The character creation process allows you to choose your gender and then your overall build and appearance from a selection of options. Once you're ready to add three companions to your party roster, you can apply the same selection process to recruitment to personalize them somewhat as well. All the character art has that Dragonball flavor, but your group is truly defined by its gear. There's a wealth of different types of armor to equip that goes well beyond the tired territory of chain mail and leather boots. Fishnet stockings and high heels, T-shirts and jeans, boxers and briefs are only the beginning of a wardrobe filled with all sorts of madness. You'll have characters in full-plate armor next to compatriots with equally powerful gear that look like they should be going swimming instead. It keeps equipment gathering interesting in a way that goes beyond increasing your stats and allows you to indulge in some truly horrible and hysterical fashion sense.
But in the end, it's all about battle readiness, and picking your balance of character classes is as important as what type of shoes to wear. The basic professions available are minstrel, warrior, priest, mage, thief, and martial artist. Your own character will always start as a minstrel, while you can tailor the rest of your group as you see fit. Each class can equip specific types of weapons and armor and will learn specific spells as it grows more powerful. Gaining levels will also earn you skill points, which can be applied to weapon proficiencies that enable more damage and new abilities, as well as class proficiencies for additional battle abilities. You can change professions at an abbey that becomes available some hours into the game, and while you'll start new vocations at level one and without any spells you learned as a different class, you will keep any skill point abilities you purchased. If you decide that leveling a priest is a pain and that you'd like to go back to your old job, you will again assume your previous level and all of your spells while losing those priest spells. It's rather a big deal to switch professions because you'll have to invest some time to get those characters back up in terms of their levels, but it opens the door for determined players to mix and match powerful abilities.
Bringing those skills to bear against foes is as easy as heading out of town and scanning your surroundings for the nearest meowgician. New to this installment in the series is the ability to see monsters roaming the dungeon and world environments, so you can more easily trigger battles or just thread your way around skeletons and ghouls to be on your way. Creatures will still sometimes charge at you if you're of a lower level, but if you need to quickly regain your spot in the dungeon du jour, it can be done without too much fuss.
The actual fighting is classic turn-based fare, with you issuing orders to your party and then watching the action unfold. There are some basic AI tactical options that you can set for your three followers that will have them focusing on healing, conserving their magic, attacking at will, and so on, or you can choose to just manage each character individually. Because monsters can show up in large groups, it's important that you're careful to split the action to take out your most dangerous foes as quickly as you can. While you can run from battles, and while you learn spells that let you easily leave dungeons and warp back to towns, the game is by no means a cakewalk. There are some seriously deadly creatures out there that command a lot of respect, so you don't want to skimp on leveling and empowering your party. This can turn into a bit of a grind, but the visual variety of monsters keeps things from getting too mundane.
