sincere | Tales of Graces f is coming out

I hear and obey.

Actually, when I heard the news I was so giddy. More Tales of games!

And it's for the PS3. I don't have to whine about having to buy another console just to play one game for it.

GOOD WORK! /salute

I want all of them. I've heard nothing but amazing things about Tales of Xillia and I seriously have the worst deja vu right now, I could've sworn I already responded to you.

Anyway, hooray for systems we own! Although I now own all of them, so. Yeah.

Hmm, I got Xillia for Christmas last year and I can say it's really fun. The battle system is my most favorite so far in the series from what I've played and it's pretty interesting since it's considered the next big step for how they make the tales series from here on. I hope you get to play it someday.

But be warned,

They only have...

Ready?

4 in game costumes! lots of free attachments though.

Only four in-game costumes?! /flips tables

I'm just kidding. I live for costumes but I will survive somehow. The character designs all look pretty awesome anyway! Plus I heard there was a Ba'ul ornament, so I approve of this.

But I've seen some screencaps and it's gorgeous. I really hope Graces does well and that convinces them to bring Xillia over~

Damn you and all the awesome Tales casts at Marina for making me consider spending hours and hours of my life playing them all despite being horrible at games and the fact that they give me headaches!

...All that is to say, I'm thinking about it. >.>

I want to come out there and play it for you. ...and Tales of Vesperia. (Mostly Tales of Vesperia.)

The good news is that Tales of games can literally play themselves if you're really terrible or need to rest your eyes. They have an autobattle! The AI is not the greatest and might get itself killed, but, hey. Autobattle!

I would totally let you and provide refreshments. /o/

I actually don't know if my level of terrible because I haven't played a video game other than DDR-types for... a decade? Usually I just watch the pretty go by while someone else plays.

But. I have lots of free time right now. So. How pathetic would it be if I play using a walkthrough?

If only I didn't hate airlines so much right now!

It wouldn't be pathetic at allllll. I have played Vesperia at least four times and I don't play without a guide to tell me where all the sidequests are after every major event, because Tales of games are chock full of them. This and this guide, specifically.

Graces might not have proper walkthroughs out for a while since it's not out in English yet. So you should buy both Graces and Vesperia and start with Vesperia... clearly...

...Oh hey, helpful links that are clearly designed to tempt me. And are clearly working. OTL

I swear I have willpower, I swear I do...

/trundles off to Amazon prime account

yessssss

...it's only on the 360? Damn, that means I have to talk Husband into bringing that system back upstairs (and, you know, sharing it) before I can buy anything. Maybe his shiny new Vita will help with this.

Ooh, I was interested in the Vita. I kind of hate my PSP, and I've heard good things about it...

Yeah, people are working on the PS3 Vesperia -- whether a formal localization (for like a year Yuri's voice actor has been saying "I don't know what the hold-up is, they made me come in and record the extra scenes for the PS3 version, so they already have the voice tracks for it") or a fan-translated version -- but right now the 360 version is the only one available unless you like your games to be 100% in Japanese.

You'll have to tell him it's for a good cause. And maybe that Judith is hot.

If only they made a Japanese version with subs, like they did for FFXIII.... alas.

I had to call him about our dog's surgery anyway and he said he'd allow it if he can mock my terrible gaming and also claim the 360 on the rare occasions when he is home and not working. I think that's a fair deal.

And now I'm out of excuses. Declare your victory, go on.

/declares victory /plays victory music /victory quote

I pre-ordered it as soon as it was possible last year (lucky me too, the price listed was 20 bucks off so I got it before they listed back to 60 just 30 min. later). XD

I can't wait for it too. The characters look adorable and the battle system looks so fun. I honestly have been waiting for this forever as so far the main console RPG I'm most looking forward to this year.

(Just hope they have more prints than Abyss did in case it sells well.) >_>

....

This game!

sdlkfjslg that is lucky. XD I actually have... two... preorders, because I preordered it from Best Buy thinking it didn't have any preorder bonuses, but just recently they put up the Gamestop preorder bonuses, and I am a huge amazing loser for preorder bonuses, so... I had to get it from Gamestop. But I figured the more copies that are preordered the happier they'll be, right?

/the hugest loser, not even kidding ;;;;

I literally know nothing about this game. The main character is a brunet kid who is all knightly, and the main female character is a loli with immense purple ponytails for some reason. And I heard people liked the battle system. This is the sum total of my knowledge.

Adding: I just don't like reading too much about things before I experience them. XD So I am happily passing up all actual attempts to learn things. It'll be out in two weeks or so and I'll find out then! :D

Edited 2012-02-22 18:21 (UTC)

You are just dedicated and that is that.

You're so lucky then. D=

I waited a long to pass up on knowing anything about the game due to wanting to be surprised. Then as soon as I lost hope for a localization I went and spoiled myself. Then a week later it get's the localized approval. DX

Never again.

Probably.

Ah well, have a great time with it =D

skdjflskj those tricksy bastards.

I WILL. ♥

Wow it's actually a lot cheaper than I expected. And I loved Vesperia before the Xbox broke!

Consider me sold~

sldfjkslkg that is both an awesome and a sad thing.

If it's anywhere near as good as Tales of Vesperia I will be in paradise, so let's both hope for the good things!

I do not own a ps-3, sadly.

You and Li will just have to let me play this game at your place. :3c

We will just have to do that.

You should buy the game anyway. To look at.

Hey, pardon the random interruption (I was just browsing the friends page of no_true_pair and I noticed this), but I figured you wouldn't mind another person chiming in in support (?)!

I pre-ordered this game in September and I'm so excited that the release date is finally drawing near!! :D (It feels like ages since I've played a Tales of game in English...)

I definitely don't mind the random interruption! I am really excited. Vesperia is amazing and I've been riding on its fandom for a long, long time, and I don't know if Graces can shake my love of it... But I have a long lovely history with the Tales of series and I'm very excited to play a totally new one!

Is the storyline any good? After Vesperia, I've lost complete faith in the Tales' series storytelling ability.

As I indicated in the post, I literally know nothing about this game other than "It's a Tales of game, the main character is some guy who wants to be a knight, and the female lead has WHOA purple pigtails." The battle system is supposed to be the best of any Tales game, though.

But Vesperia's story was both more mature and more complex than any of the previous games in the series that I've played, and I far preferred it. So I'm only more interested in what they come up with after that.

My problem was more the overall plot structure. plot points are introduced and made a big deal out of, but then completely abandoned and forgotten about.

Yuri's murdering those two assholes is the chief example of this. After he does it a second time, and a big deal is made of it again as Flynn and Estelle ruminate on what he did, it is never brought up again and nobody even seems to remember it happened.

The importance of the barrier blastia is another. At the beginning of the game, a HUGE deal is made about how important the blastia are to the survival of humans. We see barely getting into that pass, we see Halure under constant siege, and so on. Then the longer the game goes on, the more people seem to forget this stuff and just assume "Hey, we can live without blastia as long as we work together! :D"

And then there's the villains who, outside of Duke, are horribly one-dimensional hack jobs. Zagi is just a lunatic. We don't even get to find out why he was trying to kill Flynn at the beginning of the game. Alexei is seen once before we find out he's a bastard, and is not really delved into. His overall plot isn't even explained unless you do that sidequest in the basement of Ghasforast. The German accent guy is just "more complicated than we thought" and left at that, without explaining how.

Then there's Sodia stabbing Yuri at Zaude, which was so out of character and random that I couldn't take it seriously at all. It seemed like a badly written excuse to seperate the party again for the third arc.

I digress.

I'll probably try Graces F out anyway since there's a big lag between Mass Effect 3 and Resident Evil 6 on my gaming calendar, and at the very least the gameplay will be enjoyable. I just hope they put some more effort into the storyline this time. Vesperia felt like the writers just stopped caring about what they were doing halfway through.

Yuri's vigilante murders are brought up repeatedly, and trouble everyone in the party. They trouble Yuri repeatedly and they are directly referenced in the ending animation of the game, so they are absolutely not forgotten by anyone, least of all the creators. "No one ever hunted down and arrested Yuri for them" isn't evidence that they just abandoned the plot thread; there are other ways of continuing it than going all police procedural.

Barrier blastia are, to an extent, resolved in the course of the plot. The two examples you cite are literally the first two things that happen in the game. Are the barrier blastia necessary? Yes. But they're necessary because they exist. The game establishes several times that monsters are made crazy and hyperstrong by imbalances in the aer, which are in fact caused by blastia. There's literally a point in the game when everyone is asked to turn off their barrier blastia and the only problem anyone encounters is when one city decides to put it back up. When we hear about swarms of monsters attacking cities and giganto monsters, we always hear that it's because of imbalances in the aer. Halure is never described as being under constant siege; it's described as an unlucky attack while the tree was weak, resulting in an unlucky weakening of the barrier, and all of this is caused by aer going out of control. During the course of the game, 1) a settlement without a barrier blastia has been a major success; and 2) aer, the source of the madness that influences and empowers these monsters, is eliminated. There's absolutely no reason to believe that settled areas couldn't be defended by knights, guilds, militia, or what have you. I remember them saying monsters would cease being wild and attacking major cities without aer. There are a multitude of reasons why I don't think that particular complaint has merit.

Zagi is just a lunatic. Cumore is just an asshole. They're one-dimensional, it's true. But so is almost every Tales of Symphonia villain outside of Mithos. Am I seriously supposed to give a damn about Kvar or Pronyma? Who else is even a villain in that game? What about Grand Maestro Mohs, is he an incredible example of villainy? I have zero interest in any of the God Generals of Abyss, so I'm not really moved by claims that any of them were amazing villains. If Kratos or Zelos are counted on this list, then I point to Raven as being the exact same thing. Tales of games have never been a series where I expected depth from any villain other than the final boss, and Vesperia, above all other games, isn't about the villains. You don't even get to fight the real final boss! The final boss makes friends with you and then walks away after you godmode the real final boss to death. And I don't think there's anything wrong with that.

Sodia stabbing Yuri at Zaude was not only not out of character, it was a master stroke of characterization, and I'm frankly sad that you can't see that.

Basically, everything I like about the game is because it doesn't spell things out for you: because I can use my brain and see them for myself, because they are all here. Because the characters are complicated enough that a distraught woman who is a protagonist can, in fact, stab another protagonist without it just being random. I don't like the Tales of the Abyss, Tales of Symphonia, Tales of Destiny, "Let me hold you by the hand and explain to you in small words the morality and the consequences of every action." Those things, and the brainless protagonists who made that necessary, made those games feel very childlike.

If you prefer your games to hold your hand, then we have different taste in games, that's all.

If there was something about it in the ending animation, I certainly didn't see it. And yeah, the party discussing it briefly is true, but it's never resolved. For example, Flynn is obviously troubled by what Yuri did, but it never comes to anything. He never confronts him about it again after the desert oasis. I'm not asking for a jail thing, just some sort of closure.

I concede the point about the aer affecting the monsters. I had forgotten about that.

The villains in Symphonia being like that is one of the many reasons I disliked that game, so you'll get no argument from me there. As for Abyss, their motives were developed. Mohs is obsessed with the score, unhealthily so. Legretta believes in Van's vision, and so on. They all had clear, well rounded motivations for what they did. Outside of Duke, nobody in Vesperia did, and that irritated me. And Duke helping you in the end is part of why I kinda liked him, so I don't have a problem there.

I read your dissertation on Sodia, and I really can't agree with it. Sodia practically worships Flynn because he does things by the books. What pisses her off about Yuri is he goes beyond the law and gets away with it. So I really can't get my mind around Sodia stabbing Yuri outside of an incredibly extreme situation, which Zaude was not. It would take a lot more than "Yuri's kind of a dick whenever Sodia sees him" to get me to buy her stabbing him there, in an unguarded moment after he'd just taken down the guy all of them had been hunting for the last arc of the game. And to make matters worse, even that is not resolved. It's just left hanging.

This isn't about hand holding. It's about actually resolving plot points, and having villains (the movers of the plot) with actual reasons for what they're doing. Final Fantasy XII is a game I felt that didn't hand hold and got its story across effectively. Vesperia on the other hand, I didn't think did.

You did miss it! But did you also, for example, miss the part where Flynn contemplated vigilante murder, and the fact that Yuri did it so that he wouldn't have to get his hands dirty? How about the part where Ioder mentions that Flynn talked to him about Yuri's vigilante murders?

There's an extra scene in the PS3 version where Flynn explains the conclusion he came to about Yuri's actions -- during the Alexei/Estelle drama at Zaphias -- and then gives Yuri further permission to murder Estelle, which I'm sure many people also missed and will also miss when it's translated into English. But I didn't need that scene. I knew exactly the conclusion that Flynn had arrived at, and I don't demand that they sit down and discuss it in the middle of the crises that are happening nonstop during the second half of the game, which start almost immediately after their last confrontation, which was about that topic already.

As I said: that's what I like about this game. The fact that they allow you to miss things like that instead of shouting it in your face.

We're just going to have to disagree about the Abyss villains. Mohs's motives were "I want to do what the Score says so we can get to that prosperity it mentions," and I remember absolutely no depth beyond that. Sure, each God General is given a reason to hate the Score. But that, in and of itself, doesn't make someone a three-dimensional character. I have no idea what anyone sees in Legretta other than "hot serious woman who wants in Van's pants". We don't know about her past, her personality, her interests, or what she wants other than the above -- except in one scene where she rattles off ham-handedly about the reason she follows Van. In any other game, I would consider her an extremely half-assed villain. If you consider that compelling, then you have to give the same credit to Alexei: a hero, a Cinderella story, the first ever commoner to make any noble look at him, a brilliant strategist and charismatic leader who achieved this rank, and then we later learn in one scene that he was crushed by years of being cockblocked in his progressive social agenda to make things better for the commoners. So he decided to reduce civilization to rubble, because that was the only way he saw to shake the nobles off their oppressive perches. So that makes him at least as solid a character as Legretta, right? We even have the same amount of time devoted to their respective revelations.

The only God General aside from Van who I find more than half-heartedly developed is Dist, and I'm not a fan of his. I think that giving the villains a two-sentence "Here's the reason why he mindlessly supports the final boss" before he dies isn't that much more admirable than not giving them anything at all, especially in a game where, I'm still maintaining, the villains aren't the point.

But I find it really sad that you think that's a fair evaluation not only of Sodia, but of any character. "She idolizes a man, therefore she should never do anything that he wouldn't do?" Yes, she does worship Flynn. And he does do things by the books. But Sodia isn't Flynn. She is a different character. She has her own beliefs, and troubles, and frustrations. If she did everything Flynn did (hell, if Flynn does everything by the books, I think Yuri would have ended up in jail in that police procedural) then she would be a really shitty character. Is it so impossible to ever imagine a good character ever having a moment of panic and doing something they regret? Do you think that because she's a knight and she believes in upholding the law, that it's wildly OOC of her to so much as jaywalk?

Sodia is a character. She is a temperamental, protective she-wolf of a character who sees that her idol is being chipped away at, worn down, and constantly under assault by someone he perceives as being his best friend. She sees her hero literally sacrifice himself in order to try and protect that criminal. She's not a robot with a "What Would Flynn Do?" prime directive. She does something in the heat of the moment that she regrets, and then there are two mandatory conversations addressing her feelings, Yuri's feelings, and the consequences of her actions.

I know that you're not the kind of person who goes "Sodia is a whore because she attacked Yuri, how dare she! The end." But it's not much better to say, "Sodia worships Flynn and she obeys the law, therefore, any action not taken 100% within the law is impossible for her and can't possibly be the result of IC build-up. After all, Flynn, and law! What possible explanation could trump that?"

I have no idea what anyone sees in Legretta other than "hot serious woman who wants in Van's pants". We don't know about her past, her personality, her interests, or what she wants other than the above -- except in one scene where she rattles off ham-handedly about the reason she follows Van.

As someone that's a pretty big fan of the God Generals and Legretta, what I see in her is an instructor with close ties to Tear. The side-quests that detailed her past and connections were primarily focused around Tear. There are several points in the game that she tries to bring Tear over to their side, and trying to 'save' her (as much as one can do when you have kill everyone on the planet).

I do feel her romantic interest in Van was a bit of an unnecessary way of trying to show "oh look she does have feelings", but I also still feel like they gave her some form of depth in her connection to Tear and that she does have characterization beyond wanting to get into Van's pants.

That is honestly what I find most appealing about the God Generals myself. They each have their own tragedies and their own connections to other people (primarily to the people in the party) and they're all people who have been harmed greatly by the system they lived in, so that was why I was moved by them and their presence.

On that note, I am...kind of bothered by the overtone of your comments by implying that

slayerofgod was somehow not intelligent enough to 'get' Vesperia, especially with the hand-holding comments. While I can agree that it's poor taste to criticize someone's favorite game in their own journal and that it does come across as needlessly confrontational, I am honestly bothered by some of the generalizations you are making.

I enjoy both Vesperia and Abyss, but the latter was the one that moved me most cause Luke was a character I related to (he's written in a way that feels like a true account of depression, imo) and I felt i could identify with with antagonists due to their place in a harmful society and the wounds they bear and how that eventually leads to them deciding to fuck it all and just toss out the entire system. That doesn't mean that I feel that Vesperia was a lesser story or somehow less mature; and really it is a very mature story in how deals with the law and vigilantism, and the party operated as a very healthy family unit. I appreciate it's strengths but it just personally didn't find as much that 'moved' me in the way Abyss did, and that has nothing to do with either story being about 'hand-holding' or fans of either game somehow lacking the necessary maturity to understand the story. All it is is a matter of people having different story elements that appeal to them and that's all.

I don't think it was your intent, but a lot of your comments really do read like you're insulting the intelligence and maturity of other Tales of fans for preferring another title than Vesperia. I can understand the frustrations of having someone criticize your favorite game in a cheery post, but please don't insult the rest of us because of that.

I do see that in Legretta, and I think she has potential to be an awesome character. But pretty much everyone in everything does. I'm not saying I don't think anyone could find her interesting. I'm not saying people who like Legretta are somehow wrong. One of my favorite characters in Tales of Vesperia is a character that I have a pile of headcanon for because he has virtually nothing in canon. I know far less about Ioder than I do about Legretta; but I'm also not saying other games suck because their characters don't live up to Ioder's example.

People are entitled to like and dislike whatever character, game, series they want! I have no problem with people liking / writing / shipping / whatever the God Generals. I'm not into them and I probably won't read it, but that's great. I only have a problem in it if you come into my space on a post where I'm trying to rally fans and tell me "I don't want to spend money on your favorite game series because your favorite game is so bad that it ruined the series for me."

slayerofgod and I have been talking for four years, so I doubt he hasn't noticed that I'm into Tales of Vesperia or that it's a surprise to him that I was willing to defend it. I tried to back down and just say "I personally find TOV to be awesome, so that's not a concern of mine," and he laid out all the reasons why he disliked it. I assume he was interested in talking about it.

But you misinterpreted me. I'm not saying that he's not intelligent enough; I'm saying that he missed things. And that I believe a lot of people missed these things. Missing them doesn't make you stupid. He was quick to point out things that I missed about FFXIII that made it make [slightly] more sense; and I don't think it's unfair of me to say, when it's demonstrably true, "Your arguments are telling me that you missed it when this happened."

I feel like you're saying that I somehow said that liking Abyss means you're stupid, or that if you like a game where they clearly enumerate everything, you're stupid. And I never, ever said that. I love both Abyss and Vesperia. I love Symphonia. I like Destiny and Phantasia and Eternia. And in a post where I squealed "Tales of games are all worth buying, so buy this one!" I am genuinely surprised that anyone would think I'm trying to tell someone who came in here to say that my favorite game ruined the series that "If you like any Tales of game more than my favorite one, you're an idiot."

I don't like the Tales of the Abyss, Tales of Symphonia, Tales of Destiny, "Let me hold you by the hand and explain to you in small words the morality and the consequences of every action." Those things, and the brainless protagonists who made that necessary, made those games feel very childlike.

If you prefer your games to hold your hand, then we have different taste in games, that's all.

This is mainly the one that makes me feel that the maturity and the intelligence of people who enjoy those games were put into question. Saying someone prefers hand-holding in childlike entertainment holds the implication that they're simple-minded. It is a very loaded phrase to use to make your point.

I can understand the frustration of having a post with the intent to rally be derailed into "your favorite had flaws that make me want to back out of this", especially from someone that is fully aware of the fact that it's your favorite game. But you also didn't leave the discussion to be just about Vesperia's strengths and flaws and brought the other games into question, and framed the argument in how other Tales of titles were childlike and used that to argue for Vesperia's strengths. I don't know if that was meant to be a reference to other discussions you and he had in the past, but it does read as...very dismissive of the other titles, even if that may not have been your intent.

On the Legretta note, I am still bothered by the fact that you took a militant female character and reduced her to simply "wanting to get into the Big Bad's pants." Especially as you can see and agree that some of her strongest potential comes from her connections to Tear. I can agree that the sidequest that details most of her character development and motivations is annoying to access and it's aggravating that her feelings for Van was what made it into the main plot, but I also believe that completely dismissing everything else she has going for her because of those romantic feelings is...incredibly problematic.

I know none of this is your intent but your comments have still implied both things and saying that I simply misinterpreted is a bit disingenuous at best.

I was going to respond to this, but

vangirl is right in that this was needlessly confrontational, which was honestly never my intent, so I apologize for that. You were right in that I just had a bunch of opinions in my head bouncing around with no outlet and just wanted to discuss them, but this wasn't an appropriate setting.

If I may ask an honest question though. Where did you see the thing on Alexei in the game? When I played through it I never encountered anything like that.

Oh also a little nugget for a previous post in case you didn't know. The reason the PS3 version is having difficulty coming over is because Microsoft bought exclusivity rights for the game over here, so I imagine they're still being dicks about that.

Tales of Graces f is coming out

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