Magna Carta: Tears of Blood (PlayStation 2, 2005)

When I first heard about Magna Carta (MC), I thought it would be a great game. The story was interesting, the characters seemed well thought-out, the graphics looked impressive, and it was producted by Atlus. What could go wrong?...
Then I tried playing it. The battle system was by far one of the worst I've ever experienced. I believe the inherent problem was due to the fact that the game tried to incorporate too many variables. The party structure was strange, each character's battle abilities were terribly linear, and the requirements to continuously perform in a battle were extremely difficult to overcome.

The Party:
You started with a party of up to three characters, but could only play a single one at a time. This means either switching between the characters to position them out of harms way (for magic and ranged-attack users), or positioning them so they could absorb enemy attacks (fighters).

The Characters:
Attacks were based on an equipped style, which started with a single attack, comprised of some three-button combination of the "X" and "O" buttons. These three buttons were cycled around an attack wheel, and needed to be pressed at the correct time to actually perform an attack. If you missed even one of the three buttons (by mis-timing a button press or by pressing the wrong button) you lost your turn.
By correctly timing the button presses, you were able to deal out damage in a combo-attack, which corresponded to the number of the attack in the style (e.g. the first attack dealt four hits, the second attack dealt five hits, etc).
Until you successfully performed that attack perfectly, you were stuck using the single attack. As far as I could tell, the progression for learning new attacks was random at best. Regardless of how many attacks within a style you had mastered, however, each new battle required you to start with the first attack to be able to move on to the higher steps, if you had them.

The Battle System:
When performing attacks successfully, there were two effects besides the enemy taking damage. The first was that the element (of which there are eight) corresponding to the attack performed decreased. While this was usually not a problem when fighting random encounters, there were instances that I ran out of a particular element, and therefore, lost the ability to use those attacks until it regenerated (making that character became less useful).
The second result of a successful attack was an increase to the tension gauge. This gauge was meant to allow you to deal extra damage when you reached a certain percentage level. If you were trying to accumulate tension, however, and missed an attack, the percentage reset to 0%. On the rare occasions I was able to use the tension, I never noticed a significant increase to damage.
There were two other "modes" in combat as well. The first eliminiated your attack, and instead you had to block your enemies attacks by guessing what their attack combo was (i.e. which "buttons" they pressed to attack). If you were successful, you dealt damage to the enemy, and they did not hit you. If you failed, I believe you took increased damage from them. The third mode required you to be able to perform attacks more quickly than usual to deal any damage, which if successful, was increased over normal.

Summary:
Basically, with some tweaking to the battle system, this would have been a great game. As it stands, however, the negatives sadly outweighed the positives...