- Choice driven story. Actions you take and decisions you make have varying effects on the narrative, from what characters you ultimately recruit to how much of their story is revealed throughout the game. In addition their development is tied into how you interact with them, whether positive or negative.



- A large cast playable characters, some optional and others only recruit-able in place their counterparts. Each with a unique set of skills and abilities to differentiate one another. While I felt it was important to implement unique mechanics onto the characters, I did not want their core purpose to be convoluted or skewed. As such, they all generally have two sets of abilities; One set of abilities that are gained in a traditional manner (gaining experience) and another that will require exploration. Exploration entails a lot of things, be it optional content, such as dungeons, or finding characters willing to impart knowledge.



- A large world to explore. While I understand that the core of an RPG is to put an obstacle in front of the player and then gently push them through it, I wanted the game to feel slightly open rather than linear. There are dungeons that a player will have to traverse, obviously, but in addition to the core and story-driven locations there are others that are there for exploration at the player's leisure. When available they generally won't be out of place, and will offer further insight and development to characters.



- A billion items, that all do something. When reminiscing about inventories of my favorite titles, I try to think of the things that I actually needed out of the piles of stuff I'd accumulated by game's end. When creating equipment and items I wanted to put an emphasis on progression, and in doing so I implemented a crafting system that I felt encompassed it. While everything you find will have a purpose, finding a fair way to fit it in was a slight challenge but in the end I feel that it adds to the richness of the game. With every character having a unique array of weapons to wield and craft, you can focus on your preferred members and not necessarily feel obligated to make things just to pump up a crafting level.



- Another unique set of items that were added are known as "Burdens." While statistical progression is an important part of defining the role of a character, I wanted to have an option to allow for some customization of their statistics. Too often there is a game that places all the weight of such things on a player, where every character boils down to a vanilla stat box with an interchangeable face. Fuck that noise. A "Burden" is an equip-able accessory that provides a bonus to a particular parameter upon level up, much like the Espers of Final Fantasy VI fame. As is implied by their name, however, the bearer incurs a penalty to his statistics while equipped with the accessory. The higher the penalties, the greater the reward.

- Of course, in addition to the aforementioned optional content, there will be the obligatory sidequests and minigames associated with most classical RPGs. Namely a Coliseum to test your mettle against preposterously over-powered foes, and recurring puzzles that will allow the player to flex their mental acuity as opposed to their muscle. And something with cards.



- Sideview battles, all with fully scripted action sequences in the lovely Battle Engine Symphony. While this isn't a crazy new feature that will blow people away, I did want to put a bit of effort into making it stand apart. In doing so, every character has unique attack animations suited to their style of combat. Whether it be Elle's firearms or Judah's sword, each are wielded in a way befitting their fighting style. Every skill that a character possesses or attains will also have a unique animation, as to further differentiate themselves from one another.

- Simplistic battles, with unique mechanics. I did not want to bog down the flow of combat with excessive scripts and combo meters, the challenge that you can attain by tweaking a few formulas really puts things into a fresh perspective. Abilities that deal more damage depending on the state of a particular enemy, status effects that seem to hold weight in all battles rather than just the niche ones, and the ability to influence the skills of other characters in the party. Say Luca is spewing searing hot flames all over the place on the battlefield, some physical techniques of other characters will be influenced by this and their attacks will actually change, in both property and strength. While this addition isn't the newest thing on the block, it allows for some fun combinations in combat that will keep the player curious as to what they can actually get out of coordination and thought.

- The rise of the machines. While the AI integrated into the system tends to be unfocused and random, it was an important process to actually ensure enemies had properties that made them unique. As such, through manipulating states and formulas, the enemies can coordinate attacks on a particular party member if they are weakened or dealing excessive damage, or provoke one of the other characters into attacking ultimately baiting a turn. Much of the vanilla thought process of "more hp, more damage" was thrown out in place of providing a balanced encounter system.

` RANDOM ENCOUNTERS, that aren't really random. In borrowing a bit from both the Breath of Fire and Wild Arms series, encounters are structured so that when the player is an appropriately strong level they can be circumvented entirely. The gripes of touch encounters are many, and random encounters as well. I felt that by implementing a system that doesn't require weaving and dodging all over the map while allowing an option to ignore them a much better solution. Enemies do not scale with the player, but there will be challenges available for them to seek out.