Tales Series

[AnimeGamer183]

Started up Xillia 2 this weekend, man it is alot darker than the first game. That bein said, it feels like I have jumped right back into the original game. Graphics are exactly the same, some areas are pulled straight from the first game. I would definitely say this package is some what of an Expansion Pack Plus format if I may. I cant neccesarily knock it for reusing what was already fine, although I have read some reviews tearing it part for too much recycled material, but I dont have much of a problem with it. I havent quite played enough to see the real differences here, but its easily accessible for fans of the first game, I also think this game may be more of a stand alone experience than some people were originally saying, it seems different enough so far in terms of story, but my opinion on that could change once I get further in.

[OL]

Yeah, the story starts calling back to the first pretty quickly. I only finished the first game, what... earlier this year? And there are some things being talked about in this one that I'd totally forgotten about, so I feel a tiny bit lost. Just lore-specific stuff, but I'm still a bit surprised by how much I'd forgotten already.

And yeah, I'm totally not bothered by the reused stuff so far. There's a lot of old, but there's a lot of new as well. Like I always say, give me a new story in a gameworld I already loved, and I'll be hard-pressed to complain about it. I love returning to familiar stomping grounds.
And they've already remedied a small problem I had with the first game by making the cities a little bigger. I'm not sure about other places in the game, but Trigleph has an entirely new, expansive city area that makes it feel much bigger. Not a lot has happened there so far, but it goes a long way for atmosphere.

[AnimeGamer183]

My biggest gripe about Xillia 2 so far "Check for DLC" at the start up, its kind of irritating. I got a little further in the game today and I was pretty surprised how fast I was leveling, the debt thing is kind of annoying too, dont mess up and keep paying the bear minimum or you'll constantly be bugged to give up the cash...

[OL]

Yeah, the debt thing bothers me a bit too, mainly because... well, who the hell wants to delve into a videogame, only to be met with something as realistic as having to pay off debt? That ain't exactly escapism.
Though, to some extent, I do understand its implementation; most JRPG's eventually have you hauling around insane amounts of money with practically no earthly use for it. So in this case, they make it essential that you gradually have to keep giving some of it up. It's kind of a novel idea, and I get why it's there, but like I said, debt problems aren't exactly the kind of thing most people want to deal with when they're trying to forget the world through entertainment.

Can't say I'm all that bothered by the "checking for DLC" message though.

EDIT: As a side-note, I finally just got around to watching the Tales of Vesperia: First Strike movie which I'd been putting off for way too long. Turns out it's actually really great. Nice little prequel story that explains a lot of small details and adds a bit of extra depth to seemingly unimportant things in the game. All of the stuff with Repede is my favorite, seeing him as a puppy and all that. Really sad in some cases too.
I would recommend playing the game first though. The movie is, surprisingly, almost entirely devoid of spoilers, but it's still one of those cases where everything means a helluva lot more if you've played through the game it's related to.
So yeah, good little flick. A really nice supplement to the game. And it doesn't hurt that the animation is pretty damn top-notch. Some of the cg work is a little iffy, but the cell animation is all great.
So now all of the Tales-related anime I've seen (this and Phantasia) has been really good. Wouldn't mind seeing more in the future.

[OL]

Just a cool detail I noticed.
I already knew that Elle's backpack was based on Octy from the Baraduke games (which is an awesome reference in and of itself), but it wasn't until about 7 hours in that I finally spotted in one of the cutscenes that she also has a little keychain-charm or something of the main character from Baraduke as well.



Stuff like this is part of the reason I love Namco so much. Even though they don't necessarily always make new games related to their classic series, they still continue to reference and pay respect to those games anyway. Ridge Racer, for example, almost always has names plastered across the cars like "Ordyne" or "Phantomile," and aside from this Baraduke reference, Tales of the Abyss actually had a full remake of Dragon Buster hidden in it. There's always stuff like that in their games, and I love it. I don't think anyone else pays homage to their own history quite as well as Namco.

[AnimeGamer183]

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Yeah Zestiria (aka zesty italian dressing) is looking pretty darn sweet. I like the open world, I also instantly thought how it has taken this long for the series to ditch the mid PS2 era development practices of core game play and exploration and really step it up... it is kind of shocking we havent seen some of this stuff before already in Tales, but I am glad we are getting it with this game.

Also he mentions that the game is coming out in january in japan and within 6 months of that date in the us. Its the fastest we will have ever gotten a Tales game in the west. Looks great to me.

[OL]

It almost feels weird to me how the Tales series has taken off recently in the west and gotten all popular. Years and years back when I first played Phantasia on an emulator (and the series was only about 3 games in) I had just kind of accepted it as being one of those that will forever be obscure in the west, despite its popularity in Japan. Strange to see this big turnaround.
It's good though. The more success for Namco, the better.

But yeah, Zesteria looks great. Beyond that though, I'm actually surprised at how cool Hearts looks. Despite the fact that it's pretty much a given that I'll be buying it day-1, I hadn't really been following it much. So seeing that gameplay and seeing how fast and continuous the action is... it really looks pretty damn nice.

[AnimeGamer183]

http://www.rpgamer.com/games/tales/tox2 ... trev1.html

Tales of Xillia 2 is the story about a man's crippling medical bills and his efforts to pay them off while collecting cats. No, seriously.

Ouch... I have to admit there is some truth to it. But honestly I think reviews like these are reviewers getting entirely too caught up in trying to review the game. Apparently he thinks the story is ridiculous, and I cant wrap my head around what has happened so far from what I have played besides some kind of transformations and alternate dimensions/realities.

Ok so lets be honest, the debt system was a bad idea... a REALLY bad idea. What does it provide that makes the experience better? At the end of the day its a small nuisance, some people can over look it, some people cant. I know that the phone kept ringing a RIDICULOUSLY high number of times if you keep doing the minimum debt repay, instead of the max (and im talking about like every time you acquired more money... which is obviously too excessive). Im still slowly gaining ground in the game, and im liking it just fine.

At this point, im gonna go ahead and lower my expectations for the final experience of the game, and Im not seeing Xillia 2 being able to be nearly as good as the first game. Maybe i'll be surprised and it will change my mind.

[OL]

I think the main thing to understand about the game (and I already knew this, so I haven't been all that bothered by it so far) is that the whole thing is basically a giant depository of content that was planned for the first game but didn't make it in. Not necessarily because of a lack of quality, but simply because it was... extra. Rewire it all a bit, put it all against a new story, and you've got a sequel.
That's not me trying to put the game down or anything; that's just literally what the game is. It's better to go into it not expecting an identically-epic experience to the first, but to go into it understanding that it really is just an expansion pack. It's an extras disc in the form of a new game.
I'm not expecting it to get quite as grand as the first, I'm just expecting further fun in the same universe. That's all I was looking for really.

Xillia isn't even my favorite Tales game, anyway. If you want another truly grand JRPG adventure, I'd recommend going and trying out either Tales of the Abyss or Tales of Vesperia. Aside from the golden classic-ness of Phantasia, those are easily my favorites. I think they'd be up your alley.

[AnimeGamer183]

Man I wish Vesperia PS3 came out here SO BAD! its still not too late namco... DO IT! haha, I may end up getting Abyss on 3DS at some point though. I also need to finish Eternia, I really liked what I played of that game.

[AnimeGamer183]

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New Zestiria game play trailer. Is it just me or does the main chick look similar to lightning from FF13?

[Thief]

Zestiria? Man the names for these Tales of games just get dumber with each release.

[AnimeGamer183]

Many of them Rhyme, and many of them end in with an "ia" I think tales of destiny, hearts, innonece, graces, and abyss are the only ones that dont. Phantasia, eternia, legendia, symphonia, vesperia, xillia and zestiria do... confusing enough naming system for you?

Anyway many fans are calling Zestiria "Zesty" or the more comical "Zesty Italian Dressing"

[OL]

The "Zesty Italian Dressing" thing annoys the crap out of me. It's exactly the kind of thing a certain blue someone who used to post here would come up with, and then say it every chance he got because he felt clever or something.
Blech.

Anyway, I don't really see what's particularly dumb about the name Zestiria. It's just kind of a standard fantasy-sounding fake word someone came up with. No dumber than cities in the Final Fantasy series being named things like "Nibelheim" or "Rabanastre." Or characters having names like "Bilbo" or "Legolas." They're just random fake words.

And in regards to the trailer, I just want to mention it's nice they're actually switching up the enemies in this one. Most Tales games tend to repeat the same basic animal-like enemy types, but I spotted nothing but new enemies in that trailer. Or if they weren't actually new, at least they were lesser-utilized ones from before. I didn't recognize them (save for the shelled squid thing, maybe. I feel like I've seen something similar before).

[AnimeGamer183]

Hmm I saw some of the doe doe bird short looking with big beak enemies in those battles that are in both Xillia 1 and 2. Thats the only one I noticed that came from those games though. I like the more open world feel, the MMO kind of ground work and lay out, but I think it might be a bit of an illusion unless it everything flows seemlessly and there arent "areas" so to speak like in Xillia, even though thats not neccesarily a bad system, its still PS2 development tactics (hell even some PS2 games like FFXII broke through that barrier with that old hardware). I hope Zestiria is better than Xillia 2.