Enemy GP/HP & Guard Break
In the top left corner of the battle screen will be listed all enemies HP (Hit Points) and GP (Guard Points). When an enemy's GP reaches 0, you will Guard Break them. In this state, you will do more damage to an enemy.
Guard Break lasts a certain amount of time, depending on the enemy, but it is considerably longer than in Hyperdimension Neptunia.
Turn Order
In the top right corner of the battle screen is the turn gauge. This gauge shows the turn order of your characters and the enemies in battle. You can use this to take advantage of knowing who will act next. For example, if you need to heal an ally you can determine if you need to do it asap, because a monster is going to attack next, or if your healer is going to get a turn first. You can also use this to know when enemies are going to attack and if you can kill them before they get their turn.
Symbol Attack
While walking on the dungeon maps, you have the opportunity to strike an enemy before in makes contact with your character. Doing so will give not only start your characters at the front of the turn order, but they will also get bonus AP.
Front & Back Rows
There are no longer front and back rows in the battle, but there are 8 battle slots. The front 4 slots are the default battle party that will start in battle. The back 4 slots are your alternate team. During battle you will be able to switch between your front and back row characters freely. Note that your front row characters are the only ones that gain the pre-emptive bonus AP. Your back row characters can still store the 100 SP for later, even if they are not in the front row.
Commands & Combos
You start with some basic Combos already equipped. As you level up and learn more skills, you can start to customize these combos even more.
Here's a basic layout of what a basic combo looks like:
| 1st | Attack or Slash | AP 12 |
Triangle - Rushes
| 2nd | Rush | AP 16 |
| 3rd | Rush | AP 16 |
| 4th | Rapid Hit | AP 27 |
Note that you do not need to use all of the same attack, in fact switching them up is generally a good idea.
You can change these combos to anything you want between battles. If you use enough AP in a combo, an EX Finish will automatically be activated.
Skills
You can now use skills at any time during battle as long as you have the required SP and AP to use the skill. This means you will need to attack the enemy with your AP to gain SP. Note that 100 SP can be carried over from one battle to the next, but vanishes when you leave an area. This means you can fight minor enemies and the jump into a boss battle with 100 SP stocked up and ready to use skills on your characters first turns.
EX Finish
EX Finishs are the Bonus Attack of a combo that may occur when you use enough AP in a chain. You can view these in your Command Menu, with greyed out ones meaning you do not have enough AP useable to perform the attack. The more EX Finishs you are able to perform, the more options you have in battle.
Fleeing
Unlike the previous game, which required and item to escape battle, you can now run from a battle freely with one condition; you must be on the edge of the battlefield in order to select Escape from the battle menu.
Hard Drive Divinity
HDD can now be activated at almost anytime, as long as you have the SP. Less powerful than previously, the changing of processor units will still let you drastically change the CPU and CPU Candidates stats against certain enemies (including certain elemental resistances). While in HDD the character will eat up the SP and when it reaches 0 they will automatically change back to normal form.
