Post by Farulosonoth on Aug 23, 2010 11:43:43 GMT -5
Tales of Vesperia is an RPG released in August of 2008. While it is the 10th title in the main “Tales” series, it is the first one I have played and for the most part, I was pleasantly surprised. You start off with a very catchy anime opening and song, as a fan of fantasy anime, I liked it and as I do a lot of times with games, I treat them like interactive TV shows and every night when I start it up, I let the opening play out, it only takes 2 minutes or so and it gets me in the proper mood, this game’s opening is perfect for that little quirk of mine.
Onto the game itself, it opens up with some admittedly cheesy dialogue in the beginning, which might mislead you to thinking this is a children’s game, and from a western perspective, a lot of the game comes off this way, mostly due to one character that is a child and acts like an idiot the whole time. However, if you kind of ignore him and focus on the rest of the game, it can be quite dark and adult. The main character actually murders a few of the antagonists throughout the game. I know your thinking, so what they do this all the time. The difference is the game shows side events of him leaving the party behind and going out to kill these people on his own, they aren’t monsters, or boss fights, they are just people that make the protagonists job more difficult and he chooses the easy way out of simply killing them, adding some edge to this character.
As a Japanese RPG It has it’s required elements, including the flying ship once you get to a certain point. As far as strategy and game difficulty, I had it set to “normal” and breezed through almost every enemy with little or no thought. The challenges were few and far between, but there were a few, also, trying to get the bonus achievements for XBOX Gamerscore during each boss fight made it a little tougher as well as I played this on the XBOX 360.
One really cool thing which I wish they would add to more games in this genre is the local multiplayer ability. You can have your buddies, your wife, your kids etc play one of the other 3 members in combat. This is a feature which I would love to see in more games and I doubt it would take that much more programming.
The animation, voice acting and CG cut scenes were all first rate (not counting the annoying kid). The story is well thought out, and I enjoyed it. The combat is real time, not turn based, this subtracted a few points for me as for RPG’s I prefer turn based, I am not in a rush to defeat an RPG and I usually prefer turn based over real time. The controls take a bit to get used to with various combo’s and whatnot that you can do, having finished the game, I still haven’t fully mastered all the secrets of combat in this game. The graphics are astounding, using the same cell shading effect that was first seen in Robotech for the Nintendo Gamecube. All the aspects of gameplay, graphicswise, could pass off for an anime movie. The soundtrack is good and inspiring at the right moments.
In conclusion, Tales of Vesperia is an RPG with real time combat, which unfolds and looks like an anime feature film. There are a few quirks here and there, but all in all, on my scale of 1 -7 pieces of the magical rod, I give it a 5.
~Farulosonoth
Onto the game itself, it opens up with some admittedly cheesy dialogue in the beginning, which might mislead you to thinking this is a children’s game, and from a western perspective, a lot of the game comes off this way, mostly due to one character that is a child and acts like an idiot the whole time. However, if you kind of ignore him and focus on the rest of the game, it can be quite dark and adult. The main character actually murders a few of the antagonists throughout the game. I know your thinking, so what they do this all the time. The difference is the game shows side events of him leaving the party behind and going out to kill these people on his own, they aren’t monsters, or boss fights, they are just people that make the protagonists job more difficult and he chooses the easy way out of simply killing them, adding some edge to this character.
As a Japanese RPG It has it’s required elements, including the flying ship once you get to a certain point. As far as strategy and game difficulty, I had it set to “normal” and breezed through almost every enemy with little or no thought. The challenges were few and far between, but there were a few, also, trying to get the bonus achievements for XBOX Gamerscore during each boss fight made it a little tougher as well as I played this on the XBOX 360.
One really cool thing which I wish they would add to more games in this genre is the local multiplayer ability. You can have your buddies, your wife, your kids etc play one of the other 3 members in combat. This is a feature which I would love to see in more games and I doubt it would take that much more programming.
The animation, voice acting and CG cut scenes were all first rate (not counting the annoying kid). The story is well thought out, and I enjoyed it. The combat is real time, not turn based, this subtracted a few points for me as for RPG’s I prefer turn based, I am not in a rush to defeat an RPG and I usually prefer turn based over real time. The controls take a bit to get used to with various combo’s and whatnot that you can do, having finished the game, I still haven’t fully mastered all the secrets of combat in this game. The graphics are astounding, using the same cell shading effect that was first seen in Robotech for the Nintendo Gamecube. All the aspects of gameplay, graphicswise, could pass off for an anime movie. The soundtrack is good and inspiring at the right moments.
In conclusion, Tales of Vesperia is an RPG with real time combat, which unfolds and looks like an anime feature film. There are a few quirks here and there, but all in all, on my scale of 1 -7 pieces of the magical rod, I give it a 5.
~Farulosonoth