It would be cool to see this feature return!

[Kosmos992k]

Well, having played White Knight Chronicles on PS3 - to it's death - I can definitely agree with the wish to incorporate 'breaks' on larger enemies. In WKC, you could break tails or legs causing the boss or sub boss to fall to it's knee or side for a short time. For example a lot of the larger 4 legged bosses/large monster, could be broken at the knee, and then, when they slump down, you attacked their back for an extra drop. Given things like titan's heart and the differing phases in his fight, it's obvious that this feature could be more widely used in larger enemies.

Some enemies also had tail breaks for additional drops, and heads/backs became subject to melee attacks when an enemy was 'broken'. It meant we had some tactics to use when farming rare drops, since for those you of course needed to break the enemy, and then hit the appropriate place, and of course with RNG, you may have to do that more than once to get any drop.

Another thing that this did in WKC was added strategy to certain boss and bounty fights where breaking the knees was paramount to gain a pause in combat to recover HP or MP before continuing. Of course it also enabled you to score large attacks on vulnerable spots while the creature was incapacitated.

One thing to the folks talking about bringing multi-attack chains/combos, have a look at a light or full party with a good spread of jobs. Look at the differing skills and the status ailments that they can inflict. If you properly time and chain the attacks of a group, you can fully maximize your damage as a group and minimize the ability of the enemy to inflict damage on the party. If you do it right, you can also build your LB more quickly. Yes, I can hear it now, "we all know this, it's obvious stuff". It's obvious, but perhaps there is something else to it?

I think that the existing combat system rewards working as a team and combining attacks can significantly increase the damage output and decrease the damage taken by the party (through player/party buffs and enemy debuffs), as well as more quickly building for a large attack (limit break). That sounds like a pretty good description of attack chains and/or combos. Unless you're only looking for attack chaining and combos that have large bright graphical indicators and large numbers on screen for emphasis, the existing combat system does include the essential elements of attack chaining and combos, but it's kind of an 'implicit' combo (the effect happens without a fanfare), rather than an explicit one (the effect is accompanied by large numbers, special graphics and sound effects).

I mean, we can all 'feel' when a fight goes well and everyone is in sync, buffs and debuffs are happening and the fight is quick, as opposed to a fight where people are spamming basic attack rotations without attempting to buff/debuff. To me, the coordination to pull of a multi-player attack chain or combo is not really much different from the teamwork and coordination needed to maximize the use of buffs/debuffs and limit breaks.