Gaming Trend

Gaming Trend Review

by Chris Miller

The Tales series has been around for a long time, and has always occupied that second tier of Japanese RPG’s (you know, the tier reserved for any game that doesn’t have “Final”, “Dragon”, “Fantasy”, or “Quest” in their name).   While the Tales games might not have the production values of the heavy-hitters, they have always provided a solid, enjoyable RPG experience that has been more heavily focused on the “action” end of the action-RPG spectrum.  None of them have ever particularly wowed me, but they haven’t disappointed either.  They’re the RPG equivalent of comfort food.

With Tales of Vesperia, the series breaks new ground on a new console.  Will it continue its tradition of solid but unspectacular, or will the series turn the corner and challenge the big boys in the JRPG world?  Let's find out.

The graphics can be summed up in 4 words:  clean, crisp, detailed, and beautiful.  As with prevous games, ToV utilizes cell-shaded graphics to create a visually stunning world.   Both characters and locales are rendered with crisp bold lines and vibrant colors, and it is a welcome change from the dreary grey, brown, and black color pallete that seems to be favored by most games.  Every locale – from bustling cities to dank dungeons – is truly unique and is full of small graphic touches that provide plenty of personality.  The characters are animated incredibly well, and are able to convey a wide range of emotion through simple movements.   I was constantly impressed by the art direction in the game, and came away with the impression that I had played an interactive anime. 

As good as the locales and characters are, the graphics in combat are even better.  Throughout the game, your team will be matched up against a huge variety of enemies that run the gamut from fairly standard (wolves and bandits) to the truly unique (baloon ghosts and horseraptors).  Rest assured that no matter how big or small the fight, every enemy will look fantastic and animate beautifully.  Even with up to 15 characters on screen at once – all with their accompanying spell, attack, and item effects – I never saw even a single hint of slowdown.   Some of the larger battles are truly spectacular to behold, and I never got tired of seeing my party lay a beat-down on some unsuspecting baddies.

Unfortunately, ToV has one glaring, ugly, nasty weakness:  the skits.  Anyone who has played a Tales game before is familiar with these skits.  They are short narratives used to divvy out plot points or develop characters, and are presented using extremely basic 2-D talking head portraits.  While the idea behind them is fine, their presentation is ToV is awful.  In comparison to the rest of the graphics, these talking heads look as if they were drawn by a 10-year-old.  Quite frankly, they look terrible and it is extremely jarring to be pulled away from the lush gameworld to watch these amateurish portraits spout their dialog.  For me, the skits were the huge hair-covered mole that sits squarely on the otherwise beautiful face of ToV.  I know the developers were probably going for the nostalgia factor, but they really needed to update the graphics in these skits to match the graphic style of the rest of the game.

In entirely too many RPG’s, we are given a game that looks stunningly beautiful but sounds like utter garbage.   It’s amazing how quickly bad voice work or music can ruin an otherwise enjoyable game.  Thankfully, ToV fares nearly as well in the audio department as it does in the visuals.  Outside of a single character that annoyed me (Karol), all the voice work is fantastically well done.  I’d actually put the voice work in ToV up with some of the best I’ve ever heard, comparable to the likes of Final Fantasy XII and Shadow Hearts:  Covenant.   All the voice actors sound like they are truly enjoying their work, and - in an amazing change of pace for an RPG – they can actually act!   There are a wide variety of emotions, ranging from jokes and sarcastic remarks, to honest sadness and gravitas; all of which are delivered perfectly by the voice actors.   There are a few awkward phrases that I assume didn’t translate particularly well from the Japanese script (Karol asking if he is “too emo” was particularly strange), but overall both the writing and delivery are extremely solid.  As a personal aside, I want to sincerely thank Namco for choosing a voice actor for the lead character that didn’t sound like a spoiled pre-pubescent brat.  It made the game infinitely more playable.

The music and sound effects are also both very well done.  Each area has a different musical theme, and while a couple of them are forgettable, there are some very beautiful melodies with fantastic arrangements.  Combat is full of the appropriate whooshes and clanking from swords, explosions and other effects from spells, and comments from your party.    You will learn quickly to pay close attention to these audio cues, as they can provide much-needed information during battle.  If a character needs a healing item or lands a particularly powerful blow, they’ll be sure to let you know.   Special mention should also be given to the post-battle comments.  Your characters will always have some banter after a fight, and some of these exchanges are downright hilarious.

With regards to combat, ToV is far more Soul Calibur than Dragon Quest.   Most battles are rather frantic affairs which require you to attack, block, and cast spells (or artes) with furious abandon.  The early game will feel like a rather rudimentary button masher, as most enemies can be taken out by simply spamming the B button with basic attacks and the A button for the more powerful artes.  As you progress, however, the enemies will get significantly stronger and smarter, and you will need to make full use of your offensive, defensive, and magical arsenal to succeed.  There is a fairly deep system that allows you to string together chains of standard and specialty attacks (Fatal Strikes, Burst Artes, Overdrive, etc.) to truly devastate your opponents.  Unfortunately, many of these techniques are very quickly and very poorly explained.  Even after playing for nearly 50 hours, I never could wrap my head how to consistently use the combination of artes, fatal strikes, overdrive, and burst artes and typically stuck to the 3 or 4 attack combos I could repeat with precision.  I did activate some of the stronger attacks on occasion, but it was always more of an accident than something intentional.  My guess is that if you have any penchant at all for the complexity of fighting games (which I don’t, unfortunately), you’ll have great success with combat in ToV. 

You’ve heard the basic story of ToV before, but the likeable characters and solid writing make this version worth the telling.  ToV takes place in the world of Terca Lumireis, most of which is constantly under attacks by monsters.  Unique elements called blastia are used to ward off these attacks, and when one is stolen from our hero Yuri’s hometown, he sets off find it.  Along the way, he gets caught up in an epic struggle that involves shadowy villains and mysterious characters.  He also hooks up with a rather eclectic supporting cast including a pipe-smoking warrior dog, a naïve princess, a headstrong mage, and a few others.   Overall, the story is compelling from beginning to end, although there were a few spots were I was left scratching my head or wishing they’d move things ahead a little more quickly.       

Locations in ToV are broken up into towns, dungeons and the overworld map.  The majority of the story progression will take place in towns, while most of the fighting will happen in either dungeons or the overworld map.  The dungeons do have the occasional puzzle to be solved, but there's nothing here that will significantly tax your grey matter.  ToV eschews random battles (yay!) as you can see all enemies on the map and choose whether or not to fight them.   The act of starting a battle is simple (just walk up to them), but there can also be some strategy involved.  If you initiate combat with multiple enemies in the vicinity, you end up fighting more than one mob.  While this can be tough, it also gains XP twice as fast, so you’ll need to weigh the risk vs. reward.   Mobs can also attack from behind, which causes your party to use the unassigned party members instead of the standard group you hand-selected.  This typically isn’t a problem, but fighting tough baddies without your healer can sometimes get a bit dicey.  There is a never-ending spawn of monsters on the world map, so gamers can power level to their heart’s content.  A bit of grinding certainly helps, but on the whole I found the game to be fairly balanced, assuming you weren’t actively avoiding enemies.  Some of the bosses, however, could be extremely difficult.  On more than one occasion, I would breeze through an entire dungeon with little challenge, then get wiped by the boss in a matter of moments.  Thankfully, there is almost always a save point before a boss encounter (RPG developers, take note here), so I rarely lost much progress.

Combat is typically done with a party of 4, and I think most people will spend the bulk of the game controlling Yuri (there is an item that allows you to choose to use a different character, but I found Yuri to be the most effective).   The AI of your squadmates is generally excellent, especially since you can set specific combat strategies that can be changed on the fly (i.e.  Defend, Full Attack, etc.).  Each character has their strengths and weaknesses, and you will quickly learn how to use them effectively.  In addition to their inherent traits, you also gain additional skills, attacks, and magic by equipping new items (similar to the skill development system in Final Fantasy IX).    You can choose to manage these skills manually, or simply let the game choose the best combination for you.  In the early game, I spent time manually assigning all the skills for each character.  As the game progressed and I ended up with a massive list of skills, I simply let the game automatically assign them (I found the auto-assign would typically come up with the same selection I would have manually made).  This does take a bit of the fun out of the customization, but those who wish to have complete control over their characters can certainly do so.

My only real problem with the gameplay is one that is common to JRPG's.  On more than one occasion, I had no clue what to do or where to go next.  While there is a journal system, it can be frustratingly vague.  You are typically told where to go during dialog segments, and if you happen to not be playing close attention (or not play the game for a couple days and forget), it can be very difficult to get he storyline back on track.  The world map isn’t a huge help either, as it only displays places you have been to in the course of the story arc.  There were multiple times I would stumble across a dungeon or town, but because I hadn’t hit that particular plot point in the storyline yet, it would not be marked on the map.

ToV is a long game and will require a minimum of 40 hours (which would be rushing things) from most gamers.  While there’s not much incentive to play through it more than once, the excellent story, likeable characters, and fun combat, made me absolutely feel like I got my money’s worth.   There’s both a hard and easy mode for those than need more or less of a challenge.  The difficulty level can be changed on the fly, which can come in handy if you find yourself getting wiped by some of the tougher enemies.   ToV also tracks multiple gameplay records (i.e. number of enemies killed, highest combo, use of specific artes, etc.) and even includes an XBL scoreboard for some of these categories so you can see how you stack up against others.  Some of the damage totals and scores you see there are amazing, and give the novice players like myself something to shoot for.  Tales of Vesperia is a very strong addition to the Tales series, and makes a fantastic debut on the 360.  With its strong characters, superb writing and voice acting, and loads of eye-candy, ToV has an undeniable charm that will draw you in and keep you interested throughout it’s considerable length.   While it may not be the end-all, be-all of RPG’s, it’s easily the best Japanese RPG currently available on the 360, and is worth a look for any fan of the genre.

Gaming Trend Score

86

1. Graphics: 90
2. Audio: 90
3. Controls: 75
4. Gameplay: 89
5. Value/Replay: 82
6. OVERALL:86