How does the Vagrant Story battle system work?

Combat runs in real time and pauses at the moment of decision. Draw your weapon and press attack, and a wireframe sphere blooms around Ashley: everything inside it can be struck, and you choose which body part to strike. Limbs are tracked separately; beat an arm or a leg into a dying state and the owner fights at a disadvantage, weakened or slowed, though nothing dies until its hit points reach zero. Ashley is built the same way, which cuts both directions.

From that single mechanic the whole system grows. Land a blow and you may chain further abilities onto it with timed button presses, a rhythm game played at sword speed. Get hit and a well-timed press fires a defensive ability instead. Spend hit points and a Break Art, a signature technique tied to the weapon class in your hands, trades your own blood for damage. Every one of these choices feeds the meter that defines the game.

That meter is Risk. It rises as you attack, faster when you chain, and as it climbs your accuracy and defences fall and enemy blows land harder; in exchange your critical hits multiply and your healing magic works better. Break Arts pointedly add no Risk at all. There are no levels to speak of: growth arrives as small bonuses after bosses and through items, and the real progression is metallurgical. Weapons gain affinities against the six enemy classes and the elements by being used against them, lose them by neglect, and are combined and rebuilt in workshops until the arsenal in your eight inventory slots is a set of specialised answers. Magic, when it comes, arrives as Grimoires dropped by enemies, and cannot be chained at all.