The game's battle system is unusual for its genre in that it uses a turn-based system.
When a player character and an enemy character come into contact with each other on the game map, both parties are transported into a miniature instance where the battle takes place. For outside players, the involved parties appear as stationary, with a symbol floating over the combatants' heads to indicate combat. In this state, both parties, computer-controlled foes as well as human players, can receive assistance from up to two additional allied parties that can enter the battle at any time. This can lead to large battles of up to 27 monsters versus 27 heroes (3 players, 24 mercenaries).
The game is classically turn-based in that only one side can take action at a time and those actions take immediate effect. However, each character also has a certain speed represented by action points; that means that slower characters may have to skip some turns to reach a threshold value of action points while fast-moving characters have to skip less turns or none at all. Additionally, magic effects can also modify the amount of action points a character has to allow fine-grained control of speed effects. Each party can never have more than 5 characters act during a turn, even if more than 5 characters have sufficient action points.
The characters of each party are positioned on a 3x3 grid. Positioning the characters is an important decision, because different weapons and skills have different attack patterns. The player can change the position of his/her characters during a battle if desired.
During a character's turn, one of the following actions can be performed:
Basic Attack: Perform a standard attack.
Magic: Use one the character's available magic skills.
Item: Use an item that is assigned to one of the character's available Quick Slots, such as a healing potion or a magic scroll.
Move: Move the character to any position on the grid that is not occupied by a dead character. If the target destination is occupied by a living character, the characters will switch positions.
Wait: Forfeits the character's turn, keeping all action points.
Guard: Assume a stance that reduces damage dealt to that character during the enemies' next turn, while passing on the character's turn to the next character that has sufficient action points to act (if any).
Search: Search the body of a fallen enemy for loot. This also removes the body from the field, preventing resurrection.
Switch mercenary: Switch the mercenary out for one that is not currently fielded. You can only do this a limited amount of times during a battle.
All of these actions, except for Wait, consume a certain amount of action points.
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