While not the most innovative or even the most original narrative to come from an RPG, the narrative in Tales of Vesperia moves at a brisk pace and keeps the player interested from start to finish. You begin the game as Yuri (who has black hair that I still think looks purple) a fallen-knight living with the poor folk in the slums of a larger city. After their water source is stolen, Yuri travels to the wealthy part of town to find the thief, gets thrown in jail, meets a princess, and eventually leaves the city in search of his buddy Flynn, a heralded knight who has gone on a pilgrimage to better himself and the world. Can you guess what happens next? If you said spunky band of good guys taking on a much larger evil to eventually save the world then give yourself a gold star! Like I said before this is not going to bring home any awards for the tale part of the game.

While the narrative itself has been seen before and even the characters fit into the traditional JRPG archetypes of wide-eyed princess, sarcastic and droll magic using woman, hyper little ruffian, among others, the game presents players with some rather nice moments. The Tales series has featured little bits of dialogue between characters referred to in-game as "skits". These appear and certain times and can be activated with the push of a button or ignored altogether. While they're not adding anything to the story, I found myself watching all of these vignettes. Many times you can get more entertainment out of two characters conversing than sweepingly epic cut scenes with clashing swords and bursts of magic.

The battle system straddles the line between turn based and real time, with the player given direct control over the movement and attacks of one character while AI handles the others. I found myself initially frustrated by this system because I oftentimes found myself battling the controls instead of the baddies. By default you can move back and forth, but using the left trigger you can move freely around the battle field. This free movement is best used to dodge attacks as the actual block button seems to have limited ability to defend. There were also times when Yuri felt like he didn't need to run at monsters and kind of strolled over. He may have a lax view of battles but c'mon man, do it for me! Attacking is handled with A and B, with the formed handling quick attacks and the latter being used to pull of special skills. You'll gain new ones over time and eventually be working the right analog stick along with every button on the pad to successfully win battles. After a few hours the controls become second nature, but that doesn't mean you can just lazily button mash. I found that boss battles in particular ramped up the difficulty and my party was near wiped out many times. Strategy comes in the form of quick thinking and strong finger control, because the monsters aren't going to go easy on you. One plus in combat that I found a treat after Infinite Undiscovery was the ability to pause combat to select items and spells. I do prefer staying alive while trying to heal my party members.

When you're not in the heat of battle you'll be exploring a larger over world and countless dungeons and towns. Towns are standard RPG issue and come with weapon and item shops where you can participate in synthesis to create new items and strengthen old weapons, Inns where you can rest and save, and a few houses to rob blind. Weapons will give you skills that through time can be learned permanently **cough** magicite **cough** with abilities ranging from stat boosts to extra defensive and offensive combat moves. Most characters are limited to one or two style of weapons and you're given limited options in choosing how you want your party to develop. I chose for well rounded characters who had large skill pools to draw from rather than going for tanks and damage dealers.

Dungeons will have your time split between battles and puzzle solving. You'll find yourself hitting switching, moving objects, and activating traps to progress to the end boss. None of the puzzles are really head-scratchingly difficult, but expect to find yourself going "Oh yeah, I have to run back to the waterfall to activate a bridge over the chasm!" more than once.

The level of presentation in Tales of Vesperia is going to be a love-it or hate-it scenario for gamers. Those that love anime inspirited design will find a simplistically beautiful world that looks especially appealing running on a high-def television. The towns were a personal favorite of mine and as I said in my initial impressions, while many have you exploring only a small part, you have a sense that these towns are actually home to many more citizens than you are able to see. Nice to see the world has a population of over 200 people. The character and monster design ditches realism in favor of fully embracing cell shading. I really would like to see a game make use of cell shading but have the characters realistically proportioned, sort of like older Disney films. You all can have Pixar-looking games, I want classic Disney.

There is an RPG mold and Tales of Vesperia has no intentions of breaking it. Yet as much as gamers are clamoring for change, sometimes a nice safe trip into the familiar is what we need. If you're a fan of traditional JRPG's then picking up this game is a no-brainer. With a solid 50 hours of gameplay you'll rarely find yourself bored as you traverse from location to location fighting your way through vicious beasts and some anime staples. The item creation system is robust and easy to use, making creating new weapons a treat rather than a chore. In the end, Tales of Vesperia works to perfect the genre rather than pushing it forward.

8 out of 10