Fbh
Member
Tales of has always been this sort of B-Tier JRPG franchise for me. They’ve always been enjoyable enough to be worth playing through but at the same time they’ve never truly been up to par with some of my favorites in the genre.
I had high hopes for this since the visuals and overall production values looked like a massive step forward for the franchise, which had sort of been trapped in the Ps3 era of visuals for a long time. But while I enjoyed my time with it, in many ways it still feels like that same B tier franchise, with several annoyances that nicer visuals can't quite compensate for.
The presentation is indeed very nice, the game has some awesome vistas, flashy effects and animations, a nice watercolor look that really sets it apart from other HD anime style games (like DQ11 or Xenoblade), and it also has some really nice looking towns which is always a plus in my book. Compared to the previous Tales I played (Xillia) I also found some nice quality of life improvements. There’s no longer MP but rather “Cure Points” which are only used for healing spells and buffs, so mages have become more fun to play and you also no longer have to worry about the AI companions using up all their MP in 30 seconds. The transitions to and from battle are also way quicker (though it's a tad disappointing that fights still happen in a separate arena), and they thankfully removed the after battle screen in favor of just getting the XP and loot information on the side once regular gameplay resumes.
This town in particular was really nice, I just wish there was more to do in it
I think overall my biggest issue with this was the story, which wasn't terrible but never managed to elevate itself beyond "just ok". The entire premise is very generic, there isn’t much in terms of interesting (or at least unexpected) plot developments and, maybe more importantly, the cast is on the bland side, lacking a lot of that party chemistry that I’ve come to expect from the franchise.
I think a part of the issue is that the optional skits seem longer and more exposition heavy than before. They used to be more lighthearted and comedic in tone, giving you some of that banter and team building in between the more serious story heavy cutscenes. But now a lot of them drag on and it’s often the characters repeating their same main story beats over and over with slightly different phrasing.
Bonus points for no young children, lolis or annoying furry mascots though
The combat is a mixed bag too.
It’s one of the rare cases where I think it’s much better when fighting regular enemies than bosses (usually I’m the other way around). Enemies are on the spongy side but it sort of makes sense as you are encouraged to stagger them and create long combos which eventually allow you to do a “boost strike” that insta kills them. Finding the best skills to create long combos as well as the right time to call in allies to keep them going was fun, and the boost strikes are just short and flashy enough to not get old despite seeing them over and over.
But then you get to the bosses and all of that gets thrown out of the window since you can no longer break their stance (so you can’t really do combos) and you can’t boost strike them either. Moreover they all have massive amounts of HP so you just feel like you are evading attacks and hitting a wall for 10 minutes. What’s worse is that towards the end more and more boss type enemies start to get recycled into regular encounters (the final dungeon is pretty terrible because of this).
The length was at least decent, I beat it in a bit over 40 hours doing quite a few sidequests which is thankfully pretty decent and not as stretched out as other 60+ hours modern JRPG’s, but despite that it still didn't manage to escape that sense of bloat as the last 6 to 8 hours could have been trimmed. It reaches a point where you almost can’t play 5 minutes without triggering some cutscene, and the final dungeon is annoyingly filled with bullet sponge enemies which makes it a chore to get through and takes away a lot of the fun from encounters.
Ultimately though, it was still ok. I’d give it a 7/10. If the next entry managed to combine this level of presentation with a better plot I’ll be looking forward to it.
Also bonus points for a decent PC port, still can't belive how nicely this ran on my 1050ti laptop.
Last edited:
