yeah it's a card-based battle system, as opposed to the free-motion buttonmashing engine of the first game. basically you build a deck of attack/defend/restore commands and can combine cards and play hands, which sounds really cool in theory, but ends up being exasperating a lot of the time, IMHO. it has its merits, i'll give it that, but i found it more cumbersome than anything and wound up ragequitting on more than one occasion. XD;;;

LP = Let's Play, basically a video walkthrough. they're really useful for a canon review if you don't want to have to replay a whole game to go through certain scenes again, plus they're great for just... watching a game you don't have or can't beat or whatever.