You seem to be proud about the combat system, can you tell us whats special about it?
There are a couple of things that I think separate Bevontule from a lot of typical tactical-based combat games. Firstly, there is no grid. I believe that a lot of people mistakenly think this is something of a 'gimmick' that doesn't really offer anything except the right to say gridless. However, as someone who has played the game exhaustively and judging from the feedback from many others, it really does add quite a fresh spin. For starters, movement and acting aren't really decoupled like they are in most TRPGs. This means that you can actively be switching and analyzing different skills and abilities while moving around. This is more of a functional improvement, but it does speed up combat and tends to make it feel more dynamic and less error-prone. Take a classic like FFT--you'd have to basically count tiles. Sure, it isn't hard to do that, but it would be nice to just 'see' the range of any skill from any position without having to move there first--Bevontule solves this issue. This also tends to minimize mistakes made by the player. This also allows 360 degrees of targeting and/or motion, which opens up more interesting 'types' of attacks that deviate from the simple, 'hey, you're in this radius, I can hit you.' In this way, the targeting, in particular, almost seems like a turn-based MOBA-type game. We also have certain boss battles implemented (and many more planned) that are almost MMORPG 'raid-like' in that they require very careful positioning to deal with certain 'combat phases' and mechanics or require the tank to soak up a devastating attack. In many RPGs, roles don't really mean much, but in Bevontule, they are very important, but can also be 'spread out' to a large degree for different 'specs.'
The second part of the battle system is the emphasis on 'combat chains.' This is a fairly simple concept that boils down to, 'in the turn queue, any time there are consecutive skills executed against the same target, that target takes increased damage.' For that reason, it pays to position and try to queue up skills to be used on the same target, but not only that, but to try to save the most devastating skills for last. Since different skills have drastically different 'charge times', there can be an enormous amount of strategy involved in most optimally selecting the various actions for each character on any given turn. Enemies can also take advantage of this system and very often will! We also have a very robust, generalized and tuneable AI system that is smart enough to avoid your attacks, heal enemies, execute allies, move into ranges of buffs, and many, many more things. We want this game to be very challenging, but also to be 'winnable' with the correct usage of these combat chains. We also would like to have a difficulty system (enemies can be easily adjusted), however, so that more casual players can ignore this aspect more easily.
I hope I've given enough of an explanation. If there are things that are unclear, there are also several videos on our Youtube
channel that show the battle system in action. Finally, we did release a fairly fleshed out
demo back in November that features a few hours of gameplay and generally shows off the battle system, although several aesthetic and functional improvements have been made.
Will we be able to create our party or do we have to play with the pre made characters from the screenshots?
You won't be able to create the party as there is somewhat of a 'stricter' plot progression than might be found in a CRPG/open-world RPG, but there are many, many ways in which they can be customized in and out of battle