Namco's Tales series thoughts

I'm playing it right now, i'm 3 hours into it, and i have a few problems with it. It seems like you press circle for auto-combo with a few artes thrown in by pressing X, not a whole lot of variety since i'm early in the game, then there is the stun, enemies stun you easily, this was no problem in earlier games because it didn't take long to recover. other than that, i like the story so far.

I like the sense of humor the game presents between Sorey and Mikleo, especially that scene where the seraphs try to communicate with Alisha. That was good. I think i like the game lol
the technical complexities with other games seemed to work hand in hand with the game's focus, which is combat, where in zestiria, there is story and exploration.

Now that i've got armatization down, and one more artes then finally advancing the story, i must say, i'm really enjoying my time with the game now. Must say i misjudged it, and it took me a year to appreciate it.

fsfsxii Hah, yes. Sergei is pretty amusing in general, yeah. Sincere and innocent to a fault.

Tales of Legendia

A few things of which to be aware:  I first reviewed this on the old CGR forums more than a year and a half ago, so these aren't fresh impressions and I definitely may have forgotten things.  Also, although I finished the 'Main Quest' portion of the game, I only got through a bit of the 'Character Quest' second of the game, which basically comprises its second half.  Although focusing on smaller stories about the individual characters, they intertwine into a full second story.  This is similar to, but longer than, the 'Lineage & Legacies' section of Tales of Graces f.

Interestingly, the game was designed by "Project MelFes", rather than the normal Namco Tales Studio.  Although a lot of the same individuals were involved, some project member were also people that normally worked on the Tekken and Soul Calibur series

Another note, this game features one of the longest gaps between the time I bought it, and the time I got around to playing it. I bought it used in 2006, but didn't get around to playing it until 2015 when I decided to finally give the Tales series the attention it deserved.

Lacking a CGR or Undertow review for this one, here is the opening cinematic:



Here's some gameplay as well to give you an idea of the in-game visuals:


Visuals
Legendia is a bit of an odd ball in the tales series, with 3D polygonal characters like the other post-Symphonia games, but 2D combat sections which are closer to the older entries in the series.  The in-game characters are a nice upgrade from Symphonia (the previous North-American-released entry, though Tales of Rebirth came in between in Japan), and the  environments and overworld are colourful and lively.

Town and dungeon sections are from overhead fixed angles, as are many of the earlier Tales games.

Character skits are done with torso shots, rather than small portraits, and show off the excellend 2D character designs.  Subsequent games seem to switch back and forth between small box head shots, or these larger body shots, but this is my preferred style.

Speaking of the 2D character designs, when I played this, something struck me as extremely nostalgic, and sure enough, when I looked up the character designer, Kazuto Nakazawa, I found that he was the character designer for El Hazard, one of my favourite 90's anime series. For this reason, even though my feelings on the game are mixed, I'm sad that we never saw a Legendia animated series, as some of the more recent entries in the Tales series received.

Voice Acting
I was quite pleased with the voice acting that is presented in Legendia.  The standouts are probably Cam Clarke as Will Raynard, as I always like hearing him in any game, and Heather Halley as Chloe Valens.  Overalll though, I think all the English voice actors do a great job.  That said, with the previous entry (Symphonia), the decision was made to leave the skit sections unvoiced in English (presumably as a cost saving measure).  In Legendia, the skits are fully voiced, but only for the first half of the game.  In the Character Quest chapters, which compose the second half, skits go unvoiced, and the voice acting is limited to in-battle voices, and the odd animated cut scene.  It definitely makes me glad that later games in the series have the full voice treatment done for localizations.

Audio
Rather than series regular Motoi Sakuraba, the soundtrack or Legendia is composed by Go Shiina, and is definitely a standout addition to the series.  There are some memorable epic tracks, but also some relaxing smooth jazz.  It seems like after this, Go Shiina was mostly involved with the spinoff titles, though I'm pleased he is apparently behind a lot of my favourite tracks in Tales of Zestiria as well.

Mechanics
Due to the length of time since my playthrough, I don't have a ton to say here.  As I noted before, the battle sections feature only a single linear plane, which is a bit of a step back after Symphonia.  That said, it works pretty well, and feels a little more like a fighting game, likely due to the Tekken/Soul Calibur background of some of the designers.

That said, Legendia lacks a multiplayer option for battles, and omits some of the more complex elements, like Mystic Artes.

One thing I did enjoy is that puzzles in dungeons were mostly optional.  They generally take the form of a broken teleporter mid-dungeon, where your team is teleported to a nexus point and must solve a puzzle to continue.  However, you can have Jay, on the the party members solve the puzzle at any time and just continue on. It does cost you a title, but I found the puzzles more of a hindrance than a nice break in the action, so usually used this option. There's a 'Lost Woods' style forest area at one point where you get a similar option.

Story


Overall
Legendia is definitely worth a playthrough, even though it doesn't rank among my overall favourite Tales titles.  I think I'd have been more likely to finish the Character Quests section if it had remained fully voiced.  For older (NES, SNES, PS1, etc) JRPGs, I don't mind the lack of voice acting, but even for a 10+ year old PS2 game, it seems lacking when it isn't there.

Tales of Zestiria
Finished up the majority of Tales of Zestiria this week. I’m still working on some of the post-game content, but it is not story-related, so I feel comfortable putting up the review.

Also of note, I did not purchase the “Alicia’s Story: The Strength of a Knight”, which includes a post-game story scenario featuring the characters of Alicia and Rose. It did seem interesting, but was fairly short story-wise, and only featured a single dungeon. At a cost of $9.99 Canadian, it didn’t seem worth it, though for context, I did wait for the main game to go on sale on PSN for $24.99 before picking it up, so I m a bit cheap. I did watch the story content from Alicia’s Story on Youtube after completing the main game.

We don’t have a video review from TJ, due to CGR winding down by the time it was released, but I would like to share GameTrailers excellent review (written by Ben Moore and read by Brandon Jones), which was done shortly before that site shut down, and those folks went on to create Easy Allies.


And because I really like the song, here’s the Japanese version of Zestiria’s intro song, “White Light”. The English version is missing the lyrics sadly, but is still pretty catchy as an instrumental.



My playthrough took about 55 hours, but I did make a point to wander about a lot and unlock some extras. If someone weren’t bothering with the collecting, etc., it would be closer to 40 hours.

Visuals
I played on the PS4, and it is available on the PC, but Zestiria is fundamentally a PS3 game. Zestiria is running on the same engine as Xillia and Xillia 2, and there is a lot that has been re-used (about every 3rd male NPC has the same face as all the shopkeepers in Xillia for example). Draw distance on enemies and NPCs is surprisingly short, with objects often not popping until they’re right in front of you. Even enemies that are visible a fair distance away tend to appear very choppy, with only 3-5 frames of animation until you get close. I’d say the engine is showing its age.

That said, even if it doesn’t quite stand up as a current-gen game, Zestiria is still gorgeous. The world and people seem lush and vibrant. The Xillia games usually featured a number of smaller, interconnected outdoor areas, but in Zestiria, each region is composed of a much larger, contiguous map. It makes the world seem much larger.

Zestiria’s towns also feel large and varied, though they are not as geographically diverse as Xillia’s. Unlike a lot of Tales games, there’s no multiple-worlds, space travel, high technology, etc. in Zestiria, so it mostly sticks to a normal anime swords-and-sorcery look.

The larger dungeons do seem a bit empty, and the ruins in particular are very much just palette swaps.

In game characters still aren’t cell-shaded like Vesperia, but probably come closest since that entry to matching up character appearances between the 3D character models and 2D animated scenes.

The skit sections have gone with 3/4 body shots instead of just character faces inside portraits, which I prefer, so it is nice to see that.

Voice Acting
I wasn’t familiar with a lot of Zestiria’s voice actors, but this was another case where it is difficult to call out a single standout performance, because everyone is excellent. Protagonists and villains are all well cast. If there was a weak point, it might be some of the actors repeatedly playing various unnamed NPCs, but it is a pretty minor point.

Audio
Along with Motoi Sakuraba, Go Shiina had a lot of the composing duties on Zestiria. The last main Tales entry he worked on was Tales of Legendia, and I really liked the music in that game as well. Zestiria has a ton of memorable tracks, but aside from the intro, I think my favourites are those from the four elemental shrines.

Mechanics
Zestiria seems to take a lot of queues in its battle system from Tales of Graces. Characters have a ‘Spirit Chain’ gauge similar to Graces’ ‘Chain Capacity’ gauge. All actions lower this gauge, but it refills when waiting, blocking, etc. Like Graces, there are no ‘magic points’ fueling arts, so there is not need to refill them with items (Orange gels, etc are absent), but it also means that you’re limited to food or items when healing between battles.

Artes work on sort of a paper/rock/scissors system, with human and seraphim characters each able to access two of the three kinds. Seraphim are required to be linked to a human character, which means the human members must always be in the battle party. However, seraphim can be swapped out freely during battle and recover when they’re not in the active party, including from death.

All enemies have creature types and elemental strengths and weaknesses as well that need to be checked and exploited.

Human characters can ‘armatize’ with their seraphim comrades, combining into a hybrid being with access to magic artes, but this reduces the number of active participants in battle, which can make it easier to be swarmed under, as like Graces, Zestiria’s combat encounters seems to involve a lot of enemies on the field at once.

Overall, I liked the system, but it is a bit…busy. As with Graces, battles generally remain entertaining, even for extended periods. Twists and additions to the system are added throughout the first half of the game to give you plenty of time to get used to them. That said, switching out the seraphim freely can make them feel more like items or abilities rather than individual party members.

Of note, Zestiria is the first Tales that characters remain on the normal map once a fight begins, rather than transitioning to a separate battle area. This is pretty neat, but in confined spaces, the automatic camera is noticeably terrible at following the action.

Outside of battle, there are a number of sub-systems that feel…of limited use. Equipment can be fused with items of the same type, combining abilities and slightly increasing their base starts. Also, equipment also unlock extended abilities based on what combination of items you have equipped. These both seem like they have some potential, but they honestly seem less important than just equipping new items as you come across them, as you would in any JRPG.

Fast travel is present again, but oddly limited since Xillia. Now, fast travel is limited to and from save points, and has a monetary cost. It felt a bit arbitrary, and honestly just an extra travel tax.

Story
Overall
I very much enjoyed my playthrough of Zestiria, though it is definitely a bit harder to get into than other Tales games. I would say that that even if someone had mixed feelings for the first few hours, try playing up to the 10 or 12-hour mark and the game really hits its stride.

Anime
Only tangentially related to the game, I’ve been watching the anime “Tales of Zestiria X”. Early on, it offers some neat insight, as it starts our following Alicia before she tries finding the seraphim, and the game’s opening moments only come up about mid-way through the second episode.

It takes some wildly different paths from the game, so I would consider it supplemental material, rather than a different way to experience the same story (which is how I would classify Person 4: The Animation, for example). I’m not entirely happy with the changes in some of the characters either. Rose for example, is portrayed as much more vengeance-obsessed, which doesn’t really jive with her in-game portrayal. That said, it hasn’t kept me from watching more

I’m not sure how exactly it is going to end. I’m up to episode 17 in the series, since I’ve been watching them as the English dub episodes come out through Funimation, and they’re maybe somewhere between 1/3 and ½ way through the plot of the game, but they only have 9 episodes to go, and I haven’t heard anything about another season.

Another odd decision is that there is a 3-episode break in the first season (of only 13 episodes) which seems to be the opening to Tales of Berseria. It was definitely good, and made me look forward to the game. But, even though they are in the same world…it felt very odd to diverge for what basically seems like a preview for another series.