The player starts with the option of choosing one of four separate hero characters (each of which sporting their own palette swaps for visual variety). Next, as a slight customization method, you're asked a handful of questions to determine the chosen hero's starting statistics. At each level up, you can tailor your stats to meet your characters needs at each level up; each successive gained level offers even more stat points to distribute as you see fit. Any hero character can use any of the following weapons to meet the player's play-style: the sword, the axe, the spear, the staff, and the bow & arrow. The player character's objective is simple : wipe out the monsters threatening town. To do so the player repeatedly dives into a dungeon called the Abyss, which acts as a spawning ground for the monsters that rampage the town. Each level of the Abyss consists of 3 procedurally generated stages followed by a boss level. Once the boss is defeated, the player is awarded a sum of Lufia (the in game currency in From the Abyss) by the town's queen and she grants the player access to a lower level into the Abyss. There are 8 levels of the Abyss in total.Each abyss is home to standard monsters that happily await their death by the hero's weapon of choice (usually through a swift attack combo), but others require a more tactical approach. This is where skills come into play, and, more specifically, how these abilities are acquired. Similar to the Final Fantasy Blue Mage job class; the hero learns their abilities by copying one from a weakened foe. The difference is that the character captures the enemy in question to absorb a skill (which is accessible from then-on out). He/she first damages the enemy as much as possible (the lower the remaining energy, the higher the success rate). Then a Soul Capture is then performed to harness the skills of your opponent (this applies only to the first time capturing a particular critter; HP is gained any other time).
