Xenoblade Chronicles 2: Torna ~ The Golden Country – Details and footage for the battle system, soundtrack samples

Last week, Nintendo updated the official website for Xenoblade Chronicles 2: Torna ~ The Golden Country, providing us with some additional details. And today, the mystery section of the website was finally opened, and as expected, it’s about the Battle System. However, there’s nothing really new that wasn’t already known, which certainly makes us wonder why it wasn’t open until today!

First, here’s some gameplay footage from the official website:

And here’s two soundtrack samples…

• Gormott theme, by ACE (TOMOri Kudo,CHiCO)

• Battle theme, by Kenji Hiramatsu

As mentioned previously, the Battle System in Torna ~ The Golden Country is slightly different than in the main game. You still have a team made of a Driver and a Blade, but this time, you can have up to two Blades engaged at the same time during a battle.

You also have two different roles:

• the character at the front, who does the attacking;
• the character at the rear, who does the supporting.

A key aspect of the Battle System is that you can switch who is at the front, and who is at the rear. Do note that you can only have either the Driver alone or the two Blades in a given position: you cannot have a Driver and a Blade at the back and a Blade at the front for example.

Of course, you can switch positions in the middle of battle (it’s not something you have to set up beforehand). Doing so allows you to recover some health, but also automatically activate Arts known as Switch Arts. And just like in the main game, you can chain regular Arts in order to create Combos, which fill up the Party Gauge and allow you to launch devastating Chain Attacks.

Here’s some details about each element:

• Arts: special moves; each character has their own. There’s different types of Arts: attack, recovery, defense, etc.. You can combine those in order to hit enemies with specific status (Break, Topple, Launch) and prevent them from attacking altogether for a few moments;
• Combos: you can chain combos in order to deal lots of damage. When you reach the end of the combo (like the Blade Combos in the main game), you can launch a powerful attack with the whole team, dealing even more damage;
• Chain Attacks: all characters attack in turn. The longer you keep it going, the more damage you will deal to enemies.

Xenoblade Chronicles 2: Torna ~ The Golden Country (Switch) comes out on September 14th worldwide for owners of the Expansion Pass, and September 21st worldwide at retail.