Impressions: Tales of Vesperia
I sat down this weekend with a copy of Tales of Vesperia prepared to be whisked away into a land of magic and mystery. So far I've taken on the role of Yuri, a purple haired former knight who in the opening movie I mistook for a girl. I've made a few friends, traveled to different towns, and conquered a handful of dungeons. It isn't looking like it'll be redefining the RPG genre, but will I be grinding my way to the ending with a song in my heart, or a bottle of vodka in my hand?
Find out after the jump.
Get used to the A button because you're going to be pressing it a lot. Battles are done in a hybrid of real time with pauses for selecting spells and items. Your basic attack is done with A, while pushing B and the left stick in a certain direction unleashes some more powerful moves which drain your TP (think MP, but with a T) While many people laud the ability to see enemies on screen instead of having random battles, the end result is the same. If you don't battle almost every monster you come across, you'll end up woefully underpowered when it comes time to the boss battles. Once in a skirmish, you control the movement of one character, defaulting to Yuri but able to be switched via some overly complicated menus. You have the option of moving back and forth with the left control stick or by holding down the left trigger you can move freely about the arena. Starting out I found the movement rather clunky especially when I tried to freely move around and ended with Yuri facing away from enemies and being zapped of his HP.
Outside of battles characters are able to be customized with abilities they learn during battle known as artes, as well as skills they gain from weapons and armor. The artes are generally offensive in nature with some healing and buffing magic for the mages. Skills tend to be stat boosts as well as some extra moves like the ability to jump backwards during a battle. Equipping certain weapons give you access to these skills, and fighting in battles allow you to master the skill without having the weapon equipped anymore. Not exactly winning any prizes for originality, are we fellas? Those who have become fans of item creation will be happy to know characters can synthesize weapons, armor, and items in shops while also using ingredients to prepare meals on the road. So far I've found that shops carry more powerful weapons than the ones I can create, so synthesis is mostly useful for creating weapons to nag skills off of.
Tales of Vesperia sticks with the series trademark shell shaded style and in high definition the game plays like a 3-D anime. Where games like Eternal Sonata used this style to convey a beautiful almost expressionistic world, in Tales of Vesperia the style sticks closely to its anime influence, by simplifying the character models and placing them in highly detailed backgrounds. While I've yet to traverse a great portion of the world, the areas I've seen so far are stylish yet a bit clichéd. I've been in a tomb, a forest, a foresty hill, and a cave or two. The towns themselves benefit more than the dungeons with backdrops often containing more action that the foreground.
I still have a long way to go in the story and thus far the main quest isn't all that interesting. My band of rapscallions, which include nobles, thieving mages, sword wielding dogs, among others, began by running from town to town in search of the knight Flynn, who has a habit of leaving town a minute before I get there. Alongside this extended search for Flynn are a plot involving the mysterious blastia, which bear more than a passing resemblance both in look and function to materia from Final Fantasy VII. The blastia re able to be used for magic, special skills, as well as create barriers around cities to protect them from wandering beasties. Someone is stealing these little artifacts and the gang is trying to figure out who. Sure that's all well and good but all of this takes a backseat to the interaction between characters. Coming off of Infinite Undiscovery I am ecstatic to once again be playing through a game where character is key. At certain moments in the game you can activate skits between your party by pushing the "back" button on the controller. These skits play out through animated character portraits wherein your characters do everything from talk about their histories, the quest your on, or harass each other to the point of tears. I'm pleased that so far I've yet to see a brooding hero, everyone has a sense of humor and a range of emotion, which the voice acting perfectly emotes. If I'm going to be on a sixty hour journey, I'd rather my companions be sarcastic and mischievous instead of tortured and emo.
As I said at the beginning Tales of Vesperia isn't offering anything new in the gameplay department. While the story so far cannot be confused with a compelling narrative the characters are likeable and even entertaining to hear bicker and goof around. If the battles remain solid and the story finds some much needed depth I can see this being a recommended title for those looking for the most traditional of JRPGs. Expect my full review sometime next week once I fight my final fight and watch the credits roll.
TheDoctor
Posted to Hot Stuff, Reviews, Video Games on 15 September 2008
· Comments (9)
Other stuff like this: impressions, namco bandai, rpg, tales of vesperia
During my entire playthrough I never saw his hair as being purple, and even now I don't. The picture you have chosen it is clearly black, specifically, black the way it looks in light.
That said I enjoyed Vesperia for what it was, a traditional entry into the Tales series. It provided what I wanted it to, beautifully. My main complaint would be that the music was severely lacking.
I "new game +ing" Tales of Symphonia right now (3rd time through), impatiently waiting for the sequel. This is looking mighty tempting as well, to tide me over. Can't wait for your full review.
I may be accused of being a PS3 fanboy (even though I don't own one yet), but I wish the japanese had boycotted this game, forcing the publisher to port this entry in a series that has always appeared on sony consoles. I just don't want to buy a 360 just for this game and maybe Star Ocean 4, all the other j-rpgs to get a 360 exclusive have been substandard so don't try to convince me with Blue Dragon or Indefinite Undiscovery.
Where as the PS3 with its no RPGs yet is so much better?
I have both, but I easily have 20+ games on my 360, while only 5 or so on my PS3.
Oh and Lost Oddyssey was good. Not great or anything, but quite good.
Yep, less than 2 hours pass before someone comes along to bash the ps3. The 360 has been out for three years and at best there's 2 or 3 games I have an interest in on its release list, whereas I don't even own a ps3 yet and I already have 12 games for it on my shelf in anticipation for when they finally make up their mind about backwards compatability and there's a definitive version of it I can get. Also my 'games I intend to buy' has another dozen ps3 exclusives that will be released in the next year or two.
I'm now a 3rd of the way through Vesperia (I know because I got the achievement for completing part 1 of 3) and I'm loving it. The Tales series has always delivered great characters that have more depth than any other series out there.
To James: I hate burst your bubble, but saying that the Tales series has "always appeared on Sony Consoles" simply is not true. Tales of Phantasia, the first game in the series, was a SNES game. Then, more recently, Tales of Symphonia, considered the "FF7" of the Tales series (though personally I think Abyss was better), was released first on Gamecube (and in the US, only on Gamecube). And now the sequel to Tales of Symphonia is going to be released exclusively for Wii, showing that Symphonia did much better on Gamecube since the sales and fanbase for that game are on the Nintendo system. There's also Tales of the Tempest and the upcoming Tales of Hearts, both of which were on the DS. So yes, a majority of Tales games have appeared on Sony systems, but when the first game in the series was on a non-Sony system, and the most popular game in the series was on a non-Sony system, then it's not fair to say that the series should only appear on Sony systems in the future.
As for other 360 RPGs, you're right that Blue Dragon is subpar, but Lost Odyssey is amazing, and shouldn't be written off just because the developers also made Blue Dragon.
Ok, I'm not saying that the playstation series should be a walled off stronghold for all rpgs, but since so many of the tales series have appeared on one or more of them I think it's only fair to the majority of fans that this latest entry get a multi-platform release.
With so many titles getting releases on both the 360 and PS3, it's much less likely that the average person will own both. We as gamers are a poor sample of the population for disproving that observation.
I'm not at all bothered by Symphonia being released for the gamecube, since it's the cube copy that I own,
Also because I love a good arguement, Tales of Phantasia was rereleased for the PSP (and I'm not old enough to remember the SNES, sorry not my fault). But the tales series in general has been poorly treated, none of the DS entries have been released in english, and tales of legendia (which is awesome) never received a PAL release so I had to import my copy.
So I admit that I'm guity of hyperboly by saying 'always', but 16 releases on the PS1, PS2 and PSP in the past decade gives it a majority share. And sure, what wasn't released on a sony console appeared on either a nintendo handheld or console, so why the hell split the series three ways by involving the 360?
Tales of Phantasia was also ported to the Gameboy Advance before the PSP. Of course, it was also ported to PS1 before that. I guess that makes Phantasia a split between Sony and Nintendo (2 with each company) but I only typically factor in the original releases, not the ports.
Anyways, I agree that Vesperia should go multi-platform. In fact, I fully expect it to, just like Namco Bandai's other RPG Eternal Sonata, which is being ported over to PS3 right now. What I disagree with are things like wishing for a boycott of the 360 version to force a PS3 version. If anything, poor sales would encourage Namco Bandai not to port the game to other systems. You should be hoping that Vesperia sells amazingly well on 360 so Namco Bandai can see that there is high demand for their game and be more likely to port it to PS3.
@James
Wow!
I'm bashing because I say that the PS3 doesn't have any true RPGs YET (which it doesn't)?
And for saying I own more games for my 360 than my PS3 (you doing pretty much the same thing in your repsone) which I own both while you have neither?
Yeah... ¬_¬