Anyone else like the "Tales of" series of JRPG's?

The Game Room
41

You sick people - you didn’t like Vesperia? Monsters!

No, it is slower in the plot department, and it uses some very nonstandard character types. Yuri is more Batman than “Standard Idiot Hero” as in most Tales games. Repede is a dog. Estelle early on is closer to Space Cadet than typical JRPG magic-using-heroine and later is about -] [- this close to completely losing it. Karol’s arc is all about courage; and Raven just completely rocks the house. And there’s Judith, who is fun in a teasing way.

What I think turns some people off is that the story meanders. The team has good reasons to go where they go, but they’re the character’s reason, nto the players. The player wants to go with the “main plot,” but to a great degree they’re just out adventuring. And a lot of it is about finding the hero within who can do that Mighty Plot. Much of the rest is touching on the weird powers who inadvertently caused the plot: you’ll meet people in Act 1 who do almost nothing until Act 4, which is where I think a lot of people get confused and annoyed. This game could definitely use a log system and some reminders.

But at the end of the day, I think it’s a blast. I also enjoyed Tales of the Abyss and several other Tales games , though I never finished it because the game is punishingly long or had bugs. And I definitely do NOT like the Tales’ series habit of putting incredibly secret, hyper-complicated triggers for getting things like titles and skills and whatnot. Contra Airk, though, this is definitely not like other games. They have about a billion little plot elements you will NOT find if you dont’ use a guide. half of it seems completely random, and half of it has drop-dead dates.

42

We may have a chance since Xillia sold half a million on RELEASE in Japan, which is a big record, even for Tales over there. Graces f was comparatively lackluster.

However, there’s only so far buying as a Tales fan can go. We can’t do all of Namdai’s marketing for them, and if they actually marketed Tales I’m sure it would sell a lot better. When they marketed Symphonia it became almost an archetypal game for the Gamecube, when they didn’t market Abyss, it didn’t do as great. Vesperia was a case of luck in that it was one of the few decent RPGs that even existed for the 360 at the time, but it would have sold better if they actually made a campaign. Namdai is just so afraid about JRPGs in the west that they refuse to spend any money more than they have to to sell it (they do a great job localizing and voicing it). To some degree, I can understand. Any JRPG that’s not Final Fantasy is wary here, but with the success of Symphonia you can’t argue that Tales doesn’t have a chance in hell like some of the other JRPG franchises that have flopped here.

43

Vesperia was okay. I found Yuri to be a bit of a hypocrite for my tastes, and I couldn’t stand Karol at any point during the story. Plus the Yuri/Flynn dichotomy never really worked for me because I found Flynn to be badly underdeveloped - something they probably fixed in the PS3 version. I really did like Estelle, Repede, Rita and Judith though. (Raven was okay, but he just couldn’t match up to Jade in the ‘cool old guy’ category, so ended up feeling like a bit of a letdown.)

I did indeed find the plot sortof wandering, and the entire third act gives me a serious sense of “tacked on generic content” because that’s where the game breaks out the fetch quests AND where the thing that seems like it SHOULD be the big bad just kinda gets swept under the rug for a confrontation with the white haired pretty boy who never really seemed to work as a villain, which lead to the game ending on a sortof blah note. (Especially since there was basically zero connection between Yuri and the big bad.)

So compared to Abyss, which swept me up and kept me invested for an absurd amount of time (And which did a really nice job, IMHO, of delicately subverting all sorts of genre cliches without resorting to Vesperia’s somewhat heavyhanded “look how coooool our protagonist is! He does BAD things, but that’s okay because he’s still a good guy!” methods), Vesperia was merely “okay”. Also, it suffered badly from being an Xbox 360 release, not because there’s anything inferior about the platform, but because as it turns out, most of the installed base over here for the 360 doesn’t have any interest in JRPGs. Add to this what I consider to be Namco’s horrible mishandling of the game by subsequently releasing a PS3 version with TONS OF NEW CRAP. Not like “yeah, you get some new arts and a new bonus dungeon” but like “we rewrote the plot to integrate a character who never previously joined into the party, AND add an entire new additional character” (Who is also the number one reason I am NOT sad I never played the PS3 version. Ugh. Patty.)

So yeah. I didn’t DISLIKE Vesperia, and it’s the best JRPG on the 360, but it wasn’t particularly outstanding, nor as good as Abyss, it was sortof halfassed in its original form, and it sold poorly for a number of reasons.

Edit: Xillia’s Japan release success really has nothing to do with our chances of a localized version, honestly. We have to demonstrate that there is a market HERE.

44

Vesperia didn’t really sell poorly, it’s the second best selling to Symphonia. I mean, it wasn’t Halo amazing, but it didn’t precisely flop either.

Edit: Also, what’s your problem with Patty? She’s a loli-pirate who talks like an old woman (or was it man?). Is it because you have a 12 year old hitting on Yuri? Because I think he’s creeped out by in in game too.

45

Japan sales.

Can’t find a U.S. one, but don’t you think if the game had done well here, they would have localized more?

You mean I need more reason than “loli pirate with no pants”? How about her forehead thumpingly ridiculous mystic arte? Or just the fact that she seems like “third wheel” to the party dynamic? And yeah, I understand that she’s inexplicably de-aged (A BLASTIA DID IT!) but seriously. The game makes little enough sense internally as it is. It doesn’t need any more tacked on characters.

46

According to vgchartz, Vesperia sold about half as much in the Americas at release. Over the first 10 weeks, it sold approximatle 50k less (under 100k), that’s not great. However, the telling parts are in total sales.

In Japan, it reached about 186k (207k by your chart), in America it appeared to be a sleeper hit, reaching 256k, around 50k MORE than Japan’s total 360 sales.

I suppose it sold very poorly compared to, say, FFXIII, but that’s true for Japan too.

Also, I think Patty’s Hi-ougi is adorable. And I figured the no pants was because she was using the oversized shirt as a dress :/, she seems to be covered enough to me.

47

Actually, you guys maybe can answer a question for me. I like RPG’s and the review’s would lead me to believe that Tales of Vesperia is the best RPG out there for xbox360 at the moment.

Given that I hate grinding, am very plot orientated, liked FFX & X-2, NeverwinterNights (all of them), Dragon Age (all of them), Baldur’s Gate (all of them), am I more or less likely to like Tales of Vesperia?

48

You can get through Vesperia without grinding at all, except for the first bullshit boss (the third one), considered the “noob killer” (even worse if you’re getting his achievement/secret mission). There is a bit of encouraged grinding with the skill system. When you equip a weapon it has “skills” attached to it, and if you kill enough things you get to keep the skill permanently without needing to equip the weapon to use it (you still need points to “equip” the skill itself, but that’s different). If you’re OCD, or really like a certain skill you may find yourself grinding to get it before you get your next weapon, especially after the item shops open up a bit and reveal 2-3 new items at a time, but it’s not mandatory. It also encourages grinding a little in that you can “synth” items, which is basically a VERY simple crafting system, but it’s still unnecessary, and if you really want to, there are “synth packs” you can buy for microsoft points that contain synth items from various parts of the game.

There is one major exception though. If you’re really careful and do all of your sidequests* the first time around you’ll unlock the final form of the last boss. If it’s not a new game plus prepare to grind about 20-25 levels, because you’ll probably get CREAMED and never finish the game. Especially since the mechanism that makes the weapons are so powerful in the first place doesn’t activate until you start a new game+.

  • Specifically:
    You get all the “fel arms” which are more or less the ultimate weapons for each character. The mechanism which makes them powerful is that they gain +1 attack for every creature that character kills, unfortunately it doesn’t work until the new game plus, like I said.
49

Hmm - that sounds ok. I’m not a huge fan of crafting really - but I can deal with a little.

What really annoys me is when you get invested in a game but get completely stuck because you need to grind to finish. I never actually finished FFX, simply because I got stuck against the dark aeon’s and eventually got too annoyed with it. I prefered FFX-2 for the simple reason it was much easier.

I don’t mind having to fight a boss a few times to change tactics or whatever, but when it gets to the stage that you’re just dying over and over again with no way to get around it but reload an earlier save and grind a bit more, then it’s gone too far.

Incidentally, Dara Ó Briain (an Irish comedian) has a very funny routine on the fact that video games lock off content you’ve payed for unless you’re good enough.

Quote = “Oh my god I’m in a gun battle! Which one of these buttons isn’t crouch…”

50

In all fairness, it’s barely what you can call crafting. Monsters will occasionally drop vaguely vendor trash sounding items (“Wolf Claw” or “Book page” or something similar), then you go to the store and select “synth” and there will be a list of items, along with which of the vendor trashy items you need. If you have enough, you hit right, A, and then you have the item. It’s more of a really annoying form of alternate currency than crafting, and if you just want to get by and not get everything you’ll probably have enough items to get at least one weapon for your main characters in every new town.

51

That certainly sounds less annoying then NWN2 - get the enchanters bag, put the items + soul gems you need in, then cast appropriate spell. Each action taking about 5 clicks :confused:

52

w.r.t to Tales of Vesperia, it’s only the last part of the game where it gets grindy, IMHO…and what makes me quit the game finally is…

The last dungeon is one of those which just go on and on without any save points.

53

Wow, they don’t waste time, there’s a 2 day count down to a new Tales game being revealed.

http://www.bandainamcogames.co.jp/cs/list/taleschannel/newtalesof/

54

It’s very plot-oriented. And while it’s not the hardcore western ROPG (no branching paths here), it’s still very fun. The interactivity is all in the fighting, but you still have choices as to how you develop your characters, how you want to fight, and the AI is pretty responsive to how you set up your bottle strategies (but be careful, because you can leave them without any options).

There are tons of sidequests, and you WILL need a guide. I’ll post a link to a webpage which has all the sidequest steps in order, without spoilers. While you’re likely to find a lot of them, it’s just very eay to miss bits here and there and then go past a drop-dead point which deactivates anything you missed.

Edit: What I love about Vesperia is hwo the characters fit together. They’re like a family, if a weird one. Rita is really mean to Karol, but it’s like she’s his big sister as well. And she’s approriate with the backtalk like Yuri’s her older brother.

55

You mean Kouli’s event chart (the original got removed)?

My favorite is Rita, especially the way she develops (and her wonderful, wonderful voice. Fits her way better than it ever fit Rukia), from her complete inability to recognize a high five in Act 1 to initiating it in Act 2.

But I agree, you will NEVER finish all the sidequests without a guide. It’s not quite as bad as FFX-2 (if you miss one line of dialogue or leave the screen before the text bubbles disappear…) but it’s pretty bad.

56

Oops, my clipboard bugged out on me, here’s the event chart:

http://forum.draekon.com/showthread.php?t=21

57

Yupo, that’s the one. I just got back and was going to put it up. In fact, I’m going through a playthrough of Vesperia right now.

58

Rita and Estelle were my favorites. Yuri was a huge letdown, as he basically has no character arc that I can discern at all. He starts out with his “Welp, no one else is gonna do this, so time to get my hands dirty, and I don’t care what anyone things” attitude and ends with…pretty much the same thing. In fact, if I had to pick on a single thing that left me feeling let down about this game, it was Yuri Lowell. It was clear to me what they were TRYING to do with him and Flynn, and IMHO they just didn’t execute as well as I wanted them to.

Oh please, while it’s true that you’ll need a guide, none of it is even on the same order of magnitude as say, FF12, with its “you need to NOT OPEN these seemingly randomly chosen 7 boxes” BS. One of the things I -like- about the Tales games is that you WILL just blunder into a lot of the sidequests, because there are JUST THAT MANY of them. I like to do one playthrough “guide free” and get the “organic” feel for the game, and then I do my new game plus with guide in hand so I don’t miss things. Since half of the sidequests usually only unlock in new game plus anyway, this seems like a pretty good way to do it to me. :slight_smile:

Crafting is indeed pretty minimal, unless you get all completionist towards the end of the game, where you’ll have to go to very specific areas of the world to get very specific drop items to make certain pieces of gear. None of which is required though, and the interface portion is benign - pretty much just selecting something from a menu and saying “Why yes, I’d like to make this, thank you.” while having appropriate cash and components in hand.

Also, if you like story driven games, and have a PS2 (which I suspect you do based on having played FFX) I’d suggest Tales of the Abyss as well. It’s available on Amazon for about the same price as Vesperia, and IMHO it’s a much better game overall, though less technically polished. I actually liked the battle system BETTER for a variety of reasons, though Vesperia has a few plusses there too:

Battle system breakout!

Abyss:
Seperate Overlimit Bar for each character (Loathed the shared overlimit gauge in Vesperia)
FoF effects for changed artes add way more value to tactical positioning and teamwork than the Vesperia Altered Artes system
Characters handle less sluggishly. Going from Abyss to Vesperia made me feel like I was dealing with a ton of input lag. I realize they were trying to reduce the effectiveness of Free Run, but they overdid it, and approached it the wrong way.

Vesperia:
Skill system is more interesting than Abyss, with more character diversity, but skill point costs are pretty poorly balanced, with some useless skills being really expensive, and some very strong skills being really cheap (Looking at you, High Tension. :P)
Spell Area of effects are much more reasonable - AoE spells in Abyss hit far too small an area for how fast things move around the battlefield.
Judith - an air juggle character is just really cool. :slight_smile:

But anyway, Abyss just seemed better executed to me, from a story and character perspective. Everyone tied in well to the plot, with no “He’s just along because we’re babysitting him.” characters (er, except maybe Luke at the beginning, and he’s the main character. :wink: and…well, stuff. I could go on, but I don’t want to enter spoilerspace. I’ll just leave it as a strong recommendation.

59

I love Judith’s combat style in concept, but I can’t use her for shit. The AI isn’t much better. I always say “Hmm, let’s switch it up and try Judith!” And then I fail at combat. I mean, I don’t die, but it becomes a pain in the ass…

60

I get the impression she’s rather more technical than most of the characters (Read: Everyone except maybe Yuri) but my wife (Did I mention that the best thing about Tales games is co-op?) who generally regards herself as non-dexterity inclined, is able to do some fairly decent stuff with her. Nothing crazy complicated, but enough to do some ground hits, maybe a ground base arte, a launcher, some air hits, and then knock the opponent back down to the ground with a knockdown, which, truthfully, is about as complex as I find is generally useful anyway.