One of the biggest inspirations when it came to coming up with the battle system for Exadimension Neptunia is the Final Fantasy series. Combine that with the fact that S-Sha, the personification of Square Enix in-universe, is one of my favorite characters in the series, and you'd think that I would be able to come up with something cool for her skills and abilities in a fangame portrayal.

But based on the fact that I'm making this devlog, you can clearly see that this was not the case. S-Sha's current skillset is probably the most poorly designed thing in the game right now (second only to the funnel-shaped dungeon entrances in previous versions which have already been fixed by the addition of Map Guides). A lot of things didn't work together and what ended up happening was that the only thing resembling a reference to the FF Series were the skills' names and powerful effects, while the cooldown mechanic acted as a way to balance them out. A rework has been planned for a while now and I think I finally have something that's much more thematic, and much more comfortable to work with.

To be implemented in v1.9.1 (EDIT (08/17/19): A bug has been discovered that prevents progress of the game to certain players who have not yet reached a certain point as of the current version. The S-Sha rework shall be moved to 1.10 in order to better facilitate the resolution of issues found in 1.9 versions) along with other minor changes/additions, S-Sha will now function as a hybrid character that (after leveling up high enough) will have 4 physical-based and magic-based skills each. The skills are portrayed as job classes from the FF series, and have bonus effects if they have been 'mastered'. Job Mastery works by activating the corresponding EXE Drive ability as seen in the picture above. For 4 turns (subject to change), the indicated jobs will display a different skill name when used, have a 'stronger' animation, and incorporate a more powerful effect. Here's an example with the 'PHY Master' status:

Mastered jobs will have "★★★" next to their name (the number of stars don't mean anything; it's just for flavor) and display the "MASTERY: " text in white, indicating that the skill will now have those effects as well.

Dragoon (Osmose Jump) and Spell Fencer (Flare Spellblade) which have been retained from S-Sha's old skillset don't have any Mastery bonuses and will remain consistently strong (or consistently weak depending on your interpretation). Meanwhile, Sharpshooter and White Mage have extra-strong Mastery effects which will cause the PHY Master/MAG Master status to end prematurely after they are used (again, subject to change) regardless of how many turns you would've still had with it. For now, SP and EXE Gauge costs aren't shown since I'm still figuring those out.

Overall, I think this is a much better way of restricting powerful, effect-packed attacks compared to the out of place cooldown mechanic she currently has. There aren't any plans to do a total rework of another character's skillset as of now, though I am looking into changing 1 or 2 skills from either B-Sha, Rom or Ram.

As always, if something happens and I have to scrap this whole rework due to it breaking something in the game, I'll be making another update.