I'm generally not a fan of JRPGs and really long games but I was attracted to the nice visuals and anime style of Tales of Vesperia as well as the real-time combat mechanics (Linear Motion Battle System or some such) so I thought I'd try it out. It's a good game. I really liked the main party of characters. Everyone was likeable and had some kind of motivation. What really lets it down isI'm generally not a fan of JRPGs and really long games but I was attracted to the nice visuals and anime style of Tales of Vesperia as well as the real-time combat mechanics (Linear Motion Battle System or some such) so I thought I'd try it out. It's a good game. I really liked the main party of characters. Everyone was likeable and had some kind of motivation. What really lets it down is the stock standard "kids saving the world" fantasy story. It's just not all that compelling and I was mainly playing for the character interactions. The game is overlong with a third act that just drags on and on. I'll probably get laughed at for this but I turned the game to easy at the 20th boss because I just couldn't beat it and I didn't want to double the 10 hours of gameplay I had left because I was terrible at the combat.
On that note, I did like the combat. You can do a lot of different combos and abilities and it's a fairly deep system if you get into it enough. I actually never unlocked Yuri's Mystic Arte (think ultimate ability) because I probably wasn't paying attention to something. Some bosses are just insanely unfair though, especially early on when you're still learning the mechanics. The hardest boss in the game before the one I gave up on was like the third boss. All my attacks were bouncing off and I couldn't get a hit in because he had a swipe attack that would get you no matter where you were. I ended up cheesing it by just going into Overlimit and spamming one of my powerful Artes. The one I gave up on though, oh boy. His Mystic Arte was an AOE attack with massive range that would one shot my entire party. You could avoid it with at least one character by staying away when he went into Overlimit, but sometimes he would activate it the second he went into Overlimit and you wouldn't have a chance to move and everyone would die. The thing is you HAVE to stay near him and constantly be attacking or he will heal. So yeah F that boss. From there on it was smooth sailing easy mode and I could enjoy the rest of the game.
I also want to talk about the dungeons. Look, I don't like being harassed by monsters every couple of steps and it's especially annoying when you're backtracking. I expected the game would be like this and I won't harp on about it too much. It's fine. What was annoying though was that monsters would respawn if I went through a door and came back, which made some things frustrating. But again, I knew what I was getting into. What I wanted to talk about was how great the locations actually were. Every dungeon is unique. Every. Single. One. They each have their own look and feel, and there is a lot of different music too. They're a joy to walk around in and very nice to look at. This game really puts Skyrim's drab copy-pasted dungeons to shame considering it came out a few years earlier. In fact the game in general has a really nice art style that holds up to this day. If I didn't know any better I'd assume it was originally released in 2019.
So I think this is a good game and I'd recommend it to someone who doesn't mind long games. I clocked in at about 43 hours, which is probably the longest I've taken to finish a game. The story is pretty average but it works well enough to give the characters motivations and personalities and create interesting interactions, which are this game's greatest strengths. I give it a 7.… Expand
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