Is this a good tales game to get into? I played a few hours of Vesperia but that was more than 6 years ago. Played a lot of Phantasia and really liked it. Had the one on the 3DS and didn't play it much..i'm also not a fan of the anime feel but the gameplay is fun..
Anyone like the tales games?
yes. play symphonia. some may over rate it but its a good game overall.
It's kiknda bland in general, it's not bad, but bthat's about it.
Don't nything that resembles character development though.
The first hours of the game will be bland because it boils down to auto > auto > auto > arte > block
Combo shenanigans will take a while. The story isn't anything special but it long, which gets you really attached to the characters.
From best to worst
Tales of Legendia
Tales of Zestiria
Tales of Symphonia
Tales of Graces F
Tales of Berseria
Tales of Hearts
Tales of Xillia 2
Tales of Xillia
>zestiria that high.
what the fuck? also play abyss
Why is Zestiria second on the list? It should be bottom.
Don't you bully Judge Mathis' game you cunny. As brain dead as it was, pivot was the funnest mechanic in the series.
>Legendia number 1
[Doubt]
because the story is great, soundtrack is 10/10 and the combat is refined.
It's great game that aged bad.
If you have missed it when you were 15, you'll enjoy it still due to nostalgia.
If you are under 20, your eyes will bleed.
>the story is great, soundtrack is 10/10 and the combat is refined
all have cringey voice acting.
>Berseria's spot on the list
Yep I agree.
This guy was the best thing about it from the moment he showed up, but even he can't cover up how awful Velvet's character is, nor how mind numbing the combat became after 5 minutes, despite the thousands of subsystems there were to manage.
>pc gamers playing Tales of
steam port was a mistake.
The story? What story?
Zestiria's story cuts out once you leave Izuchi, go to Ladylake and then meet Edna.
From now on there's no story, just 5 one hour sidequests and final battle.
You can finish the whole game in 12hours, 14 if you do ex dungeon.
From there
Tales ranking from what I've played:
Abyss
Berseria
Vesperia PS3
Symphonia
Vesperia 360
Xillia 2
Eternia
Phantasia
Graces F
Xillia
The rest of the titles are irrelevant besides Hearts R, but I'd imagine it's probably at least as good as Xillia 2
You can only truly call yourself a tales fan with taste when you play through Vesperia PS3 and realize that it is quite overrated, but still a good game
phantasia is a great starting game
after that symphonia
abyss
vesperia
the rest of the tales series is spinoffs and play wildly different
>Zestiria's story cuts out once you leave Izuchi
That's why you have to watch the anime prequel and them episodes 1 and 2
All the really popular tales are overrated to be fair. Vesperia is just the most popular to dickride.
I find playing Eizen and Magilou the most enjoyable.
Once you raise his paper defenses, the man is a real reaper against everyone who's weak against Earth and Wind. Then if enemies have Fire/Water weakness, I just switch to Magilou. Her casting can be long if you don't master 40% shorter cast from gradient guardian, but once you'll do, and learn to cast after combo, she immediately cast these 6-8sec wait spells.
And man, the two have good gear everywhere, so you can raise them to 1000+ atk and mag and 800-900 focus without problems.
I've read novel, which was just a bit better with character development of Sorey and Rose, but left rest of the group too bland. The beginning was funny at least.
Manga had best version, but cut out Mayvin's and Eizen deaths, as well as some other minor stuff. Plus it made Heldalf Sorey's father, what explains why Heldalf felt some attachment to him, and wanted the boy to join his side.
Anime is shit, as it cut out every single good thing.
-Cardinal arc
-Maltran
-Lafarga
-Mayvin
-Mikleo meeting his mother
And replaced it with forced armatization and Alisha focus, cutting on 3 episodes for showing how great and cute she is, instead of deepening the Zestiria lore about Seraphims through Sorey.
Also Rose's development wasted 2'5 episode of her thinking face stills, instead of explaining her way of living.
In the end Sorey can purify dragons out of his ass, while having Maotelus powers.
And let me tell you something - Maotelus couldn't turn dragons back into Seraphims. He couldn't help Eizen, who turned dragon 200 years earlier, nor any other dragon.
But Sorey can do that with his powers.
I call it a bullshit.
>Legendia
The character quests are the most agonizing experience I've ever had playing a video game.
Tales games got so easy, that NG+ loses its factor.
Symphonia at least had options of Kratos and Zelos.
Xillia had dual protags.
Xillia 2 had multiple endings.
But rest of the games have no replay value. Especially Berseria which was shit easy on chaos as long as you didn't triggered dangerous encounters on heavenly steppes / cameo fight / Phoenix.
Rest of the battles was piss easy once you learn to stun/sidestep attacks for break souls to combo the enemy weakness.
Grade shop bonuses bring nothing tong+
>Maotelus couldn't turn dragons back into Seraphims. He couldn't help Eizen, who turned dragon 200 years earlier, nor any other dragon.
>But Sorey can do that with his powers.
Still burns me
It's the worst bullshit they could come up with.
Ufotable just panders to fandom.
- People were mad Alisha left.
> Let's focus half series on her!
- People wanted Eizen to reunite with Edna and live happy life.
> Let's give Sorey OP powers of purification, that got passed to him from a god. It doesn't matter said god couldn't master them in 1000 years, Sorey can do it within few weeks and even surpass the god! Who needs Fifth Empyrean to keep the world safe, when random kid can do better, just because he has power of friendship.
just started playing tales of berseria and its my first tales game.
who the fuck is sares though?
she just died and seemed as important character.
You'll learn through the story, but if you don't care about spoilers.
She's reborn Velvet's late sister
lapicet is velvets cousin
These are the only good tales games:
Tales of the Abyss, Tales of Symphonia, Tales of Vesperia.
Everything else is dogshit.
It's pretty fucking clear to begin with desu
>character starts muttering about something plot relevant
>what was that?
>i-it's nothing, lloyd
this happens all the fucking time in symphonia. it doesn't help you'll really see the story twists from a mile away and then you have to go through the motions because characters are idiots.
thats just every anime and JRPG in general.
Of course it's clear after what she told Velvet about enjoying the time together with her and Arthur.
Only his family called him by that name.
Who's your favorite Berserian and why?
I really fell for Magilou and her being important for the story, but not forcing her in.
She's one of the pillars that caused the shit, but rebelled against Abbey.
Her "if Velvet can do it, then I can as well" moment is great in it's subtlety.
Also the way she denies every good deed she had done, makes her an adorable tsundere.
Tales of Festival in 2 months.
We'll learn name of new Protag of new game.
Great game to play as a teen back in 04
It definitely happens more in Symphonia than any other anime/JRPG I've ever seen.
I missed out on it when I was a teen. From all impressions it sounds like unless you did play it when you were 12 and it activates your nostalgia almonds to play it again 15 years later, you'll actually not be all that impressed with it.
>Zestiria
Fuck outta here. Worst games in the series. Worse than Graces. Combat is alright, but the framerate makes it unresponsive and the camera gets stuck so fucking easily that you can barely see what's going on. All just to avoid having a battle transition. Big mistake. Glad they went back to the normal style with Berseria.
It feels a lot like a late 90s JPRG, but with GC graphics. Puzzles almost all revolve around pushing blocks around a square grid, activating switches in the correct order or the occasional sliding around puzze a la Pokemon. It's not great, but it's not really frustrating either.
Combat is where the good part of the game is. You do get a good amount of techs to use and party AI is okay. You can set up some pre-made strategies and switch them around on the fly in-battle, something I completely overlooked for the longest time.
The one glaring flaw is how you're stuck on a 2D plane, while enemies and party members are capable of running around freely on the battlefield. Wanting to move around a party member requires you to either jump over them, which isn't always possible, or targeting another enemy, run in that direction, then re-targeting the other enemy so you get a different angle. It's a pain in the ass and I don't see how a free run wouldn't be beneficial to the game.
Story is okay. Cliched, but okay. There are some plot twists and turns throughout and it's quite lengthy. Characters have decent to good voice acting and they all feel like genuine characters who get some satisfying backstory and development as the game goes on. There's an affection system in place which results in at least one lengthy scene if you get close enough to a party member.
Content wise it's a beast. Huge amount of side-quests and optional shit. There's a randomly generated bonus dungeon you can unlock towards the very end which is pretty challenging. The problem is that the rewards are completely useless since you get them so late. NG+ does not allow you to carry over items, but you can keep skills, tech, gald and grade and increase exp for the next playthrough, so replaying the game doesn't take as long.
>not a fan of the anime feel
run, just run away and don't look back
Why did the series become so fucking anime? I mean, look at Phantasia and then look at Xillia. It's like they're completely different series. It was always a JRPG series, but it seems everything became so extreme around Abyss. They completely went all out with flamboyant characters, overdesigned magical circles, giant glowing crystals that seem to serve no purpose and shit.
It's the jrpg scene as a whole who went full weeb past 2005, we will never get Dragon Quest 8 ever again lad
What about Velvet's character do you find awful?
Phantasia reminds me about Record of the Lodoss war and Tolkien.
The good oldschool times of fantasy.
I don't like modern themes in RPG's, so xillia didn't clicked with me.
do i need to give a fuck about how combat works in berseria?
i followed the tutorial but i still dont really know what i do i just mash into demon form back and forh.
playing on hard btw
I know it's nitpicky, but shit like this, magic floating circles with crystal edges, just annoy me know. They look sort of neat for a while, but they are everywhere and make no sense.
I think that people fell for the edgy meme, not realizing the plot meaning behind that.
She was held in the pit prison harvesting hatred, and despair to feed Innaminot.
Everything Abbey was doing had such purpose.
Also Velvet is plain village girl, taught how to write and read by old lady, she can hunt, cook and suddenly she's thrown into open world after three years of killing humans turned daemons daily.
Of course she's edgy, but in rather unstable psychical way, than miss goth 2007 people think so.
Combat has always been the main draw of the Tales games, so yes. I haven't played a lot of Berseria, but the combat seems streamlined compared to previous entries, so you shouldn't really have too much problems with it.
Yeah, it's everywhere.
>are we using magic in this city? Let's put a lot of floating sparkly circles all around!
Eventually city barrier with sparkly hexagonals.
And incantation circles have become ridiculous as well. Usually some form of pentagram would suffice, but now they're all kinds of silly shit, sometimes floating in the air as well. It just baffles my mind. I'm probably autistic when it comes to this shit, but Vesperia was a hard game to play because of the constant floaty magic circle bullshit. I still don't know what the hell Rita is supposed to be doing whenever she does that. Reprogramming reality? What the fuck?
I haven't played Vesperia in years, so I don't really remember how magic there works, but I'm baffled with Berseria's magic animations.
Especially Magilou and Laphicet's.
Their artes look like someone burst firecracks all over the screen, and you can't see shit for few seconds. I got hit several times because enemy was covered in glitter.
And don't get me started on framerates' drop once you have 3 or more spells on screen. My ps4 chokes for 5 seconds, that even MA animations freeze or have delay.
I get it's ps3 ported game, but what the fuck.
Aw, fuck. Berseria has framerate issues too? I was so happy when it ran at 60fps in contrast with Zestiria and Xillia's sub-30. Is the framerate drops really that bad?
Only when you use Spell absorber few times at once and cast 2-3 whole field artes, with 5 enemy casters doing the same.
For 2 seconds framerate drops below 10 on ps4.
It's rare. If you don't play Magilou, but if you main her, this will happen every time when you have casters around and want to survive on higher difficulties.
Never had this problem with others.
Maybe sometimes Velvet's break soul and blue inferno will hiccup for a split second.
>> Let's focus half series on her!
Alishafags are actually a minority, that's why she doesn't get any merchandise, no fashion line, and you'll never see her likeness on a curry box. Alisha used to have merchandise but they all flopped so Bamco doesn't bother to make them anymore.
>> Let's give Sorey OP powers of purification, that got passed to him from a god.
I have to wonder who they were really pandering to with this?
I do and i fucking want Radiant mythology 4 already
Alisha had people feeling pity toward her.
She was just looking nice, nothing else.
Ufotable made her Mary Sue and unlikable. She just looks nice in pink I guess.
I have no idea what they tried to manage by making Sorey full mankind savior, where Zestiria was all about coexistence of both races to prevent disasters in the future, with Sorey just teaching people how to do that.
Loved this game so much as a young teen, though I think it kinda appealed to my god/religion hating retarded teenage self. Not sure how the story would have held up, but the gameplay was always fun.
Best Tales. Not that that's saying much anymore.
Still one of my favorite games of all time.
It's funny because after reading what the director she's pretty much worst girl, worse than Lailah, she isn't someone to be pitied. And the anime only made that more apparent.
I think that Ufotable really just wanted to go with generic boy saves world, and didn't even bother trying to understand the story of Zestiria or Berseria for that matter.
Alisha was meant to introduce Sorey to outside world, becoming one of his first (human) of many friends he made during the journey.
He was supposed to meet variety of people, and learn about all sorts of malevolence, trickery and well - humans.
Suddenly she became more important than MC until the last two episodes aired.
Ufotable tried to fix what was bad, but cut out the good parts of Zestiria.
Bring me just one scene where the party is ZESTY about world traveling.
There's none. The calamity haunts the plot from day one, and the cute group of friends perished to occasional scenes of Edna and Mikleo agreeing with each other instead of her annoying the shit out of him, Lailah hasn't told a single bad pun, Dezel never went full Eizen about beetles or environment or cooking (beside episode preview) and Zaveid didn't hit on anyone.
Tbh, the next episode previews held the most of Zestiria's inner charm of party banter.
Berseria may not have been the best by any means but atleast it saved what was left of the series, maybe it can have a minor influence on how they handle characters in the future.
Alisha was meant to introduce Sorey to the outside world, but even but actually wasn't important. A first conversation between Sorey and Mikleo after they leave informs the player that they were already planning on leaving anyway. Then later on you also find out that Sorey was chosen to be the shepherd from when he was born. So really even if Sorey never met Alisha he still would have become shepherd.
According to the director, Alisha only wanted to be a squire because she disliked being the being the princess and so she regularly shirked her duties and responsibilities to play at being a knight. But though she still wanted world peace so instead of sucking it up she attempted to push her responsibilities on Sorey. Which is why Lailah kept on reminding him not to get too involved with politics, and ultimately why Sorey didn't go back to "save her". The very idea behind Alisha's character was that she's a minor character whose attitude gives you the illusion that she's more important than she actually is, but really she's just an irresponsible princess with her head in the clouds, that's why she kept failing. Eventually she was supposed to grow up and manage being a princess and being a knight which isn't something that Sorey can help with, nor is it really connected to him.
It's funny Ufotable basically made Alisha's problems even more apparent and justified her leaving and Sorey never inviting her back into the party. She isn't connected to anyone and she doesn't help Sorey's journey, and that's the point. So now because of that Sorey isn't allowed to meet or speak to other people outside of Alisha's circle of friends. She actually holds the story back.
The anime is just very joyless all around, characters had their arcs and personalities gutted to make more room for Alisha. The episode previews really are the best thing about the adaptation, and that's just sad.
I like your way of thinking, many people disagree with the whole Alisha fiasco, becuse waifuism, but what you described is exactly what her role was, and I really loved it.
A princess comes to your aid, but you have to show where her place is.
She's good person, who would drag Sorey down because of who she was.
There's a lot to the NPC's, what was well thought, but people refuse to acknowledge it.
Ufotable can animate flashy fights and cgi water, but they can't into story.
I actually took this from the director's interview, though I guess you could figure this out from the game itself and the head writer's interview when he outright said that Alisha and Sorey were never meant to be equals.
I think that the real problem was that the game needed to include more moments of her getting BTFO'd like she was with Lucas, and maybe just have some characters lose their patience with her attitude, to make it clear that Alisha's problem wasn't just that she made Sorey go blind. There was a genuine problem with her personality, and her status. They needed to have Sorey or somebody else call Alisha out on her behavior or at least question her on why she continues to ignore her own position. Even though she'd be more effective as a princess.
She's a nice girl, but she's not good for or helpful to Sorey.
Ufotable's only decent adaptations are all Nasu works, which have mostly outsiders helping them out. In house Ufotable writers have always been shit.
its a good tales games, fun enough to playtrhough at least once
though it is one of the most basic tales games
if you want a unique tales game, play abyss, vesperia, or berseria
I think that Hearts was the most unique.
Berseria and Vesperia are generic to the core, just have a little twist of MC's not being knights in shiny armor.
Abyss had good lore, but cast treating Luke like autistic kid made it a bit annoying halfway.
Jeez the amount of autism in this thread.
If you unironically think that berseria isn't number one then you're a nostalgiafag or just straight up retarded.
Name other game that lets you paly as a Jesus.
Zesty/berseria lore is very good.
Berseria is not the best in the series, as it has its flaws.
People love it, only because the game takes all good concepts from previous games.
Even the plot has multiple Xillia2 comebacks, that I'm surprised none discuss.
Its combat gets repetitaive a hell, mainly because you are allowed to make your own combos and you end up mashing one button.
MILLA IS THE BEST TALES
Of course every tales game has some kind of flaws.
I played almost every game in the series and i find it obvious that berseria is the best tales game.
Is it me, or difficulty spikes severely on elemental guardians?
>they went back to the normal style with Berseria
But transition to combat works exactly the same as in Zestiria.
Tales series are like watching a mediocre anime, but you have to play a shitty beat em up to watch every next half of an episode.
Depends on which route you take. Going after Iapyx in the Blacruf Mausoleum before doing the water seal can be tough, for example.
No, it's not. In Zestiria, it takes whatever environment you're in and puts the combatants directly in it, corners and walls be damned. In Berseria, it creates a more favourable battlefield based on the environment. It's a transition in Berseria, whereas in Zestiria, it just drops enemies in place.
It is my favorite too, and I have played all main games and spinoffs.
But the game lacked polish of the older games.
I don't like when plot taking for example a year in game, feels like characters got stuck together for 2 weeks and saved the world.
Wasn't it the other way around?
>Wasn't it the other way around?
No. The reason you have such severe camera issues in Zestiria is because of the lack of battle transitions. It just throws you in battle where you are, instead of transitioning to an apt battle arena, like in every other Tales game. Berseria included.
It's just that loading times are way quicker now and in Berseria the assets for the battle arena are visually the same, but it is a different area. Zestiria is literally the same regardless of being in battle or not.
Water seal boss took several tries for me to beat, now it's Lubaris I'm stuck at. Everythink else was somewhat of a cake walk.
Which route did you take? Did you go by boat from Izoold to Palmacosta, or go to Hima by foot?
Berseria uses the exact same locations you explore, just like Zestiria.
No, it is a horrible time. Two back-to-back releases of the worst Tales game to date, and a pretty bland one. If you're aiming to play future games, I'd advise you to stop and fucking reconsider. Play anything before Graces to have something worthwhile in your hands. Xillia 2 is the only tolerable recent Tales.
This is only the case with Abyss and Symphonia, Vesperia's praise is well-deserved. Not only is it the prettiest Tales game to date (which is fucking pathetic), it also has the best 3D Tales combat. And the best cast of characters, bar none
>inb4 muh Jade
>inb4 Vesperiafag
Not even. I think it's the third best game in the series. The best being the ToD remake, and the second best being Eternia.
By foot.
Yeah but the areas you battle in are different. You don't actually battle on the map.
Yeah, that's the so called hard route. The game expects you to go to Palmacosta after Izoold and doing the Hima/Luin route is significantly harder.
It's probably that Berseria has the decency of not putting enemies in tight corridors. Zestiria was horribly when it came to this and it caused the camera to freak out when in tight environments.
If they use the same system, I'm really happy they considered enemy placing.
I got stuck behind rocks on Lionel island and in a shallow river near Loegress to believe it wasn't intentional battle ground but the field itself.
>You don't actually battle on the map.
But you do.
Berseria also doesn lock your sideways movement, that might have something to do with less camera shenangians too. Although I remember at least one case of camera screwing me in Berseria. It also doesn't keep tracking mob your are locked on to, or you can turn that of.
Yes but not on gamecube.
PS3 has dual audio.
You can correct the camera with guard button.
What I find annoying is that you can't correct tracking camera on geoboard, and if you turn it off, good fucking luck maneuvering the board and camera with two analogs.
Lol no Tales games can be played button mashing. Don't fucking bother unless you want to play on hard.
Button mash, grind, explore and do side quests and you'll beat every Tales game with ease.