Tales of Zestiria's sixth character revealed and combat details
Revealed in Famitsu magazine a few weeks back, Bandai Namco has updated the Tales of Zestiria website with new information about the battle system and introduced the sixth party member character, Dezel. He is a member of the heavenly tribe whose element is Wind, and he uses a pendulum as his weapon of choice. We don't know much about his character yet, but we do know he is looking for revenge towards someone who took his friend, and he has spent time with humans in their society.
Battle system details have also come to light. Namco had already revealed that combat revolves of two different types of arte attacks, much like Tales of Graces F, and that human characters use close range base artes in combination with the Heavenly Tribe (Tenzoku) character elemental artes. New information reveals that a gauge below HP is used to chain artes together in combo attacks, and different artes require different amounts of this meter. This gauge also refills on its own, much like 'CC' in Tales of Graces F.
The number next to these gauges is used for actions such as evading or guarding (a move like the sideways step from Tales of Graces F has returned), and can also be used for other special effects. The human characters are also shown to be linked to the Tenzoku characters in the interface. While it's not clear exactly how the links affect the gameplay, it seems that linking with different characters may allow for altered attack patterns or combination styles, perhaps similar to Tales of Xillia. Check out the screenshots in the gallery for context.
