Any fans of the Tales series here?

[TheBigBB]

I've been obsessed with Tales games lately; have put about 200 hours into various Tales games over the past month or two. Does anyone else here play these games? I didn't notice any threads about it when Tales of Xillia 2 came out last month. Of course, Xillia 2 has a ridiculous amount of rehash. Right now I'm playing the PS3 import of Tales of Vespiria.

 

[Taiso]

I'm playing Symphonia on PS3 (among other things) right now.

I enjoy the Tales games, but there's always a point in every Tales game I've played, which is about 5 different titles, where they begin to stretch the story and bloat it. The game engine isn't good enough to sustain me through that stretched portion of the narrative. I always find myself saying 'was this development really necessary? Just get on with it, already.'

So yes, I'd say I'm a fan but not one that's myopically satisfied with the series. I haven't tried Xillia, Xillia 2 or Graces F yet, although I do own them all.

And I've heard that the general consensus is that Abyss and Vesperia sort of battle for the top spot in the Tales hierarchy.

 

[ki_atsushi]

Well said Taiso... I haven't finished a single one, all the way back to Phantasia. They just get too drawn out and I lose interest.

 

[ggallegos1]

I only played through Abyss and enjoyed it, but I agree the story dragged on. I did enjoy the combat and boss fights, however. Thanks to Abyss, I'm a fan.

 

[Opethian]

Im a big fan of whale tails


Honestly I haven't played any since Destiny 1 and 2 on PS1 and Phantasia on GBA but they were great ones.

 

[Jon]

I'm probably the only one that enjoyed Legendia.

Ironically, it was the character quests after the main story ended that I liked the most. Every character had their own little side story that took 4-5 hours to beat. Wrapped the whole story up in a nice little package and finished extremely well.

Jon

 

[Maury V.]

I love the Tales series but I have trouble finishing myself. I played through Abyss some time ago but my memory card got corrupted and I had to start ALL OVER AGAIN! D: I want to play through it again but I just don't have the time.

 

[Jon]

Im a big fan of whale tails


Honestly I haven't played any since Destiny 1 and Eternia on PS1 and Phantasia on GBA but they were great ones.

FTFY.

We never got Destiny 2, unfortunately. It has my favorite anime opening, BTW.

Jon

 

[Opethian]

Ah it was Eternia then. I never played TOD2 on PS2. I did like the combo system (much better than SaGa Frontier) and the active battles were a change of pace for me compared to the turn based RPGs I grew up with.

 

[Master Tasuke]

Any fans of the Tales series here?

i sure as hell am, and i'm probably going to seriously take it in the six for it from certain members around here, just you wait and see.

in any case, i just love the Tales' series, i have since my first, the PS1's "Tales of Eternia" (TALES OF DESTINY II in U.S.) around 2001 or so.

2003 or so brought "Tales of Symphonia" -a then NINTENDO GAME CUBE exclusive- singlehandedly cementing my fandom right then and there.
Colette -NOT "Collet" that just sounds plain STUPID- Brunel is an absolute dear, and remains my favorite female Tales' chara to date.

2006 or so brought the PS2's "Tales of the Abyss" my second favorite entry, -actually, truth be told, just about equal with Symphonia there-
and one i damned near missed out on due to the situation my life was in at the time.
sure glad i didn't, though, as Natalia Luzu Kimlasca Lanvaldear (DAMN, WHAT A NAME!!)
ended up being my second favorite Tales' female, hot on the heels of Colette Brunel, peerless Goddess and crown jewel of the Tales' series for now and all time.

as i understand it, there there were like two/three Tales' entries
in between Abyss and the next entry i had gotten, 2011's PS3 "Tales of Graces" (A REAL STINKER)
that i had missed out on, but i believe they might have been portable platform exclusives anyway, so i probably wasn't missing much.

Graces, as i had just indicated, was truly a stain on the series' great name, and one of the worst RPGs i've ever known.
2012/13's Tales of Xillia is vastly superior, though still full of little flaws, chief among them a disturbing functional similarity
to MMO type games, a disturbing and ever growing trend with JRPGs these days.

i'm still proceeding through Xillia, and am currently right at the tail end of it. i just got 2014's Xillia 2 and will be jumping right in to that
just as soon as Xillia 1 closes. hopefully, it'll be a better experience, gameplay wise, than it's predecessor, though i hardly count on it...

 

[TheBigBB]

Damn, Master Tasuke, I can't top you with that post. I love the games, but I don't have a single collector's edition, and some of them I only have digital copies of.

I actually love Graces. It starts off shitty and the main character is a moron, but I thought the characters turned out to be pretty funny. I also thought the battle system in Graces was one of the best because you're able to use all of your special moves at will without worrying about running out of TP, which is kind of an annoying mechanic in the other games since the CPU never has a fucking clue how to maintain any sort of equilibrium with its TP spending. In most Tales games you have to feed your characters orange gels by the dozen if you want to use the full power of your team. In Graces the enemies just get massive lists of weaknesses and you have to come up with combos that exploit them, with no restrictions. I like that a lot!

I usually finish the games because I tend to like the characters more as the games go on, even as the plots don't necessarily always turn to gold or anything. To me they do a good job of being character driven. Xillia 2 should have been a piece of shit due to how much of it was rehashed areas, but the charm of Xillia isn't good level design, it's just got a pretty good battle system (despite TP woes) and extremely memorable characters, and the character aspects of Xillia 2 were still fun and actually made me laugh on a regular basis. I never laugh at video game jokes, for some reason only Tales games can get a smile out of me.

One thing about the battle systems is that they're usually a lot deeper than the game will teach you about. They could easily just become button mashing spamfests if you don't bother to learn how to make combos and chain attacks together. Like I think a good simple example is in Vesperia, Yuri by default only gets 3 attacks before he has to break, but if you hold the free-run button after the last attack, you can chain another attack, and then you can do an arte, and then you can throw in an arcane arte. So you could take a 3-hit combo and turn it into a 12+ hit combo right there if you know what you're doing. But the game kind of doesn't teach that kind of shit to you. If you don't figure it out I think you could end up hating the battle system a lot. At least there's always the easy difficulty level for people who aren't any good at figuring the systems out.

One last thing that's awesome in the series if you play it enough is the grade shop for new game plus. Normally you might think that there's no way you would play a JRPG game twice in a row, not after spending 60+ hours finishing it the first time. But new game plus in Tales games gives you a massive list of options that can change fundamental rules of the game. For example, allowing all characters/enemies to do 10x more damage and 3x more critical hits. Suddenly the game is completely different. You can 1-shot things on the highest difficulty, but they can one-shot you as well. Really cool to change up the rules of a game like that, where most RPGs just make NG+ turn the game into a trivial ROFLstomp for the player.

 

[Cyclops]

I actually love Graces. It starts off shitty and the main character is a moron, but I thought the characters turned out to be pretty funny. I also thought the battle system in Graces was one of the best because you're able to use all of your special moves at will without worrying about running out of TP, which is kind of an annoying mechanic in the other games since the CPU never has a fucking clue how to maintain any sort of equilibrium with its TP spending. In most Tales games you have to feed your characters orange gels by the dozen if you want to use the full power of your team. In Graces the enemies just get massive lists of weaknesses and you have to come up with combos that exploit them, with no restrictions. I like that a lot!

I agree with this. I'm a big fan of Graces. Generic story aside, the battle system is fantastic and the game does a great job making all the different subsystems work together. It also encourages you to play on higher difficulty levels since you can change the difficulty at any time you want unlike the other Tales games. Higher difficulty rewards you with better drops and at the highest diffculty, the game even rewards you by giving you double damage if you exploit the enemy weaknesses. Gameplay wise, I would rate Graces at the top of the series with Vesperia being the best overall game if I were to recommend the series to a newcomer.

I've been a fan of the Tales games ever since I blind bought Tales of Destiny on the PS1 at Sears way back when. I haven't picked up Xillia 2 due to not having touched the first one yet. I'll probably wait on a sale at this point. I'm more looking forward to when Zestiria comes out. though. The Bandai Namco panel at NYCC is about Zestiria/Hearts R so I'm hoping we get a US release date then.

 

[TheBigBB]

Speaking of Tales of Hearts R, for those who don't know, Gamestop is getting an English version of this game for the Vita on November 11. I have a feeling it'll turn into one of those expensive rare games because I seriously doubt there'll be a large run of them given that they didn't even spend the money to dub it. Even though Gamestop is not the most beloved company, if they had any hand in getting the game localized I can maybe start to forgive them for their other discretions.

 

[SNKorSWM]

Destiny 2 (the Japanese PS2 release, not the renamed Eternia), Destiny remake, and Rebirth are my faves. Not so much for the 3D ones like Symphonia and Abyss. Played Legendia but that one pales in comparison with Destiny Remake which was released at about the same time.

 

[greedostick]

I am not a big fan. I liked the SNES one, but after attempting nearly every one, I decided after Tales of the Abyss on 3DS I was going to skip everything with Tales in the title. Until I learned of Tales of Graces F. I might have to check that one out.

I did however enjoy a similar game, called Eternal Sonata on 360 and PS3. I really like the visuals, music, and story in that game. I need to go back and finish it sometime.

 

[Cyclops]

Destiny 2 (the Japanese PS2 release, not the renamed Eternia), Destiny remake, and Rebirth are my faves. Not so much for the 3D ones like Symphonia and Abyss. Played Legendia but that one pales in comparison with Destiny Remake which was released at about the same time.

You should give Graces a shot. It was the first 3D Tales made by Team Destiny. It uses the CC system similar to Destiny R.

Team Destiny games
-Destiny 2
-Destiny Remake
-Rebirth
-Graces

Team Symphonia games
-Symphonia
-Abyss
-Vesperia

 

[Master Tasuke]

so NAMCO/BANDAI has two separate dev teams that work on their various and sundry Tales' entries?
guess that would explain why there is such a disconnect in feel between some entries in comparison to others.

is it possible that one team works exclusively on Kosuke Fujishima's entries, with the other handling Mutsumi Inomata's ones?

 

[sparksterz]

I've got the same amount of Tales games as Master Tasuke. I've been buying every collectors edition state side since they've been offered. (Vesperia started it unless I missed one). I love the series. I've finished:

Phantasia
Symphonia
Abyss
Symphonia Dawn of the New World
Vesperia
Xillia

I tried to like Legendia, but I just couldn't. Phantasia began to stretch my patience with random battles and not knowing clearly where to go. It felt like a rough grind at parts. I guess the most popular one that I struggled with was Abyss a cool story when you get the whole picture, but considering your main character walks around with an attitude and knows nothing (along with the player) for about the first 3rd of the game it got to be a bit old. I feel it's a game that would be amazing on a replay, but the first play through can be a bit of a struggle.

Symphonia was really the first one to get me hooked. The next one I played after that was Vesperia. I LOVED Vesperia. Maybe even moreso than Symphonia. I liked the main story of Xillia a lot. I'm currently trudging through Xillia 2 and this grind to repay your astronomical debt feels like a major cop out and simply a ploy to keep the game long. When you can do main character side missions it's great. When you have to do random odd jobs like killing a specific amount of monsters to prove that you can it feels pointless. I'm really having a hard time finishing it, and the fact that you have "Mr. Mime" as your main character is pretty annoying. I heard you can unlock his voice in new game + but I seldom play those and I really don't see why it's something they felt was a good idea to put behind a wall so the majority of people playing never hear more than 3 words from the guy.

Anyhow, I'll finish it, I'm just hoping the story turns around for Xillia 2 much like Symphonia 2 did.

 

[Cyclops]

so NAMCO/BANDAI has two separate dev teams that work on their various and sundry Tales' entries?
guess that would explain why there is such a disconnect in feel between some entries in comparison to others.

is it possible that one team works exclusively on Kosuke Fujishima's entries, with the other handling Mutsumi Inomata's ones?

The bolded is pretty much the case until recently when Namco's Tales Studio finally merged with Bandai Namco proper. Starting with Xillia, there has been more collaboration between the teams but you can still see which team makes up the majority of the staff on a certain title.

Also note that while those were the two main teams, other developers had their hands in the series. Legendia feels different because it was actually developed by Namco's Soul Calibur team and Alfa Systems did most of the handheld games.

 

[TheBigBB]

Spark you don't have to spend much time paying the debt off in Xillia 2. You get plenty of money just from doing the boss monster hunts and character chapters. You never need to do a single grindy monster kill quest. The only requests worth doing are ones in red text which lead to sidequests or special items. I paid off the debt in the Xillia 2 endgame by just killing the big boss monster hunts and literally no grinding. Also helps to use Leia and Ludger's "lottery" skills as often as you possibly can, because when they're both in your party it almost always activates. There is also some item I got which gives 1.5x gald, not sure where it came from, maybe some sidequest. You just get a special cutscene and costume for paying down the entire debt, but the three main endings to the game only require paying off about 2 million (unless you make extra payments) and at some point they "forgive" your debt for the remainder of the game unless you choose to keep paying it. That being said, once you realize that paying the debt grants you some awesome skills, costumes, and even Ludger's best hammer, paying off the debt is actually kind of a neat mechanic because it gives the player a choice between just buying gear and using the money to get skills and other bonuses. But of course, that's on the assumption that you're not having trouble paying the debt to progress the story. I don't think you should be. For the record, some of the EX monsters give nearly a million gald in one shot, you get a million gald for beating the game, and you get a million gald every time you kill the final boss in the bonus dungeon. So believe me, you don't need to stress about that debt right now.

 

[Dr Shroom]

Those games look all the same.

 

[TheBigBB]

Those games look all the same.

The core principles of the battle systems are usually similar, but the specific mechanics can differ quite a bit, especially with the last bunch of games. Vespiria, Graces and Xillia all have very different ways of handling how you go about making combos and how you should use your skills. To an observer it would look like the same exact systems, but if you sat down and played them, they are not at all. Play Vespiria and Xillia side by side and you'd immediately notice a huge difference. It's like how fighting games mechanics can differ once you know them. To the casual observer, all fighting games look the same, but they're absolutely not. I feel Tales is exactly like that.

I actually used to be a much bigger Star Ocean fan than Tales. I've always liked the RPGs where battles were full of action. Somehow over the years, Tales way surpassed Star Ocean. Now I'm not even sure if Star Ocean will get another installment after the last two games were just mediocre.

 

[SNKorSWM]

You should give Graces a shot. It was the first 3D Tales made by Team Destiny. It uses the CC system similar to Destiny R.

Team Destiny games
-Destiny 2
-Destiny Remake
-Rebirth
-Graces

Team Symphonia games
-Symphonia
-Abyss
-Vesperia

Interesting. Destiny 2 has a TP system, but it seems I can play through the whole game without ever using a single TP restoring gummi in that game. Destiny Remake and Rebirth simply got rid of the whole notion of TP and that makes the gameplay much more fluid. Will give Graces a try and see how that feels.

 

[TheBigBB]

Interesting. Destiny 2 has a TP system, but it seems I can play through the whole game without ever using a single TP restoring gummi in that game. Destiny Remake and Rebirth simply got rid of the whole notion of TP and that makes the gameplay much more fluid. Will give Graces a try and see how that feels.

If you do give it a try, give the story some patience. The main character is a bit of an idiot and pretty much every character starts off as an annoying kid, but they get a lot better as it goes on.

 

[GregN]

I gave up on 3DS Tales got stuck in a part where I couldn't grind and had to fight a boss and couldn't beat him. I liked Vesperia though. I might try one of the PS3 entries.