To set up these auto-orders you decide the action, the target of the action, and the condition for the action to be executed. The basic attack gambit can be tuned to beat up the closest enemy, beat up the enemy that's beating you up, or beat up the enemy the party leader has targeted. It's a tiny bit technical with various percentages and conditions, but it's all pretty logical stuff. Do you want to heal an ally when his hit points become critical or earlier when they drop to 50%? You can actually do both, since you can eventually set up to a dozen gambits per character in order of priority.

It's easy to acquire a solid command of the basics (the game does a good job explaining things without being patronizing) and the advanced stuff is really optional icing on the strategic cake. You will come across challenging foes and direly difficult key battles that tend to require a lot more direct input (or at least some leveling up and license point accumulation), but as the system expands and you're given more and more to work with, mastery of the system can translate into a nearly un-beatable automated fighting force -- which is pretty satisfying in its own way.


You beef up your characters directly not only by gaining levels by unlocking new spells, techniques, armor, and weapons via the license board, a sprawling checkerboard of connected squares. Working outward from centrally located squares, you explore and define each characters potential -- weapons, armor, spells, and skills -- as you see fit. If you're the kind of player who gets a lot of enjoyment in customizing your characters, the huge board is full of tantalizing potential. It isn't always easy to convert that potential to an immediate benefit, though.

Uncovering new squares on the board doesn't necessarily make them available for use -- you also have to purchase or find a physical weapon, piece of armor, spell, or skill to use it. There are worthwhile statistical bonuses and special attack techniques called "quickenings" available for players who push hard toward the edges of the board with their harvested license points, but it's quite likely you'll unlock scads of equipment and abilities you won't see until much, much later in the game. This means you have to move through the story to unlock more goodies and gambits, but even if you get most of your enjoyment from the technical side of things the storytelling side of things is also well-developed and well-executed.