Topic: Tales of Series General Discussion

What do you guys think of Tales of Zestiria so far? Do you think it's Tales of Xenoblade like a lot of people are calling it?

No. But it is shaping up to be better than Xillia 1 & 2 at least. If they can deliver on the gameplay department actually being the best of Xillia and Graces, then I think they might actually bring the series back into greatness.

I played Abyss and I've gotta say, I disagree, for the most part. I liked the majority of the characters. Even Luke and Ashe, once they got over being a brat and a jerk, respectively. I liked the story line and didn't feel like Luke's transformation was really all that forced. I also preferred Symphonia's dungeons, but then, I actually liked the puzzles.

It's kinda always the same with Tales games for me. Only Symphonia and Graces really stood out positively (although Graces was seriously convoluted), while Abyss consisted of nonsensical characters, Vesperia was absolutely underwhelming except for the awesomeness that is Yuri, and Xillia went by far too cliché for a Tales game.
Meanwhile, Symphonia 2 was a flat-out insult to all fans, the handheld games were all badly designed, and World was just fandom levels of awful.

But whenever I hear about a new Tales game, the trailers don't impress me, and when I play them, they seem to become more artificial in terms of combat depth with every new entry. Nonetheless, I'm still waiting for BamCo to finally release a genuinely good Tales game after all the mediocrity.

Funny, I'm the complete opposite. I thought Abyss had great dungeons and meh characters, while Symphonia had great characters and meh dungeons.

Also, Asch never got over being a jerk, which bothered me to no end. He just seemed to get angry no matter what Luke would do.

Tales of Destiny 2 (aka Tales of Eternia) on the PS1/PSP was pretty damn good!

I think it desperately needs to come out on a current console. They're gonna sell hardly any. Most people's PS3s went into the attic after Dark Souls 2.

So I'm thinking about getting Tales of the Abyss for my 3DS. If I really like turn-based JRPGs, do you think I could get into this? I did like Xenoblade, The Last Story, Crisis Core, and Ring of Fates. I somewhat enjoy Bethesda's games and Secret of Mana. I can't get into Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days or Heroes of Ruin.

I'm about 4.5 hours into Tales of the Abyss and I'm actually loving it. The style kind of reminded me of Kingdom Hearts (which I'm really not a fan of), but now that I've played it I'm super into it. Good thing I didn't give up while Luke was annoying, because I almost did!

Considering there are only 3 announced 1st party titles exclusive to PS4, I highly doubt that.

It's okay. The game is extremely light on exploration and crafting, but very heavy on storytelling and dungeons. Personally, I'm not a fan of the characters, but others are.

It also doesn't telegraph information very well. I'm still confused about the capacity core system, and it kind of feels like the AD Skill system is random. At least in the 3DS version, it doesn't tell you what boosts different titles give either.

Tales of Destiny 2 (Aka Tales of Destiny 2) was good, too, IIRC.

And there are over 80 million PS3s on the market, and about 8 million PS4s...I think they'll do fine.

Well I couldn't care less about crafting, and dungeons and storytelling are very important to me. I will be purchasing this game.

So I saw some new Tales of Zestiria footage with the battle end screen.

I'm kind of disappointed that it even has one. Zestiria seems to be transitioning straight into battles from the overworld, so I don't see why they can't transition you straight out. They can overlay the banner in real time, as you walk through the world

New field and battle footage of Tales of Zestiria!

A couple of things.
1. Dat overworld theme is amazing
2. I'm really excited to explore this overworld, the heavy emphasis on exploration is one of the reasons I love Symphonia.

Except Tales of Symphonia had a big overworld with hardly anything to do in it. If this one gives you more to do in it - more stuff to find and places to go that aren't forced or told directly to you - I'd probably dig it a lot more than in Symphonia.

Also: I hope there aren't too many enemies that constantly heal themselves like the ones in that video. It was great to show off the combat, but it'd get annoying if I did actually have to take on a whole field full of them before I'm super strong.

There was plenty to do. A couple main quests like the Unicorn horn and Linkite tree, while told to you later on in the game, could be discovered/initiated much earlier. Several opportunities for sequence breaking offered a great sense of exploration and discovery. Then there were optional places like the Houses of Salvation, the Hot Spring, and Exire that offered additional content or sidequests (the Salvation houses had Girls and Dogs for Zelos and Colette's title sidequests)

Then you had chests, skits, and Noishe points to discover.

Admittedly, I've still only played 3 games in the series, but Symphonia far and away blows Abyss and Innocence out of the water in that regard.

Sequence breaking is more proof of a poorly made game rather than exploration...that's like giving a game kudos for allowing you to glitch out of the map. :/ I don't remember the Hot springs being optional, and those points existed so you couldn't get too far without fighting something, before the concept of fast travel existed. Nice, but not what I'm talking about. Otherwise what you described has been in every Tales game since the beginning. I'm hoping this one takes it up a niotch and actually put in secret areas and whatnot, kinda like what Xenoblade did. At the very least it clearly needs more stuff in its evironment so it fells less empty.

I don't see how Sequence Breaking is proof of a poorly made game at all. It's one of the most commonly requested elements of a new Zelda game. Why? Because by eliminating a forced order of events, you leave the discovery of mandatory locations more to the player, and this conveys the feeling that you are exploring. Now, if done poorly, such that it completely interrupts the narrative flow of a game, sequence breaking can be bad, but Symphonia has a pretty well paced narrative. And it does a good job of slightly modifying the dialogue depending on when you enter certain locations. The only place it kind of has a hiccup is when you are fighting summon spirits.

None of the things I mentioned involved fighting something, so I'm not really sure what you mean by "they existed so you couldn't get too far without fighting something"

Nope, Abyss doesn't have skits or overworld chests. In fact, there are very few optional areas in general in Abyss. The major thing in the overworld were search points, and those were visible from very far away, removing the need to explore.

I definitely preferred Symphonia's and Abyss's open overworld over Graces's and Xillia's instant travel list. Something feels lost in the streamlining. It doesn't feel like I'm going on an adventure when I just instantly travel to dungeons and towns.

Nice.

In Tales of the Abyss, I just ran into a sidequest I missed on my first time through, lol (involving Cecile & Frings). I just love that this game has so much stuff, that you won't experience everything your first (or even second) time through.