Tales of Vesperia Early Impressions

Finally Gamefly has decided to bestow upon me Tales of Vesperia. This has created for quite the Xbox 360 renaissance in my life. My sugar daddy Fat Jay bought me a year's worth of Xbox Live randomly (heart), so I play Halo 3 and Gears of War 2 with him and Jim during the first part of my west coast evening, the play Vesperia after they head to bed. Who would of thought I would be playing 360 again anytime soon.

Anyway, Tales of Vesperia is the latest in the long line of Tales game, starting with Tales of Phantasia originally on the SNES. The next game was Tales of Destiny on the PSX, and I briefly played this with Jim. The PSX Tales game allowed for 2 players to control a character during battles, so I hopped in randomly and played the battles during his play through. Mostly I remember delicious 2D chaos from Destiny 1 and 2. The only other game I've played in the Tales series was Tales of Symphonia on Gamecube. I picked it up used about a year and a half ago, since I was looking for an RPG at the time and I read it was the best yet of the Tales series. Mostly I enjoyed the characters and the fast-paced battle system, but the story was too bland to keep me interested past 10 hours or so. And apparently the same can be said for most of the Tales series. Great battle system, hilarious characters and dialogue (complete with lots of voice acting), but bland, cliche story and setting.

And it was this sameness that hit me like a truck in Vesperia. The world map looks exactly the same, the battles look the same, menus, etc. Hell, one character in your party even has the SAME EXACT face as the main character from tales of Symphonia. Sure anime faces aren't hugely varied, but I mean, come on. So, my first reaction was one of disappointment. I was hoping for something new and fresh, in look and feel at least, from last generation's RPG. But then I was thinking to myself, isn't this exactly the same thing that Final Fantasy does? I mean Final Fantasy 3-6 had the same looking over world, menus, character design, etc. Even the newer games continue to use some of the same elements, even if they are more varied. But, I usually don't fault the FF series for that because I am a fan and I am expecting those things. I am looking for that familiar comfort zone, along with the new characters and story. So, taking this perspective on tales, it has begun to grow on me.

Let's start with the best part. The graphics. This is by far the best use of gaming's often maligned 'cel-shading' techniques. This game looks gorgeous, and screenshots of cutscenes look extremely close to a still of an actual hand drawn animation. It is really a treat to just watch this game, especially since I'm a fan of anime. There are also actual anime cutscenes in the game, which mix hand drawn animation and 3D graphics. There really isn't that much a difference between the hand drawn characters and the in-game characters. Kudos to the artists and developers.

Not only do the characters look good, but they are actually interesting (and hilarious). Sure, their back stories may be cliche... you have the anti-hero main character, his faithful "dog" companion, the sheltered princess, and the plucky, sometimes angry other female. But, their interaction with each other, along with the great voice acting, is what really makes them special. You actually get the feeling that this is how an actual group of teenagers would interact with one another, as they are also joking and poking fun at one another. Too many RPGs forget the humor entirely, or fail miserably at it. Luckily, Vesperia gets it right, and you actually start to grow attached to the characters. Which is important when the overarching story is a bit dull. Admittedly, this one is presented much better than Symphonia's, and I have gotten into the story a little bit. Hopefully it picks up nicely and doesn't get dull in the middle.

Now on to the other main draw of the Tales series, the battle system. Again, you can see enemies on the field, and avoid/engage them to your heart's content. The battles are real-time, with no turns to be had. And they can be hectic with your 4 characters battling 5 or more enemies at once, all pulling off skills and combos with abandon. The battles are fast and fun, and you are constantly awarded with new "Artes", which seem to unlock randomly during battle. A fun battle system that actually makes you want to grind in an RPG is always a good thing. I do have one gripe with the system though. Now, I haven't played any of the Tales games between Symphonia (Legendia and Abyss), but the system seems to have taken a step back in the fluidity department. In Symphonia, the transition between attacking, blocking, and jumping was all fluid, if I recall correctly. I remember jumping around like a mad man, especially with flying enemies. Now, there is a noticeable delay between attacking and blocking. Once you finish your combo, you have to wait for the character to do this annoying sword flip over his shoulder animation to finish before you can block. But of course, enemies can attack you as soon as you are done hitting them, so it is annoying to attack then block, as was standard in Symphonia. Most of the time, I get hit back before I can block. So if I want to block an attack, I am best served by holding block until the enemy gets around to attacking me. Not too fun. So mostly I just attack everything in sight as fast as I can and just let the healing character stand in the back and heal me. it works fine, but it would be nice to actually block something between attacks every once in a while. Boss fights can be annoying because of this, since you need to block some attacks. not sure why this step back was taken.
Also, in order to jump, you first need to block, and then press up on the analog stick. Also, I think I have managed to jump forward once, because it is such a pain to get the right motion. I could have just been imagining jumping forward too, since I've never been able to replicate it. So, you can just jump straight up. Pretty useless in what is basically a free-motion fighting game. Combine this with the aforementioned headaches with blocking, and it pretty much takes jumping out of the game for me. Sad when it would be so nice to jump into the middle of a group of enemies and go to town. Again, this was possible in Symphonia, so not sure why they made it such a headache here.

Other points of note:
The cooking menu is confusing. Basically, you collect ingredients throughout your travels, and find recipes in order to make food for your party after battles, with various effects like restoring health or raising attack power for the next battle. . That is all well and good, but the menu you use to set up cooking is confusing as hell, and not explained at all. I think you can set a specific character to cook certain recipes, since you have the option of making 4 right after the battle. So, in theory you can assign a different person to each recipe, or have the same person make them all. This is important because using certain chars to make certain recipes unlocks new recipes. This would all be well and good, but sometimes random characters who I don't want making a certain recipe make it, even though I have another character seemingly assigned in the cooking menu. It isn't clear, and kind of frustrating. I want Yuri making Rice Balls, not Karol DAMMIT.

The minimap is pretty damn hard to see when on the world map. I wish RPG developers would remember some people in this world don't have 50-inch HD TVs. Infinite Undiscovery had the same issues, only much worse.

This game makes me lol consistently. Post battles exchanges are pretty damn funny, even after 100 times. We'll see how they hold up after I've played for 30 hours.

Aside from Artes, which are spells and melee combos, their are Skills in the game, which are mostly passive buffs. The Skills system is ripped directly from Final Fantasy IX and Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, where equipment has certain skills attached to it, and after a few battles, you learn the skill permanently and can then move on to a different piece of equipment with new skills. I don't mind the rip-off, since the system from FFIX is my favorite RPG skills system ever. Combine that with a weapon crafting system (again ripped from various other RPGs), and you have quite the enjoyable Skills system, even if we have seen it before.


So, Tales of Vesperia is growing on me. I'm not very far in yet, but I can see this being good. As long as the story keeps me mildly entertained, the battles and characters can fill in the rest. I'd like to actually finish an RPG once in a while...