Vagrant Story has one of the deepest
combat systems I've seen in a game. In addition to the features mentioned in the previous nodes, there is another clever idea in it: your
weapons will change over time
depending how they are used. Let's say you have a
rapier. If you use this to
fight a
dragon it will become more effective against all dragon-class creatures, and less effective on other creature classes. As well, some types of weapons are naturally more effective than others on certain creatures. Using a rapier -a
piercing weapon- on
skeletons won't do much damage, but will work well on
dragons and humans. Some enemies are also going to be
vulnerable to
elemental attacks. The same ideas apply to
shields. So if you see a
big bad fiery breathin' dragon up ahead you equip your dragon slaying ice rapier in one hand, fire and dragon resistant shield in the other, run behind the said dragon, target its
tail (vulnerable to piercing weapons) attack it normally and chain together attacks to first
paralyze it,
poison it, and do extra damage, all before it even attacks you.
And then you move onto the next enemy.