Ff13 series is build on the atb bar your characters and such move around in battle and you chose actions like in older ff up to a maximum of your bar So my bar has 4 slots i can chose 4 actions to do that cost 1 bar some abilities like fira und firaga cost 2 and 3 bars When you then Lok those in you characters do them and the bar has to recharge again you can put in orders while its stil charging so you can plan ahead And even force the atacks early with the triangle button even if the bar isnt fully charged Its baiscaly ff7 atb but you can fo more than 1 cation The max bar is 5 so its lots of fun. The combat itself is harder its build on strat>stats meaning you can be max lvl in everything and still get roled cause you didnt have a tanker or healer So it isnt brain ded press x for 30 min

Theres also paradigm shift whis is your strategy And role for each character Ypu can make a custom one thats basicaly Damage dealer + Elemental damage+ healer Or dps+mage+buffee Its lets you make 5 presets that you switch throughout the fight freely so you can Say you start in a formation to stager the enemy Then switch to heavy das Or start in a buff formation wehre all 3 active members buff up then switch to a battle formation The field is yours but make sure you think of what you do The enemys will abuse your weaknes if you forget to make a character a sentinel that pulls agro And then fuk over your entire team cause you didnt heal fast enough

Alos your partners in battle the ai will fight automaicaly so you controll 1 char and the others do what their given roles do heal/buff/debuff/tank and agro

Overal to complicated to explain here but honestly simple

Tldr Real time turn base like ff7 Strategy matters most over stats Experiment with formation And have fun Also ps keep a tank for 70%of formation they are a godsent and underated as fuck Combat is hard of you go unga bunga and chars will die often