As far as combat goes, the turn-based battles are firmly rooted in the tactics genre, although there are a few tweaks to keep you engaged. You pull together a team of fighters from your school based on whatever configurations are required by the battle. The nice touch about combat is the implementation of a "swing meter" which ensures you'll be doing more than reading a book and zipping through combat menu options with one button press--as is sometimes the case in RPGs. When you initiate combat, the meter comes up--if you manage to press the A button at the right time--and, the more the cursor travels across the meter, the more damage you inflict. As with most tactics games, you have to carefully position your fighters during combat, making use of terrain--if you can--to give yourself the best advantage possible.