The general gameplay of Abyss is similar to past tales such as Tales of symphonia. Players will travel through dungeons and towns to progress through their journey as well as venture through a highly detailed world map that helps give scope of the world's depth. Traditional o tales the player will also get a vehicle to travel in that will allow for quicker movement throughout the world.
Battle System
Tales of the abyss featured a radical change in the Tales series battle system, this change entailed allowing the player to hold a button to run in any direction this ability was named free run and allows for increased maneuverability. As in all tales Abyss's new battle system has a custom named dubbed the flex range linear motion battle system. This new system also added Fields of Fonon (FOF) Basically if an elemental skill is used enough an elemental field would appear on the ground and a character could stand on it and perform a normal skill and it would transform into a different move relative to the element on the ground.
Artes
In the tales series Artes are used to dish out extra damage aside from typical character combos. In general these abilities are learned over the course of the game by leveling and in some cases side events. Moves are usually designated to one button and 4 artes can be mapped Linking these moves with your normal combos is the bread and butter of the Tales series in terms of being offensive.
Capacity Core and AD Skills
Ad skills are abilites that characters can learn which grants them stat bonuses amng other things. these skills are obtaind through capacity core. At first they must be equipped, though once they are used for so long they can be used without the assistance of the capacity core. 
