1: Enemy Info

This is where the enemies' names are displayed, along with each one's "speed bar". When the bar fills, it's that enemy's turn to attack.

2: Enemies

These are the enemies you are currently fighting against.

3: Player

This is the player you are controlling.

4: Player Info

The vital stats and other information of the player, from top to bottom:

• Player's name
• Space for status effects (none shown)
• Hit points (HP) / Max HP -- If these run out, the game is over!
• Magic points (MP) / Max MP -- Used for spells.
• Stamina (ST) -- Maximum is fixed at 1000. This value decreases a certain amount after every physical attack. As this value decreases, the strength of your physical attacks decrease.
• Player speed bar -- When this fills, it's the player's turn to make a move.
• Breaker bar -- Fills a little every time the player is damaged. When this is full, the player can preform a breaker attack (through the fight command).

5: Command Menu

This menu appears when it is the player's turn to attack. Each of the available commands is outlined below.

Battle Commands

Fight

This is your most basic attack-- a swing of the sword. There are three intensities to choose from:

• Weak -- ST cost: 5 -- Obviously does the smallest amount of damage, but never misses.
• Medium -- ST: 12 -- The average attack. You'll probably want to use this one most of the time.
• Fierce -- ST: 25 -- While the strongest, it misses often and has a unnecessarily high ST cost. It does tend to critical hit more often, though.

Tech.

Sword techniques may take some getting used to, but you'll find they are well worth the effort. Each technique is performed by entering a specific key combination (available though the menu outside of battle) in a fixed amount of time.

Upon selecting the Tech. command, a window will appear prompting for a key combination (note that you can still press the back key here to cancel the tech if you change your mind, but any other key will start the tech input and you can't go back). Enter the combination quickly but smoothly. After the keys have been entered, don't press anything for a second and the keys that have been registered will appear on the screen. If you entered a valid combination, the technique will be preformed. Otherwise, nothing happens.

If you are having trouble entering the techs in correctly, here's some tips: If some of the names of the keys you entered don't appear, you are probably pressing the keys too quickly. If the key names appear before you are done entering them, you're pressing them too slowly.

The main catch to the techs is that each technique can only be used once per battle. All sword techniques are physical moves, which mean they are affected by and drain your stamina. Keep in mind that you cannot perform a technique if your stamina is below 250.

Magic

Magic spells, not affected by stamina, are selected from a menu. Each spell requires a certain amount of MP to cast, which is indicated by the number to the right of each spell name. Some are damaging attack spells, while others increase your stats temporarily. Note that some single target spells can be cast on two enemies by pressing the up key when selecting the target.

Item

Items are selected for use via menu as well. The number to the right of each item name indicates the amount of that particular item in stock. Not all items can be used in battle.

Run

Sometimes it is wise to flee from battle. Watch out, though, as you are likely to drop some of the gold you are carrying while trying to get away! Some enemies are harder to run from than others. Some you can't run from at all.

What about that blank space?

After you get the magic command, there's one space left... The final command won't become available until late in the game (Don't you just love surprises? Heh...)

General Battle Tips and Info

Enemies share the same stat structure as you-- including MP and Stamina. If you fight a particular enemy long enough, you'll notice a gradual weakening of its physical attacks.

Every attack has at least a small chance to score a critical hit-- which means a damage increase of up to 100%. This includes enemy attacks as well. Be careful!