I will absorb your freaking phozons!!!!
You can jump and attack and use abilities, blocking is in there but its pretty useless. You get to play a bunch of different character and they all have their own fight style/mechanic, like one chick can fly and another guy can do summersaults(sp? lol). A cool part is that you basically just have two stats. HP, and Psypher. Every time a living thing dies it releases this energy called Phozons. Psyphers are weapons that can absorb phozons and get stronger. So if you absorb phozons with your psypher you will cause more damage but you can also plant seeds in the ground that will also absorb phozons and create fruit. If you eat the fruit you can heal wounds and get HP xp. Get enough xp and you permanently increase how much health you have. I think monster strength is determined by how much health you have so do go crazy raising it. I always like to keep my Psypher level way above my HP level.
There is also alchemy that lets you create all kinds of potions. Healing potions, attack potions, status healing potions. You get these empty bottles called Material and then you can squish stuff into them to increase their "rating" and depending on their rating and what you squish them with thats how you make different potions. You can also takes the fruits and vegetables you get back to town and have the cook make you food (for a price) which gives you a crapload more XP than normal and also bonus HP like +10 or +28. It is very worth your while to try and save up the ingredients to make stuff back at town instead growing crap out on the stages. This lets you absorb all the phozons with your psypher.
Anyways each character that you get to play has like 6-7 chapters and each character's story tells how they are involved in this big struggle between kingdoms which reveals different aspects about the story. I love all the stories so far. You can go back and continue to play any previous character as much as you want it looks like but i have not done so yet, im trying to unlock all of them right now. Hopefully before or after you finish the game there will be additional bits of story that you get for replaying the older characters. Im not sure how much the game has to offer after you beat the game but even if its not alot I think its still a fun enough game that you would just pick it up and play it occasionally anyways. Anyways this game is amazing and you should definately buy it.