Tales Of ... series - Vesperia out on Steam

[TheImplodingVoice]

Arrived to desert village and opened synthesis weapon tab in shop...

Just don't sell all your old weapons etc. Because you will need it to makes some kick ass weapons through synthesis

 

[Reinhardt]

Bosses are starting to getting rapey-rapey. Got my first game over screen. Had to grind some exp, money and weapon skills.

 

[Reinhardt]

Final dungeon is yuuuuge.

 

[Bohrain]

Finished Vesperia a couple of days ago.
As far as 3D Tales games go it's probably the best. Haven't played Xillia 2 or Graces F, but I've heard that some people prefer those solely for the combat. Vesperia has a very enjoyable protagonist, combat has actual challenge even if you don't play on unknown difficulty and the game tons of content. Graphical style holds pretty well, you couldn't really tell that it's a decade old game. Consumables feel somewhat scarce throughout most of the game since they are costly and max carrying capacity for individual items is 15. Basically if you have never played a Tales game I'd recommend this one, since it gets most of the core design elements right and the cons are relatively minor.
As far as the negatives go I'd better just list them here.
- Unlocking additional artes (as in combat abilities) as well as extra properties for them require spamming an individual arte 100 or several hundred times. Extra properties typically include decreasing the end lag on moves or changing the way it launches the enemy so that you chain them to other skills. It isn't as time consuming as it sounds since you can spam them to some extend if you activate over limit and you'll be fighting all the time anyway, but I just don't see the point of it. Acquiring new abilities is already tied to character levels and passives learned from items, so the ability spamming feels just inane grinding.
- Combat opens up slowly. You are more or less doing short-ish cookie cutter combos for the first 30 hours or so.
- Minor issues in writing. The third act in the story feels tacked on and half of the party members don't have meaningful character arcs.
- 3D movement in fights with a lot of enemies. There are a lot of situations where you are forced to free run around enemies until they aren't aligned in a way where one of them is bound to interrupt your attack. I don't recall having this kind of a problem in Symphonia or Abyss, I think those forced character movement to set lines within the 3D area. Very frustrating especially in the couple of the scripted events where you have to fight several enemies alone.
- Completing most of the sidequests essentially requires reading an external guide. There is tons of missable content that require backtracking in certain points, resting in some inn several times or something similar that isn't hinted at all.
- Soundtrack lacks memorable tracks. This is essentially the point where Motoi Sakuraba stopped coming up with good melodies.

All in all the negative aspects aren't major enough to warrant dropping the game.

 

[Reinhardt]

I will see last stages of 100 man melee as Karol in nighmares. Eruption spam from druids and psychotic unicorns.

Also was surprised that doggo is really good against flying enemies. Actually from all characters he feels best against flyers to me.

My most butthurt moment - spamming Nam Cobanda Isle capsule machine for hour for dem stars and THEN finding out you can just fight them in tag team arena.

 

[Reinhardt]

Finished it today. Missed lots and lots of stuff. At the end i have ~70% of skits, and only ~60% of monsters. But at least farmed 10k grade, so now i'm more or less prepared for second playthrough.

Also i really liked ending slides during credits. Simple but beautiful.

 

[Sam Ecorners]

I've been playing this game on the switch recently, it works out beautifully for that system. I've been enjoying the game a lot, especially since it reminds me so much about Legend of the Dragoon on PS1. Still don't understand much of the combat system, but that's cuz I've been playing it high af

Spoiler

Alexei fucked me good tho

 

[Bohrain]

Spoiler

Alexei's heal and mystic arte are bullshit.

 

[Falksi]

Just playing through Berseria and absolutely thriving on it so far. REALLY well paced game, with the story coming at you in nicely sized portions, and presented in different ways to keep things fresh.

Lovely looking game, thrive on the fact that the group you are part of are the "villains" of the peice, great layers of traditional JRPG goodness mixed with more modern expectations.

With all that said, I've hardly any fucking idea what's going on during combat. It's a button bashathon, with the odd alt button press, and guarding at the right time. I'm still enjoying it, it's daft chaotic fun if you control it manually, but the amount of utter bullshit they throw at you regards arts, hidden arts, special bars, stuns, etc. is just fucking stupid. No idea who has the time or drive to put so much thought & effort into the combat.

And for the record I'm no Tales fan. I tried Vesperia and thought it was absolutely fucking awful.

 

[Terra]

Yeah, I definitely feel the Tales series combat has become more clusterfucky since entries started shifting from 2D battles to 3D. Though I recall really enjoying Graces combat towards the end. I'm chipping through Berseria slowly and I just find the old side-on battles of earlier games easier to follow. This entry's battles often feel like an orgy of VFX, rarely interspersed with some healing items (only in boss battles). I'm not sure how I feel now they've ditched standard combo attacks so every attack now has to be some form of chainable arte, it feels really weird to me compared to previous games.

Like you mentioned, I'm enjoying the revenge plotline so far, it's interesting enough to keep on playing bits of it every now and then, it hasn't hooked me like some previous entries did though.

 

[Bohrain]

I really enjoyed the story and the character interaction in Berseria, even though everything else felt mediocre.

 

[aweigh]

tales = shit

 

[Falksi]

tales = shit

Vesperia was. What a fucking dull slog. But Berseria is a different class mate and, as a JRPG man, I think it'd be worth you giving it a blast.

Don't even worry about combat. Think it as some 16-bit era beat-em up action, and only dabble with equipment etc. as you feel you want to. But the plot, pacing & vibe are all as good as I've played in a JRPG since The Last Remnant. It's just nice to play the villains and constantly have something interesting happening. It's got thta traditional JRPG exploration layer too, which is just something I personally love.

If I carry on enjoying it as much as I have, I'd prob have it as one of my top JRPGs of the last decade.

 

[abnaxus]

Velvet just needed to get laid.

 

[Goi~Yaas~Dinn]

tales = shit

I'm sorry you feel that way. I quite enjoyed Phantasia, and Destiny ain't half bad, either. What didn't you like?

 

[aweigh]

yeah phantasia and destiny are good. they're the only ones I liked. Current tales games are nothing like them, which is why they're all shit.

 

[Goi~Yaas~Dinn]

yeah phantasia and destiny are good. they're the only ones I liked. Current tales games are nothing like them, which is why they're all shit.

Honestly, I NOPE'd outta gaming in general after the 6th (console) and 7th (handheld) Gens. So while I couldn't begin to give you an educated opinion about gaming trends since, it wouldn't surprise me in the least if that's the case. I will say my initial impressions of Eternia have not been nearly so favorable.

 

[aweigh]

i'll never "nope" out of gaming but it is undeniable that as amount of games produced increase the quality suffered. When the market potential grows they feel the need to temper the material into being as appealing as possible so it touches all corners of the bigger market.

ofc there are many different reasons for why there are more bad games now than before, or why quality control has decreased, ranging from things like online distribution making it acceptable for modern developers to ship incomplete products because of the ease of patching, something which wasn't an option back in the day; other reasons like the tools for making the actual games becoming more commodified and generic and thus lowering the skill requirements; more tangible capitalist reasons like the fact that specific "anime tropes", to come back to Tales series, are simply more marketable and sell better than other approaches to story-telling, which is why modern tales games are bottom-of-the-barrel shit anime tier in this with little ambition or creative scope.

etc, etc. got tired of typing. basically i'm saying there are many, many reasons for why there were more "classics" back in the day than now, but to end on a positive note that doesn't mean good games will go away, and there are many good games made currently. there no need to "nope" out of anything, and in fact gaming crashing and burning will lead to a rennaisance in the art and craft of it, as has happened with other markets.

 

[Abu Antar]

 

[abnaxus]

Sheathe your sword inside your waifu.

 

[vonAchdorf]

Tales of Arise sounds Engrish.

 

[HoboForEternity]

berseria still have the best characters and story. gameplay is kinda meh, but i doubt bamco will get that good again.

even then still pretty compared to falcom games

 

[Goi~Yaas~Dinn]

What was the last legitimately good Tales game, in you guys' opinion? Like I've said elsewhere in this thread, I've never played beyond Eternia. Not just good story, or just good gameplay, but the whole package?

 

[CryptRat]

Combat in Tales Of series is retarded mashing buttons from the start of the series as far as I'm concerned. Taking that into account I thought Tales Of Vesperia was a very fun game, with a cool character system with tons of passive skills to check and abilities to try, a crafting system to unlock the next weapon, a big world, fun dungeons, whenever you get back to a town after a while there's likely something new there. I think it's the most ambitious JRPG of its generation of consoles regarding quantity of content and I like games with a lot of content. The game is beautiful (not utterly cute like some other recent titles), the story is classic but cool enough and so are the characters in your party.

 

[Perkel]

That trailer graphically looked so fucking good. It is hard to imagine that AA dev went from low graphics into stratosphere just like that.