NightstrikerX

User Score
8.8

Presentation - 9.5
Gameplay - 8.5
Value - 8.5

- Introduction -

Whenever I have visitors over and they take a peer at my game collection. They always seem to notice the mainstream games I have, often they notice the odd game out. The game this time was Tales of Vesperia. They ask "You have such well known titles as Halo 3, Mass Effect, and Fable II in your collection. But why this one?". My reply will always be.

"That is very simple. It's because Tales of Vesperia deserves to be there."

- Presentation -

If I needed to discribe Tales of Vesperia and how it presents itself in one word. I would have to pick the word "Colourful". Why? Because that's exactly what Tales of Vesperia is. I don't mean colourful in graphics either. The entire world is very rich and vibrant. Almost as if your staring at a very bright and well colourful picture. From the characters to the sound to the graphics of course. Everything about the world of Tales of Vesperia is colourful.

But let's break this down a bit; Graphically the game uses a japanese anime style of art. As evidenced by the opening intro, anime is brought straight into the gameplay as the characters models are based off anime designs. Yes, that means perfectly symmetical faces, wacky clothing, and bizzare hair styles and colors. I've found this to be well needed relief from the CGI we've been facing lately. Without a doubt CGI can look amazing, but we've seen CGI-cutscenes and animations in almost every game. Understandable too of course, developers want to capture realism in their games and CGI clearly the best way to do it. But often it's nice to be able to sit back and play a game that has cartoony graphics and very well know you're in a videogame. If your the kind of person however who doesn't like anime or cartoons. You may want to stray away.

The Art style also allows for very breathtaking scenery, while being able to freely mix in bold colors. As evidenced when comparing a character to a town. I generally hold graphics on a very low regard, so I often have little to say about it. Considering the fact that I've said as much as I have already. Colour me impressed.

Sweet! Port town! Where's the nearest pub?

What always has and always will capture my attention is audio. I'm a firm believer that audio is just as important as graphics, if not more important. While your eyes will always be watching the game, your ears bring you into the game. Being able to close your eyes and imagine yourself instead of the hero getting completely owned because you took your eyes off the game should be something that every game needs to achieve for. Bonus points if you can cut out the "getting owned" part.

Tales of Vesperia comes at no slotch when it comes to music as well. It's theme song is Kane o Narashite or Ring a Bell by Bonnie Pink. A very upbeat JPop song that's likely to get caught in your head. Luckily for people who are not fans of JPop will be happy to know that the song never is in the game in lyrical format. You will hear it occassional as instrumental, but that isn't a problem.

Battle Music, Town Music has always been important to JRPGs. They get you pumped up for the action, hearing a excellent Boss fight music has this strange thing with gamers as though they know that this truly is a epic battle and need to give it their all. Tales of Vesperia has this, infact it was composed by famed composer Motoi Sakuraba, whom also composed for titles such as Valkyrie Profile, Star Ocean, Rogue Galaxy and Infinite Undiscovery. To name a few. This game may be considered by fans as one of his greater works, the themes are fast and frantic when they need to be, soft and suave at other times, and they even got a track that discribe silliness whenever such a oppurtinity presents itself.

DIVINE WOLF FA... I mean. Tenacity! a Example of the game's amazing soundtrack at work.

Overall tales of Vesperia presents it strong. Very strong as it dang well needs to be. Since the game is weaker in it's gameplay aspects, the relies on this to bring it back up. If ya want to hear why I call the game weaker on it's gameplay aspects. Proceed forth.

"Because Blaine, tales of vesperia is one of the most beautiful games this generation."

- Gameplay -

While Tales of Vesperia is fantastic on it's presentation, I had issues regarding it's gameplay. Particularly around the areas of it's battle system and characters. Although major at first, I was able to see beyond my issues and bring myself to see beyond that. Let's take a quick dip into it's story and characters as that's always a important part of JRPGs.

Meet Yuri Lowell. Hold on.

Isn't he pretty? I want to brush my fingers though his hair; and I'm just a sentence.

Meet Yuri Lowell. His story begins when something bad happens to where he lives, he tries to find out what happened just to be thrown in jail. His only clue is a name, while escaping he comes accross a girl and with nothing but this clue and this girl as his companion. His story helps change the fate of the world.

Sounds familiar? That's because it is.

One of the most common complaints about Tales of Vesperia is that. Dispite what many people have said, we've played it before. If you've played a good number of JRPGs but havn't played Tales of Vesperia. You've played it before. Particularly when it comes to the other Tales games. Yes, Tales of Vesperia borrows so heavily from other JRPGs when it comes to it's story, that it's often to find yourself surprised. As I've read before that was very well put. "If you see a character and guess it's a princess. It's likely a princess.". That pretty much discribes it, if you see a town it's likely you'll find some issue with it and have one of your characters drag your party half-way around the globe to save the town.

That being said, while the story does lend itself to be predictable. I did find moments, infact quite a few moments where yes I had the deja vu of experiencing this before. But tales of vesperia did it so much better, not only that. But I've also found myself shocked at a few moments (People who've played though tales of vesperia may be able to guess what moments I'm talking about).

I did like how the characters interacted and eventually grew. I won't get into this for spoiler sake but know that it's there and that it's something to enjoy.

There are also a good number of sidequests, this being a JRPG unlike it's WPG cousin. It doesn't rely on the sidequests heavily, and you'll often miss them and have to head back just to get them. But they are fun to scout out for and do whenever you see them, but it's too common to miss them all together.

I have to comment about, even though it's just a footnote is that the story is a bit strange in it's structure as it feels like chapters of a bigger story. When you play though the game you'll often find yourself constantly strife to a goal and reach it much quicker than other games let you. Then the game unfolds as you find yourself pitted agaist a new enemy. While some may complain at it, I found it quite interesting to have "multiple end bosses" and see how they were all interwoven.

The second most important thing I value in a JRPG is combat. Combat to Tales Fans will be very familiar, infact. So familiar that if you've played tales of abyss. You may be struck with a case of deja vu. Since as with almost every tales game. Tales of Vesperia uses a slightly improved or evolved version of the last games battle system. New to this game? Encounter Linking, where encounters on the map may be linked together to form bigger battles of up to 8 enemies on screen at once. I've had several fights where I've fought 12, maybe more enemies in a single battle. Clearly taking advantage of the next generations improved hardware, battles feel bigger and more epic as you progress though the game.

That being said, I can't help but shake my fist at namco. Is it so hard to ask for a complete revision of the LMBS(Linear Motion Battle System)? LMBS was first used back in 95' with Tales of Phantasia, and every sequel has had the system upgrade a little, and a little, and a little untill we're at "Evolved Flex-Range Linear Motion Battle System" (EFR-LMBS).

Kogah... Kohagazan? Aww forget it. Tiger Blade!

However, getting down to the nitty gritty of it. Combat is easy to learn and moderately difficult to master. Many players can breeze though battles at normal difficult with little difficulty. There's a button for your standard attacks, there's a button for your special attacks. Using Up/Down/Right/Left while attacking either standard or special causes you to modify your attack chain slightly. At later levels, you can begin chaining artes together to form complex combos.

The downside to combat now is that with Xbox 360 achievements and soon-to-be PS3 trophies. Every boss battle has achievements to be won, now most of the time you can do these quite easily. But some of them at so insanely hard you'll find yourself pulling your hair out trying to achieve them due to the franticness of combat.

The final note on combat has to do with your allies AI. Your allies are very self-aware, they generally know when they are overmatched and will flee if they feel that they don't stand a chance, healers and magic casters usually try to stay away from the front line and it can all be adjusted from the menu. However, while it seems like a great system and the AI knows what it's doing, it more often than not. Fails at it, Casters will run away. But they will run away such a tiny amount and attempt to cast a spell again only to be interrupted, they repeat this over and over and over again untill they begin to gobble up your items. It all soon becomes a annoyance as yuri starts having to babysit everyone in the party and kiss their boo-boos.

Overall I found that you will have fun with tales of vesperia and you will enjoy it's gameplay. But there are often times when you're in a battle and wondering to yourself. "Why do you bother with allies, wouldn't it be much easier to do the lone wolf thing and beat up everything yourself. Why do I try to bring these guys back from the dead? It's so much peaceful alone." Aside from a few minor fustrations and annoyances I enjoyed the gameplay of the game alot. There is a ton of things to do and you'll never be bored of combat no matter how many monsters you will. So long as you can keep your allies in check.

"It's easy to get excited over what you do in the game. You'll have alot of fun with the story and the gameplay."

- Value -

Whenever I review Value. I always review Value in equilivent to how much I've played the game vs how much I've paid for the game. Tales of Vesperia for me retailed at 59.99. Ten dollars cheaper than your average canadian game now-a-days. So I was happy to pick it up for a lower cost.

The game itself can be beaten in about 10-50 hours of gameplay. Depending on how fast you move though it and what you do all in all. There is a achievement for beating it within 15 hours and it's decently hard to achieve. The biggest value however comes in the New Game+ feature that is common amongst Namco's Tales series since Tales of Symphonia. Depending on how well you played previously, you can go back and carry over your characters titles, artes, skills, equipment, money, and so forth using GRADE. GRADE is rewarded or deducted at the end of every battle and is pretty much a evaluation of how well you did in that battle.

So it's very fun to play though the game with a character whom has end-game skills and equipment and simply plow though everything without difficulty even on the most difficult levels. It's also fun to see how far you can push your own limits in the combat system. This makes some of the challanges that you may have not been able to overcome the first playthough much more tolerable a second time around plus you may also find sidequests and challanges you may have missed.

That being said though, you are still playing though the same game and it's likely you'll skip the cutscenes and you won't feel as emotionally attached to anything since you've done it all before. Even more so because the story borrows so heavily.

Was it worth the price I paid for? Definately, I wouldn't rent this game. I wouldn't be able to get far at all but at 59.99. Any fan of JRPGs would be proud to own this game in it's collection.

"I think I've played though it, twice now. It's easily one of my favorites."

- Overall -

I've been a fan of Namco's Tales series since I first played Phantasia, I've loved Symphonia from the bottom of my heart and Vesperia allows me to see that dispite having so many games in the series. They've still and might always have that spark with JRPGs.

Overall I'm very happy with the outcome of Tales of Vesperia. I consider it to be the best JRPG this generation and hope that Final Fantasy 13 can at least compete with it's level. Any fan of JRPGs should pick this one up as it makes a great introductory title to the entire "Tales of" series.

With a simple but amazing plot, lovable characters, vivid graphics and sound. Tales of Vesperia takes everything that JRPGs have been, but raises the bar for the 7th generation. If only it innovated a bit it would be well over a 9 in my opinion. However, today we settle for a 8.8

NightstrikerX ~