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Not your traditional fantasy setting…
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Summoner's world is populated with creatures of all sorts, and not your conventional orcs, trolls, mean dwarves, and ghouls. Anoop Shekar of Volition Inc. gives us a taste of what to expect from the creatures in Summoner,
"In Wolong, a city in Orenia, there are extensive caverns throughout the mountain on which it's built. Within these caverns are the Wolong Cave Guardians. These crystalline creatures guard the secrets and treasures hidden within the mountain. On Medeva there are the Bacites. These semi-intelligent lizards have small camps and settlements throughout the wilderness. They don't take too kindly to people intruding on them. These are only a few examples of some of the unique creatures that Joseph and his companions will encounter."
Of course, you won't be alone in combating these sorts of fiends. Your party will consist of yourself, Flece, Jekhar, and Rosalind (although you won't start with all of them in your party). Flece is your average thief, or so it would seem… but she also has useful abilities in combat, like disarming foes during a battle to decrease their effectiveness. Jekhar is the conventional warrior, except he doesn't like you, Joseph, a whole lot. Jekhar's entire family was destroyed by the demon Joseph summoned, and he agrees to travel with Joseph and help him only out of necessity. Lastly you have Rosalind, the daughter of your mentor Yago, and she wishes to become a mage-priest but is ordered by the head of these mages to aid you in your quest.
So just how will the fighting work? When a hostile bad guy walks on the screen, you enter a combat mode where your party draws their weapons and prepares for a fight. You can pause battle at any time to issue commands so your party will have better synchronized attacks. Shekar tells us you might have Flece disarm an opponent, Jekhar use a double attack for more damage, Rosalind cast a firewall spell to burn enemies, and even let Joseph summon a golem to the party's defense. The combat actually sounds a lot like that in Baldur's Gate or Planescape-Torment. Summoner, however, isn't only set in a 3D world… but they take conventional character classes and expand on them. Jekhar, a fighter, will have more options then just "attack" and your thief, Flece, can disarm opponents to make things easier on the close combat fighters like Jekhar.
You have full control over characters in your party and can direct them to cast spells, perform special attacks, or use whatever skills that character has. There will be a character AI since the combat is real time, so you can stick to managing just Joseph and letting your buddies take care of business on their own if you'd rather not pause the game and take full control in directing attacks. I prefer to have full control in battles like that, but in a lot of cases I'm sure it won't be necessary to synchronize attacks unerringly, and you can simply let your friends beat up enemies with their own AI.
As characters level up they will get skill points they can use to distribute among their various skills, which are based upon their different classes. A thief, for instance, can choose between various thieving skills, and a fighter for fighting skills… etc.
Although the majority of the weapons you'll get are pretty common in fantasy games (swords, axes, maces, etc.), each you can wield has been given it's own unique appearance. Also, Shekar tells us, Jekhar can get a pretty "nasty" axe that is capable of slicing enemies in two. Oh, the possibilities…
Overall, the combat in Summoner sounds pretty darn nifty. And when we say pretty darn nifty we mean… well… we mean pretty darn nifty. But that's not the point. The gameplay in Summoner isn't just combat, there will be a lot more to it depending on what area of the game you're in. The game's immense levels will vary focus on gameplay. In city areas, there will be more quests to complete and NPC interaction, but something more along the lines of a dungeon will be heavier on combat. Still other areas may be chalk full of puzzle solving, so getting experience won't simply involve bashing the biggest monsters you can find.
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