My initial thought when I played of Tales of Syphonia's battle system was "This reminds me of Star Ocean 2." The battles play out in true realtime, a feature not present in the Grandia or FF series for example, which have moved towards more semi-realtime systems.

On the show floor it's nearly impossible to get a feel for much besides the overworld and the battles, but those two were enough to sell me on the game. The overworld was bland, with me traversing an extremely generic looking hillside path. That being said, in the RPG genre especially, content is king. What I was so glad about is that all enemies are visable on the overworld. That more than makes up for the lackluster graphics. No random "swoosh" effect followed by a battle. If you can avoid contact with the baddies, then you can just skip the fight entirely.

Naturally, me being the combat nut that I am, I did the exact opposite. After only a handful of battles I was hacking and slashing and casting spells like a pro. The system really is extremely intuitive, and not that different than a fighting game. A is your standard moves, and B is your special moves. Pressing A or B + a direction will change up what attack you're performing, just like Super Smash Bros. Melee, or most other fighting games. As you attack or get attacked, you can see the damage being done on screen.

Overall it was an extremely fun experience. Besides the battle system, the rest of the title (characters, menus, items, etc) appeared to be your standard RPG fair, but I personally am more than willing to overlook those unoriginal ideas to experience those extremely fun battles when the title is released this fall.