Tsugunai: Atonement

Cattle Call Inc, formed by ex-Metal Max developers, debuted with a partial inversion of SMRPG's combat titled Tsugunai: Atonement, whose active inputs are designed almost exclusively for defense. Guarding is no longer a simple response to the occasional charged, 2-turn attacks of bosses, but a timing-driven system split into four types, each of which varies in difficulty (e.g. strictly-timed counterrattacks that anticipated Paper Mario: TTYD), effects (building or spending super meter) and/or application (namely backstep, intended for unblockable moves). Reaction training aside - though, combat is as slow, sterile, passive and brainless as the common JRPG. And it's not a particularly creative or well-implemented idea, either: Vagrant Story achieved a much more robust, customizable version of this very system the year before. Luckily, side quests (a remnant of their open-world beginnings, featuring a player-controlled spirit forced to help villagers out via possession) keep battling to a minimum to focus on adventure, while the Amulet system (in which magic is set by rotating and fitting crafted shapes onto emblems) is at least imaginative. But the rest feel like half-baked interpretations of their publisher's (i.e. Atlus') trappings, whether the general brooding vibe or their chronic obsession with gods, angels, demons, religious concepts (hence the name), etc.