Inspiration!

As taken from Kaze no Stigma, their idea of "pandemonium", a group of magicians that take random people and grant them special powers.

I would propose a game similar in principle, where the main character gains a power (maybe one that is chosen through gameplay?) and has to defeat similar opponents. This would progress in a tournament system, each battle tougher than the last.

I'm not proposing a street-fighter style game, but rather one set in a modern of future city, where our protagonist finds himself recruited to in to this tournament. Perhaps the tournament is some way of settling a dispute between two factions in an organization. Either way, a reward of great power is promised to the winner, and obviously evil people are recruited as well as good.

Sounds like I stole this straight from Shaman King, eh? They're similar, that's for sure.

The gameplay /story is FPS. Skills and abilities based on whatever the player chooses. Perhaps base classes like Nature, Space, Earth, Fire, Wind, Water, and perhaps Mind would suffice. Each "level up" gives you the power to specialize further or broaden your skills. This would require MUCH balancing, so everyone doesn't pick the same skillset.

Battles are in real time, where the NPCs either outnumber or are of a higher grade than the protagonist. AI will be tricky.

Perhaps a pokemon-style battle system would go good here. Rather than the user shooting FPS style, they select an attack and have to preform a certain action or sequence to determine the potency of your spell / ability / action. For example, a water-based attack might be a large whirlpool surrounding the enemy. Potency of attack is based off the speed of which the player can rotate the joystick.

This could happen real-time, so the enemy can break out of the spell if his attack or defensive abilitiy has greater power. It comes down to a quick-thinking action rather than button mashing.

More to come!