Tales Of Series appreciation thread.

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Tales Of Series appreciation thread.

Ice Blue: Mar 20, 2002; Sorry, I get paid to shoot paintballs, honey, not the breeze.

Cless Alvein posted:

The biggest problem I had with the GBA port is the fact that the translation was so terrible. Cless Alvein somehow became Cress Albane. Don't really care if that is what it was supposed to translate to because Cress is retarded name. Beyond that they some how translated ,"Ragnarok" to "Kangaroo". How they did this, I have no goddamn idea. They cut out the opening song for some reason and the voice acting is pretty terrible and voice acting normally never bothers me. I've played through the SNES and GBA versions and currently playing through the PSX version when I have the time. I think I like the SNES one the best just for the DeJap translation. DeJap seems to have gotten it right in the fact that they had to change the script occasionally so that it made sense to the people who were now going to be reading it. Besides, I bet Arche really does gently caress like a tiget!

I wonder what the original line about Arche was. Anyone know?

Centipeed posted:

Symphonia is probably my favourite RPG ever (Although Rogue Galaxy, which obviously isn't a Tales game, is edging it out). It's the only RPG I've ever completed, and I went back and played a New Game+ with 10x EXP set and some other cool stuff.

My characters are all around level 190, each one has the best weapon available in the game (Love the Gaia Cleaver (I think that's its name?)), except for a couple who need to complete the Colosseum to get it. Collette isn't exactly fantastic to play solo. I've gotten all of the Devil Arms, but I didn't carry across my kills, so they're a little underpowered.

It's the furthest I've ever taken an RPG, and I never usually complete games, let alone do it twice.

I'm sad because I own Rogue Galaxy and never actually played it. I don't even know where it is at the moment. Is it really all that great?

So I'm playing through Abyss right now for the first time before trying Vesperia. I figure once I get used to Vesperia, it'll be hard for me to go back to the old engine with its load times and poo poo. Anyways, I understand most of the game, but I still don't get how FSCs work. Can each Arte only take one type? What the the extra dots? I assumed you can keep adding more and make them better but it seems it can only take one at a time. Or am I doing something wrong?

# ¿ Sep 2, 2008 07:50

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# ¿ Apr 25, 2024 10:06

Ice Blue: Mar 20, 2002; Sorry, I get paid to shoot paintballs, honey, not the breeze.

Sylphiel posted:

You can only equip one type at a time, but you can switch them out at will and keep the levels you've gained for each type. So you can, say, level a grass chamber on Raging Blast for stealing, then switch it for a sunlight chamber for FOF changing, then switch the grass chamber back on when you get to a fight where you want to steal something.

The extra dots are just for the levels; the level raises as you use the skill with the chamber equipped and it makes the effect better.

The levels stick with the Artes, not with the chambers right? It's not like I'm leveling up this chamber to level 2 and can put it on another artes and it be level 2, right?

Seems kinda lame. I mean it's cool but it could have been cooler if you could mix and match and customize powers the way you want. You can't have a power be cheap to use and powerful, only one or the other. Makes Grass chambers seem useless for powers that don't steal. What's the point of making them knock back more when you could make a power cost less or deal more damage?

# ¿ Sep 2, 2008 08:09

Ice Blue: Mar 20, 2002; Sorry, I get paid to shoot paintballs, honey, not the breeze.

Anyone know where I can get the Tales of the Abyss soundtrack? The anime opening has made me really like the music again.

# ¿ Oct 26, 2008 22:03

Ice Blue: Mar 20, 2002; Sorry, I get paid to shoot paintballs, honey, not the breeze.

Cross posted:

It's a lot of little things, mostly, but they add up. The biggest and most obvious change is that you can't pan the camera back nearly as far, and the battlefields are much smaller, so combat always feels a lot more cramped. Fatal Strikes are another huge difference, although they make the biggest difference on multiple playthroughs once you work your way up to doing challenge runs, like Unknown without 10x Exp or carrying over equipment.
Apart from that, free-running is kind of broken in general because enemies don't have the AI to deal with it and very few of them have wide attack arcs. You can't attack out of a free-run, which means that you can't get enemies back up after knocking them down (pretty important for racking up combos or keeping stun-lock). FOF changes were kind of a neat idea, but you had way more control and flexibility over Altered/Burst Artes in Vesperia. The equipment-based skill system was also a lot better than Capacity Cores, I thought, but that's maybe not so directly related to the combat.

Character balance/variety is probably bigger than any of the general changes to the combat, though.
There's basically no reason to ever use Luke except when you have to, because Guy plays almost identically and completely outclasses him because he's so much faster (and really isn't signifigantly weaker to compensate). In Vesperia, Yuri and Repede play very differently and neither one really steals the other's thunder, not to mention Judith being a third, completely unique option for playing melee.
Natalia and Tear both heal in basically the same way (ie: Spells) so they work more or less identically in that regard, except Natalia is a bit worse at it. Whereas in Vesperia, Raven and Estelle are both viable as your main healer, but they bring completely different advantages and disadvantages to the table.
Karol and Anise are about equal I guess; Anise is a bit better as a fighter, but having spells is kind of worthless on her, and Karol having Support Artes makes him useful as a supplementary healer when you need it. Rita and Jade are pretty close, although I'd have to give the edge to Rita because thanks to Fatal Strikes and some of her Skills, even her low-tier spells stay perfectly useful throughout the entire game (on the other hand, Jade doesn't break the game the second he goes into Overlimit, so there's a plus for Abyss).

Like I said, it's a lot of little things, so it sounds nitpicky listing them off one by one, but all together it just sort of makes Abyss feel like the barebones proof-of-concept demo that got turned into a fleshed out game when they made Vesperia.

What do you mean by breaking the game in overlimit? Is she that ridiculously powerful? Also, I kinda like Luke's style a bit more for some reason. I don't know why. I usually use both him and Guy in the party so it's not really a disadvantage for me to use him.

# ¿ Nov 10, 2008 11:52

Ice Blue: Mar 20, 2002; Sorry, I get paid to shoot paintballs, honey, not the breeze.

Cross posted:

Basically, yeah, she is that powerful. If you haven't played Vesperia yet, spells don't have a cast time in Overlimit (the incantation is literally shortened to "blah blah blah"), and the four-stage Overlimit gauge means that she can keep a level 1 Overlimit going indefinitely. Rita is already one of the better mages in the Tales series even without Overlimit, so add that in and the game gets pretty lopsided.

I've only played the demo so far. Is the OL bar shared by all the characters? I remember in Abyss it was per character. Also can only one character at a time go into Overlimit?

# ¿ Nov 11, 2008 01:25

Ice Blue: Mar 20, 2002; Sorry, I get paid to shoot paintballs, honey, not the breeze.

Wow. Seems like OL is much more important in ToV than it was in ToA.

# ¿ Nov 11, 2008 01:29

Ice Blue: Mar 20, 2002; Sorry, I get paid to shoot paintballs, honey, not the breeze.

ConanThe3rd posted:

I'd be more sympathetic if I didn't have to import almost all of their games.

I've only tried Legendia today. I dunno if it goes tits up later, but by god it's a good start. Why was this and "The Abyss" blocked from European Release whilst Dawn of The New World gets a pass?

I've heard Legendia is one of the worse Tales games.

# ¿ Jun 21, 2010 23:43

Ice Blue: Mar 20, 2002; Sorry, I get paid to shoot paintballs, honey, not the breeze.

Mokinokaro posted:

Except they're giant PS3 fanboys and kept mocking 360 owners as beta testers for Namco games.

The worst thing about Legendia is the fact the 2nd half of the bloody game isn't even voiced.

I took their beta testing thing as less of a bite on 360 players but a sting at how Namco pretty obviously planned Vesperia to come out with a second iteration with extra content.

At least according to one of their articles, the 360 version seems to have better visuals (more color and higher resolution).

What I want to know is if Symphonia fans had a similar reaction to the Symphonia rerelease on PS2. Sure it kinda sucks the 360 version doesn't get the full experience but it's pretty standard for Tales games I thought. Plus it makes sense that the later version would get more content after Microsoft paid for time exclusivity. It's not like the game would have sold very well as a 360 exclusive in Japan.

Ice Blue fucked around with this message at 00:36 on Jun 22, 2010

# ¿ Jun 22, 2010 00:30

Ice Blue: Mar 20, 2002; Sorry, I get paid to shoot paintballs, honey, not the breeze.

Slug in a Box posted:

Yeah, I agree.
I also hate the platform jumping for their main titles. It wasn't so bad last gen since they mostly stuck to PS2, but this gen is just a mess. You have to own all the consoles and portables if you want to play all the main Tales games. Go multiplatform or stick to one console/portable from now on.

They should also cut down the whole "Team Symphonia" and "Team Destiny" idea. They are already starting to merge, so they're on the right track. It feels weird for stuff like Tales of Vesperia not to have CC which is a great upgrade to the battle system, and on the other side, have Tales of Graces not have simple stuff like renaming party members or scene skip from ToV.

How do you scene skip in ToV? I could never fit it out.

Also what's CC in the context of Tales games? And how does character renaming work?

# ¿ Jun 26, 2010 21:44

Ice Blue: Mar 20, 2002; Sorry, I get paid to shoot paintballs, honey, not the breeze.

ConanThe3rd posted:

No idea

CC are "Move points" that more or less replace TP and refill quickly in battle. The cravat being that every action except for moving and using Items requires at least one CC Point. The last game to use it was Keroro RPG.

Renaming is usually a case of selecting the person's name in most Tales games.

I didn't see a rename option in Vesperia. I don't remember one in Abyss and Symphonia either but I have a bad memory about details like that. Does it change the dialog so when a character says another character's name, it's just blank or is the voice acting the same? That'd get confusing.

# ¿ Jun 26, 2010 23:52

Ice Blue: Mar 20, 2002; Sorry, I get paid to shoot paintballs, honey, not the breeze.

Nate RFB posted:

Games like Phantasia, Symphonia, Abyss, and Vesperia are all great games, but I think you're pretty damned if you play any of them out of order. Each game spoils you if you play the previously released ones.

A remake of Abyss with Vesperia's gameplay/graphics/loading times would probably be my ideal Tales game.

I delayed playing Vesperia because I wanted to finish Abyss before getting spoiled by Vesperia's graphics and better load times and everything. But I never got around to finishing Abyss over the years so I was like gently caress it I might as well start ToV. I bought it at launch and only stayed days ago.

# ¿ Jun 27, 2010 04:27

Ice Blue: Mar 20, 2002; Sorry, I get paid to shoot paintballs, honey, not the breeze.

Overbite posted:

I think Vesperia is sort of an anomaly in the Tales series. Every one is about some plucky young dude who gets in an adventure and all his friends help him out as he learns about the world and about himself, though perhaps the same could be said of all JRPGs.

But Vesperia is different in how Yuri is already a grown dude and we don't have to watch another character go through anime puberty. It was refreshing. Then they made Graces and went back to the kids on patrol. After Vesperia I really don't want to play a Tales game (or any game) like that. If that's the kind of game they want to make then I don't care if they stop making Tales games.

I thought Abyss did a decent job of turning the formula around. Luke wasn't plucky. He's an rear end in a top hat. He shits on everything and is a naysayer. He's also pretty ignorant, like almost belligerently ignorant since he had so much pride. I felt that was a pretty interesting plot element. The plot twist was pretty well done as well even if it was somewhat obvious. I also thought Tear was a cool character. A strong, silent badass as the main chick instead of the standard naive princess. If anything Vesperia is more standard JRPG except the main character Yuri is the tough older dude with the heart of gold that follows the plucky young hero Karol around. Even the main chick is a naive princess. It's like as if Barret was the main character in FF7.

Arcaeris posted:

I'm really liking Vesperia, it's fun and the dialogue is funny. I've only barely gotten Rita, though, so hopefully there's a lot more fun in store.

Some of this trophy poo poo is retarded, though. I've accidentally completed 2 secret missions so far, so I looked up what the hell they are. How would you know to do these things? Apparently you're also supposed to do a bunch of poo poo (that I missed) like use an identifying item on every enemy?

That's some crazy (and stupid) trophy poo poo right there.

Tell be about it. I forgot to use magic lens on the first 3 guys. I've done it ever since but I'm kinda pissed I missed so much poo poo at the start that gently caress up my chances at getting some achievements/costumes.

# ¿ Jun 27, 2010 06:45

Ice Blue: Mar 20, 2002; Sorry, I get paid to shoot paintballs, honey, not the breeze.

Eddain posted:

I like the Magic Lens mechanic in Tales games. You use it on an unknown enemy and you learn everything about them, and the data is retained if you ever encounter the enemy again. You can even review your monster book to see which enemy dropped what in case you needed to get certain materials.

The secret missions aren't supposed to be obvious. Sometimes they have an effect during the boss fight, sometimes they do nothing at all. It's pretty cool when you get it randomly and it's not like you need to complete them all (unless you're an achievement whore).

What bothers me about the Magic Lens is it's a pretty useless thing that you need to keep filling up on when you go to the store when it could easily just be an Arte like it was in ToS. It really loving sucks when you are low on lenses. I mean sure they drop all the time with some enemies but it's pretty dumb that you have to keep up with buying them just to fill out your monster book. It's a neat mechanic in theory but making it tied to an item that you have to constantly fill is poor design.

# ¿ Jun 27, 2010 20:32

Ice Blue: Mar 20, 2002; Sorry, I get paid to shoot paintballs, honey, not the breeze.

wdarkk posted:

It was an item in ToS too, unless you're talking about the PS2 version (where it was an arte, but most of us didn't play that).

I didn't say it wasn't an item in ToS. I said in ToS there was an Arte that served its purpose. And no I only played the GC version. I remember Rain having a spell that did the same thing as Magic Lens.

WingsOfSteel posted:

They're cheap as gently caress, you only have to use them once per enemy type (Dungeons usually have less than ten unique monster types), you can carry up to 20 at a time, and they are available in every town.

I'm not sure how it could be any more convenient, except for the game just telling you every enemy's HP.

If you're using Magic Lenses on every enemy in every encounter, you're not using them right.

How can you carry 20? I can only carry 15. I'm not using them on every enemy encounter. I'm just saying it's a retarded mechanic to make you have to buy them all the time when it could easily be an ability that does the same exact thing.

I never complained about their price or how often you have to use them either so bringing that poo poo up is kinda pointless. You really can't defend making them an item vs making it a default ability. It doesn't serve any purpose as a cheap item that you constantly have to fill up, especially considering it's possible to forget to fill and run out in the middle of a series of battles where you can't go shopping.

Ice Blue fucked around with this message at 05:52 on Jun 28, 2010

# ¿ Jun 28, 2010 05:42

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# ¿ Apr 25, 2024 10:06

Ice Blue: Mar 20, 2002; Sorry, I get paid to shoot paintballs, honey, not the breeze.

wdarkk posted:

Uh, you got a source on that? Because I don't see it anywhere except in the GC-to-PS2 changes list.

Honestly the following mechanic pretty much doesn't bother me. How you think it's bad compared to Ymir Forest of Latheon Gorge is beyond me.

Weird. I guess I was wrong. I could have sworn I used it.

Anyways, I don't remember the Shadow Temple. Anyone care to explain?

# ¿ Jun 28, 2010 06:06

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