Quote
Could someone describe the battle system(s) from previous RUNAAAAs? I'm intriguied.
It's hard to explain, so I found some pictures.
A,
B, and
CYour characters start out on the right side of the screen. Monsters on the left. It's turn-based. Once it's your turn, you can select someone to attack something. They have a certain distance that they're capable of running in one turn. If they can reach the selected enemy, they'll attack. If they can't reach, they'll just get as close as they can, then just stop. Everyone on the field occupies space, so things can get blocked up. Forcing characters to take the long routes around things, which can mess up their turn. Same goes for the enemies.
It's not that different from something like Tales of Symphonia. Except that Lunar came out on the Sega CD, back in the days when Final Fantasy was groundbreaking for introducing the "active time" battle system, and before Crono Trigger wowed people with battles where the characters weren't always in the same place.
Lunar's battle system isn't anything spectacular by today's standards, but it worked really well and had a fast-pased "action" feel to it. The "Grandia" battle system is an evolution of the Lunar battle system (they basically just added an active-time "charge meter"), and is one of the top battle systems in use today.
Lunar DS looks to be having a painfully-uninspired typical RPG battle system, with the lone "hook" of having the upper screen of the DS display "airborne" enemies, which have to be dealt with using methods/weapons that aren't what you'd be using on the ground-based lower screen enemies.
As long as Lunar DS still has Bromides, I can forgive a sub-par battle system.