Maybe I should just bump the Tales thread, but whatever. Tales of Graces f is coming out a week from Tuesday. It looks like Bamco is actually taking this thing seriously and marketing it this time (a real shocker). The recent GameFAQs poll showed it as second most anticipated compared to ME3 (though we’ll see how that actually plays out in sale numbers).
If this game does well, we could see a better future for the Tales series in the US. I admit, at first I was really meh about Graces, but the more I look at the new battle system, the more I like the CC system over a traditional mana(or TP) system. As for the story, I know zero. I’ve seen that characters, and that there’s several arcs that take place in different eras (Childhood, Adolescence etc) and that’s it. Oh, and the plot is based around “friendship.” Usually I know a lot more about games by this point, but I’ve remained remarkably spoiler free this time.
So boxed spoilers only. Anyone else picking up ToGf?
Sorry, it’s a real-time action JRPG. Battles take place in a separate arena from the map screen (they’re not random encounters, you see enemies on the map and run into them to engage them in combat). I’m not familiar enough with the new battle system to really be able to describe it in detail, though.
It’s the updated re-release of Tales of Graces, it’s for the PS3 rather than the Wii. They essentially pulled a Vesperia again with Graces (though Graces wasn’t an obvious beta for Graces f like Vesperia 360 was for Vesperia PS3). Graces f added a “future” (what the f stands for) arc that’s supposed to be about 10-15 hours of new story and sidequest content along with the usual new mystic artes etc for each character.
For others in the thread, Tales of Graces was never released outside Japan, so “updated re-release” is relative, for us Tales of Graces f is the only version.
Yeah, I know PS3 is pretty sparse on this board, but I wasn’t sure if Airk, Mahaloth or one of the other JRPG or Tales fans on the board would be looking at it.
We only bought our PS3 about a month ago so I can’t claim to be up to speed with this game but I’ve played the last 2 Tales games for Nintendo. I guess I need to check it out. Unfortunately, I wouldn’t be able to get it until this summer.
Preordered already. Hoping it does well, because good sales on this title are bound to encourage Namco Bandai to bring Xillia over here too.
Pretty much bought a PS3 for this title. (Well, not wholly true, but it was the one that pushed us over into the “Okay, there are enough games we want to play that are exclusive to this system to justify the purchase” camp.)
Truthfully I don’t know that much about it - the tweaks on combat look interesting, the characters look like they have personality, and the person I trust who plays all these games in Japanese liked it better than Vesperia (which I thought was kinda meh) so I am hopeful.
Did you every finish Tales of the Abyss? I just want to acknowledge smilingbandit as awesome; he let me borrow his copy since money is tight around our house. What a cool guy.
Why? Because it’s on PS3? PS3 is basically the ONLY HD system in Japan. Tales games are made for Japan first, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth… etc
Only after that priority does anywhere else in the world even register. Say what you will about Bamco hating money, at least they’re ADVERTISING Tales now. When I saw an advertisement for Abyss 3DS in another DS game, or a poster for ToGf in Gamestop I almost fell over. ToGf is in the top 10 preordered games, and winning 2nd in polls for most anticipated right now, which is damn impressive for being launched against Mass Effect 3.
My only worry is that it won’t sell as well as Vesperia because, well, from what I understand the story is quite… er… Japanese (I know no actual plot details, just have heard about the feel of it). It’s character focused rather than plot focused, which is always nice, but the trailer is a bit… um, well, “friendship” “happiness” “ore no nakama” “heart of the cards” Britney Spears music circa 1999 blah blah blah. I’m actually a bit entertained with that kind of stuff but it’s not the kind of stuff the West really eats up.
What? because Vesperia had an awesome plot? It was a shambles. It was a character driven game.
Heck, I would argue that MASS EFFECT is a character driven game. Maybe not in the same way as a Tales game, but certainly much moreso than say, Skyrim, which is… honestly neither plot NOR character driven and is really just an RPG sandbox.
Come to think of it, I can’t really think of the last RPG I played which would really fall into the category of “plot driven”.
Anyway, the only reason I can see for people to believe that Namco hates money is that they’ve been skipping out on releasing/advertising these titles for so long.
And that’s my issue: They’re right now getting to the point that Square hit over a decade ago. They don’t realize the market is a lot bigger than just Japan - but you need to put some marketing effort out there. That includes choosing the release system, strong localization, and an effort to get the word out. They don’t really do this, even now that the Tales series is pretty grown up.
Basically, not many products can thrive when the customer has to make an effort to go get them.
Good for them, but think about how much market they’re missing. (Although, I would suspect the reason it’s doing so well is that they just suddenly started some too-late marketing efforts, and so getting all the pre-orders in a rush.)
Y’know, I honestly never did. I think it was when I realized I as going to have to put in about a hundred hours to do what I wanted. For reason, I absolutely cannot play a Tales game with anything less than 100% completion.
:o Thank you. I’m kind of a dick, though, so I wouldn’t go thanking me too much.
I’m not really convinced that limiting a JRPG to the PS3 is a serious hindrance at this point - in Europe, the PS3 has as much of an install base as the 360, unless I am misremembering, and in the US, people who want to play JRPGs generally have PS3s, because it’s accepted as one of the strengths of the platform by now.
It’s like saying an FPS game would be missing out on a large chunk of the market by releasing as a 360 exclusive - I just don’t think that’s the case. People who want to play FPS games probably have a 360. People who want to play JRPGs probably have a PS3. Certainly, this has been my experience. Now I’m not saying that ALL people who want to play game type X have system Y, or that all people who have system Y want to play game type X, but there seems to be a strong correlation here, and there has been for some time. JRPG enthusiasts tend to pick the PS3. As such, I don’t think Namco is missing out on as much market as you think. Yes, FFXIII sold pretty decently on the 360 over here, but it sold BETTER on the PS3. If Namco is trying to see what kind of return they can get for their dollar (yen?) then playing it safe and not spending a bunch of money to port the game to the 360 is the safe way to play on what is clearly their “Let’s see if it’s actually worthwhile to localize these games” release.
Say what you like about how “grown up” the Tales series is, it does not have anything approaching the name recognition or brand loyalty (zombie effect) that Final Fantasy does. And for reference, according to vgchartz (which is probably not super accurate, but we have to start somewhere) here is is how FFXIII broke out:
PS3: North America 1.49m, Europe 0.98m, Japan 1.87m, elsewhere 0.42m, Total 4.76m
360: North America 1.07m, Europe 0.57m, Japan 0.01m, elsewhere 0.18m, Total 1.83m
The numbers on XIII-2 are much lower across the board, and even more weighted towards the PS3.
Right now, the PS3 is the JRPG enthusiast’s console. It’s not a mistake to release a JRPG exclusively there.
Perhaps character DRIVEN wasn’t the right word, you’re right. Character FOCUSED is more of what I was going for, Vesperia was focused on the conflict, or rather on the group’s dealings with the conflict and all that entails (Brave Vesperia etc). From what I understand, the plot of Graces is literally about how interactions affect each other, rather than how their interactions affect the plot. It’s a much more limited narrative, caring more for what happens to the group than the world, something that most games don’t do. Sure, you cared about Shepard’s team, but the Reapers were more important. Graces (again, just from what I’ve heard, nothing definitive) is more about if there weren’t any reapers and it was just a game about the wacky adventures The Normandy Crew™ get in, with a vaguely defined thread tying it together of course.
In other words, the conflict is driven by the friendship pact the group made (it’s in the trailer and the beginning of the game, not too much of a spoiler), rather than by some external influence that draws them together (replicas, adephagos and Alexei, Saren and the Reapers whatever).
Also, I likes Vesperia’s plot and didn’t think it was particularly shambly, but you knew that, we’ve had this argument and I don’t think starting it up again will help :p.
That was more or less my reply, but I couldn’t find any hard numbers so I kept my trap shut.
I don’t think the PS3 is lagging behind that atrociously badly in sales (except on this board for whatever reason). And JRPG fans are even more likely to have a PS3. I don’t think PS3 console exclusivity is all that damaging, even for a more niche game. The console user base is there, Uncharted and Infamous are every bit as big as other AAA games. Combine that with a larger JRPG base on the PS3 and I think you’ve got a good audience.
Hell, I hate to keep harping on the sales and poll statistics, but a facebook page posed and sourced this (though I lost the original source):
Most Anticipated for PS3: #1
Most Anticipated Overall: #3
Best Selling PS3 Game: #2
Best Selling Game: #5
Best Selling Item: #10
Edit to add: Also, you have to consider that porting between the PS3 and 360 is non-trivial if you want to do it right. Namco-Bandai takes great care with Tales, and at some point the expected return of having it on another system is probably estimated a lot lower than it needs to be to justify it. As good as Tales in, even I’m not convinced there’s an installed base big enough to drive up a large number of 360 customers if it’s already on PS3, especially when you look at the XIII-2 stats Airk gave.
Interesting, but sounds speculative right now. Could well be true though.
It -was- however, essentially two plots. And more character driven than plot driven.
No, it’s still lagging pretty badly in North America - though I think that’s the only place. Going back to the same dubious source, the 360 leads by about 4 million consoles worldwide, but by about 14 million in the US. (And the latter lead, at least, is still growing.) I suspect the numbers are probably more even amoung “core gamers” but that’s just me speculating.
Actually, it seems like it’s more “ESPECIALLY for a niche game”; Particularly when you have a system that’s as identified with its niche as the PS3 is.
Actually, if we go back to the source again, this isn’t actually true. Uncharted and Infamous are barely even in the same ballpark as the big 360 franchises - Uncharted 2, which is the best selling (apparently) of the Uncharted franchise did about 2.6m in the US (Infamous only did like 1.2m). Compare Halo 3 at 7.55m, or even ODST at 4.13m. Even Gears of War consistantly did 3.3+M. I poked around a little more - Killzone never did more than 1.33m. Fable II was in the same league as Uncharted with 2.4m, but Fable 3 apparently did 3.3. So yeah. In the US market anyway, the 360 is the CLEAR winner and the story is pretty similar globally, with the big Xbox franchises doing better than the PS3 ones - though less significantly here, with Uncharted 2 moving roughly the same number of units as ODST or GoW3.
Really, this is what makes the difference. The PS3 has the following things going for it for the JRPG fan: A) Significantly larger library of localized titles B) Region free if you like to import non-localized titles C) It’s THE CONSOLE (With, oddly, the exception of the bullet hell shooting genre) in Japan, so titles designed for the Japanese market first will be done for this console.
Stats I gave were for XIII, actually, XIII-2 sold a lot fewer units thus far, but maintained a similar spread. But yes. At this point, it’s probably not worth Namco’s money to do a port. If this were a franchise that were more firmly established over here, then they could probably port it and attempt to widen their market share, but right now, they need to keep things lean and cater to their core audience (Which, admittedly, they haven’t done for about 4+ years now, so…start there.).