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

[Jragon]

@Airk

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.

Let me just preface this with spoilers:

I’m replaying, and while I haven’t finished yet, I’m at Capua Nor, post Heracles cannon. And even if Yuri doesn’t really develop himself, the game takes great glee in his double standards, Pharaoh was practically the conversation between him and Flynn about Cumore:

Pharaoh: “Sometimes you must cut off an infected part to save the whole.”

Yuri: “What gives you the right to judge, to determine when a part is infected and needs to be cut off?”

Nevermind that despite Yuri explaining the same sentiment to Flynn, Yuri said, almost verbatim, the exact same thing after the Don died about Judith (er, I think, I may have gotten the context slightly mixed up). I think he also has a little more development than you give him credit for, such as Yuri “punishing” Schwann/Raven in the Heracles by making him join up with them, whereas old Yuri probably would’ve cut his throat for selling out the person he’s almost overzealously protective of. It’s not much, and it’s subtle, but I think between many points in the game he alters his viewpoint at least every so slightly.

I have to day though, while I don’t hate Karol as much as you do, I do find him sort of useless, not just combat wise, but PLOT wise. Like they wanted to make a foil for Yuri but forgot Flynn existed, or something. He’s like what would happen if you took Krillan from the Team 4-Star Dragonball Z Abridged and actually gave him responsibility. But hell, if this were Final Fantasy XV, Karol would be the main character given how often it seems like they put the secondary character in the main role (was there a reason for Vaan to exist? He mostly just seemed to be there. I mean, yeah, his brother died in the opening and blah blah, but really. That seemed more like an excuse to make him the main character than a real reason for him to be plot relevant. At least Tidus was related to Sin, but Yuna was still a much more logical protagonist).

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.

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.

I didn’t mean to imply it was on the same order of magnitude… but it’s still pretty bad. For a game that’s so well designed in most areas it can have such weird flaws with the sidequests. Take the Dog Map sidequest, unless you use a checklist you’ll never figure out where you have left to mark. For Raven’s Ladies Man title, unless you’re anal about talking to every random NPC after every minor plot point (which you would in most games, but as both a blessing and a curse in Tales games, there’s usually too many for it to be feasible), it’s unlikely you’ll get that. There are some time sensitive quests that are like “If you rest at this inn there’s a 33% chance a scene will trigger, do this 6 times” (Karol’s Special skill), or “rest at an inn to get this but if you want to get both scenes, you must leave town and come back in between rests” (Dark Enforcer/Portrait of Nan).

In GENERAL if you get a sidequest, it’s pretty good about alerting you where to go next, even if it’s not clear WHEN you should go (Ehmead Hill grave, you know to return, but not when. Guild Quest pt 1, after you get it, you can’t complete it until Judith comes back though it never mentions you need your whole party), but some quests can get pretty bad with their arbitrariness, especially the ones that are like “go back to this minor area you went to 20 hours ago and take a fork with a chest you probably already opened way back then to trigger a scene to get a flower.” There’s encouraging backtracking (new areas you can get to with an upgraded Sorceror’s Ring) and then there’s arbitrariness. It’s pretty good usually, but once the game opens up after Fiertia/Ba’ul, sometimes they put quest triggers in the oddest places. Luckily the Item Book bullshit doesn’t really contribute to the story or that’d be a whole 'nother rant (mostly revolving around the Karolean Sword +1).

I can excuse the bullshit secret missions, they’re meant to be hard and annoying, but putting quest triggers in a place you never have a reason to revisit is a bit… odd. That’s not to say I don’t like the game, I love Vesperia, and nothing in a JRPG will EVER be as bad as 100%ing X-2 or getting the Zodiac Spear, it’s just a bit silly sometimes.

[Airk]

@Jragon

I’m replaying, and while I haven’t finished yet, I’m at Capua Nor, post Heracles cannon. And even if Yuri doesn’t really develop himself, the game takes great glee in his double standards, Pharaoh was practically the conversation between him and Flynn about Cumore:

Pharaoh: “Sometimes you must cut off an infected part to save the whole.”

Yuri: “What gives you the right to judge, to determine when a part is infected and needs to be cut off?”

Nevermind that despite Yuri explaining the same sentiment to Flynn, Yuri said, almost verbatim, the exact same thing after the Don died about Judith (er, I think, I may have gotten the context slightly mixed up).

Yeah. Yuri’s them & us (It’s okay if me and my group do it, but not okay if other people do) attitude and general hypocrisy really didn’t give me much reason to like him.

I think he also has a little more development than you give him credit for, such as Yuri “punishing” Schwann/Raven in the Heracles by making him join up with them, whereas old Yuri probably would’ve cut his throat for selling out the person he’s almost overzealously protective of. It’s not much, and it’s subtle, but I think between many points in the game he alters his viewpoint at least every so slightly.

Maybe too subtle for me who never liked him in the first place.

I have to day though, while I don’t hate Karol as much as you do, I do find him sort of useless, not just combat wise, but PLOT wise. Like they wanted to make a foil for Yuri but forgot Flynn existed, or something. He’s like what would happen if you took Krillan from the Team 4-Star Dragonball Z Abridged and actually gave him responsibility.

I have this pet theory that everything about Karol would have worked about 4000 times better if Karol had been ten years older - a sort of gangly, scruffy, thin guy who uses weapons that are clearly too heavy for him.

Now he’s OLDER than Yuri, but even more of a failure than Yuri is, which makes him more like the anti-Flynn.
Now being kicked out of every guild in Dahngrest starts to seem plausible. (As it is, how old was he when he started joining? 8? It’s just stupid)
Cowardice now seems like an actual character flaw instead of “Well, duh, he’s like 12, of course he’s scared of monsters!”
His little “thief skills” get a slightly darker edge on them.
His relationship with Nan (Who would also need to be aged up a bit.) suddenly seems a lot more relevant than “Oh, well, the kid has a crush on some girl.”
And so on. It’s really remarkable how much better the character works when he’s not like, 13.

But hell, if this were Final Fantasy XV, Karol would be the main character given how often it seems like they put the secondary character in the main role (was there a reason for Vaan to exist? He mostly just seemed to be there. I mean, yeah, his brother died in the opening and blah blah, but really. That seemed more like an excuse to make him the main character than a real reason for him to be plot relevant.

I have heard FF12 described as “Star Wars where the main characters are C3P0 and R2D2” (Vaan and Penelo); They’re essentially what would be the comic relief sidekicks, except the game is being told from their perspective. I actually thought it was kindof interesting, but yes, it mostly seems to be Square/Enix trying to avoid having a “real” female protagonist. (See: Yuna. ). They finally got over that 13 and Lightning was the best thing about that game.

Take the Dog Map sidequest, unless you use a checklist you’ll never figure out where you have left to mark.

Er what? The Dog Map display was perfectly adequate for that quest. I never had any trouble with that one at all. I mean, it shows the colors on the map. o.o

There are some time sensitive quests that are like “If you rest at this inn there’s a 33% chance a scene will trigger, do this 6 times” (Karol’s Special skill), or “rest at an inn to get this but if you want to get both scenes, you must leave town and come back in between rests” (Dark Enforcer/Portrait of Nan).

Yeah, these are annoying. Though the worst one is still the one for Judith’s final spear that requires like 6 super time sensitive “do trivial thing X before you go to actual plot point Y, or you can’t do critical thing Z later for no reason at all” tasks that makes me rage.

I can excuse the bullshit secret missions, they’re meant to be hard and annoying, but putting quest triggers in a place you never have a reason to revisit is a bit… odd. That’s not to say I don’t like the game, I love Vesperia, and nothing in a JRPG will EVER be as bad as 100%ing X-2 or getting the Zodiac Spear, it’s just a bit silly sometimes.

I concur. The sidequests are another reason I liked Vesperia less than Abyss. Abyss just seemed to have fewer completely F-ing ridiculous sidequests, and most of the really stupid ones were just character fluff instead of titles/gear.