Tales of Vesperia

I was a little harsh on Tales of Vesperia in my early impressions. However I'm delighted to say I've had a change of heart, and many of the things I took issue with before have been resolved through playing the game more. There are still a few setbacks, and some other annoying elements in the game - but Tales of Vesperia has really turned out to be an awesome installment in the series, and just the sort of JRPG this generation needs.

The Story

For the most part, Tales of Vesperia's story is pretty standard, especially among the Tales series. The protagonist Yuri sets off on an adventure to deal with a small problem, and ends up involved in a conflict that will determine the fate of the world. If I just spoiled anything for you, you haven't played enough RPGs before. That isn't to say the story is bad, no - from time to time I enjoy the simplistic story of good versus evil without things getting overly convoluted. And besides, there are still some twist and turns that add a little spice to the story.

Speaking of which, I'm a pretty big fan of the character roster in Vesperia. Yuri, the main character, is one of my favorite protagonist at this point. He's very carefree and has his own sense of justice. He's an Outlaw looking out for the small people, and he's not afraid to get his hands dirty. That's my kind of Hero. His partner in crime is his faithful pooch Repede. Yes he is a dog, and yes he does have style, but he doesn't talk. For this reason it's hard to relate to the character, but it's something new and I found him to be pretty cool.

The leading lady Estelle is another matter. She's your typical goody-goody Princess who is naive in the ways of the world. And she's pretty conflicted with just about everything. She never seems to be sure of what to do, and she changes priorities at the drop of a hat. Estelle has her charms certainly, but I found myself getting annoyed at her frequently. Another female character I feel conflicted about is Rita. If you recall I pointed out my dislike in her during my early impressions. And while it takes quite a while, Rita slowly starts to change into a more likeable character. Though she's your typical Tsundere type character, so some people might love her from the get go. Another interesting thing about Rita is she seems to have a thing for Estelle. This becomes pretty obvious as the game goes on, and it's kind of cute.

Karol, who is in my opinion a pretty terrible character to fight with, is actually a pretty interesting character. The poor kid is trying to face his fears and take responsibility for a change. He's also surprisingly knowledgeable about the world. Raven who IS the worst character in a fight is kind of a boring character. Sure he has a few secrets to hide, but for the most part he's just a lazy "old man" despite being 35 years old.

Finally Judith - my favorite character. She's awesome, everything from her character design, to her voice, the way she fights, and her personality. Judith shares a lot in common with Yuri as she is also a pretty liad back character. She has an agenda, and she is always up for a good fight. She also has a playful side, and she can be a bit of a tease from time to time.

For the most part we've got some pretty awesome characters here, but there is one rotton egg in the world of Vesperia. I complained about him before, and he only got worse. I'm referring to Zagi of course, one of the game's main villains. He's like a mirror version of Judith. Everything about him sucks, from his design, to his way of talking. Unfortunately you see a lot of him throughout the game, and even more sad is that a lot of the GameFAQs kids seem to love the guy. He's not evil, or insane, or cool - he's just dumb.

The Combat (and Skills)

Previously I ripped on ToV's combat for being slow, and a step back from what had been established in Tales of The Abyss. While I still think the game is sorely lacking the fonic fields system from ToTA, I found out that the combat in ToV isn't nearly as slow as I thought it was.

Perhaps I just wasn't used to the Tales combat since I hadn't played a Tales game for a while, or it might have had something to do with my skill setup. For whatever reason though, as I kept playing the game - the combat got better, and I was once again enjoying the action packed, combo filled combat that I'd come to expect from the Tales series.

One of the more interesting things about the combat in ToV is that your fighting style can change pretty drastically based on the character you're using. Sure, this has always been a part of the series when you go from a Melee fighter to a caster, but just about every character in ToV has some unique mechanic, or fights differently.

For example, Yuri fights like your traditional Tales melee character, though he has access to an absurd number of combos and hits. Where as Judith, another melee character, is all about aerial combat and doing combos in the air. Karol has an interesting system where he can charge up his attacks and release them for big damage. Estelle can add additional hits in a combo string, and Rita can rhythmatically tap the B button to speed up spell casting.

All of these and more are largely due to the Skill system which I touched on before. Basically character can learn various skills from all the Weapons and Sub-Weapons you obtain throughout the game, and while all the character share many of the same skills, they also each receive their own unique skills that allow for variety in combat. So while the fonic fields might be missing, ToV certainly has it's own brand of depth added to the combat.

Another thing I expressed concern with was the balance of the game. I complained that sometimes you'd be doing fine and than you'd go into a boss battle that would totally wreck you. Luckily that isn't the case, save for one boss battle in the game. For whatever reason that one boss is just really fucking hard for no reason. I never had any other problems with boss battles after that one.

Synthesizing, Side Quest, and Secret Missions

Aside from the main game, there's also a ton of extra stuff to keep you occupied and to warrant several playthroughs of the game. Synthesizing will play a large part in the main game, as you craft new equipment for your characters, but you can also go out of your way to get the best stuff in the game. Side Quest will have you revisiting areas around the world, collecting items, and completing missions for various people. And the Secret Missions are little objectives that can be found in most boss fights.

To Synthesize you need to gather a set of materials and take them to any merchant in the game. Once you've unlocked the "blue print" and have the materials you can make your item. You'll use this mostly to synth and upgrade weapons. But you can also make armor, accessories, and attachments. Attachments are a really fun addition to the series, they're basically cosmetic accessories for your characters. For example you can make Sunglasses for Yuri to wear.

To get the materials, you can go about it in a couple of ways. The more common method is to collect loot from the monsters you defeat. Sometimes this can be easy, by just farming a certain monster over and over again. Sometimes it can be a pain in the ass, when you have to hunt a Giganto monster. An overly large, mini-boss type encounter that will spawn randomly in certain dungeons and fields. Farming these Giganto monsters can take hours upon hours of reloading areas.

The other method is similar to grabbing materials from previous Tales games. Through various Search Points scattered across the world map. These search points will respawn randomly, though they seem to have a set list of items they can produce. It's still random what you'll actually end up getting though, so it takes a bit of luck.

Moving on, there are many Side Quest in Vesperia, not unlike previous Tales games. These quest can reward you with various items, abilities, or titles. Unfortunately these side quest most of the time require you to revisit a certain area at a certain times. Without a guide this can be pretty frustrating as you'd have to revisit every area and talk to everyone every time you progressed a bit in the game. Also unfortunate is that the official Strategy guide doesn't even touch most of these side quest. Lucky for me Kouli made a handy little guide on his blog that I'm using for my second run of the game.

But let's consider the fact that you don't have access to this sort of guide, like I did originally. You can actually miss out on abilities for your characters. That is pretty fucking annoying. You can also miss out on equipment and titles, which is slightly less annoying, but still not cool. Than again, I guess the point is that these are in fact side quest - and you don't need any of this stuff to finish the game.

Finally you have the Secret Missions, which in my opinion are way more trouble than they're worth. It's basically taking advantage of the 360's Achievement system, the problem is you can get items and eventually a title costume from doing all of them. The Secret Missions will always require you to do something specific against a boss. For example, one of them has you knocking the boss down while he's trying to do his special move. Some of these missions are easy, most of them are annoying as shit. I think I bothered to do about half of them on my first playthrough, and I'm not sure if I'll even be able to do them all on my second run.

Closing

Before I wrap things up, there is one last thing to note about ToV, though it shouldn't come as a surprise to any Tales veterans. Once you beat the game you can spend your accumulated Grade points to buy bonuses for your "New Game EX". Basically you can buy things like x10 EXP for your next run of the game. This is in my opinion the best sort of New Game + option out there. I think the first game to do something like that was Chrono Trigger which let you start the game over with just about everything including levels. I find this system to be a little more enjoyable as you still have to build your characters up, but you can do it much faster and with far more efficiency due to your knowledge of the game at that point.

With all that said, it's about time I wrapped things up. If it hasn't become abundantly clear at this point - I'm a huge fan of this game. It's certainly going to place high on my Games of The Year list, and it's just the sort of game I was looking for in this generation of console gaming. If you're a fan of the Tales series, I'm pretty positive you're going to enjoy this game. If you're a fan of RPGs but haven't jumped on the Tales bandwagon yet, this is a good time to start.