Tales Series

Symphonia has the simplest battle system of the three though.

Let's make it as clear as possible for the new guy:

Get a PS 3 to play most of the Tales Series. Done? Good.

Get the Symphonia Chronicles + Graces F bundle, and start with the first Symphonia. Liked it? Go to its sequel. Then get the Xillia 1+2 bundle and start the first. Play Graces in between the two Xillias and see if you like it. You did? Grab Zestiria after you finish Xillia 2, since its battle system is pretty similar. Wait for Berseria... If you have already a PS 3 and it can run homebrew, search for Vesperia and its patch. DO IT.

Portables? 3DS has Tales of the Abyss, a pretty correct port of the PS 2 version. PS Vita has Hearts R, a completely remodeled Tales of Hearts (and the only version with English text...) I will wait a bit to hear about consoles you own / emulators available to you.

-*hears news about Nintendo Direct* GRUAAGRUALRKGH *brain implodes* CLOUD FOR SMASH! DRAGON QUEST 7 AND 8! FEMALE LINK! Wait, did I fall into Bizarro World or some crap? If so, I want my Vesperia Wii U + my Cyclorg Trilogy localized for 3DS!

edited 13th Nov '15 7:09:45 AM by FlightMaster

Also get Zestiria for PC if it is stronger then your PS 3.(It took people 2 days for a playable Alisha hack, only a matter of time before they find a way to let her armatize)

TBH I couldn't really care less about Alisha. Out of all the Zestiria characters, I'd say I found her playstyle to be the most awkward, though maybe I couldn't get used to it.

Overall, I'd say it goes Water Armatization (Maelstrom locking all the time) -> Earth Arma (Scrap Toss <3) -> Mikleo -> Dezel -> Wind Arma -> Sorey -> Edna -> Rose -> Fire Arma -> Lailah -> Alisha.

Though I held on to Edna for as long as possible in the final boss fight because Healing Circle.

edited 13th Nov '15 8:09:35 AM by asterism

Well I personally didn't like playing as Alisha either.

My personal usage ranking goes Lilah > Fire Arma > Water Arma > Sorey >Wind Arma > Earth Arma > Mikleo > Denzel > Alisha > Rose.

edited 13th Nov '15 8:24:28 AM by Kiefen

Blow all your money on a physical copy of Tales of Destiny or Tales of Eternia.

Fire arma is awesome. All flame walls all the time.

Well I beat Alisha's Story, my opinion will be in spoilers beyond the fact that Zestiria is in my top 3 Tales games and is a wonderful world full of depth, heart and well written characters.

The final boss of it was tough as hell, but mostly because Alisha dies alot due to not being able to armatize. I mostly just kept having Rose armatized with Zaveid and using regular attacks while Edna healed and cast magic and then swapped to armatizing with Lailah to use Crown Fire constantly to kill both at the same time.

Alisha getting to say her final words to where Sorey is resting was good too, Alisha spends the game unsure of herself and to hear her get that answer she needed was great.

So yeah, I'm really happy to have gotten Zestiria on Day One and to be finished with it, it was a thousand times better then I thought it'd be.

I heard there was supposed to be more story DLC, but that it was cut in the end.

It certainly looked like there was going to be more. They set Lunarre and Symonne up for some more shenanigans, certainly.

I know some people expect it to be expanded on in the anime. Along with the new character for it possibly connecting Berseria with Zestiria. Their cape has a symbol from a Berseria flag next to a dragon one and the World Guidance book does bring up how other continents once conquered the land in the past.

edited 14th Nov '15 4:09:59 PM by OmegaRadiance

I would love for Berseria to be set in the northern countries at the same time as the events of Zestiria are going on. Even a throwaway line like 'hey, did you hear about all that crazy stuff going on in the south near Pendrago?' would make me super happy.

Also, new character?

edited 14th Nov '15 4:15:11 PM by RedSavant

There was a mysterious character shown in the trailer.

Ah, there he is... interesting. Oh wow, 'transcends Zestiria'? I wonder what they mean by that.

It wouldn't be unreasonable to cross-promote Berseria with a Zestiria anime, honestly.

That'd certainly be different. Instead of the two worlds twist happening in one game, it'd be spread out between two games.

The humans and seraphim already makeup the two worlds mechanic for Zesty.

Like I said, it'd be cool to approach the same world from someone who has neither knowledge nor interest in the seraphim. Velvet seems like a pretty no-nonsense pirate type, after all.

Yep...

I was going to link to this, but it looks like someone already went in and edited out the links.

So...yeah, if any links to this person's translations are still on the wiki, please edit them out.

Loool. Edna has been in the party for less than an hour and she is already the best character. Now I know that she gets all those PR 0 N pictures because she is awesome and not cuz she is the Token Loli.

• Edna: I am calling you Meebo.
• Mikleo: My name's Mikleo!
• Sorey: Seraphs are not my tools, but my friends.
• Edna: So you like to guilt-trip girls into making the first move?
• Lailah: *flustered* Sorey, keep your thoughts pure!
• Edna: Chivalry went out of fashion a couple centuries ago.
• (Edna produces a pair of gauntlets as her Divine Artifact... as she covers her front with her umbrella while doing so, seems like her Hammerspace hole is in her v****a or something...)
• Alisha: I judged you too prematurely, I am sorry.
• Edna: As a punishment, you will do the NORMINCARENA.

I know, I did my research. For SCIENCE, of course. Vesperia has little porn: Few Estelle and Judy's, but LOTS of Rita. Graces has a ton of Asbel x Richard, some Cheria and very little Sophie. (Is Pascal too ugly to fap to?) Xillia has a good bunch of Milla and some Leia or Muzet in yuri poses with the former. Practically no Elly! Totally ZERO Elle! Heh, artists do have moral standards! As for Zestiria: a bunch of Edna (pretty clean and cute.) and some Alisha and Lailah. Practically no Rose. Do porn artists hate Rose, or does everyone?)

As for the Alisha hack: if you somehow disable the plot flags that say 'Alisha must leave the party' then she will stay, right? But to make her armatize... you'd have to add a line to her code that says 'this character can armatize', or even 'this character who looks, fights and equips the same gear as Alisha is actually ROSE'. And she would use Armatized Rose's 3D model and stuff.

edited 16th Nov '15 7:23:40 AM by FlightMaster

Japan still hates Rose with a passion and I mean seriously hates her. since she basically takes the place of the one character that everyone actually liked and pointlessly shoved her into the background. Doubly worse considering Alisha was advertised as the main girl of the story.

The fan reaction was huge and Namco had to do damage control for months, including releasing the DLC episode for free. Going so far as to basically announce the next game when they had very clearly nothing but a character design and a boat in an attempt to try to get people off the subject.

Sadly that reaction killed any future DLC plans for Zestiria even though they kinda them set up.

Also Elle is a true kid she won't get that kind of fan art.

edited 16th Nov '15 9:20:30 AM by Memers

Shame. I like both characters. I bet rose's story was going to be DLC too. But nope.

It's disappointing, honestly. I liked Rose as a character, even if I felt like the whole assassin thing was glossed over a bit more than it should have been. It seems like it's not so much her they hate as her position in the story, and that's really unfortunate. Probably doesn't help that these hardcore otaku types seem to like their girls sweet and innocent and demure and all that, and Rose is none of those things.

But honestly, I still think the level of outrage that it prompted in fans was disgusting. Being upset with elements of the game is one thing, but harassing developers online is nowhere near OK. Harassing Rose's voice actress is extra levels of bullshit.

edited 16th Nov '15 9:37:53 AM by SapphireBlue

4xBasically the scene that has Alicia leave sets her being in the party to "false" and the hack sets it back to "true", easy to find out when you track the content of your RAM and then ask what values have changed after said scene.

Assuming the programmers went with an object-based approach, armatisation removes the instances of Rose and the Seraph from the battlefield and then creates an instance of the armatized character at the coordinates of Roses instance.

Replacing Rose with Alisha in this equation shouldn't be that much of a problem, I think the bigger issue is allowing Alisha to trigger armatisation in the first place, since her object probably lacks the corresponding function.

Adding this would actually require manipulating the code. Of course this is all baseless speculation on my part.

edited 16th Nov '15 9:34:27 AM by Kiefen

Gonna be blunt: I didn't care for Alisha at all. I found her to be too idealistic without the strength of character to back it up, so she just comes across as a bit wishy-washy.

Rose is great. She's so far away from the 'ideal feminine' type, and I really like her interaction with Sorey. It's nice seeing two people from opposite sexes just getting along as friends.