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dkirschner's Tales of Vesperia (360)
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| [November 2, 2013 09:16:21 AM]
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Finished Tales the same day as FFXIII. I am SO over JRPGs for a while!
I'd say the game began around an 85% for me and ended on a 70%. It outstayed its welcome by 15 or so hours as well. I think I'm just tired of the Tales series, perhaps have grown out of it. I haven't played one in a long time, since Tales of Symphonia on Gamecube.
Tales of Vesperia is all about friendship and being stronger together and learning to put others' needs first...blech. It started out all funny and charming, especially compared to FFXIII's complete lack of charm (save Sazh), but a handful of the characters ended up being really annoying. I liked Yuri, the main. He had a cool attitude and was voice acted very well. Estelle and Judith were also pretty good. Repede, the pipe-smoking dog, was the best of course. As usual, the children characters just got under my skin. Karol is like 10 years old and is a monster hunter. How original, a monster hunter. Then he becomes a guild leader of the guild that Yuri forms with him. Why would you form a guild with an annoying 10-year-old kid? I dunno. Unfortunately the guild becomes the centerpiece for the whole 'let's stick together' theme and it was just so cheesy that I didn't really want to play anymore after that. Rita is the other character I disliked. She's also a kid, a "genius mage" and a researcher. Yeah, a 12-year-old expert scientist. She goes on and on about science and research. As a Ph.D. student, I cannot stand science and research being talked about in uninformed ways. In Rita's world of science, she just "discovers" things left and right. She uses the scientific method...literally, she said at some point "hypothesis, method, collect data, observe...that's the secret to winning!" or something equally idiotic. She's always figuring things out, but contrary to her scientific method, she always discovers things abstractly instead of empirically and then assumes they will work. I know it's fiction, but damn the game's representation of research irked me to death! There were more annoying non-main characters too...ah, JRPGs...
Here's a quick breakdown of the story. There are things called 'blastia' that power various systems in cities and whatnot...regulate water supply, form barriers to keep monsters out, etc. Blastia is going missing/being destroyed, so monsters are invading everywhere. "Monsters." They're never any specific enemy, just "monsters." Anyway, you go off trying to find what's happening to the blastia and after a while the story goes deeper and deeper and gets super convoluted. There are ancient beings called Entelexia and there's some bad thing called Adephagos that I thought was one enemy but turns out at the end it was plural the whole time (??) and seriously I had no frackin idea what was going on for the last 10 hours of the game and I really didn't care either. The story was really really weak.
Combat remains fun, yet repetitive. Tales is known for its active combat system where you run one character around the field mashing buttons and scoring combos. Combat system is deep but became B B B B B B X B B B B B B X... repeat ad infinitum. Every fight can be won like that, especially once you set particular skills and tweak your party and the AI behavior. There are tons of types of combo attacks and special moves and tons of weapons that you learn skills from by wearing them and getting "LP" points. Enemy types are recycled like crazy. I just watched the trailer for Tales of Xillia, the new Tales game, and they have the SAME enemy types on the trailers in that game. Come on guys, new enemies...
There's tons of extra content and a new game + mode if you're into that. Fans will probably love it, but I think it's my last Tales game. I was so bored and did not care at all for the last couple play sessions. This is one I wish I hadn't bothered to play. Very mediocre experience for me. Scratched Tales of Xillia off my 'to buy' list.
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dkirschner's Tales of Vesperia (360)
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Current Status: Finished playing
GameLog started on: Saturday 19 October, 2013
GameLog closed on: Friday 1 November, 2013 |
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