Combat in Magical Vacation
This is a combat guide for Magical Vacation.
Overview
In the game, battles occur randomly in the overworld, by interacting with certain things, or during scripted events.
Once a battle begins, the player's team of up to six party members are placed on a 3x2 grid opposite of the enemy's team, and will recover MP based on their individual MP% stats at the start of each turn. Battles are turn-based, meaning that there are no action attributes or timers. The player selects the party members' moves in the order of their respective agility stats, and the combat phase commences once every characters' actions have been selected.
Spirits and attributes
There are a total of sixteen attributes, each represented by a spirit. Thirteen of them (the ones that are chosen at the start of the game) follow a rotation of super-effectiveness. Striking an attribute's weakness inflicts 2x more damage, using an attribute the enemy resists inflicts 0.5x damage, and attacking with a spell of the enemy's attribute inflicts 1 damage.
When casting magic, the damage can be amplified by having spirits of the same attribute on the field, known as a Spirit Combo (精霊コンボ Seirei Konbo). The spirit(s) disappear once a spell of their attribute has been cast, and their power is transferred to the spell. Any spirits on the field are free to be used by both the party and enemies, and up to seven may be present at once. If one spirit is used in a combo, the damage is doubled. If two spirits are used in a combo, the damaged is multiplied by 4. With a maximum of seven spirits, the damage gets multiplied by 128.
Spirit Combos can also remove spirits of an advantageous attribute. For example, by using three fire spirits to power up a fire spell while two ancient spirits are on the field, the three fire spirits will offset the ancient spirits and remove both of them from play. However, because two of the three fire spirits were used to cancel out the two ancient spirits, only the remaining fire spirit's power will be used in the Spirit Combo.
- Primary axis
Fire → 
Wind → 
Poison → 
Beauty → 
Blade → 
Sound → 
Stone → 
Insect → 
Wood → 
Beast → 
Water → 
Thunder → 
Ancient
- Secondary axis
Dark → All except 
Light and 
Love
Love → Neutral (no strength or weakness)
Actions
The commands available to characters are 
Skill, 
Magic, 
Item, 
Guard, or 
Flee.
- Skill
Skills are non-magic attacks associated with the power stat. The name of this command varies among characters, some examples being kick, slap, and chop. While skills can be used by any character regardless of position, they only reach enemies that are in the front row.
- Magic
Magic unleashes attribute-based attacks against enemies by consuming MP.
- Item
Items have supportive and offensive effects in battle. They are categorized into four types:
- Gummy frogs restore HP.
- Gummy worms restore magic points.
- Tails dispel status ailments.
- Bombs emulate magic attacks without consuming magic points.
- Guard
Guarding halves all physical and magical damage for one turn.
- Flee
Fleeing gives the party a chance to run from battle. The success rate of fleeing is based on a character's agility.
Stats
- Level
Level/Lv is a ranking that increases with EXP, which are gained by defeating enemies and requires active participation in battle. The maximum level for each character is 999.
- Magic level
Magic level/MLv is a ranking that increases with magic experience points, which are gained by frequently casting magic. Magic levels reward party members with more spells, increase the strength of magic attacks, and reduce damage of specific attributes (independent of the spirit stat). The maximum magic level for each attribute is 99.
- Hit points
Hit points/HP determines how much damage a party member can take. If it reaches 0, that party member faints.
- Magic points
Magic points/MP are used to cast spells.
- Power
Power/Pow is the strength of physical skills. Its symbol is a sword.
- Buffed with beast magic (lion power).
- Debuffed with insect magic.
- Defense
Defense/Def is resistance to physical skills. Its symbol is a shield.
- Spirit
Spirit/Spr is resistance to magic. Its symbol is a wand.
- Buffed with sound magic (spirit's march).
- Debuffed with wood magic.
- Agility
Agility/Agi determines how fast a character acts in battle, physical skill accuracy and critical hit rate, and the success rate of fleeing. Its symbol is a boot.
- MP%
MP% is the amount of magic points a character recovers at the start of each turn. Its symbol is a red circle outlined in yellow.
- Buffed with love magic (angel's charge).
Status ailments
Certain attributes can inflict status ailments when cast. The only way to recover from most of these is by waiting them out, using a tail, casting the white rose spell, or winning in battle.
- Poison
Poison reduces 10%-20% of the target's HP when a turn ends.
- Caused with poison magic.
- Recovered with dokuna tail or white rose.
- Paralysis
Paralysis halts the input of actions.
- Caused with beauty magic.
- Recovered with mahina tail or white rose.
- Numb
Numb halts the input of actions like paralysis, but takes effect less often.
- Caused with thunder magic.
- Recovered with shibina tail or white rose.
- Blind
Blind reduces the accuracy of physical skills.
- Caused with light magic.
- Recovered with white rose
- Sleep
Sleep halts the input of actions until the effect wears off, or the target is hit with an attack.
- Caused with sound magic.
- No items recover this status.
- Stone
Stone permanently halts the input of actions until it is recovered, and cannot be waited out.
- Caused by stone magic (petrify, three eyes).
- Recovered with stoneoff tail or white rose.
- Faint
Fainting stops a character from executing actions until they are revived.
- Caused when HP reach 0.
- Recovered with wakey tail or white rose.
Formation
On the battle grid, there are a total of six spaces that party members can occupy; three in the front, three in the back. Characters in the middle of the front row are more likely to get hit with attacks, and those in the back row or sides are less likely. Party members with higher physical stats (HP, power, defense) are better off in the front row, whereas magic-based characters (MP, agility, spirit) work best in the back row. When a party member in the front row faints, they swap positions with the character standing directly behind them, even if they are revived. The party's formation goes back to normal when combat is over.
Additional features
During command selection, certain buttons can be pressed to assist the player.
- At the very start of a turn, pressing B shows the entire battlefield without the command interface. Pressing A or B undoes it.
- Pressing the L button opens an attribute weakness chart.
- While hovering the cursor over a spell or an item, pressing Select shows their effects, base strength, and area of effect.
- Holding the A button speeds up selection and skips attack animations. Releasing it makes the battle flow normally again.
Link battles
- Main article: Communication#Let's Battle
Trivia
- In early screenshots of the game, the battlefield was planned to display a 5x3 grid during command selection.