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I'm something around ~35 hours into it and I've been enjoying Symphonia 2, personally. The Pokemon thing is interesting enough and can be mostly ignored if it's not your thing provided you choose a few that are okay and just use them when the Symphonia 1 party aren't around in sufficient numbers. The skits are generally entertaining and actually being voice acted is nice. Tenebrae is playing a lesser version of Jade's role in the skits, so they're worth watching. The combat system is the best of Symphonia with some of Abyss's features thrown in. The first hour is absolutely atrocious and you want to kill everyone and return the game, but if you get through that it picks up fine. Load times are fast and from battle->game almost zero. The thing it tends to lack is balance. Some monsters are fantastic and some terrible (mostly for AI reasons). Some quests take 30 seconds and some take 30 minutes but the rewards each will give you are identical. I frequently look through my Synthesis list to find that there's still nothing worth making in a giant giant list. The Tales 1 characters are generally better than most of the monsters primarily because their AI is better, but perhaps when I get toward endgame their poor growth and static equipment will screw them as others are saying. Emil's semi-auto does have some issues, but I mostly consider it reason to stay awake and play with better movement rather than just mashing A A A B repeatedly like "better" semi-auto devolves into. Anyhow, perhaps I have low standards or something but I've been enjoying it fairly well. I've played Phantasia, Symphonia (several times), most of Destiny, 1/4th of Legendia, and Abyss. For me it's pretty close to Abyss but with voice-acted skits and without the load times that kept Abyss from being the best thing ever (and kept me from playing it more than once). Instead it has the aforementioned balance issues, but the combat system is fun and screwing with the monsters keeps it fresh. The story is about the same level of barely-passable that all Tales games have and most suffer from the same godawful-first-hour that it does. Where it suffers story-wise is a lack of character development since only the new pair get any development and the TOS1 cast are static rehashes of their old jokes, but I felt like only Abyss had much in the way of character development so while this has less it's hardly an awful game. Did Vesperia just raise the bar so much that the rest all suck after playing it? Someday I'll get a 360 and play it; I just find it hard to justify a console purchase for Vesperia and only a few others. Perhaps in the meantime it's better that I keep waiting so I can continue to enjoy the rest of the series.
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Nov 29, 2008 09:08
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Skychrono posted:I haven't played the game yet, but according to the Nintendo Power preview it says that Kratos voices the narrator. Maybe he's in the game proper too, no idea. Yeah, you hear his voice like 3 seconds in, so I wouldn't really call it much of a spoiler.
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Nov 30, 2008 09:09
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Yay, someone else in the thread with an overall positive impression of TOS2. At least I'm not the only one anymore. 
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Dec 6, 2008 11:23
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EngineerSean posted:All I've taken away from the first hour is that Emil is such a lovely character that he apparently needed to make a pact with the devil to grow a set of balls. Even I admit the first hour is loving terrible.
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Dec 6, 2008 20:42
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Abyss had a bunch that were from very-missable events and sidequests, too. The best thing about Symphonia's system was learning one during a battle. "Demon Fang! Demon Fang! I MUST BE A GENIUS!!! DOUBLE DEMON FANG!" 
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Dec 11, 2008 00:44
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Blackbelt Bobman posted:there is no over limit or anything like it in ToSII, what the gently caress.  CloseFriend posted:EDIT: Even literary references couldn't hurt. I've never seen the names Quintanona, Hardquanonne, or Fauchelevent used in an RPG, and why not? 
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Dec 11, 2008 07:14
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Blackbelt Bobman posted:EDIT: are you talking about enemies that can make themselves immune to flinching? Because some of the vanguard jerks have that, and it's really loving annoying. This, yeah. Some boss groups get them later and it can be rather nasty when you can't interrupt their spells (I think U attacks always work but they'll still get one off before you can charge another of those). Also they have the black-and-flickery effect faintly that marked Overlimit in the first game. Cliff posted:You can also synthesize and armor called the "Painkiller" that gives you the skill "Glory", making you immune to flinching. It also lowers defense or something. Oh yeah? I didn't catch that. If you combine that with the weapon(s) that let you easily infinite-combo I guess you'd break the game doubly fast.
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Dec 11, 2008 07:55
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Blackbelt Bobman posted:I guess I'll put off finishing the rest of the quests until after I get them, then. I can still finish the quests after I get them, right? In theory yes, but Aqua isn't obtained until directly outside the final boss's room.
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Dec 13, 2008 10:45
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For what it's worth, I felt like the grade was given rather freely in TOS2 compared to others. I didn't try to do anything toward whoring grade in my playthrough and still somehow ended up with enough to buy basically everything for the next, which is rather unlike TOS1 and other Tales games I've played. It's more of a 2-games-for-everything system, instead of first-game normal, second-game for grade whoring with the grade+ option, then third game for all the good newgame+ options.
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Jan 5, 2009 23:21
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It's not really made good by Luke changing so much as that he does it semi realistically and the other characters react to it very realistically. He's still semi annoying but you enjoy that the other people are also annoyed, unlike in Ratatosk where most seem to like Emil just fine when he's being an idiot.
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Jan 11, 2009 08:16
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Do you know more specifically what sort of union policy prevented it? Also Cam Clarke says maybe 5 sentences all game
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Mar 21, 2009 22:18
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Y'all should probably spoiler some of that. Personally I thought the fight before him with Alice and Decus was far more difficult, so if you can even get to Richter you can beat him fine.
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Apr 4, 2009 01:39
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Samurai Sanders posted:By the way, how do y'all usually bind your special attacks? I have settled on the following scheme: I pretty much use this one, yeah. It has enough vague logic to it to work well.
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Jun 22, 2009 20:53
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Could someone please remind me what the "CC system" refers to? Google seems to just find this article.
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Jul 16, 2009 20:48
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Excellent. Sounds like a nice variety that will be new to me and a welcome return for folks who liked it on others. Thanks for the synopsis.
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Jul 16, 2009 22:00
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Abyss just has crazy good characterization in general. Yes Luke changes and that's pretty unique because dynamic characters are rare in jrpgs, but even more unusual I think is how much backstory they bothered to give not only all the party members but also all 8(?) of the major bosses. How many games can you honestly say give longterm development and morally ambiguous motivations to every midboss character? Of course most of it is in skits, but still, I was pretty amazed. I hope Vesperia has similar in that regard. I finally got a 360 now so I'll be playing it when the game gets here, mostly because this thread hypes it so much.
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Aug 2, 2009 08:53
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I thought the encounter rate was way too high and it drove me to not finish. At that point I had only played Phantasia (SNES translation, and with liberal use of fast forward to take care of this same issue) and Symphonia. The new games have spoiled me with being able to avoid (at least partially) encounters I don't feel like mashing through.
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Aug 2, 2009 20:40
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FOF is pretty much worthless or impossible until the late->endgame when suddenly luke's basic artes and pretty much everything jade does creates fields you can use pretty easily. Before that, though, it's just a rare fluke when it happens.
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Aug 3, 2009 01:44
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I think the sunlight chambers is what I meant? My memory is bad though. I did every major sidequest and I still didn't have very many of those until pretty late in the game
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Aug 3, 2009 02:35
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I'm just starting Vesperia now. Does it have a ton of missables like Abyss that would make me particularly regret trying to play without a walkthrough?
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Aug 17, 2009 09:43
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Is this the sub-event guide people use? I checked the last 5 pages of the main thread but don't want to go through it all or I'll surely spoil something. I think I used one from the same site/author for Dawn of the New World and it wasn't so bad. Abyss I'd actually bought the Brady guide for though. Anyway, guess I'll go with it. At least I've gotten everything so far.
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Aug 17, 2009 18:29
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Yeah, I'll agree with Tenebrae being the best thing in that game. He really did feel like Jade again except with even more stupid childish behavior to make fun of because the protagonists are that much more stupid and childish. It *does* get a lot better after 5 hours or so but man I think it's definitely a contender for the worst beginning of any jrpg I've played.
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Sep 21, 2009 02:46
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I was going to say that the official guide isn't too bad for that purpose, but holy crap the cheapest price for it on Amazon is $50 used. 
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Nov 17, 2009 00:28
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The beginning couple hours are absolutely abysmal-- like, probably the worst beginning of any jrpg I've played and I've played quite a lot. After that, it's passable.
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Nov 22, 2009 01:16
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That didn't even bother me half so much as OH EMIL I LOVE YOU OH MAN I AM SUCH A GIANT WUS COURAGE IS THE MAGIC THAT TURNS DREAMS INTO REALITY
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Nov 22, 2009 01:25
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Well, that and *balance*. Some skills/characters/monsters are much better than others for no particular reason, and all of the Symphonia characters are crap compared to half the monsters, particularly at endgame because they have a lower level cap for no apparent reason.
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Nov 24, 2009 00:56
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There's also the emulation option if you have a very modern PC. Turning off the framelimiter during load times works wonders.
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Dec 12, 2009 01:51
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I've never used a PS3 so I don't really have much to compare with, sorry. Check out the PS2 emulation thread for more info on that regard though. I know that Abyss is at least playable but I don't know how perfect it is.
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Dec 12, 2009 02:28
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I seem to remember Symphonia saying somewhere near the end that it was jealousy over their living for a really long time and having innate magic affinity.
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Dec 12, 2009 04:18
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Does every line she says in old sequences not otherwise about her also feel shoehorned in, or just the stuff for her backstory?
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Dec 12, 2009 10:05
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How about the original voice actors? Did they bring them back to say things to/about/with her, or did they write everything she says in order to make sure that wasn't necessary? If the latter, it could probably explain some of the awkwardness, since in that case nobody could actually ever say a voice-acted line directly to or about her.
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Dec 12, 2009 10:17
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Oh, well that's good. I figured they did it the cop-out way. Having to rehire all the old voice actors back probably makes localization less likely though.
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Dec 12, 2009 19:42
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Yeah, Tales games like to trot out the cliches so much that you really have to wonder how much of it is meant to be taken seriously sometimes. In fairness, I'd never have finished Phantasia if it weren't on an emulator. The encounter rate is just way too high by modern standards. There's an item to decrease (or increase!) it but not until the end of the end-game optional uber-dungeon at which point it's rather pointless.
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Dec 16, 2009 02:31
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I managed to make it until almost the end of Destiny PS1 but stopped when I hit some maze thing that was driving me way too nuts with the encounter rate, even despite playing basically everything in 2-3x its intended speed by that point. Much like Phantasia I'd have never gotten even that far on a real system though. The old combat systems were really good for their time and back then higher encounter rates were more standard, but after playing the more modern Tales games it's really hard to go back.
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Dec 16, 2009 03:55
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Plus if you're stick of the too-frequent repetitive battles, semi-auto is better for letting you hold down fast forward and mash xxxy or whatever repeatedly to win
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Dec 16, 2009 21:47
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Different directions on the dpad activate different levels.
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Dec 18, 2009 20:09
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I'm sorry I don't really remember. I want to say up was one level and left was all of it and the others were in-between clockwise, but that could be totally wrong.
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Dec 18, 2009 20:10
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Honestly I didn't fee like I needed more than the sidequest guide. That covers everything missable, and why use a guide for things that aren't missable? You need it if you want to do something insane like finish the collector's book but it seems overkill for a first playthrough.
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Apr 17, 2010 01:09
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http://www.sankakucomplex.com/2010/06/20/tales-studio-near-bankruptcy-tales-series-doomed/ (has  ads)http://kotaku.com/5568531/end-of-story-for-tails-studio Other sites are picking up the story now.
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Jun 21, 2010 18:57
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aka basically the same plot role Exspheres had in Symphonia
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Jun 22, 2010 03:01
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