Tales Series

That Lorelei only says the Score forseeing destruction was undone innthe ending says that even the Replicas and the destruction of the world Van sought was itself part of the prophecy. That's why they pointed out the Tower with sacrificing the Replicas was itself a Prophecy Twist and still part of the score because it fulfilled the same purpose as the destruction of Akzeriuth.

This does imply Luke changed destiny because he was a clone of Lorelei, but that says to me that Asch could have too if he wasn't beingnthe second worst.

He'd already turned himself into a monster before that point. That was just the final nail in what sanity he jad left.

Edited by OmegaRadiance on Jun 12th 2020 at 1:30:30 AM

It wasnt Anise the one feeling pity for Mohs, that was Tear. And we already agreed it was a dumb comment. Anise, though? I am sure she was metaphorically dancing over his tomb after his body decomposed before their eyes. That said...

—Kimlasca's nobles' My God, What Have I Done? moment:

Azkeiruth's case was like the typical tale where a monster threatens a town periodically, and the only way to slow it is human sacrifices. Then a hero appears and proves that the monster can be killed and stops the sacrifices. Are you honestly telling me that...

1) ... people who had to begrudginly and painfully send a family member to their death cause they didn't know better...

2) ... and some crazy fool who wants to KEEP the sacrifice system going AFTER it was shown there is another way...

... are EQUALLY guilty of 'murder'?

Can you really, truly say that with a straight face?

The fact that Kimlasca's nobles agreed to help the party avoid more tragedies shows they are HUMANS that learn from their mistakes, unlike Mohs.

'They got off easy'! Well, now that they were proven wrong, all victims of past tragedies and wars are now weighting on their conscience. Isnt that enough pain for you?

Prophecy Twist stuff:

'The sacred flame will kill 10k people above the ruins of a mine' prophecy was seemingly avoided, then resurfaced once Asch was willing to kill 10k replicas above that tower, built... over the ruins of a mine! This could be one example...

How do we know the Score didnt just Loophole Abuse itself into being fulfilled anyway whenever someone tried to defy it?

Yes, the Score is a poor concept. As poor as Malevolence, but they are made to show us as players what manner of Crapsack World the characters live in. In an ideal world you can say Screw Destiny, but in one with 100% fixed prophecies... the first question you should ask is 'can you really?'

Edited by FlightMaster on Jun 13th 2020 at 2:05:36 PM

uuuugh I have a feeling this is going to get out of hand

also her showing sympathy to Mohs is another reason I don't like Tear.

I admit I was getting too hotheaded. Sorry. Last time it happened was when someone compared Yuri killing complete bastards to him killing the Don.

But I rest my point. Mohs is so FAR above the King and Duke in the Complete Monster Rank that it riles me up when Omega says they are just as bad. When someone kills it should not be easily forgiven... but Mohs' was repeated and premeditated murder compared to the former ones' attempts to atone.

Like comparing, lets say... Regal and Vharley.

Edited by FlightMaster on Jun 13th 2020 at 2:27:06 PM

Except it never actually feels like that at all. That's the point. Even when I would go around talking to everyone in the game that I can when doing story events, I never, never, once got the genuine feeling they actually regretted all the death they caused. The only thing that made the King change is that he realized his daughter does matter regardless of blood ties, which has nothing to do with the Score, and even instory it was noted he's a bad king whose daughter was more popular than him in his own capital.

And the idea it was painful is nonsense because Lukes father never got attached to him to begin with so he could let the kid die, it doesn't make up for anything, especially afterwards Luke goes so far deep into self-destructive tendencies and how much he tries to get Asch to go back to them because he's done nothing to prove Luke has value to him. Unlike his wife.

Just cause you feel bad doesn't mean anything, you have to do actual, long reaching change if you want to prove you're better, but the story doesn't try this with the Duke. The King does more to make genuinely amends with his daughter than that man ever does.

It's the same for why most of the cast being assholes doesn't endear them to me even when they start being less assholish later, because Guys the only one who realized he should have done more to help Luke, and Ion saw little value to his own life for being a Replica too.

Like if that works for you, fine, but it did not work for me storywise.

Edited by OmegaRadiance on Jun 13th 2020 at 6:22:48 AM

Arise officially delayed

Not exactly a surprise, given the total lack of news + Covid messing everything up, but it's good to have confirmation

Edited by lrrose on Jun 25th 2020 at 10:40:06 AM

Having official acknowlegement is a good thing. Still looking forward to hearing abut it when they have more to share.

So the only news is a delay? Not even any new info proper as an article?

I just wanna know when Crestoria's out.

Meanwhile, very slowly progressing through Abyss, currently at... I do not recall the name, but it involved collecting coloured orbs. I am currently very indifferent towards Luke, I guess. He's traded in being obnoxiously hateable for being aggressively... there, I suppose. Pretty much everyone else except maybe Tear is more interesting though and they're all still fun.

Also, Yuri's Guardian Field is just under 7000 uses now. Why can't the AI just use this move properly I don't wanna spam it manually.

Something I remember hearing about the Score was that it never went off track and this is because the score isn't predicting the future it's telling people about the past specifically the planets memory about the past. If I remember correctly the Score is closer to the sports almanac from Back to the Future 2 then actually predicting the future.

@ Delayed Arise: NOOOOOOOO! *cough* And now the Bandai half is helping with Pokemon Snap 2 so we cant know when we will hear from it again. Dammit.

If the Score is the planet's memories from the past, up until its eventual destruction, then Yulia has Future Sight instead of merely being able to communicate with Lorelei. Unless Lorelei is a pan-temporal being that can see past, present and future at the same time? Then again the folks at Auldrant made it a Self-Fulfilling Prophecy due to complacency.

'Items brought from the future can change depending on actions made in the past'. I dont think the sports almanac example is valid here. The almanac, like the picture or the newspapers, COULD change depending on actions made in the present (lets say someone blackmails one of the teams to lose the match) so its only valid for as long as people's choices remain unaltered.

Yulia's stones never changed, even if our heroes tried to do things differently. The prophecy we thought was related to Azkeiruth happened, but later and somewhere else. So question is: was it a massive (one time) coincidence, or the Score used Loophole Abuse to make itself true?

What is the game's rule about time travelling, anyway? Set in stone past, rewrittable past, multi dimension theory or Magical Video Tape theory?

(I observed we always play / discuss more or less the same stuff. Sapphi and my own's back and forth regarding Rebirth was fresh.)

Edited by FlightMaster on Jun 29th 2020 at 11:27:06 AM

Yeah, I don't think we'll hear anything of A Rise for a long long time, personally.

We do tend to retread the same discussions here. I feel like after three or four times around the block on a given topic, I’m usually happy to stay out of it.

Also, I remember the Rebirth discussion, but I don’t know much about Rebirth and wasn’t a part of it. I went back to check and it was mostly lu that you were talking about Rebirth with. (Unless there’s another thread regular whose name can abbreviate to Sapphi, and I don’t think there is.)

Edited by SapphireBlue on Jun 29th 2020 at 8:43:13 AM

That tends to happen in a lot of threads, especially when there's not much else to talk about.

Yeah, I get the same vibe too. Especially when that one word (starts with "M", ends in "lence") is involved, it gets so draining because its the saaaame thiiiiing ooover and oooover. Its why I've spent less and less time with te Tales series and more time with games and stuff like Yakuza and Gundam. If Arise got new info I might stick around more and engage but the fact that the only news in a long time is a delay and its likely to be all we get for maybe the rest of the year...I get circumstances are an issue but it also shows that they....aren't optimistic about it. So why should I?

I guess Crestoria is coming out soon (hopefully anyway), so that's at least something? I'm likely gonna give it a try, see how they handle the inevitable gacha elements, and see how the story measures up. Tales of Link was cute and improved a bit over time, if never quite being up to the level of the main games, and Tales of the Rays was wonderful, with a solid story, solid gameplay, and a good cast, but then the Global version died, which sucked. Hopefully Crestoria is at least decent comparatively.

Thank God for those Rays translation channels on youtube.

Link was cute because it gave me Sara and she was a joy.

@Flight Master I wouldn't be surprised if the Lorelei was a pan-temporal being, plus one of the things to note is that the score uses a lot of vague stuff. As to why I believe the score never went off track here is a link, it shows an interesting take on things.

Link

Man, heavy! The LP'er theorizes that Lorelei knew the WHOLE plot of the game from the start and s/he abused ambiguity and goalpost moving so as to not give it away to in-game characters... so Lorelei is a bug crawling around the Fourth Wall.

@ Sapphi: OH RIGHT. It was directed to Phi Sat, or 'Phi'. I had a brain fart and wrote Sapphi.

Lu was able to discuss about Rebirth because she has played it, since she knows runes. Thats why a lot of Tales games are not discussed very much: most didnt play them because UGH RUNES.

@ Kombat: discussion about [the M word] usually goes nowhere because its a flawed plot device. The villains from Zesty back their actions upon 'the M word is a natural occurrence among humans, we should not try to erradicate it' when they didnt know (and WE didnt either until Berseria) that it was not normal. Heavenly Seraphs increased humans' M-word output to 1000x when something like 2x is enough to make most criminals go hellion.

Unless there is a third game in the Zesty-berse where we travel to the Heavenly plane to kick ass and break the curse made by those jerks... Sorey's dream is hopeless. Glenwood's doomed to be a Crapsack World.

So yeah, on a different tangent... remember the Tales Series Ps 4 triple pack? When is the Switch gonna have something similar? (PS 1 games, and even PS 2, are perfectly possible) Or what would be their next Surprise Localization after Vesperia?

Edited by FlightMaster on Jun 30th 2020 at 2:13:10 PM

Maybe a proper Abyss remake? Or the Xillias.

Edited by Kiefen on Jun 30th 2020 at 3:01:06 PM

A decent version of Phantasia released for the west would be a pleasant change.

Edited by SkormSnow-Strider on Jul 1st 2020 at 9:02:15 AM

Maybe translae that Destiny remake if that game is so important.

> Does some endgame Vesperia stuff > Yuri learns Frigid Gale

please no i thought i was done with this

Also, those postgames dungeons were... kind of fine? Necropolis kinda dragged but I liked the gimmick there. Labyrinth was... somehow more of a slog despite being much shorter. At some point I might just rush the final boss again and be done with the game. Auto-grinding artes aside, I think I've ended up pouring close to 200 hours into this game. And have not even come close to vaguely understanding the combos outside of using an arte at the end of basic hits. Everyone else feels much more difficult to use than Yuri too, so meh.

I'd still say it's my second favourite Tales overall, though. Far more playable than Vesperia, overall much better cast than Abyss, Berseria has it beat in almost every way for me.

Speaking of pointless grinding and Abyss though, I decided the best use of my time was to max out the coloured orb's levels for all of Anise's artes. I haven't even seen any yellow ones yet.

Vesperia is still firmly in first place for me. Berseria would beat it if the battle system did not have that annoying snowball effect of losing souls > harder to kill enemies > easier to lose MORE souls > defeat. And healing spells being nerfed to uselessness above Hard. Its clear it is a Team Destiny game. When you are being destroyed in Vesperia coming back is as easy as swap to Estelle > Overlimit 1 > two quick, uninterruptable Nurses. Now the boss is sweating bricks.

That and costumes. Tons of unique, well designed costumes >>> super boring waitress + swimwear and ridiculous Normin fursuits.

Ah, the Bonus Dungeon duo. The bad part about the Necropolis is not knowing where the heck you are inside the maze, either in-battle or outside. An awful slog without a map. And the Labyrinth of Memories' awfulness comes from the stupid Fake Gald + the boss at the end spamming uninterruptable First Aid and, like the Necropolis, lack of maps and Checkpoint Starvation.

When I finally start my copy of Switch'peria I dont think I would even attempt them. I was burned on them and the copy of Vesperia I was playing was not even mine!

@ Kombat: they totally should localize Destiny R! Its only what, the BEST 2d Tales in the multiverse? And the Director Cut perfected the perfection.

(Insert meme here: 100% power Cell boasting about 'perfection'.)

Edited by FlightMaster on Jul 8th 2020 at 2:26:28 PM