Post by Imperial Khador on Jan 2, 2023 6:19:06 GMT
Tales of Innocence R
I actually finished this one a few months ago, but couldn't motivate myself to post much in the way of thoughts at the time. My thoughts on the (english-patched) original DS version of Tales of Innocence are on page 3. It was one of the few Tales games I found myself uninterested in pushing to completion. And some of the issues I had there are still present.
English-Patch Quality
The patch for Innocence R was easy to get going on my Vita with RePatch. It is done by a group called Life Bottle, and I was surprised to find out that it is not based at all on Absolute Zero's earlier translation of the DS version. I didn't notice this at first, but eventually I had noticed some places, events, etc, being named differently between the two versions.
The translation quality itself is decent, and goes beyond just literal translation.
There are a few points where english text will overrun the text box, particularly with contents of treasure chests, but you can still tell what items you've obtained. The patch has not modified the usual Playstation confirmation/cancel buttons (O for confirm/ X for cancel), so it can be a bit confusing when saving the game, as it will reverse to the Western confirm/cancel buttons on the save-screen only.
Visuals
There is a definite step-up from the DS entry, which I noted as being a particularly nice-looking polygonal JRPG for that system. However, character models, environments, etc are all much less detailed that the other Vita entry in this series, Tales of Hearts R, which released the next year. Looking at the two of them side-by-side, I can well imagine that this factored in to why only Hearts R received an official western release.
Voice Acting
As I mentioned for the DS entry, all the Japanese voice actors seem to fit their characters well enough, and there is a lot of voiced dialogue.
Other Audio
Aside from the two opening themes, and closing themes, I didn't find much of the music memorable, but it was suited to its scenes.
Mechanics
There is some customizability to the characters, and you can focus on different play-styles, building up physical combat abilities, magic, etc as you choose. I mentioned this in my DS review, but the problem with this is something that comes up in a lot of Tales entries: enemies tend to swarm the active player character, so there is little point in focusing their abilities in anything other than melee combat. However, the ability to focus AI controlled-characters along different paths is nice.
Innocence R allows the normal 4 active party members at once, up from 3 party members in the DS version. I found that combat was over much more quickly, and I wasn't spending inordinate amounts of time chipping away at bosses to the same degree as I was in the DS version. I don't know if the combat has been fully rebalanced, or if this is more an effect of just having a fourth active party member in combat.
The DS entry had enemies show on the overworld and dungeons, and could be avoided, but Innocence R has completely random encounters. The encounter rare is also a bit high for my liking, but it doesn't kill the pace.
Story
Various characters in the semi-modern age of their world (think Tethe'alla from Tales of Symphonia) begin awakening as reincarnations of powerful magic-using beings who lived in a world linked to the current one in a long-ago mythic age. All the characters so far seem to be reincarnations of those who lived in the final era of that other world and fought an era-ending war that brought about the current world. It is definitely an interesting premise, and the player characters often have personalities quite different from the old incarnations. Some are even reincarnations of a dragon, or a sentient weapon, though all currently exist in human form
In the current day, various groups are rounding up these characters as they awaken, either forcing them to fight using the magical abilities, or as batteries for magical war-machines. Party members include characters who were both allies and enemies in the previous incarnations, and dealing with two sets of memories, and in some cases being a different age, gender or species since their old incarnation is interesting.
The premise intrigued me as far as I got in the DS version, and I think it held up fairly well. Eventually you find out what caused the fall of the old, mythic world, why people are reincarnating, and why the villains are trying to complete the process started in the previous age.
"The Triverse"
This is something I would have mentioned in my Tales of Hearts R review, had I been aware. In that game, a new character named Gall Gruner, is added. When I played it, Gall seemed part of the narrative, but I gather if you complete a post-game dungeon, he returns to his original world, and meets QQ, one of the new characters from Tales of Innocence R.
Tales of Innocence R, introduces two new characters, QQ and Kongwai, who have similar powers to the rest of the party, but are very clear that they are not reincarnations. They are apparently from opposing factions on their homeworld, but set it aside for the duration that they're with the party, and return at the end. Strangely, they also hint that they're aware of the story of 'Tales of Innocence' as either fiction, or past events that already have a set ending. QQ is apparently an archeologist, and Kongwai is there to collect two souls of antagonists the party meets.
All three of these characters are apparently from the world of Tales of the Tempest, the first DS entry, suggesting setup for an 'R' remake of that game on the Vita, or perhaps another game set in that world. However, as this never came to pass, it is unclear what Namco's plans were for 'The Triverse' before whatever it might have been were cancelled.
Overall
I liked Tales of Innocence R, but it would be tough to recommend it over Tales of Hearts R if someone only wanted to play one Vita entry. Everything from character models, to environments, to UI and music is big step up in Hearts R.
I also found Innocence R to be one of those Tales entries to have FAR TOO MANY of the 'skit' conversations. I don't mind 1-2 after an in-game event, but I found getting prompts for 5-10, which got tedious.
I also mentioned in my Tales of Hearts R review that Hearts did a great job of making environments feel bigger than they were by appearing to extend into the background, even if the playable maps were based on the DS entry. Innocence R, does manage this. It has the level of tech common to a lot of Tales games, where sword and sorcery is mixed with some steam-era tech, and some sci-fi stuff like robots and computers. But environments are so small and simple that it's hard to fully buy that tech level, or that there is a globe-spanning entry, etc.
So, worth a playthrough if you're a Tales completionist, or just love it when games get english-patches from fan groups, but otherwise I wouldn't recommend going out of your way for this one.
I actually finished this one a few months ago, but couldn't motivate myself to post much in the way of thoughts at the time. My thoughts on the (english-patched) original DS version of Tales of Innocence are on page 3. It was one of the few Tales games I found myself uninterested in pushing to completion. And some of the issues I had there are still present.
English-Patch Quality
The patch for Innocence R was easy to get going on my Vita with RePatch. It is done by a group called Life Bottle, and I was surprised to find out that it is not based at all on Absolute Zero's earlier translation of the DS version. I didn't notice this at first, but eventually I had noticed some places, events, etc, being named differently between the two versions.
The translation quality itself is decent, and goes beyond just literal translation.
There are a few points where english text will overrun the text box, particularly with contents of treasure chests, but you can still tell what items you've obtained. The patch has not modified the usual Playstation confirmation/cancel buttons (O for confirm/ X for cancel), so it can be a bit confusing when saving the game, as it will reverse to the Western confirm/cancel buttons on the save-screen only.
Visuals
There is a definite step-up from the DS entry, which I noted as being a particularly nice-looking polygonal JRPG for that system. However, character models, environments, etc are all much less detailed that the other Vita entry in this series, Tales of Hearts R, which released the next year. Looking at the two of them side-by-side, I can well imagine that this factored in to why only Hearts R received an official western release.
Voice Acting
As I mentioned for the DS entry, all the Japanese voice actors seem to fit their characters well enough, and there is a lot of voiced dialogue.
Other Audio
Aside from the two opening themes, and closing themes, I didn't find much of the music memorable, but it was suited to its scenes.
Mechanics
There is some customizability to the characters, and you can focus on different play-styles, building up physical combat abilities, magic, etc as you choose. I mentioned this in my DS review, but the problem with this is something that comes up in a lot of Tales entries: enemies tend to swarm the active player character, so there is little point in focusing their abilities in anything other than melee combat. However, the ability to focus AI controlled-characters along different paths is nice.
Innocence R allows the normal 4 active party members at once, up from 3 party members in the DS version. I found that combat was over much more quickly, and I wasn't spending inordinate amounts of time chipping away at bosses to the same degree as I was in the DS version. I don't know if the combat has been fully rebalanced, or if this is more an effect of just having a fourth active party member in combat.
The DS entry had enemies show on the overworld and dungeons, and could be avoided, but Innocence R has completely random encounters. The encounter rare is also a bit high for my liking, but it doesn't kill the pace.
Story
Various characters in the semi-modern age of their world (think Tethe'alla from Tales of Symphonia) begin awakening as reincarnations of powerful magic-using beings who lived in a world linked to the current one in a long-ago mythic age. All the characters so far seem to be reincarnations of those who lived in the final era of that other world and fought an era-ending war that brought about the current world. It is definitely an interesting premise, and the player characters often have personalities quite different from the old incarnations. Some are even reincarnations of a dragon, or a sentient weapon, though all currently exist in human form
In the current day, various groups are rounding up these characters as they awaken, either forcing them to fight using the magical abilities, or as batteries for magical war-machines. Party members include characters who were both allies and enemies in the previous incarnations, and dealing with two sets of memories, and in some cases being a different age, gender or species since their old incarnation is interesting.
The premise intrigued me as far as I got in the DS version, and I think it held up fairly well. Eventually you find out what caused the fall of the old, mythic world, why people are reincarnating, and why the villains are trying to complete the process started in the previous age.
"The Triverse"
This is something I would have mentioned in my Tales of Hearts R review, had I been aware. In that game, a new character named Gall Gruner, is added. When I played it, Gall seemed part of the narrative, but I gather if you complete a post-game dungeon, he returns to his original world, and meets QQ, one of the new characters from Tales of Innocence R.
Tales of Innocence R, introduces two new characters, QQ and Kongwai, who have similar powers to the rest of the party, but are very clear that they are not reincarnations. They are apparently from opposing factions on their homeworld, but set it aside for the duration that they're with the party, and return at the end. Strangely, they also hint that they're aware of the story of 'Tales of Innocence' as either fiction, or past events that already have a set ending. QQ is apparently an archeologist, and Kongwai is there to collect two souls of antagonists the party meets.
All three of these characters are apparently from the world of Tales of the Tempest, the first DS entry, suggesting setup for an 'R' remake of that game on the Vita, or perhaps another game set in that world. However, as this never came to pass, it is unclear what Namco's plans were for 'The Triverse' before whatever it might have been were cancelled.
Overall
I liked Tales of Innocence R, but it would be tough to recommend it over Tales of Hearts R if someone only wanted to play one Vita entry. Everything from character models, to environments, to UI and music is big step up in Hearts R.
I also found Innocence R to be one of those Tales entries to have FAR TOO MANY of the 'skit' conversations. I don't mind 1-2 after an in-game event, but I found getting prompts for 5-10, which got tedious.
I also mentioned in my Tales of Hearts R review that Hearts did a great job of making environments feel bigger than they were by appearing to extend into the background, even if the playable maps were based on the DS entry. Innocence R, does manage this. It has the level of tech common to a lot of Tales games, where sword and sorcery is mixed with some steam-era tech, and some sci-fi stuff like robots and computers. But environments are so small and simple that it's hard to fully buy that tech level, or that there is a globe-spanning entry, etc.
So, worth a playthrough if you're a Tales completionist, or just love it when games get english-patches from fan groups, but otherwise I wouldn't recommend going out of your way for this one.
