Basically, before the battle starts, the player equips actions into the seven slots at the bottom of the screen. Each action provokes a response and has a counter, as explained in the info screen when they are selecting each action. The ones chosen for the White Knight character were slash, shield attack and grab.

Meanwhile, the mustachoied older man chose a series of attacks that when put in that order created a combo you can activate, because of the type of attack. You can see little icons at the side of the name which tells which is which.

So then in actual battle, the player positions the character and makes the targeting reticle. Inside the reticle is the action you’ve chosen and you can switch to any of the other actions along the bottom at any time, when you push the button, it activates and paper/rock/scissors thing goes into effect. So the shield bash should knock down an enemy as it did, but not if its met with a well-timed thrust attack and so on. This is demonstrated when the White Knight character gets his arm hurt from inputting slash attacks at the wrong time (and perhaps having little strength as well).

Just like Rogue Galaxy, you can switch the active character at any time, and they all speak about battle conditions so you can hear what’s going on without seeing it. So later on, when the female character talks, she’s asking for help and he switches to the White Knight goes behind the guy and activates “grab” to hold him by the arms so she can beat him up.