Now let’s talk about Chain and Stagger:

a) By continuously attacking the enemy, thus chaining the attacks together, you’re increasing an enemy’s Chain Gauge (evident by the yellow bar being filled from left to right).

b) Physical attacks add very little percentage to the Chain Gauge, but they also cause the Chain Gauge to decrease slowly, allowing you ample time to chain together the next series of attacks.

c) Magical attacks add a lot of percentage to the Chain Gauge, but they also cause the Chain Gauge to decrease rapidly, not allowing you to string together attacks easily.

d) Every enemy in the game has its own Chain Gauge and it starts at 100% once battle commences.

e) Once you add enough percentage points to an enemy’s Chain Gauge, that enemy enters the Stagger state. For example, the first enemy you fought has a Chain Gauge of 300%. When battle commences, its Chain Gauge begins at 100%. This means that you have to keep chaining attacks together for so long until you accumulate an additional 200% towards the enemy’s Chain Gauge.

f) In Stagger the enemy is extremely vulnerable, more susceptible to status changes, takes much more damage from attacks, and cannot respond well to your attacks. Additionally, sometimes attack and/or status affinities may change in Stagger.

g) Once the enemy is Staggered, a bonus 100% is added to the Chain Gauge. In the aforementioned case, the Chain Gauge would then become 400%.

h) The maximum value a Chain Gauge can reach is 999.9%.

i) Percentage on the Chain Gauge has another effect. All of your attacks will inflict higher damage, affected by the amount displayed on the Chain Gauge. In the aforementioned case, your attacks would inflict 4x greater damage than usual.

j) Once the enemy is Staggered, its Chain Gauge will start to slowly deplete from right to left. Until the bar is completely gone, all additional attacks by you will keep adding points to the Chain Gauge. Once the bar is empty, an enemy’s Chain Gauge returns to 100% and you have to Stagger it again.