Another reference for good Healer design

[ty_taurus]

So I just started playing Star Ocean: The Divine Force, and I gotta say, it's doing a pretty good job thus far despite the last 2 games in the series being more lackluster.

That said, I want to talk about Nina. In SO: TDF, Nina is the party's dedicated healer who uses a bell in combat. In this game, combat has you lock onto enemies to target for attacks, but Nina is unique in that she doesn't target enemies; she targets allies. There is a dash mechanic where other characters can spend a gauge to rush enemies, blindside them to stun, and deal damage, but Nina uses this to rush to her target ally and heal them.

Nina has several interesting qualities to her gameplay:

1. All of her abilities are point-blank AoEs except for 1.
2. She cannot heal herself directly. She needs to be within a party member's range and heal them. She heals for 20% of the HP she restores to other allies.
3. She can set up a "turret" basically that stays in place and heals anyone that gets close to it in a smaller range than her normal spell.
4. She has buff songs that buff one of the 4 main stats.
5. She has a song that pulls all party members to her.
6. She has more DPS abilities than she does healing. Despite not being able to target enemies at all, she has point-blank AoE songs that deal respectable damage, and are meant to knock back enemies or hinder them, but still does good damage. She can also set up a DPS "turret" like her healing one that radiates her knock-back song over and over.

Nina is a very interesting character in an action RPG that takes a role that previously could be quite binary in Star Ocean and shows yet again how a dedicated healer who can't even target enemies in the first place can have a variety of offensive actions.

For anyone interested, you can find what her gameplay looks like here.