Having Problems With Compound Special Attacks

After several years, I finally managed to both buy a GameCube and Tales of Symphonia, so I'm able to play the game. But I'm having two problems with it regarding the Unison Attacks.

1. The Compound Special Attacks. I can't seem to get them to activate no matter what. I know the combinations of certain moves have to be right, and I've been trying that, but nothing is happening. Do the CSAs happen automatically, or do the characters need to be in a certain position for them to work?

2. For some reason, when I set Raine to do UAs using Proton, when I hit her button, she won't attack. I have it set to Proton, and I hit her button before the time limit, but it doesn't let her attack. I seriously don't get it. What should I do to allow her to attack during the Unison Attack? Photon is the only attack she knows, and the fact that it won't activate when I use her in the UA means I must be doing something wrong.

I'm not quite sure how to go about this, and none of the sources I've found have helped me much in this matter. Would anyone help me, please? Thanks in advance!

I am unsure if this will help, espcially as I can't see the problem, but I'll try.

1. For Compound Special Attacks, the only requirement you need is that two of the characters in your active party use an attack each that will lead to a Compound Special Attack, during a Unison Attack. For example, if you have Lloyd use Tiger Blade and Colette use Pow Hammer, they should automatically do Pow Blade. If this is not happening, try starting a new playthrough (as painful as that can be) and hope that on your new game, this problem does not persist.

If that doesn't work, then you may unfortunately have a problem with the copy of the game you have, and there's not much that can be done about that.

2. In this situation, have you set your other characters to use spells or angel artes? Though the game doesn't tell you this, you can only use two spells during the Unison Attack, as a general rule. I believe this is more of a bug that Namco wasn't aware of, but often, if you try to have three characters use magic, the third character will just stand there and do nothing. There does seem to be some exceptions when it comes to novice tier spells (in that you may be able to use a novice tier spell after two spells are used), but generally, your character won't actually cast a spell if two spells or one spell plus one angel skill is used beforehand.


I hope some of this actually does help you. But if not, maybe someone else on here knows more to give you some advice.

Quote :

2. In this situation, have you set your other characters to use spells or angel artes? Though the game doesn't tell you this, you can only use two spells during the Unison Attack, as a general rule.

Which Techs are considered spells or angel artes? Currently, my party's like this, and these are the attacks they use in UAs:

Lloyd: Sonic Thrust
Kratos: Sonic Thrust
Genis: Fire Ball
Raine: Proton

Based on that set up, there really shouldn't be any problems. Lloyd and Kratos should be able to do Cross Thrust without issue, and Raine should be able to do Photon normally.

At this point, I think you just need to restart your playthrough and hope this problem you're having doesn't carry over.


Also, these are the artes that are considered spells or angel artes:
- Every arte Genis knows is a spell
- Every arte Raine knows is a spell
- Colette's Angel Feathers and Judgement are angel artes (Holy Song and Sacrifice are also angel artes but they can't be used during Unison Attacks anyway)
- Kratos/Zelos' Fire Ball, Eruption, Stone Blast, Grave, Wind Blade, Air Thrust, Lightning and Thunder Blade are all spells
- And this is spoilered out just in case you don't know Kratos' "secret".

Spoiler:

Are you accidentally hitting the Start button during the Unison Attack? That cancels the U.Attack in progress, which might explain what you are seeing. I've done it by mistake a couple of times.

No, I never hit the Start button during UAs.

I solved my problems with both! As it turned out, I never used the toggle switch for the UAs. At all. Jeez.

That's good to hear you've figured out what the problem was.