It’s finally time to unveil the battle system for Untold Story!

The following is what the battle system will look like in the final game, but do expect a few small changes as we get more user-feedback during our testing.

Battle system basics

When designing the battle system for Untold Story I was wary of keeping it within the same style of NES RPGs, whilst also ensuring that it came across as modern, easy-to-understand and (perhaps most importantly) entertaining.

That’s how I came up with the battle system know as: Active Battle Points or ABP for short.

So how does it work?

The player controls four characters, and uses those characters to fight a maximum of four enemies. Each of the player’s characters has a circle around them, which charges over time. When a character’s circle reaches full, they gain one battle-point. Characters can gain a maximum of four battle-points after which they’ll stop gaining battle-points. When you do an action you’ll consume all of your current battle-points, at which stage you’ll start gaining battle-points again.

Four characters, four enemies, four battle-points.

So, how do you fight enemies? Each character is bound to a button (for the keyboard it’s Q,W,E,R), with each button controlling one of the characters. For example, want to get Adrasteia to attack? Then simply press the Q key. Want Blanc to attack? Press the E key. Pressing the button that corresponds to each character is the only action you can do in battle. But there are a few caveats.

Adrasteia using one battle-point to do an attack

Remember those battle-points I was talking about? Well, each character will do a different action based on how many battle-points they have. If Adrasteia only has one battle-point then she will do a basic attack. If she has four battle-points, then she will do an attack which will not only deal considerable damage, but also steal some of the enemy’s life.

Do you wait for your characters to get more battle-points so you can do more powerful attacks, or do you keep hammering away at your enemies with basic attacks which only cost one-battle point? The key to Untold Story’s battle system is patience and timing.

Blanc using three battle-points to do a more powerful attack.

For example, if there is one enemy left but your allies are all on low health then do you wait until Sophia has two battle-points so that she can heal all of her allies, or just get her to attack (and hopefully kill) the last enemy with one battle-point?

Lots of tactical decisions involved!

There’s also one last mechanic. At a later point in the game, players will have access to summons. Each attack you do on an enemy will slowly build up the summon bar. Once the summon bar is fill, another character (in the image below its Bakchos) will jump into the fray and launch a devastating attack against all of the enemies.

Bakchos being summoned into battle!

Pretty cool, right?

Timing is key in Untold Story, getting everything to come together can lead to quick battles. You do need to be careful though, because if you slip up then you’re going to get knocked about a lot because the enemies hit very hard.

That’s it for today’s basic look at Untold Story’s battle system! We’re hoping to get a trailer for the battle system together soon which we hope will give you a clearer picture of how battles function in Untold Story!

For now, I hope you enjoy the above GIFs!