Final Fantasy Gaiden TGS hands-on preview by RPG Land

Janelle says, "How the game works is a little different from what one would normally expect from a Final Fantasy derived game. Each character has no particular specialty in their normal forms. They have an attack command, an item command, and six slots for battle skills. Battle skills could be a command like "Steal," or a spell like "Cure" or "Fire," but won't encompass both. There is no "Black Magic" command that'll contain all the spells the character knows. That's because a character can only cast the spells whose scrolls they have in their inventory. Each character has 15 inventory slots that have to contain all spells and items that the player wants available for that character, as well as the character's equipment. It really limits the functional ability that each character individually has, and definitely promotes building a cohesive team rather than single powerhouse characters."