Lhant Hill: North Road

When a fight starts, you'll automatically lock onto an enemy. If you need to switch targets, just hold down R1 and use the Left Analog Stick left or right. To attack, hit the Circle button. The trick is that the direction you're holding on the Left Stick while attacking changes your move! For instance, holding Up or Down will make Asbel unleash a three-hit combo using his equipped Artes.

Every attack uses up something called Chain Capacity (CC), shown as numbers under your character portraits. No CC means no damage, so keep an eye on it. The good news is that just standing still will let your CC refill pretty quickly. You'll also learn about Guarding (hold Square to mitigate damage) and Evading here.

Evading is a bit trickier. First, initiate a guard like normal, then quickly press the Left Stick in any direction. Just a heads-up: you need to have your combat settings on Semi-Auto or Manual for this to work; Auto characters can't evade like this.

After that first battle, keep moving forward to a small waterfall area. Here, you'll learn about Skit prompts, which appear in the lower-left corner of your screen. Always keep an eye out for these! Next, head east at the fork in the path. You'll find a treasure chest tucked behind a tree containing a Glassphere.

Continue north, and you'll run into your first save point. Right across from it is another treasure chest, this one holding a Life Bottle. After progressing a bit further, some scenes will play out. Once they're done, head back to the save point for another skit called Rebel Without a Cause. You're all done with this part of Lhant Hill, so let's move on to North Lhant Road.

The game might nudge you to head back to Lhant town now, but let's explore a bit more first! Instead of going straight to town, head west past the guards. Look for a sparkling spot on the ground. These spots are random, both in where they appear and what item you get, but it's always worth checking them out for potentially rare finds, especially later on.

Keep heading northwest from the sparkling spot, and you'll find a treasure chest containing another Glassphere. After that, go east towards the save point for a skit called Seek the Sparkles!. With that done, you can now head south to finally reach Lhant.