Once you've set up your rooms (which you access on the world map), you can head out to take on the storyline or you can jump into your rooms to upgrade them. Unlike the Item World of the Disgaea series, upgrading a room doesn't use the geo system for battlefield buffs and debuffs. Instead different types of terrain and map affects determine the difficulty of a given battle. When you first start out this can make things a little difficult but as you get rolling and earn some experience, things become a lot easier. Besides improving your rooms, leveling them up gives you points which you can apply to units for upgrading stats.
No matter what kind of battle you take on, they all play out something like this: the main character starts out alone on a map featuring different kinds of terrain (grass, mountains, town square, desert, etc) and a number of enemy squads. From here he or she can go it alone or summon more squads you have put together. From this point on you'll maneuver your groups around the battlefield, engage the enemy in turn-based fashion and destroy them all. The only requirement is that you destroy all the enemy units and keep the main hero alive usually.
As you build up momentum you'll be able to use special attacks that do massive amounts of damage. Every group leader has at least one and depending on what units you have in a group, you get additional power attacks that target a whole group or a leader for quick kills. The quickest way to take down an enemy squad (or lose on of your own) is to kill off the leader.
Each room has a designated leader, and when that leader dies the room dies with it when the turn is over. Placement of the leader is the most important thing to consider when putting your group together. Putting a weak leader in front is obviously a bad idea because once that group has been defeated it cannot return to that particular battlefield. Each designated leader also has special skills that they can use outside of battle. Most of these are buffs that do things like increase your attack and defense power heal your group or increase your stamina. he only other thing that affects combat is range. If an enemy attacks from a distance melee units can not directly engage them but ranged units like archers and mages (thankfully) can strike back. When battles occur the game shifts to a 2D view showing two sides - the defender and the aggressor. Usually the attacker goes first, followed by a counter attack by whatever survived.
Each side gets one turn and if no one's leader was defeated the group remains on the map. That's the gameplay in a nutshell, and while it is simple, it certainly is a challenge.
The other important aspect of the game is gig edicts, which are just a fancy name for items. These items can do everything from healing to allowing you to steal enemies' equipped decors or give away your decors to someone else. There has been a lot of talk about gig edicts that let you level up by thousands of levels. A lot of times you won't need these kinds of edicts if you have done the bumping and grinding you are expected to do in an NIS America game. These particular Gig Edicts are simply amazing because you will be able to take on the World Eaters with relative ease - which is saying a lot considering how powerful these bosses are in the game.
The other part of the game that is interesting is the ability to fight townspeople. To do this you simply grab a "fight" edict and use it while in the town menu. Next thing you know, you're fighting the shop keeper. The only penalty is that you lose the edict you used. Some of the more difficult townsfolk prove to be cash cows. One fight might give you 30 dollars, while one might give you 80,000. This is important because the more money you have, the more powerful you can become because the game lets you spend money to buy levels on newly created units. So instead of starting at level one with a character, you could spend the cash to start out at level 14. This makes a huge difference that gives you a real edge in combat.
