enough party members to cycle through as you run out of LP and have to rely on a previous save). You really can get by making any character into any role. Some characters just have access to things that will make them perform better (e.g. the witch with low strength doesn't make the strongest martial artist, but that extra intelligence does improve the damage of their lightning-based kick attack and their other stats might help them dodge or land status effects a bit more often. Or the heavy armored knight with low INT may make for a low damage / low healing caster, but when they cast that spell that frenzies (taunts) all enemies or face enemies that love to target casters, they may end up being a damage sponge anyway.)

That and you can generally change your gear up enough and learn roles that will make a statistically sub-par character perform statistically better and make a suited character even more potent.

I realize these are walls of text, but hoping that may shed some light on the game mechanics a bit.