" But if you decide to I tried to go light on spoiling anything major so you should be fine to read it if something oddly possesses you to want to read all of that. XDGame: Tales of Vesperia
System: Xbox 360
Release Date: 08/26/08 (U.S.)
Introduction: Tales of Vesperia is the first title in the Tales series to be release in the new console generation for the Microsoft Xbox 360, and is the first game in the series to be released in high-definition. Tales of Vesperia was created by Namco Tales Studio (the studio responsible for selling the Gamecube sleeper-hit Tales of Symphonia, and Tales of the Abyss on the Playstation 2 respectfully.)
Story: The game takes place in the world of Terca Lumireis, a world populated and supported by ancient technology known as Blastia. Blastia are responsible for many of the vital functions of the world from creating barriers in cities to protect people for monsters, to aiding people in fighting by enhancing their physical and magical abilities. The main protagonist, Yuri Lowell, is an ex-Imperial Knight from the Lower Quarter of the imperial capital of Zaphias, who eventually finds himself on a journey to retrieve a stolen Aquae Blastia, but instead finds himself on a journey to protect the world and find the true meaning of justice. The plot itself is riddled with clichés and isn’t particularly innovative, but does manage to hold a player’s interest while having several plot twists to make the game interesting and never too predictable. The pacing seems a little slower than some of the previous titles in the series, and takes several hours before the story begins to go anywhere in particular, but the story itself never becomes boring.
The Tales series has always excelled in character development, and this game is no different. The use of short dialogue scenes between characters, known as “skits” give the sense of closeness between the characters while sharing in their background, feelings and sometimes just hilarious conversations. The characters themselves are also highly developed with the main character, Yuri, in particular standing out as a charismatic, yet sometimes blatant young man, who seeks out his own understanding of justice regardless of the consequences it may ensue. The female main character, Estellise, in contrast, is a princess who has little knowledge of the outside world aside from what she reads in books, which gives her the stereotypical “book smart, but not street smart” demeanor. The other characters are Karol, a young boy from the Hunting Blades guild who ironically has a fear of big monsters, Rita a self-proclaimed genius-mage with an anti-social attitude, Raven an eccentric “old man” from the guild of Altosk, Judith a mysterious young woman, who with her partner, seek to destroy Blastia, and Repede, Yuri’s canine companion who is often the calmest member of the party.
Gameplay: Tales of Vesperia is similar to other recent Tales titles such as Tales of the Abyss. Gameplay consists of your typical RPG elements of exploring towns and dungeons, interacting with people, solving simple puzzles, and fighting monsters all with the underlying mission of saving the world from an impending doom.
The combat in Tales of Vesperia is where the game shines in particular. Battles take place on a separate field from exploration with a simple transition. Enemies appear on screen when in either a dungeon or on the world map, which means like several of the past Tales titles that there are no random encounters. The battles take place in real-time on a modified version of the Linear-Motion Battle System (LMBS) first used on the original Tales title, Tales of Phantasia. LMBS operates similarly to a fighting game in which you fight on a 3D field while running up to enemies and pressing the A button to attack and using special attacks with the B button to perform strings of combos. Attacking and stringing combos until all the enemies are defeated is the basic formula for the game, but it is not all that the battle mode has to offer.
First introduced in Abyss, Tales of Vesperia brings back skills, which are used to enhance your battling experience by either improving your abilities, giving you extra options in battle such as backstepping, or magic guarding, or transforming your special attacks into more powerful forms. The battle menu, accessed by pressing the Y button, pauses the game and allows you to perform simple managing tasks during battle such as using items, changing strategies or running away from impossible situations. Unique to Tales of Vesperia is the Encounter Link system, when more than one enemy grouping is on the screen at a time they can swarm together to fight your party if they are in close proximity adding more enemies to the battle and increasing the challenge as well as the rewards. Tales of Vesperia also introduces new attack methods such as Burst Artes, which can be used with the Overlimit ability brought back from Symphonia and Abyss, to allow more combo chaining. Altered Artes are Artes are modified special attacks that can be learned with certain skills equipped to the characters and can even be learned and used as regular Artes if they are used enough in battle.
Graphics: Using the advanced hardware available on the Xbox 360, the game looks beautiful and runs smoothly on its native 720p resolution, but also looks good on standard definition. The beautiful cel-shaded graphics, similar to Eternal Sonata, gives the game a beautiful anime-esque feel with vibrant colors and simple backgrounds. The environments themselves, while not technically beautiful, are breathtaking with color and the characters themselves show details in their interactions and emotions on a level not previously seen in the Tales series. While the real-time action of the game itself looks beautiful, the cut scenes themselves are generic and are virtually similar as they have been for the past several years. Loading times in particular are virtually non-existent with the exception of the first battle load time once the 360 has first been turned on. The game does experience some slowdowns when there are multiple enemies on screen as well as multiple characters performing actions such as casting spells and using physical attacks, but is rarely noticeable until the final hour or two of the game.
Sound: The music in the game, composed by Sakuraba and Aoyama is done to the typical high standard brought on by the Tales series with a mixture of guitar-drivin’ battle theme music, to a more subdued ambient music in towns and dungeons. While not particularly excelling for the Tales series, the music is comparatively better than many other RPG titles. Several tracks have been recycled from previous titles such as Symphonia and Abyss, which at first may seem disappointing and lacking from the team, rather instead gives a nice nostalgic factor to anyone who has played the previous Tales titles in the past. The game also has a significant amount of voice-acting with some voice actors who may not be well-known, but portray the characters very well. Most events are voiced as well as all skits similar to Legendia. The game supports both typical stereo settings and 5.1 channel surround sound.
Playtime/Replay Value: The main story itself, while not partaking in side quests or heaving grinding will take the average player around sixty hours to complete, with several extra hours needed to complete the copious amount of side quests in the game. Multiple plays are encouraged by use of the GRADE shop, which you can use to buy enhancements, skills, or transfer date from a previous play with the GRADE accumulated through plays; and multiple plays are also needed in order to complete everything in the game and receive the total 1,000 Gamerscore. The Xbox 360’s use of achievements is well implemented in the game, by adding a bit of challenge to the game, most notably during boss fights in which additional strategy is often needed in order to complete hidden objectives known as Secret Achievements. Those who bought the game to play through it once will have gotten their money’s worth, but those who want to buy a title worthy of multiple plays will also not be disappointed as expected of the Tales series.
General Scores:
Story: 7.5 out of 10
Gameplay: 9.5 out of 10
Graphics: 9.0 out of 10
Sound: 8.5 out of 10
Playtime/Replay Value: 10/10
Overall: 9.0 out of 10