So, Tales of Vesperia for the 360 was released a couple days ago. After a small bit of hype in two different threads, I was surprised there was no official thread for it yet.
I got it yesterday, and today beat the first part of the game (denoted with a specific achievement). So far it's AWESOME. And the main character isn't a typical JRPG character, which is nothing short of AWESOME. And to add another heap of AWESOME, the battle system was improved even from Abyss.
Anyway, a bit of background for those who have never played a Tales game before.
The "Tales" series is produced by Namco Bandai, and is unique among JRPGs for its real-time battle system. Yes, Star Ocean has one too, but this is very different. In the more recent Tales games (I can't speak for the ones on the SNES and such), you begin a battle by coming in contact with an enemy model while wandering around. Then the battle starts up, and your party of 4 fights the enemies in real-time. You always have a target, and move in a straight line towards or away from that target. You can execute a combo of attacks, unleash special techniques called "Artes," and myriad other things depending on what battle skills you have set up.
In Vesperia, a normal attack is done by pressing the B button. The main character has a 3-hit combo that can be done by pressing the B button three times in a row. Within the combo, he can change what types of attacks he will do depending on the input from the left stick when you hit B. Holding it to the side will make him do a stab, up will make him uppercut to hit higher enemies, down will make him slash twice low, and leaving it neutral will be a typical vertical slash.
Artes are performed with the A button. You can assign up to four for use with directional input from the left stick and A (neutral A, side A, up A, and down A), and four additional shortcuts using the right stick. For those shortcuts, just moving the right stick in that direction activates it. The awesome thing about it is that you can set other characters' artes to your right stick shortcuts, so if you want to unleash a deadly combo on a boss, you can pummel it, activate your Arte, then have your ally activate his or her Arte without having to go into a menu or anything.
The X button defends, and certain skills allow you to perform different guarding techniques. For instance, Critical Guard lets you move forward slightly by pressing X and forward, which when timed correctly, massively reduces the damage you take from an attack. X and backward allows you to backstep away from the enemy, either to make room or to dodge an attack. X and down allows you to do a "Magic Guard," which either nullifies magic or greatly reduces its potency (I can't remember which) as long as you hold the X button.
Y opens the battle menu.
You can also do a "Free Run" by holding the left trigger, which allows you to move freely in any direction you want. This is good for running away from enemies, aligning them to set up an Arte, and dodging attacks.
There are more advanced things, but they'll come with playing. Such things as the Fatal Strike, Burst Arte, and linking Artes will become staples of your battles.
Now for a bit of a background on Vesperia itself.
In this world, there is an empire that rules over all. However, its people exist in densely-populated cities, and not anywhere else? Why? Because there are hordes of monsters waiting just outside these cities, ready to slaughter anyone looking to travel. Why don't the monsters attack? An ancient technology known as "blastia" puts up a protective barrier that prevents monsters from entering the cities. Blastia also has other uses, such as maintaining a water supply and supplementing people's abilities in battle.
You play as Yuri Lowell, a resident of the "lower quarter" of the Empire's capital of Zaphias. He's a cynical jerk, but kind at heart. He's clever as well, not the naive sort of character Lloyd or early-game Luke (from Symphonia and Abyss, respectively) were. If you're not familiar with them, take Tidus from FFX or Vaan from FFXII and you've pretty much got the idea.
Yuri was once a member of the empire's armed forces, the Imperial Knights. He and childhood friend Flynn Scifo joined to try and change the empire, noting the disparity of wealth between people and various other injustices. Yuri quit soon after joining, but Flynn remained, and went on to become a lieutenant and staunch defender of the Knights' ideals. The two know each other and care about each other very well, though they often have conflicting views on what is best for each of them.
Yuri's dog, Repede, is very unique. He always has a pipe in his mouth (though doesn't smoke from it), and prefers to use daggers instead of his claws or teeth to fight. Yuri remarks that Repede doesn't think of himself as a dog, but doesn't exactly think of himself as a human, either. Repede is very intelligent and is a strong ally of Yuri's.
You'll meet other characters along the way, but I won't name any out of fear of spoilers. However, you'll find all of them very likable, and most seem to be influenced by Jade from Tales of the Abyss--quick wit and something of a jerk. No one is remotely as annoying as Colette from Symphonia, but you do see a good bit of naivete out of a certain character. All in all, the character cast is FANTASTIC and an excellent departure from JRPG standards.
Which brings me to voice acting. It's phenomenal. Certain dialogue could've been written better or performed with different emphasis, but generally, all of the dialogue sounds realistic and heartfelt. My only complaint is that certain lines, even in the middle of a fully-acted scene, are silent, and the change between silent and voiced in a scene is often abrupt.
The music and sound effects are great, too. Nothing particularly memorable (and unfortunately the main theme isn't NEARLY as awesome as the one from Tales of the Abyss ;_
, but it all fits the situation perfectly and you will never find it out of place or annoying.
On to graphics. The game's models are cel-shaded, which I admit, looks kind of awkward on the 360. But hey, it's the distinctive Tales art style, and it works, so I don't really care. My only real complaint is that Yuri is always carrying his weapon by a string or something along his side, and for some reason that's extremely annoying to watch. But when that's the only complaint I can make, you have to think that the graphics must be pretty awesome overall.
As for difficulty? I'm playing on Normal, and it's a decent challenge. To give you an example, I lost the tutorial fight. I then promptly reloaded because I could not stand to see such an amazing character lose against the tutorial enemies. Then I beat their asses. Other than that, the difficulty has pretty awkward jumps here and there. The boss from the demo is the first truly difficult fight in the game, and I had to reload three or four times to finally win. Then a string of easy fights without dying once, followed by a pretty hard fight that required a good bit of character revival, then a WTF fight where the boss healed itself back to 50% health when it was almost dead. You're always in for a surprise, but no boss (at least so far) is totally unfair or godawful to try and beat. I like it.
Puzzles aren't bad either. What I was surprised by was a password puzzle that actually required -logic-, not just gathering these items and chucking them into a password reader or something. You actually had to do a modicum of thinking (and judging from the GFAQs message boards, a lot of people can't do that). But there hasn't been anything totally frustrating or any maze-like areas that take hours to get through. It's all been pretty reasonable.
The Sorcerer's Ring makes its return, this time on your finger instead of a forest cheagle (I hated that from Abyss). So far though I've only been in two dungeons that required it, and it's not a pain to use or anything, so it's a pretty good addition to the puzzle-solving.
All in all, no major complaints about this game so far. Somehow I don't think I've gotten to the big overarching story yet (as at this point, I just finished Yuri's original objective), so I can't make a judgment call on that. I think I'll end up finishing the game but making a second save to go out and grind Grade, then start over with an awesome amount of new bonuses then use a guide to get anything I missed the first time.
Anyway, so that's Tales of Vesperia. Go buy it now if you like RPGs at all, because it's awesome and perfect and will make you happy.
I got it yesterday, and today beat the first part of the game (denoted with a specific achievement). So far it's AWESOME. And the main character isn't a typical JRPG character, which is nothing short of AWESOME. And to add another heap of AWESOME, the battle system was improved even from Abyss.
Anyway, a bit of background for those who have never played a Tales game before.
The "Tales" series is produced by Namco Bandai, and is unique among JRPGs for its real-time battle system. Yes, Star Ocean has one too, but this is very different. In the more recent Tales games (I can't speak for the ones on the SNES and such), you begin a battle by coming in contact with an enemy model while wandering around. Then the battle starts up, and your party of 4 fights the enemies in real-time. You always have a target, and move in a straight line towards or away from that target. You can execute a combo of attacks, unleash special techniques called "Artes," and myriad other things depending on what battle skills you have set up.
In Vesperia, a normal attack is done by pressing the B button. The main character has a 3-hit combo that can be done by pressing the B button three times in a row. Within the combo, he can change what types of attacks he will do depending on the input from the left stick when you hit B. Holding it to the side will make him do a stab, up will make him uppercut to hit higher enemies, down will make him slash twice low, and leaving it neutral will be a typical vertical slash.
Artes are performed with the A button. You can assign up to four for use with directional input from the left stick and A (neutral A, side A, up A, and down A), and four additional shortcuts using the right stick. For those shortcuts, just moving the right stick in that direction activates it. The awesome thing about it is that you can set other characters' artes to your right stick shortcuts, so if you want to unleash a deadly combo on a boss, you can pummel it, activate your Arte, then have your ally activate his or her Arte without having to go into a menu or anything.
The X button defends, and certain skills allow you to perform different guarding techniques. For instance, Critical Guard lets you move forward slightly by pressing X and forward, which when timed correctly, massively reduces the damage you take from an attack. X and backward allows you to backstep away from the enemy, either to make room or to dodge an attack. X and down allows you to do a "Magic Guard," which either nullifies magic or greatly reduces its potency (I can't remember which) as long as you hold the X button.
Y opens the battle menu.
You can also do a "Free Run" by holding the left trigger, which allows you to move freely in any direction you want. This is good for running away from enemies, aligning them to set up an Arte, and dodging attacks.
There are more advanced things, but they'll come with playing. Such things as the Fatal Strike, Burst Arte, and linking Artes will become staples of your battles.
Now for a bit of a background on Vesperia itself.
In this world, there is an empire that rules over all. However, its people exist in densely-populated cities, and not anywhere else? Why? Because there are hordes of monsters waiting just outside these cities, ready to slaughter anyone looking to travel. Why don't the monsters attack? An ancient technology known as "blastia" puts up a protective barrier that prevents monsters from entering the cities. Blastia also has other uses, such as maintaining a water supply and supplementing people's abilities in battle.
You play as Yuri Lowell, a resident of the "lower quarter" of the Empire's capital of Zaphias. He's a cynical jerk, but kind at heart. He's clever as well, not the naive sort of character Lloyd or early-game Luke (from Symphonia and Abyss, respectively) were. If you're not familiar with them, take Tidus from FFX or Vaan from FFXII and you've pretty much got the idea.
Yuri was once a member of the empire's armed forces, the Imperial Knights. He and childhood friend Flynn Scifo joined to try and change the empire, noting the disparity of wealth between people and various other injustices. Yuri quit soon after joining, but Flynn remained, and went on to become a lieutenant and staunch defender of the Knights' ideals. The two know each other and care about each other very well, though they often have conflicting views on what is best for each of them.
Yuri's dog, Repede, is very unique. He always has a pipe in his mouth (though doesn't smoke from it), and prefers to use daggers instead of his claws or teeth to fight. Yuri remarks that Repede doesn't think of himself as a dog, but doesn't exactly think of himself as a human, either. Repede is very intelligent and is a strong ally of Yuri's.
You'll meet other characters along the way, but I won't name any out of fear of spoilers. However, you'll find all of them very likable, and most seem to be influenced by Jade from Tales of the Abyss--quick wit and something of a jerk. No one is remotely as annoying as Colette from Symphonia, but you do see a good bit of naivete out of a certain character. All in all, the character cast is FANTASTIC and an excellent departure from JRPG standards.
Which brings me to voice acting. It's phenomenal. Certain dialogue could've been written better or performed with different emphasis, but generally, all of the dialogue sounds realistic and heartfelt. My only complaint is that certain lines, even in the middle of a fully-acted scene, are silent, and the change between silent and voiced in a scene is often abrupt.
The music and sound effects are great, too. Nothing particularly memorable (and unfortunately the main theme isn't NEARLY as awesome as the one from Tales of the Abyss ;_
, but it all fits the situation perfectly and you will never find it out of place or annoying.On to graphics. The game's models are cel-shaded, which I admit, looks kind of awkward on the 360. But hey, it's the distinctive Tales art style, and it works, so I don't really care. My only real complaint is that Yuri is always carrying his weapon by a string or something along his side, and for some reason that's extremely annoying to watch. But when that's the only complaint I can make, you have to think that the graphics must be pretty awesome overall.
As for difficulty? I'm playing on Normal, and it's a decent challenge. To give you an example, I lost the tutorial fight. I then promptly reloaded because I could not stand to see such an amazing character lose against the tutorial enemies. Then I beat their asses. Other than that, the difficulty has pretty awkward jumps here and there. The boss from the demo is the first truly difficult fight in the game, and I had to reload three or four times to finally win. Then a string of easy fights without dying once, followed by a pretty hard fight that required a good bit of character revival, then a WTF fight where the boss healed itself back to 50% health when it was almost dead. You're always in for a surprise, but no boss (at least so far) is totally unfair or godawful to try and beat. I like it.
Puzzles aren't bad either. What I was surprised by was a password puzzle that actually required -logic-, not just gathering these items and chucking them into a password reader or something. You actually had to do a modicum of thinking (and judging from the GFAQs message boards, a lot of people can't do that). But there hasn't been anything totally frustrating or any maze-like areas that take hours to get through. It's all been pretty reasonable.
The Sorcerer's Ring makes its return, this time on your finger instead of a forest cheagle (I hated that from Abyss). So far though I've only been in two dungeons that required it, and it's not a pain to use or anything, so it's a pretty good addition to the puzzle-solving.
All in all, no major complaints about this game so far. Somehow I don't think I've gotten to the big overarching story yet (as at this point, I just finished Yuri's original objective), so I can't make a judgment call on that. I think I'll end up finishing the game but making a second save to go out and grind Grade, then start over with an awesome amount of new bonuses then use a guide to get anything I missed the first time.
Anyway, so that's Tales of Vesperia. Go buy it now if you like RPGs at all, because it's awesome and perfect and will make you happy.
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