Tales Series

@Niitris:

No, that sale is right now for the first week, not a sale for the second week (why would they announce something like that ahead of time?).

Wow that was careless, I read "week after launch" and just glossed over the rest.

Holy shit, whoever said Mike x Sorry is the OTP was right. So much fanservice with those too.

Lailah is currently the best character though. She's hilarious. I currently have fusions with her and Mike, though I don't use them much. Alicia can now see Seraphs since she became Sorey's disciple and Sorry's spiritual power has grown.

"If you aren't him, then you apparently got your brain from the same discount retailer, so..." - Fighteer

I've been putting off finishing Hearts R (this game is honestly immensely boring) in favour of starting my Vesperia import. And now I've restarted Xillia 2 as well.

I honestly think Symphonia and Xillia 1 will forever remain the only games in this series I'll have finished.

Estimated shipping time: 2-4 weeks.

Alright, so I think the introductory part of the game is over. Lailah has given Sorey his mission: to cleanse the taint and keep the land safe, Seraphs used to work together with humans. A Seraph needs to become the Lord of the Land using an appriopriate, cleansed vessel (which refers to ancient artifacts mostly), and a human needs to direct the prayers of the people towards said Seraph. This allows the Seraph to spread a field of divine protection that keeps their territory untainted. Ladylake is currently tainted, so Lailah and co. go searching for a Seraph to take over. First we find the vessel, which is a piece of water taken from an untainted waterfall. Sorey and Mike can finally fuse my making Mike Lailah's disciple. Fusing requires the Priest to know the Seraph's true name, or 真名. How do you pronounce this? Mana.

Btw, Giganto monsters have made a return here. I stupidly ran against Managarm and got myself killed. -_- I'll have to study equipment fusion more carefully.

"If you aren't him, then you apparently got your brain from the same discount retailer, so..." - Fighteer

Calling it now, the Seraphs are assholes.

I've beaten both Symphonias, Abyss, VS, both Xillias and Graces f's main story.

I'm quite confident in my shitposting you know

I think their is also supposed to be a guy called the Lord of Calamity that needs to be appeased or somthing.

SEE, I'M RIGHT. SLAINE x MIKLEO OTP.

That's a pretty nice touch, I gotta admit.

edited 9th Feb '15 8:51:59 AM by danna45

"And you must be Jonathan Joestar!" - Sue

From what pics I've seen of Mikleo from the ending I thought that was already obvious.

Every accusation by the GOP is ALWAYS a confession.

WAAAAH! *cries*

Oh, sorry, you don't know where I came from.

My PS 3 owning friend started (and is 20 hours in, so no stopping in sight) a Nippon Ichi game. You know, those 200 hour long behemots that are 94% grinding, 5% actual playing (and 1% cutscenes) I don't have a problem with them, they are quirky, funny and stuff... but my chances of playing the improved Graces any soon fell through the floor.

Oh well, I will keep writing my challenge fic (doing Vesperia's chapter) and look forward to Lu's Zestiria adventures. How long until the West release? (Will they fix things like with the American Abyss?)

edited 2nd Feb '15 3:00:28 AM by FlightMaster

Copying from one place is 'plagiarism'. Copying from several places, 'research'.

Yes. Yes, you are. Those two look like they came straight out of a shonen romance. mike is the true heroine.

Time for more stuff! After finding the untainted vessel, we need to find an appropriate Seraph to serve as Lord of the Land. Sorry feels a disturbance west of Lady Lake so we go investigate, only to find a broken bridge and a bunch of terrified people saying the god of the waters has sent his wrath upon them. That's when a giant seasnake appears! Lailah recognises it as Ouroboros, who is in fact, a tainted Seraph turned into a Hyouma. We cleanse the poor guy and he comes back to his senses. His name is Uno and he accepts to serve as Lady Lake's protector. Lailah also says that there are Seraphs who have gone so far into corruption, they cannot return to their previous form. Their name is "Dragons".

Using Uno as the Lord, the untainted water as the vessel and Priest Bruno (one of Lady Lake's nice priests) to make sure enough prayers are offered to teh Seraphs, Lady Lake is cleansed and now protected. However, Uno still feels a great taint from the Noble Quarter. Sorey is invited to dinner in councillor Bartlow's mansion. Alicia comes along, but she isn't allowed in the dining room and instead has to wait in the hall. As it turns out, Bartlow is a douchenozzle. He and his cronies (the head legislator, the high priest and some other guy whose name I forgot) believe Sorey might be a fake, but they don't really care for the priest anyway. They just don't the royal family or the Empire of Lowlance to use Sorey to gain influence on the common folk. So they offer him a sizable amount of cash to be their puppet. Their plan for Alicia is to send her to Marlind, a town beset by illness to help its desperate people. Sorey's answer is to go "fuck that" and walk away, but before he can leave the room, Alicia barges in, attacked by the guards. A pesudo-boss fight ensues against them, during which the Seraphs warn you that Sorey's power is in danger of going out of control and basically killing them all. When the fight ends, Bartlow is attacked by the same bunch of assassins that warned us about Alicia. They're pretty pissed at him, since he tried to trick them. They're the famous "Bones of the Wind" guild, and they knew Bartlow was trying to assassinate the princess. Alicia begs them not to kill him cause he's important to the country's stability (what?), so they just knock him unconscious and show us a hidden underground passage to run away. The passage is an old prison waterway where we're attacked by Echidna. After we're out, Alicia decides to go to Marlindo anyway cause despite Bartlow being a douche, the city still needs help. Off to it!

At this point I should mention that appointing the Lord of the Land contains actual mechanics. Each area has a "Divine Protection and Blessing" level. According to the Grade you get in each area, you can get special bonuses like increased item drops, or displaying enemy and treasure symbols on the map, or even spend Grade to buy back old equipment. This is important because the equipment system is reminiscent of Destiny 2's slot system, and no two weapons have the same abilities most of the time. You can also spend Grade to teleport betwen save points through this guy.

I should also mention Lailah is hilarious:

Mike: Don't spoil him, Alicia. Sorey should learn just how much of a weirdo he is.
Lailah: Oh, but since you hang out with him, doesn't that make you a weirdo as well?~
Mike: ...Ever looked at yourself in a mirror?
Lailah: -stares at her reflection in the water- Oh my! What an elegant maiden!

Also, I think Bartlow is the new Mohs. Bring on the hate!

edited 2nd Feb '15 3:56:19 AM by lu127

"If you aren't him, then you apparently got your brain from the same discount retailer, so..." - Fighteer

No one knows yet, all we have is speculation. Most say August, since that'd be consistent with the Xillias.

Estimated shipping time: 2-4 weeks.

With the current blow up they might delay the game and package the repair dlcs in with it.

I for one hope they at least try to fix the camera and getting stuck in walls bugs before the western release.

edited 2nd Feb '15 7:28:02 AM by Memers

Soooo not happening. Especially the bug fixing. Just about every Tales has those bugs. In Vesperia, you could get stuck outside the stage and Abyss even added a bug in the English release with its lovely programming.

"If you aren't him, then you apparently got your brain from the same discount retailer, so..." - Fighteer

And in Xillia 2 I've had times where the character models take a while to load. And mine's a digital copy. Its not bad but it is silly seeing Teepo floating by himself for a good 5 seconds

I'm quite confident in my shitposting you know

Xillia's programming is really quite bad. That pop-in in towns was apparently to make the framerate in battle more consistent. And it still chugs a lot with spells and stuff.

So....I've met the resident little girl.

To get to Marlindo, we need to fix the broken bridge. Lailah suggests we find an Earth Seraph who lives in the nearby mountains. When we arrive, we're attacked by a Hyouma who's a bit too much for us. Suddenly, a Wind Seraph named Zaveid appears and kills the Hyouma. This half-naked dude who is voiced by Seto Kaiba has made it his life's purpose to kill all Hyouma, something which shocks Sorey since he could have just purified the now dead fellow. Zaveid then gets all touchy-feely with Lailah, but once we kick him around a little, he runs away.

Once we reach the top of the mountain, we're attacked by a Dragon. Lailah laments that she has been asleep for so long that she didn't realise that Edna had turned into a Dragon. At that moment, Edna appears calling Lailah a idiot and driving the dragon away. As it turns out, that dragon is her brother, Aizen. He has been corrupted so far, he is beyond saving. Sorey however, promises to search for a way to return him back to normal if Edna comes with them. Edna is all tsundere because she hates humans and considers them traitors and ungrateful towards humans, but she doesn't hate Sorey, so she comes along.

Before we can get to the bridge, we're attacked by a female assassin from the Bones of the Wind guild. The girl can apparently tell the Seraphs' presence, even though she shouldn't have an untainted psyche like Sorey. Before we can kill her, a man named Dezel appears and takes the girl away. Lailah says he used to be part of a mercenary band that was wiped out, but she has no idea why he's joined the assassins.

So we have Sorey and Edna fuse, fix the bridge, drag Alicia with us and get to Marlind, which is full of illness and Hyouma wandering around town. And the cause of this is a Hyouma called...Puppy Dragon.

Well, whatever. Lailah is still awesome, making silly puns. Edna is a huge bully. She makes fun of Mike and bullies Alicia, who is too respectful to not fall for it. "You must dance the Squirrel Dance, Alicia."

"If you aren't him, then you apparently got your brain from the same discount retailer, so..." - Fighteer

Why do I get the feeling I'm really not gonna like Edna

I'm quite confident in my shitposting you know

Cause you tend to not like characters who are bitches/assholes or fill an annoying anime cliche?

One Strip! One Strip!

That seems to be it, yeah. Kinda why I hated Ivar too since he was an annoying asshole. Thank god X2 took pains to remedy that. It even made him look like an adorable tryhard Matrix-loving dudebro

I'm quite confident in my shitposting you know

Yeah, I don't think you'll like Edna. She's not as bad as Rita, who would punch Karol out of the blue, but she's a serious troll bully.

"If you aren't him, then you apparently got your brain from the same discount retailer, so..." - Fighteer

Her going after Alicia (poor girl looks like she gets enough crap in universe, in addition to the whole heroine debacle doesn't really help either).

One Strip! One Strip!

Oh, it wasn't just obsessed otaku ranting? Not that I'm taking their words at total face value or anything.

x2 She certainly doesn't sound pleasant, is she that way towards everyone?

lu did say she was hatred-like with humans.

Seriously can namco stop trying to recreate Rita already jesus this is putting me off

I'm quite confident in my shitposting you know

As far as I've seen, Alicia being treated badly by the party is just BS. The Seraphs treat her very well, especially Lailah who is very supportive and happy that someone in Ladylake believes in them. Lailah even decided to speak to her directly when Alicia couldn't see them, and Mikulio respects her as well. He even blushes because Alicia admires the Seraphs.

Edna is...she's all cold and distant and tsundere, but without the violent side. She's a troll instead. She trolls Mikulio and Alicia, cause both of them get flustered easily. She can't troll Lailah because Lailah is too weird and in her own world. Unlike Mikulio though, who is her constant victim, she seems to just have fun with Alicia in a non-malicious way. Alicia is just too innocecent to see she's being teased.

Anyway, I'm almost done with Marlind and after this town Alicia will leave the game for a long time, so we'll see how Rose fits in.

"If you aren't him, then you apparently got your brain from the same discount retailer, so..." - Fighteer

Good to hear then.

I did know it was mostly exaggerated, but I wondered if there was at least a little truth to it. Glad to hear that's not the case.

Edna sounds like she has the potential to be better, so I'll cut her some slack.

One Strip! One Strip!