Battle Mechanics

Battles in the main game play as roughly old-school RPGs.

Each character has their own unique playstyle. There's a rock/paper/scissors mechanic.

There's a targeting system mechanic where you know who the monster's going to attack next. (Cuz we have some app that tells us that, etc). This can make the monsters' attacks stronger, more dangerous, but avoidable if you're playing correctly by using all your resources.

I'm thinking at least some of the monsters can be made into "glass cannons" where they aren't that tough to kill, but if you give them an opportunity, you're fucked.

Seems this might play into that best 2/3 system I mentioned. Quick, exciting fights, where you gotta do more than just keep hitting "FIGHT".

So, my thinking is that your party will have several members, but each one does a job. There's a reaction-based member who is your "BLOCK" person. The "spellcaster" has touch/swipe-based attacks, the fighter has motions. A weapons specialist guides/launches things via motion controls. Because there's so many things happening, lets make it super easy to roll out of a KO and back into another chance. Like, don't even leave the damn fight. No retracing your steps back to try again. That sucks.

The player's role in the fights is to be the commander, similarly to how they put you into an RTS game. Because you're the noob and you're worthless at anything else. The npcs you direct can also after the battles, react to what you had them do, if nothing else, just simplistically like giving you feedback or even just bitching that they had to do what you said.