Final Fantasy XIII promises a more active battle system than previous games with much more fast paced action. From the E3 trailer the battle system looks like a much more fluid approach to the previous titles battle systems which were very stop and start. Lightning herself looks extremly powerful using both magic and many melee abilities. Like Final Fantasy XII, this game will no longer involve random encounters. Enemies will spawn on the map and the player has the choice to attack or go around the enemy (depending on if they're aggresive or not).

Of course Final Fantasy XIII will have several features from the previous games but many have been enhanced in this title.

Battle Sequence - Lightning engaged in combat

1 - Battle Menu

The menu has all the standard features such as attacks and the ATB metre but it's been changed quite drasticly from other games. You can now line up your actions in a combo bar above the ATB metre. This either means you can plan ahead and one action will be used every turn you have or you can perform all the actions in one turn. Like the previous games, actions reduce your ATB metre but in FFXIII they dont reduce it back to zero after each turn. Each action uses a certain amount of ATB Cost and subtracts it from the ATB metre.

One of Lightning's special abilities is being able to control gravity which is one of the main reasons why her fighting is so agile. She can control it by using the buttons on her finger and thumb. When she clicks them together she can perform gravity defying moves in the air. It is possibly an ability she can only perform while in Overclock mode as the gameplay in the trailer suggests.

2 - Damage Type and Points

3 - Different Radar Screens during Battle

Unlike the previous games, a Radar will appear during battles showing where each enemy is located. In the first screenshot below, the blue dot in the centre is the character and the red dots represent the enemies. Once you begin to attack, a ring appears around the enemy you're attacking. If you do a "damage all enemies" attack the ring will appear around all the enemies like in the third screenshot.

4 - Overclock Gague in use

A new limit system has been introduced into FFXIII similar to the FFIX Trance mode. The player gains points for the overclock gauge by damaging enemies (screen 1 and 2 below) and once its full they can unleash a massive amount of high damage attacks. A timer starts counting down when overclock begins and once the timer is up you return to using normal attacks.