VideoGame They Got it Half Right
The Tales series has been one most popular and long-running JRPG series exported to the United States. It has an exciting and battle system that is very fast paced and attentive, a wide variety of environments, as well as unique abilities and techniques with which to customize your characters. However, what makes it so notable is the way it tells a story, building a world and at the same time deconstructing, creating a vortex of drama, suspense,comedy and tragedy to draw in the player. Vesperia was fun, but I never was sucked in and upon playing a second time, I realized how awful the story was for this entry.
The characters for this game are irritating. They are largely composed of walking two-dimensional RPG stereotypes. Rita is an insufferably abusive tsundere that I wanted to throw off the edge of the final stage dungeon by the end of the game. Karol is the annoying tag along kid with a voice like nails on chalk board. Raven and Judith have phoned in voice actors with the emotional range of a teaspoon. Estelle is a Colette expy, but far more bland and unoriginal. Yuri is a Karma Houndini with a strong affinity for self-righteous speeches and indecisive monologuing. They are all flawed characters but instead of trying to improve themselves like previous protagonists they instead decide it better to spout off their Freudian Excuses as if it completely justifies their actions. A good way to examine a story is comparing characters at the beginning to their personalities at the end. Unfortunately, Vesperia's characters remain stagnant and that's the worst insult I can give to a Tales game.
The schizophrenic plot does the game no favors. The story starts as a bunch of unexciting guild quests, switches to a transparent political drama, before plunging head deep into a "Save The World" plot. The pacing for this game is terrible, making the player slog through boring exposition dumps before throwing five curve balls. The villain for this game is the unholy union of Sephiroth and Captain Planet with all the Narm of both perfectly preserved. Even worse, the main characters constantly kiss this guy's ass and in spite of causing the deaths of countless innocents and trying to kill more, he is "forgiven" and allowed to live.
Vesperia is a fun game but do yourself a favor and skip the plot. There's even an achievement for it.
VideoGame My First Tales game
Tales of Vesperia was my first introduction into the Tales series and I have to say, I'm glad it was. It's a really good game and one of my favorite JRP Gs. There are plenty of reasons why I really liked this game. One of the reasons is the art. The art is quite well done and still manages to hold up. I really love the designs and the colors used in the game. The art, overall, is quite great. The characters are another reason I like this game. I love the interactions between the main characters. The interactions could be funny or serious and it was great watching it. I also really liked how the characters developed. By the end of the game, you could see how much they had changed . Finally, the combat system is another reason why I really liked this game. It's fast and fun. Doing the special moves never got tiring and it was always a delight to defeat a tough enemy against all odds. Overall, the combat was quite great.
If this game has some flaws it can found in the pacing and length of the story. While the story overall wasn't bad and had some interesting twists and turns, it could have a little better. The pacing felt somewhat slow at times, and I felt like it could've been a little faster. There were times during scenes that I wished that they could get to the point a lot faster. I also thought that the plot could drag on at times. The game also should've let you skip dialogue in order to get to the battles.
Despite these things, I enjoyed my time with Tales of Vesperia. While not a flawless game, it was quite entertaining and had enough charm, good characters, decent plot, and great combat to get me to stick to it. If you want to get into the series, then I suggest you try this game. You won't regret it.
VideoGame Good, but not the best Tales game
I first got into the Tales series when Symphonia came back on the GameCube, and later played Abyss when it was released on the 3DS. I'd heard good things about Vesperia, which is apparently one of the best games in the series, but while I enjoyed it, I didn't like it as much as the other two Tales games I played.
The plot is difficult to describe in a nutshell, but it starts with a young man named Yuri hunting down a thief and ends with him and his companions saving the world. The plot doesn't seem terribly focused, and much of the early game involves a variety of different subplots that often get resolved in optional quests, if they aren't forgotten about entirely. The relatively slow pace early on, and relatively underwhelming central conflict, made it difficult for me to get invested, and I almost lost interest at a few points.
The characters are a mixed bag. Yuri's a fairly well-written protagonist with an interesting subplot about his vigilante actions, albeit one that is unceremoniously wrapped up. Yuri's best friend Flynn makes a good foil to him, although it's a bit surprising that he wasn't used as much in the original release of the game. On the minus side, Karol is rather annoying, and seems out of his depth as the eventual leader of the group. Raven's a somewhat better-written character, but the game doesn't get nearly as much mileage out of The Reveal about him as it could have.
Like other Tales games, the game features a fun battle system in which you control one party member manually and fight alongside up to three computer-controlled party members. Combat is fast-paced and requires you to effectively use standard attacks and artes in conjunction with your allies to defeat your enemies.
The game doesn't have the best difficulty curve. Gattuso, an early boss, is far too difficult for when he's first encountered, due to being several levels ahead of the average party (see his entry on the That One Boss page for more). Later on, I found that my party was falling behind the enemies' levels, evidenced by scanning the enemies and hearing party members talk about how hard the encounters would be, and ultimately opted to lower the difficulty to Easy rather than level grind. It also doesn't help that your party tends to quickly run out of TP, at least when AI party members are following the default behavior assigned to them.
Dungeons are fairly well-designed and diverse, but one thing I missed from Symphonia was the Sorcerer's Ring changing function in certain dungeons, which allowed a greater variety of puzzles in that game. One other Sorcerer's Ring-related change I disliked was how it doesn't always stun the enemies it hits, making it unreliable when it comes to avoiding battles.
If you're a fan of Tales games and don't mind the problems I mentioned, I recommend that you give Vesperia a try. If, however, you're looking to get a start in the Tales series, I'd recommend Symphonia or Abyss instead, assuming you have a console that can play them.