Today, Marvelous posted their third blog entry for their upcoming title Lord of Magna: Maiden Heaven.
In it, they discussed the basics of the game’s combat and gave us a trailer you can watch below:
Here’s the most important things they had to say about the combat system:
Firstly, as seen in the trailer, Action Points, or AP, make up the primary consumable that allows characters to use abilities in combat. The more powerful the ability, the more AP that ability will cost to use. Players gain more exciting and destructive abilities as the game progresses, which keeps battles fresh throughout the duration of the game. AP generally increases once per turn, unless you choose to spend it! This means that sometimes you’ll need to strategically place a character out of harm’s way in order for them to build up AP points.
Second is the emphasis on support abilities during combat. These support abilities come in many variants, some increasing base stats, others augmenting characters. An example of such an augmentation is providing an instant full-stack of action points – an absolute lifesaver when a big move is needed! Some abilities provide straight up bonuses and others provide a bonus in exchange for a negative, such as increased attack at the cost of defense. Player choice is at the heart of Lord of Magna, and so it’s up to you, the player, to decide how you use these abilities.
Next, we have the ‘bowling’ mechanic. Characters will earn an extra turn if they are able to defeat 10 or more enemies in a single move, which is essential to gaining the upper-hand in combat. To encourage this, the bowl mechanic comes into play. Defeating a ‘henchman’ or ‘trash-enemy’ will send them flying backwards in the direction of the killing blow, knocking them through his allies and taking them down along the way. This then racks up a higher combo kill bonus if positioned correctly. The skill here is taking your time and ensuring that your attack is placed in the right position for optimum destruction!
Skill Chips are equipable items that provide characters with offensive, and support-based abilities, as well as other changes to base stats like movement, and range. Each Skill Chip has a cost in “Memory” when it is equipped, and that cumulative cost of Memory cannot exceed the total allowance that each character possesses. If you cannot equip a Skill Chip, check your Memory capacity to make sure it isn’t exceeding the total!
Another side aspect of the combat system is the elemental system. This lies at the heart of the combat, and dictates the hierarchy of weaknesses, strengths, abilities and character attunements.
Finally, Consumable Items are often used in turn-based combat systems to replenish health or remove detrimental effects on party members. In Lord of Magna: Maiden Heaven however, more emphasis is placed on using battle items in combat. Using the crafting system that is present in the game, the player can increase the power of these battle items for even more damage and special effects. This is key to exploiting the weaknesses of your opponents, as different enemies are susceptible to different battle items.
Marvelous also announced that they will be doing a livestream of the game, where viewers will be able to ask questions to the developers, on this Thursday, May 28th, at 6 PM BST (GMT +1). You can watch the stream below or click it to store the link for later:
Lord of Magna: Maiden Heaven is set for release on June 4th, 2015 in Europe and on June 2nd, 2015 in North America.
NOTE: I should be receiving a review copy for this any day now, according to my PR contacts. If you have anything you want me to cover in the review, leave a comment below or contact me.