I started this game 6 months ago after I beat Tales of Vesperia. I got burned out about halfway (25 hours) through though. However, I didn't want to abandon the game forever, and really wanted to see it through to the end, so I did. My end game clock was about 45 hours. It still stands that this is the least favorite of the Tales games I have beaten, but having only beaten 4 (this being the 4th), it has some tough competition (Abyss, Vesperia, and Graces f being the others).
Originally being designed for the Gamecube, it has graphics that suit its time. 2003 was still fairly early in the Gamecube's life cycle. The actual environments look rather nice and comparable to other RPG's on the system, and the monsters also look really great. The overworld has always looked really bland end empty to me though. However, that's a small complaint. The battle system is one of the bits I have the most qualms with. This was the last Tales game before they truly took the leap to a fully 3D battle system, and the middle-ground it occupies makes some battles very frustrating. The free-running mechanic wasn't implemented until Tales of the Abyss. However, the battle arenas are still in 3D, and monsters and your companions can occupy and maneuver 3-dimensionally. What's really aggrivating is trying to dodge spells that have very clear effect radius, when you, the player, can only move toward and away from your target. This limited movement really hampers the combat engine, and was a constant obstacle to trying harder difficulties. The combos you can make and the way you can combo techs together is otherwise fairly run of the mill for the series. I never really understood the "Unity Attack" system. It seemed a fairly odd stop-gap between a simply activatable overlimit system. Otherwise, you just never know when you're going to overlimit, so it's very difficult to plan fights around. Regardless, it's a fun brawling engine, and whacking things about is still tough and satisfying, even though it's not the more highly technical work in later games like Legendia or Graces. I also didn't really care for the skill system. You find skill gems as items throughout the game, and you can consume one to set it to a character. Each character can have 4 gems set to them, and of the 5 levels of gems, each one has 4 (usually passive) skills to pick from, and can be reset at any time. Also, certain combos of skills can activate certain other hidden passives for even extra effects. However, the amount of these skill gems being limited in the game made me very cautious to experiment with them. Ultimately, I just gave up on trying to find any nuance in that system, and just went with what seemed arbitrarily good at the time. This being the earliest Tales game I've played, I can't really comment too much on the innovation of this system, but it's definitely the skill system I've liked the least out of the Tales games I've played, so take that for what you will. The main attraction for me in Tales games, though, is the story, and this game delivers well, though this is probably one of the Tales game stories I've had the biggest issues with during the course of the game. Every Tales game has some sort of theme pervading the story, and in this game it's "Sacrifice." What sacrifices are acceptable, and how do we as people deal with the thoughts that we or ones we care about might have to sacrifice themselves for the greater good? The voice acting is usual Namco Bandai quality though: It's a surprisingly good showing by an English voice cast for the period. Note: I went for the Kratos-included ending, so my opinions on the endgame might be slightly different than others who didn't. The game has a bit of a lull in the middle. After the original revelations that exspheres are people, the pilgrimage for world restoration story-line just wasn't too interesting. However, the twist that the Desians and Crucius are the same really gets it going again. I also really really liked some parts of the end-game, but had some noticeable gripes with other parts. When its revealed that Kratos is Lloyd's father, and Lloyd starts to have a breakdown, only to have Collette console him with the same virtues of acceptance of one's self in spite of one's background, that was such a powerful moment and one of the highlights of their relationships (It even made me tear up a little). In my personal opinion, times like this, when Lloyd and Collette are going through her transformation and sicknesses, and his conflicts of personality and identity, are the highlights of the game. The relationship between Kratos and Lloyd comes in at a close second. This is also the Tales game that I think does the best job (of those that I've played) of humanizing its villain. You really see Mythos' motives by the end, and even pity him (something I think Graces tried to do, but that attempt at a similar formula felt far more rushed). Things I liked far less, however had to do with the game's main other theme of "discrimination." It was a very interesting plotpoint, but the way characters would face it often felt narratively inefficient and hamfisted. Genis' monologues about his feelings on it, as well as Mythos', are often a bit to hard-hitting and unnuanced to really feel natural. Additionally, the game has a fantastic buildup at the end, when everyone is slowly sacrificing themselves to make sure Lloyd lives to save Collette. But then the game just totally throws away that good will by having a large set of very direct and to-the-point conflicts in Walgaia of everyone very somewhat preachingly facing their biggest personal conflicts. Story is a very subjective thing in all media, but I'd give this game a rating of "mixed bag." It's really good, but not great. Verdict: A very good ARPG for its time: Recommended. It's a little hard to really give one of my more traditional "verdicts" on the series given that I'm essentially playing them in no particular order and therefore have no grasp of the progression of the series on a technical level. However, though this seems to be one of the most popular ones, I still wouldn't say it's a fantastic entry point to the series, nor would I call it the "best" one. It's one of the best Gamecube RPG's I've played (my 2nd favorite under Paper Mario), but I'd still probably say that Vesperia or Abyss would be a better first entry in the Tales series specifically.
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Though this is a game, like normal Animal Crossing, that you can't really beat in the traditional sense, I've seen just about all the game has to offer, so I thought this was a good place to put my thoughts about the game. First off, this is a very simple game. If you go in looking for Animal Crossing + Mario Party, you will be sorely disappointing. This is much more along the lines of an even more simplified Animal Crossing + Fortune Street.
There's only one map, as to simulate how in Animal Crossing there is only one town, and you roll a D-6 in order to go around it with up to three friends. Also, just as in the normal game, the game tries to simluate real Animal Crossing by not having a traditional turn counter, but you go thorugh a "month" of the year where every turn is a day. The game will tell you about how long the game will take if you pick that month with how many players you have, and if you don't have that much time, then you can even set a shorter time limit and the game will just end when that time limit is up (another design choice around it being an activity for younger children). Depending on which month you pick, there are certain events that you'll get to participate in on holidays. These events range from just themed game events on that day on a day like Weeding Day, to something like Halloween where there's candy around the board to collect and it somewhat modifies your strategy for the whole game. Every week, there's a Stalk Market, just as in the real game, and you can use your money to buy turnips. You can then sell these turnips on any day that week that isn't Sunday, and the sell price is determined by which space you land on: Each space has its own sell price, and you're basically just trying to get lucky to land on a high price and make a bunch of money on your "investment" (thus the Fortune Street stocks system parallel). You go through the month trying to earn as many happy points and bells as possible. Happy points are just that, points, and don't do anything. Bells, however, can be used in the stalk market, and are therefore more valuable (in my opinion). Whoever has the most happy points at the end of the game wins, and bells translate to happy points by 1000 bells = 1 happy point, and are usually the deciding factor in choosing a winner (in games of 3+ people). Spaces on the board are divided into good and bad, and among those are good and bad versions of bells only, happy points only, and both bells and happy points. When you land on one of these spaces, you'll see a little vignette of your character with a description, giving rationale on how they actually earned that reward. They're always cute, and depending on which character you have, you can even get character-specific ones sometimes (Resetti hanging out with his brother, Mabel working with her sisters, etc). The "amiibo" bit of amiibo Festival is in character selection, game-play, and for mini-games and town customization. The characters selection and game-play is what the traditional 3D-figure amiibos are for. If you have a certain amiibo (Resetti, Isabelle, Mabel, etc) then you can play as that character. There's no play-style difference between the characters. The only difference is that they'll appear in the vignettes themselves, and the character-specific ones mentioned above. Additionally, as in the amiibo mode in Mario Party 10, you must tap the amiibo on the Wii U pad in order to roll your dice, meaning you all share one controller. There aren't mini-games or anything during the board-games, so funcitonally this works fine, even if it is annoying sometimes that you need to tap the amiibo to roll the dice. However, this does functinally mean that players can't roll each other's dice, so if you're playing with children, that is a good method of stopping them from taking other people's turns. You do need at least one Animal Crossing amiibo to play the game at all, but you don't need one for each player. As long as player one has a character amiibo, the other 3 people can just be humanoid villagers. The other features have amiibo cards used for them. At the end of each game, you build up a collective total of happy points which earn you happy tickets. You can use these tickets to build attractions on the main menu which allow you to play mini-games with amiibo cards. The game comes with 3 amiibo cards, but to play all the mini-games, you'll need to get at least one more pack. Then there's the town customization feature. The reason there's only one board, is because, like in Animal Crossing, it's your persistent town. The same villagers always live there, as well as customizations you can make. Instead of spending happy tickets on mini-games, you can spend them on town features (basically they're public works projects from Animal Crossing: New Leaf). In most cases, they just make your town look pretty, but in other cases, like Brewster's Cafe or the Police Station, they can give you new vignettes to view. Amiibo cards that don't come with the game can be used to have new villagers move into town, which means they'll appear in the vignettes, or they can also MC your game, fulfilling the role Toad usually plays in Mario Party (the three amiibo cards that come with the game alread have their villagers moved into the town when you start, so you don't need to register them immediately. One more miscillanious complaint I have, is that you can't play with the AI unless you're playing by yourself. If you're playing with just one friend, you can't fill in the extra two slots with AI. Nothing game breaking, but just a little annoying. The game isn't that fun to play by yourself anyway. Verdict: This is a very very chill board game. If you have friends or family who aren't very familiar with video games and/or like Animal Crossing, they will love this game. Also, if you just want to unwind with friends with a simple board game video game, or want to give children something to do, this is a fairly idiot-proof activity you can sit them with. That's really all this game is trying to do: It's not trying to be Mario Party. I think it does it fairly well. If the above situations describe ones you find yourself in regularly, this game is probably a decent choice for you Probably not worth the 50 or 60 bucks you'll pay for a new copy though. Used it's 30 bucks, and then you'd need another 8 at the least for a used amiibo, so 40 is a much better price. And so my replay of Dishonored and my first playthrough of its DLC expansions is complete. I think my views on the main game have been fairly thoroughly covered via other threads, so my thoughts here will focus solely on the DLC's.
At first, I was tempted to say that the 2 DLC's together could've just been Dishonored 2, but after playing them, I've changed my thoughts on that. I did total ghost & no kill (neither humans, nor dogs (though many rats and river crusts fell at my grenades)) runs of all 3 games, meaning the pacing of my playstyle didn't change between expansions, and even then the main game was like 10 or 15 hours longer. While I can say that Knife of Dunwall and Brigmore Witches were probably originally intended to be 1 DLC expansion instead of 2 (you can even import your status from the end of KoD into the start of tBW), in terms of length of content provided, it is just an expansion, however good it may be. Each DLC has 3 missions, two of which in each have huge, brand new maps, and one which is a reused map from the first game which is a much shorter mission. Though, even those reused maps manage to keep things interesting with different modifiers, enemies, time of day, or letting you go to parts of the map that were sealed off the first time, effectively meaning they're new areas (however small). The new maps are fantastic, huge, and full of the same goodies, story, and verticality present in the main game. Additionally, Daud has all new activatable powers (his passive unlocks are largely the same though) that makes him play fairly (not majorly) differently than Corvo, forcing you to take different approaches even if the map may be similar/the same. Verdict: If you enjoyed Dishonored, then tKoW and tBW are fantastic additions to the great main game, and are very much worth playing. The GotY edition with all the DLC is only like 10 or so bucks at Gamestahp, or you can probably get it for like 5 on Steam. It's totally worth it. Highly recommended. After so many months of searching, I finally came across this game at the resale store in town today, and HOLY CRAP IT WAS WORTH IT. I'm certainly not the first on the site to rave about it, nor will I probably be the last, but this is one immensely kick-ass shooting game. The theme is unique and silly, the monsters look great, and the difficulties will really kick you in the teeth if you think you're so hot at bullet hells.
Verdict: F*cking Excellent. I don't quite remember who last raved about it and called it the best sh'mup ever, but that's an accolade that might not be totally undeserved. (I have certain reservations about such an extreme statement, as I've still not tried the other CAVE games on 360, any of the Raiden series, or Akai Katana, all of which I've heard are also fantastic). This is the expansion content added to the PS3 port of Tales of Graces. Granted, we never got the Wii original, but it's still an expansion. It adds an extra 10 hours to the game, and wraps up some fairly relevant story questions brought up in the post-credits video of the original game.
Gameplay wise, it's 4 or so totally new dungeons, and then 4 old dungeons but with new monsters. A whole new bit of story to see (ten whole hours of it), and a myriad of skits to go with it as well. As far as the intensity of the story compared to the main game, it's not quite the same level, but the writing is still good. It's just not going for those same emotional punches. I did nearly tear up once or twice (which is nothing compared to the bawling I was doing after seeing the ending of the main game (happy tears though)), I found myself laughing far more often in this story just because of how great the character chemistry is with the (sort of) new character they added to the old main party, and their topics of conversation in skits tend to be more lighthearted. I really enjoyed it. There's also the introduction of the Accel system, which REALLY changes up combat. It's more or less every character getting their own, personal overlimit meter, in addition to the one you already have that's party wide. Granted, the "Eleth Gauge" isn't so much like Vesperia's Overlimit system, but the Accel system is much closer to that. Plus, each character gets their own personalized, unique effects from their Accel gauge, so that's another neat feature. Another curiosity you unlock near the middle/end of the expansion is the ability for characters to turn into other characters by using a certain craftable item at a certain NPC. It more or less gives that character a "costume" of another character. Want a party full of just the main character? You can have that now (but it'll take a while to get enough stuff to craft that). Verdict: Recommended if you really liked the main game. Granted, it's not a standalone expansion and you need to beat the game first to unlock it, but I'd say it's definitely worth playing if you enjoyed the main game enough to play through to the end. Man, what a game. The Tales games I've tried lately have had a very hard time disappointing me, and this game is no exception. This is definitely my new favorite of the ones I've played.
The story, is far and away one of my favorite I've ever seen in an RPG. It kept me guessing the whole time, and I never felt it was predictable in any noticeable way. The major themes really spoke to me as well. The relationship of a child and father, the parent's role in raising their child and to what extent their actions may be in the right, the nature of who guards whom in a relationship, the bounds of what trust and friendship can go to. The only problems I ever had with the storytelling was that the voice acting isn't always fantastic. It's actually one of the less well voice acted Namco Bandai RPG's I've played, as they usually do great work. There's just one or two main characters who don't always sound quite right. I'll just conclude my primer on it here by saying I don't think I've ever played a game that's made me cry as much or as often as this game made me. The Vesperia/Abyss-style battle system of the few titles before this is present here, but heavily modified. In Graces, TP/MP is completely gone, and in its place is essentially time units called CC. You gain CC by guarding, just standing still, or by getting big combos. CC is expended by doing attacks, and bigger attacks cost more of it. Additionally, you're more likely to land critical hits if you let it fill all the way. There are artes that are elemental like in the other games, but your normal attacks now have artes as well, eventually giving each character fairly lengthy combos they can deal out. Combos are very important because they increase damage multiplier, stagger enemies, and gain back CC. Certain enemies are more weak to your normal attack or special attack combos, and which enemies are weak to which can be checked whenever with a quick hold of the R1 button. Finally, the elaborate sidestep, backstep, forward dash, etc. maneuver system that you needed to unlock and equip with skills in Vesperia is far simplified. Now you just have those skills all the time, costing 1 CC for every use. It's a system that's new and certainly confusing at first, as I don't think the game does the best job of explaining it to you. Once I really got the feel for it around the 10 or 15 hour mark though, battles became way more fun, and this is definitely the Tales battle system I've enjoyed the most. Cooking has been revamped into the Eleth Mixer system. Through this, you can equip specific meals which you've made at least once to the mixer in your menu. All meals have specific activation requirements and times (post-battle, when X-status effect happens, when party member HP < X %, etc.), so if you're going to try to use it, it's worth keeping track of these things. Alternatively, you can also use those slots in your Eleth Mixer to put crafting materials into, which will have a certain chance of duplicating while you're walking around, or spellbooks which you can find on your travels that apply certain passives to walking, combat, etc. at the cost of Eleth (which can be refilled at any shop). I never used the cooking system much, but I always enjoyed having new items or foods to "Dualize" into new stuff at shops, even though it only tended to be for quests. Speaking of quests, they heavily are geared toward the new title and skill system. Titles are no longer rare, or pointless, as in this game they provide you your skills. These are all skills, from new Artes (both special and normal attack ones), new passives, and even costumes. At the end of battles, you receive both XP to level up, and SP which levels up the specific title your character has equipped. The aforementioned quests always reward some material, be it gold, materials, equipment, etc., and some amount of SP. They're simple fetch quests that are accessible in every Inn in the game. These quests aren't intrusive or anything, and you could completely ignore them if you wanted. I personally liked doing them for completionist reasons. Even doing quests, getting all the titles for all the characters, let alone leveling them sufficiently, is an absolutely madman's dream as there are so many, so you'll always have something to level up with SP. These skills may come off as intimidatingly numerous, but there are 4-preset automatic settings you can pick and choose for each character to manage when the game will pick a new skill to do. Don't want to worry about it early game? Just set everyone to "until level 3" and let them skill-up like crazy! Verdict: If you like action RPG's , or any other of the post-Symphonia Tales games, this is highly recommended. It's one of my new favorite games ever, and a fantastic piece of story telling. |
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AuthorI'm an avid gamer who likes to detail their thoughts about what they play in the hopes it might aid someone else's search for a game to play. Archives
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