It has been called complex, inaccessible and downright confusing, and it’s enough to scare anyone away. The fact is though, that Resonance of Fate’s battle system is simply the best, most exciting battle system since Grandia – and it’s not nearly as complex as it appears in the fairly dire tutorial.

Or as complex as the following paragraph will make it seem.

All you have to do is scratch an enemy with an MG before switching to a HG to convert the scratch into direct damage. This can be done by hero attacks and building up resonance points to launch tri-attacks, where you can scratch and convert at once. Careful though, hero attacks cost bezels and if you run out of those you’re into critical condition and the only way out of that is to knock off an enemy’s body part, or kill them outright – unless you’ve got no bezels left to fill in again! Of course, if you’ve gauge-broken an enemy you might not have to fully deplete the body part to regain a bezel - just do enough direct damage to take it past where it’s broken. But then, if you’re fully scratched yourself those bezels will be lost again at a cost of 1000HP each.

That just about scratches (ahem) the surface. Rewind.

The problem with Resonance of Fate, if it can be called such a thing, is that it doesn’t treat the player like a moron. It feels inaccessible initially because from the very beginning of the game, the whole battle system is available to the player. Rather than drip-feeding new mechanics over the course of the first 20 hours (because the player's tiny brain can’t cope with anything more) Resonance of Fate credits the player with a bit of intelligence. Indeed, it barely even tells them how to play.

Many won’t be aware there’s a tutorial at all. An NPC mentions the arena in passing and unless you go there, the game will allow you to continue, tutorial free. As it is, it’s not the greatest tutorial in the world anyway. It consists of what are effectively screens from an instruction manual, and then a battle in which the player is tasked with performing whatever aspect of the system is being taught. The instruction screens are fairly poor and often don’t explain very well how to achieve the goal – trial and error will get you through but it’s in proper battles that the real learning happens – it’ll have to, because the game is very difficult if you don’t have the basics down.

While the system is turn based, it’s almost an action RPG and a strategy RPG at the same time. Every enemy acts at the same time as the player – if you move or charge, they can move or charge, if they move and charge quicker then your action will be cancelled. Positioning is also all important. The further away from an enemy you are, for example, the less accurate you’ll be, and it’ll take longer to charge. Weapons can only be fired when they have at least one complete charge but the more charges, the better.

There are two types of damage in Resonance of Fate. Scratch damage (blue) is caused by machine guns and is very powerful, but you can’t kill an enemy with it. It also heals over time. Direct damage is caused by hand guns, which are very weak, but a single shot from a hand gun will convert any scratch damage to direct damage, meaning that it will no longer be healed. To kill an enemy, their HP gauge must be emptied via direct damage. If it sounds confusing, it’s not, it’s completely natural by the end of the first battle – tutorial or not.

Players also heal from scratch damage over time. If all of a character’s HP is turned to scratch damage, however, bezels will be spent to restore it, at a cost of one for every 1000HP. 2001HP will cost three bezels. There are only a certain number of bezels to play with, and they are earned back by killing enemies or destroying body parts. If they run out, though, the amusing “critical condition” status begins. At this point it’s still possible to escape, or earn bezels back by killing enemies, but it’s generally a sign that you’re about to lose. Actions are weaker and take longer to charge, and with no bezels left, hero actions aren’t available.

Hero actions cost one bezel. During them, the player is invincible and runs on a line set by the player, they can attack as many times as they like until they reach the end of this line or hit an obstacle. Hero actions are excellent for repeatedly attacking an enemy to fully scratch them, or attacking multiple enemies in the same turn (although with enemies chosen with the Xbox controller’s d-pad, even when it registers a press, it’s rare that it selects the right enemy). Hero actions are essential. First for the invincibility they offer – there’s no way for an enemy to cancel an attack. Second, they give more time to charge, so a weapon can be charged over three times as many times. Third, there are plenty of upskirt-shots of Leanne, if that's your thing.

There are a few more intricacies to the battle system, using a hand gun to break an enemy’s gauge is essential to earning back bezels for example, a body part broken in two will yield two bezels when it’s destroyed, a body part broken into six, six. Running between the other two characters during a hero action earns a resonance point, which can then be used (along with a bezel) to perform a tri-attack, which is essentially a three-person hero-action where everyone attacks at once to devastating effect.

It’s complex, there’s no doubting it. But within a few hours it comes together to make perfect sense and from that point on it’s incredible, and essentially, feels simple. It’s daunting to begin with just because everything is there at once and it’s not something players are used to. It’s the right design choice, though, and involves the player in the game instantly. The risk/reward nature of spending bezels, coupled with the multitudes of strategies on offer ensures that even after 1,000 battles, it’s still exciting.

While the game can be hard, there’s never any need to grind. Grinding is simply no substitute for knowing how to take advantage of the battle system. Levelling is done via weapons, with each having its own level and the combined total equalling the characters level. A level adds a small amount of HP, but this isn’t as important, indeed, the bezel system means that sometimes it can be beneficial to have less HP. What’s important is that one extra level earns one extra potential charge, which means more damage in every turn. There are skills to learn too, of which there are too many to mention, but an example is full scratch. This gives the player a chance at fully scratching an enemy regardless of how much damage is done. The more levels, the more charges, the more chance there is of this happening – up to a 100% chance for enemies that aren’t immune to it – it’s a win button. You’ll need 92 levels to get there though, so that’s not going to come quickly.

Another way to make the game easier is through the excellent weapon customisation screens. With stats for charge speed, acceleration and accuracy among others, there’s a great deal that can be done to improve the many guns on offer. Parts can be found around the world, earned from missions, or created by the tinkerer using materials won from enemies or created by dismantling other items. The tinkering system is simple and very forward in letting the player know how everything can be created. The real fun though, is in customising the guns themselves.

A 9x9 grid is where it happens. The gun itself takes up a number of these squares, and each additional part has its own size and shape too. Marks on the edge of the gun show where parts can be attached, and parts can be added to other parts too. It’s incredibly addictive trying to fill as much of the grid as possible with extra bits. They can be rotated, the gun can be moved to allow for more space, and all the time the player must be conscious that making room for more of one part on the grid can mean there’s less room for something else. It’s a brilliant puzzle, and the benefits of which are instantly apparent in battle – a character that could only get off ten charges in time can achieve up to 100 with a pimped up gun and enough levels.

Even the world map offers customisation and advantages in battles. It’s covered in hexes which must be uncovered by the player before they can be passed, using groups of four hexes at a time. These come in different formations and often a specific shape will be needed to unlock certain parts of the map. Another puzzle! Coloured groups of hexes are also available, and these can be linked to terminals. Linking enough yellow hexes to a terminal that offers 1.5x experience will offer, well, extra experience in any battle fought on one of those yellow hexes. The hexes can be linked to dungeons too – linking a terminal that increases the damage done by fire, to a dungeon where all the enemies are cold-based, is obviously genius. There are loads of different terminals to take advantage of and the world map is endlessly customisable.

If there’s one thing that lets the game down, it’s the plot. It hints at much larger themes but whether they’ve been lost in translation, or badly written in the first place, they aren’t really clear enough that they make sense. The story does develop and build very nicely throughout the game, it’s just not clear what exactly it’s developed into. What it lacks in plot, though, it more than makes up for in the relationships between its protagonists. Almost uniquely for an RPG, they feel like genuine friends, rather than a bunch of people that just happen to be saving the world together. The banter between the three is often hilarious, and there’s a lot of humour present in the rest of the game too. It occasionally gets a bit weird, but it’s funny with it. Let’s just say, there’s this dance, right...

Resonance of Fate is traditional while at the same time not being traditional at all. It has everything a player would expect in a JRPG, but does it all so differently to anything that’s come before that it that it feels refreshing and brand new at the same time. Developers, take note.