#i am a fickle creator who judges my own work harshly

[radiant-future]

THE GAME

Radiant Future's gameplay takes place on a traditional Fire Emblem map with your usual assortment of units, terrain types, obstacles, et cetera laid out on a grid. The player and enemy take turns moving all their units, choosing what to do with them, yadda yadda yadda.

HOWEVER. The roster of playable characters is quite small compared to the average Fire Emblem game, and furthermore each character has only a small number of different weapons they can use (usually 4). Inventory management only matters for consumable items, as weapons do not break, and when a weapon is purchased for a character it becomes permanently added to a special inventory slot. When I start talking about individual characters I'll include the weapons available to them.

Each character has a Map Action - an active ability they can spend their turn on, like Rally Spectrum or Dance.

A form of Biorhythm exists as a double-edged snowball effect. Instead of fluctuating based on the individual character as a chapter progresses, your Biorhythm improves every time you pull off a combo of 10 hits or more, and worsens when you whiff 10 moves in a row in a single engagement, representing the character's confidence and doubt. Since Hit and Avoid are gone, Biorhythm affects Attack and Defense.

Stats and levels still exist. As mentioned, Hit and Avoid are done away with. The Dexterity/Crit stat determines the rate at which the Skill Gauge fills relative to damage dealt, the Speed stat shaves frames off the startup of a character's moves, the Luck stat extends the character's window for a successful perfect block, and the Movement stat has the same effects on the map as always, but also determines in-battle walking and jumping speed. Range still affects how far away you can initiate combat from, but there is no instance where one unit can fight and the other can't, unless there's an item or Map Action that can force a unit to start combat in a stunned state.

Promotions and class changes are done away with entirely, even for the Avatar, as this is a fighting game and it wouldn't be as fun if you could deal with every single enemy by throwing a General with super armor and a guard crush super at them. However, characters do still have stated class names, which can give you some idea of what they're about.

Oh, right, the actual fighting game side of things. Should probably get into that. THAT begins when you use the Attack command - at the same point where a real, official FE game switches into an automated sequence that plays out entirely by comparing stats and calling RNG. Instead of that happening, the unit you use to attack and the unit you attacked are thrust into a 2D plane with health bars at the top of the screen, three-segmented Skill Gauges (super meters) at the bottom, and a 30-second timer in the middle. The fighting units do entrance animations, pausing for dialogue if they have a special interaction, and then the fight begins.

There are five main button inputs: Light, Medium, Heavy, Signature, and Skill. Skill is used sparingly, primarily for supers, while Signature can be compared to the Slash input from Guilty Gear, in that you tend to get a 100% character-specific move out of it.

Your objective in combat is not necessarily to defeat your opponent. Your average unit can take substantially more of a beating than even some bosses in official FE. When the 30-second timer runs out, the game returns to the map screen and each unit's HP is set to what it was at the end of the engagement. This also applies if you KO the opponent before time runs out—the engagement immediately ends, the victor's HP is adjusted if applicable, and the loser disappears from the map. It may be worth it not to overcommit to defeating an opponent in one round, and to instead deal risk-free chip damage to soften them up for later. All units have their own separate HP meter, but the Skill Gauge is shared between everyone on the same side.

The Weapon Triangle exists in a form. Instead of hard number superiority, lances have the longest reach, axe-wielding units tend to have a lot of armored moves that let them push through lance disjoints, and swords have a way to beat super armor, whether with counters, command grabs, or just hitboxes that ignore armor. The Anima Magic triangle does not share this property.

Weapon types are not as strict as in real FE games—the Avatar's fighting style is best described as "sword with some unarmed street brawling thrown in"—but represented weapons include the core weapon triangle; bows; knives; at least two spells from each of the Fire, Wind, Thunder, Dark, and Light groups; staffs; gauntlets/martial arts; Laguz transformations and weaponized Creatures mimicking them; and guns that shoot non-elemental magic bolts instead of bullets.

Last thing for now: If you start combat while adjacent to an ally, you can make use of a sixth in-battle input: Assist, which is shared with a quick-select for your Map Action on the map screen. The Assist input summons the adjacent ally into battle to perform one of their special moves, just like in a tag-team fighting game sans most of the tag mechanics. If you start combat while adjacent to multiple allies, you can only choose one to be your Assist for the engagement.