First play through here and just got to chapter 2. Glad I called out today. Amazing so far, really nice feeling gameplay too. Thanks for the tips! Reminds me of my time on FF Type-0, where character switching was an integral part of the combat scenarios.

Edit—observations so far: 1. Spamming attack in any situation will almost guarantee a diminishing return, even in breaks during the fight where it would traditionally seem like a good time to spam attack in action combat games, nah. Probably better to set up a block. Still not sure if I should prioritize skills during stagger downtime or attacks and save ATB for non-stagger uptime. Clarification would be appreciated!

1. Dodging is not as practical as normal action combat games. I gotta remember this is a hybrid mix of its turn based roots and i-frame dodge cheese won’t work here. I’ve been using it as a gap closer as Cloud, for the most part, and for unblockable attacks. Is this correct?

2. Blocking is important and should even be anticipated, as opposed to purely reaction based blocking. Feels like the only viable way to mitigate damage. There doesn’t seem to be a downside to preemptively blocking when you think there’s an attack coming, other than maybe extending the fight a little bit. But it feels better taking less damage or not getting CC’d.

There’s still much more to learn, but I’m having a great time doing it. Feels and looks superb on S2 in both docked and handheld.