Legend of Legaia is a traditional third-person role-playing game with 3D graphics. With a wide variety of towns and townspeople in which to interact, you'll unravel the storyline by learning of important hints and clues. Located in each town is a series of commerce shops; item shops contain helpful potions among other things and weapon and armor shops contain wide variety of powerful swords, helmets, etc. Additionally, you can stay the night at an inn to completely replenish your party's hit and magical points.
Where it differs from the traditional role-playing game is in its battle system. The Tactical Arts System has your characters learning unique combination techniques to use against your enemy. Although the action is turn based, each character has a series of special arts and hyper arts to master; for instance, Vahn can execute a charging scorch by pressing down and right on the D-Pad -- the final button for the combination must be learned on your own! If you'd rather not worry about the fighting, you can set the game to auto mode. It will select a character's maneuvers for them and even learn new combinations.