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Fortunately, I saw the bit where you said Skies of Arcadia is better, which saved me the trouble of reading this entire review, since it's clearly gibberish. Thanks!
I can't say I agree, as Tales of Vesperia is trying to stick to it's JRPG and Tales roots. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying you have to play the whole series to like one game, as that's ridonkulous, only that the game is sticking to a formula that it knows, which is a far cry from Skies' Formula. In fact, just because it says JRPG doesn't mean it's going to be Skies' Formula. Not many JRPGs are.
I also think that the voice acting for most characters was great, with the exception of Estelle, and found the cliches to be refreshing in a world of games that try something new and fail spectacularly.
-Raptor, out.
I also think that the voice acting for most characters was great, with the exception of Estelle, and found the cliches to be refreshing in a world of games that try something new and fail spectacularly.
-Raptor, out.
Shame you didn't like it, for me personally I think the Tales of Series is a shining light in the usual dull land on turn based JRPG's. The battle system is great although I completely agree about certain boss fights, getting those secret achievements can be a huge pain.
The story isn't the best out of the series either, the first 20 hours or so I had literally no idea what the point was at all but then it picks up and actually works, and again I agree that some character arks are more defined than others, Yuri's being my favourite with Karol coming a close second.
All in all a very well done review, nice work.
As a final note, I absolutely LOVE Skies of Arcadia.
EDIT: Personally I think Tales of Symphonia is the best in the series, the voice acting is better as well as they have proper talent like Jennifer Hale and Cam Clarke playing Sheena and Kratos respectively.
The story isn't the best out of the series either, the first 20 hours or so I had literally no idea what the point was at all but then it picks up and actually works, and again I agree that some character arks are more defined than others, Yuri's being my favourite with Karol coming a close second.
All in all a very well done review, nice work.
As a final note, I absolutely LOVE Skies of Arcadia.
EDIT: Personally I think Tales of Symphonia is the best in the series, the voice acting is better as well as they have proper talent like Jennifer Hale and Cam Clarke playing Sheena and Kratos respectively.
Just because I agree to disagree doesn't mean your review was bad, man. It was great. Well plotted out, with nice points, even if I didn't agree with all of them. If you have the time, though, I would recommend Tales of the Abyss, though you might have to just Rent it, expensive as it is now. In my own personal opinion, Abyss is the best in the series, and has famous voice actors doing most of the voices. Yuri Lowenthal, for example, voices both the main character and his twin. The story is also less branching and more centric.
Also, I'm sorry you didn't like the way it was executed, I can understand why, though I personally enjoyed the more laid-back theme of this Tales game. And I will agree, that most of the plot was pieced together, though I won't say that makes it bad.
Regardless, enjoyed your review, and apologies for not making that clear earlier. Just for the record, I would have let you quote yourself. XD
-Raptor, out.
Also, I'm sorry you didn't like the way it was executed, I can understand why, though I personally enjoyed the more laid-back theme of this Tales game. And I will agree, that most of the plot was pieced together, though I won't say that makes it bad.
Regardless, enjoyed your review, and apologies for not making that clear earlier. Just for the record, I would have let you quote yourself. XD
-Raptor, out.
I'll clarify: I was purchased a copy of Tales of Symphonia for the Gamecube. I was told it was a multiplayer RPG, new and unique - so I spent ages setting up a day with my friends to play it from the start, on a big projector-TV, and we started playing it.Scobie said:
- Long sections of P1 control only (we'd already agreed to cycle pads)
- Camera focuses on P1 in combat only
- Game had a generally incredibly weak opening
It left a bitter taste in my mouth for the entire Tales series; I never even attempted to play it in single-player as a result. I felt I had been lied to, and ended up returning it to the store and swapping it for another Gamecube game - probably Eternal Darkness. I do intend to give it a fair shot, but I have a lot more games I physically own and haven't played to get through first.
Pfffahahahaha, genuine laugh-out-loud moment there. Well played. Bit heavy on the food metaphors in general, but again, Yahtzee managed to do two entire reviews repeatedly mentioning "dogs" and "cats" respectively, so...Scobie said:
With regard to the actual review itself; great writing all around, bit Yahtzeesque in places. One major criticism: too quickly did you introduce your habit of performing fellatio on Skies of Arcadia, and the sidelined image only cemented that. Save that for the conclusion, once people have actually read the review, and maybe fanboys like @rockyoumonkeys might actually read it before posting rubbish in reply.
Well, I will say that I think the storyline is mostly about Yuri. Rather than having one ongoing plotline, it has a number of differant stories with recurring characters, and the focus is actually on Yuri and his transformation through the storyline, the whole "vigilante justice" aspect is supposed to involve more than him just occasionally murdering people.
I admit that the little boy characters annoy me in general, none of the games I've played have managed to sell me on the idea. I've always sort of suspected that these kinds of characters were intended to appeal to a younger audience and give them someone to project onto.
Admittedly if you can find the subquests (which is hard, I also missed them) Karol is crucial to one of the cooler ones which involves him hunting down a bunch of boss monsters as "the Golden Knight".
I think the biggest thing that bugged me about the game is that with the storyline focusing so heavily on Yuri's vigilante activity, and his dramatic "murder" scenes, I found it hard to get all that excited about when the dude murders bandits by the millions just walking from place to place. At a certain point you have to wonder why it's all that big a deal.
Of course that is simply an extension of the JRPG problem of the storyline and general gameplay virtually existing in seperate worlds. Sort of like your inabillity to toss a Pheonix Down on Aeris in "Final Fantasy VII", or how the characterization of characters can change entirely as soon as a battle starts. I agree with Yahtzee that in the beginning especially it's a definate "WTF" moment every time you see Hope in battle, throwing offensive magic around or whatever (and yes it does look like he pulls his weapon out of his rear end, sad but true).
The "Tales" series is a good franchise, but I agree with what is said in this review, in that it pretty much fails to overcome most of the JRPG drawbacks. Vesperia is on of the best JRPGs of this console generation, but I tend to think that it's the case in part due to a lack of competition. It has an incredible amount of flaws which I think go beyond localization issues.
I admit that the little boy characters annoy me in general, none of the games I've played have managed to sell me on the idea. I've always sort of suspected that these kinds of characters were intended to appeal to a younger audience and give them someone to project onto.
Admittedly if you can find the subquests (which is hard, I also missed them) Karol is crucial to one of the cooler ones which involves him hunting down a bunch of boss monsters as "the Golden Knight".
I think the biggest thing that bugged me about the game is that with the storyline focusing so heavily on Yuri's vigilante activity, and his dramatic "murder" scenes, I found it hard to get all that excited about when the dude murders bandits by the millions just walking from place to place. At a certain point you have to wonder why it's all that big a deal.
Of course that is simply an extension of the JRPG problem of the storyline and general gameplay virtually existing in seperate worlds. Sort of like your inabillity to toss a Pheonix Down on Aeris in "Final Fantasy VII", or how the characterization of characters can change entirely as soon as a battle starts. I agree with Yahtzee that in the beginning especially it's a definate "WTF" moment every time you see Hope in battle, throwing offensive magic around or whatever (and yes it does look like he pulls his weapon out of his rear end, sad but true).
The "Tales" series is a good franchise, but I agree with what is said in this review, in that it pretty much fails to overcome most of the JRPG drawbacks. Vesperia is on of the best JRPGs of this console generation, but I tend to think that it's the case in part due to a lack of competition. It has an incredible amount of flaws which I think go beyond localization issues.
You lost most, if not all, credibility with your first sentence. Why are you reviewing a JRGP if you only played ... 2 JRGP? And you are setting standards Vesperia to your childhood favorite game? Isn't that a bit unfair? No new Street Fighter out there will ever be better than the original to me. You obviously have knowledge of the Tales of series whatsoever.
"Have another look at the review. My problem wasn't with the game's formula, or with its similarities to SoA. I read about it before I bought it, and I knew I was going to get something fairly traditional. I was prepared to swallow a few cliches. Honestly, I just thought it was badly executed. "Sticking to your roots" does not excuse an unconvincing world, bad acting (we're just going to have to agree to disagree here), uninteresting characters, low-budget storytelling, dumb game design decisions, an unsubtle and simplistic pro-environmental message and, most importantly, a sprawling and sketchy mess of a plot. I don't believe the Tales Formula requires any of those things."
What the heck? It is a free-roaming world that lets you explore. What more do you want? A straight-line like Kirby? Different planets like Super Mario Galaxy? Super-linear world like Final Fantasy XIII? Oops, excuse the third one, I forgot you do not know anything about JRPGs.
Bad Acting? This is not hostile but I am literally willing to be Yuri has a more masculine worse than you. With that aside, you have to remember that this is a JRPG. Scratch that, you know nothing about JRPGs. What I'm saying is that they will NOT ever have perfect voice acting. And if you have any significant JRPG experience, which we all know you don't, you should know that the Vesperia voice cast is actually well done. Dont believe me? Go try Star Ocean: The Last Hope.
Uninteresting characters. This is where I decided I had to make an account on this site and reply. Really? Vesperia may have arguably the weakest story of the 3 main-console English copies, but it is well known to have the best cast. I don't even wish to argue on this one. Ghostwise said it best, "Dude you are out of your mind."
Maybe you should check your faaacts a little more. Namco is in debt and that is a well-known fact. Reason for the low-budget storytelling. That and because for some stupid reason (which I do not know), they decided to make a PS3 port of Vesperia with more content. But lets have a vote shall we? Vesperia's story or Skies of Arcadia's story? Good luck to you bro.
What is dumb game design? What a dumb statment. What are you even talking about here? Have fun with your turn-base combat because you're too "dumb" to fight in a real-time situation.
An unsubtle and simplistic pro-environmental message. How is this a bad thing? It is just another factor contributing to the story. Messages are often convey in Tales, and these messages are not unneccessary because ( lets face it) people learn from all types of media, including video games.
The message in Tales of Symphonia was Racism, Decision for Abyss, and Technology for Vesperia. What have you learned or not learned in Skies of Arcadia that made it so awesome?
But mst importantly Harry Potter finds out hes a wizard. Plays some quiditch? games, takes some classes, learns some new spells, sees his parents a mirrior, fights some guy with 2 faces, kills a giant snake, rescues his godfather, wins the triwizard tournament, disobeys Umbridge, watch Snape kills Dumbledore, and now goes on his ultimate journey to kill Voldemort. DAMN! Are you calling that a mess? Because that is how you described Vesperia. "The party's ultimate goal changes about once every half an hour, so what is presumably supposed to be an epic quest turns into a series of mini-quests." Have fun dissing a book series that has 8 movies base on it. Oh wait! Tales of Vesperia has a movie too! Hahahaha.
If you don't want all the extra content, then DON'T do any of them! Duh. Don't complain about the game because you CHOSE to do something that led you to discontent. Sidequest are SIDEquest for a reason. And if you are talking about the MAIN story then I do not understand your reasoning at all. The game can be beaten in less than 10 hours with you strictly go on with the main story. Don't believe me? Check the Xbox achievement guide for Tales of Vesperia.
One last thing. How is Yuri "girly?" Who the hell ... I bet it's his hair. Why are you being judgemental? I bet one significant woman in your life has long hair, do you call them girly? Do you call your mom girly? Megan Fox has long hair, I call her "sexy." I cannot see your logic here.
Please do not review games that you ahve no knowledge of.
"Have another look at the review. My problem wasn't with the game's formula, or with its similarities to SoA. I read about it before I bought it, and I knew I was going to get something fairly traditional. I was prepared to swallow a few cliches. Honestly, I just thought it was badly executed. "Sticking to your roots" does not excuse an unconvincing world, bad acting (we're just going to have to agree to disagree here), uninteresting characters, low-budget storytelling, dumb game design decisions, an unsubtle and simplistic pro-environmental message and, most importantly, a sprawling and sketchy mess of a plot. I don't believe the Tales Formula requires any of those things."
What the heck? It is a free-roaming world that lets you explore. What more do you want? A straight-line like Kirby? Different planets like Super Mario Galaxy? Super-linear world like Final Fantasy XIII? Oops, excuse the third one, I forgot you do not know anything about JRPGs.
Bad Acting? This is not hostile but I am literally willing to be Yuri has a more masculine worse than you. With that aside, you have to remember that this is a JRPG. Scratch that, you know nothing about JRPGs. What I'm saying is that they will NOT ever have perfect voice acting. And if you have any significant JRPG experience, which we all know you don't, you should know that the Vesperia voice cast is actually well done. Dont believe me? Go try Star Ocean: The Last Hope.
Uninteresting characters. This is where I decided I had to make an account on this site and reply. Really? Vesperia may have arguably the weakest story of the 3 main-console English copies, but it is well known to have the best cast. I don't even wish to argue on this one. Ghostwise said it best, "Dude you are out of your mind."
Maybe you should check your faaacts a little more. Namco is in debt and that is a well-known fact. Reason for the low-budget storytelling. That and because for some stupid reason (which I do not know), they decided to make a PS3 port of Vesperia with more content. But lets have a vote shall we? Vesperia's story or Skies of Arcadia's story? Good luck to you bro.
What is dumb game design? What a dumb statment. What are you even talking about here? Have fun with your turn-base combat because you're too "dumb" to fight in a real-time situation.
An unsubtle and simplistic pro-environmental message. How is this a bad thing? It is just another factor contributing to the story. Messages are often convey in Tales, and these messages are not unneccessary because ( lets face it) people learn from all types of media, including video games.
The message in Tales of Symphonia was Racism, Decision for Abyss, and Technology for Vesperia. What have you learned or not learned in Skies of Arcadia that made it so awesome?
But mst importantly Harry Potter finds out hes a wizard. Plays some quiditch? games, takes some classes, learns some new spells, sees his parents a mirrior, fights some guy with 2 faces, kills a giant snake, rescues his godfather, wins the triwizard tournament, disobeys Umbridge, watch Snape kills Dumbledore, and now goes on his ultimate journey to kill Voldemort. DAMN! Are you calling that a mess? Because that is how you described Vesperia. "The party's ultimate goal changes about once every half an hour, so what is presumably supposed to be an epic quest turns into a series of mini-quests." Have fun dissing a book series that has 8 movies base on it. Oh wait! Tales of Vesperia has a movie too! Hahahaha.
If you don't want all the extra content, then DON'T do any of them! Duh. Don't complain about the game because you CHOSE to do something that led you to discontent. Sidequest are SIDEquest for a reason. And if you are talking about the MAIN story then I do not understand your reasoning at all. The game can be beaten in less than 10 hours with you strictly go on with the main story. Don't believe me? Check the Xbox achievement guide for Tales of Vesperia.
One last thing. How is Yuri "girly?" Who the hell ... I bet it's his hair. Why are you being judgemental? I bet one significant woman in your life has long hair, do you call them girly? Do you call your mom girly? Megan Fox has long hair, I call her "sexy." I cannot see your logic here.
Please do not review games that you ahve no knowledge of.
yeah you were definitely right you don't know your jrpgs, the only way yuri is girly is his long hair otherwise he's pretty much the opposite of a normal jrpg protagonist, jrpgs protagonists are usually 14-18 year old teens he is older then this and another quality that normal jrpg protagonists have is that they hate killing and they refuse to do it and yuri knows when shit needs to get done regardless of the morals behind itScobie said:[HEADING=2]Scobie Reviews:[/HEADING]
[HEADING=1]Tales of Vesperia[/HEADING]
[HEADING=2]Great expectations[/HEADING]
[img_inline Align=right width=300 caption=Pictured: A better game. You should play this instead.]http://i700.photobucket.com/albums/ww6/photoscobie/arcadia_dc_front.jpg[/img_inline]
I have only played two JRPGs in my life. The first was the original Skies of Arcadia, for the Dreamcast. It was, and remains, my favourite game. While I will happily admit that I have played other games that are technically better, Skies of Arcadia touched me in a way that no other game ever has[footnote]Oh, you with your dirty mind.[/footnote]. Beneath my cynical exterior beat the heart of a small boy, one who enjoyed happy, colourful games in which you saved the world from eldritch monstrosities with the Power of Friendship.
While I didn't play another JRPG for many years, mostly because I kept buying consoles that seemed to have a dearth of good ones, I was always ready to leap to their defence as a genre, and, what's more, I was ever on the lookout for a similar game that would fill the void left in my soul by the cancellation of Skies of Arcadia 2. And one fateful day, I happened across news of a nice, shiny, old-school JRPG that just might satisfy my perverted cravings. What's more, it was on a platform I actually owned. Huzzah! And thus it was that Tales of Vesperia became the second JRPG I have ever played. Could it live up to my expectations, and deliver me some more of that cheerful goodness of which I had so long been deprived? The predictable answer is: No. Not by a long shot. That's not to say that Tales of Vesperia is a bad game, but . . . OK, it kinda is.
Even a JRPG nub such as myself can recognise that Tales of Vesperia is as determinedly formulaic as it gets. Our hero, Yuri Lowell, is a noble if slightly girly sort who, along with his trusty dog Repede, devotes his time to standing up for the poor and downtrodden. He lives in the Japanese version of the Standard Fantasy Setting - a sort of pseudo-medieval western European society, but with Japanese bits and magitek. A minor act of thievery eventually embroils him in a plot that could doom the world, which he dutifully sets out to save. Along the way he picks up a naive princess, an "adorable" twelve-year-old boy, a bratty teen genius, a dirty old man and a giant pair of tits with a woman on the back. They explore the world. They fight monsters. They go to the jungle bit, the icy bit, the desert bit, the crystalline bit and several ancient-ruined-temple bits. They defeat the villain. The world is saved. So far, so good. This old-school stuff is what I'm here for. It would just be nice if it had been executed with any kind of skill.
[HEADING=2]This steak has a nail in it[/HEADING]
[img_inline width=300 align=left caption=I Googled Tales of Vesperia and this was the first result. Apparently Judith is really popular. Can't imagine why.]http://i700.photobucket.com/albums/ww6/photoscobie/tales-of-vesperia-wallpaper-judith-big.jpg[/img_inline]
OK, that's a bit unfair. If Tales of Vesperia had been entirely devoid of merit, I wouldn't have finished it. For a start, it's very pretty - and not in the sense of being graphically sophisticated, but in the rather more important sense of being aesthetically pleasing to look at. Everything is, as per specifications, drenched in glorious colour. Every aspect of the game's neat little cartoony visuals is well-designed, simple and effective. After years of the muddy browns and grime that pass for good looks in western games, Tales of Vesperia is a like a gentle massage for my optic nerves. And on top of that, the core gameplay is really rather good. It includes, of course, the standard wandering around in dungeons, opening treasure chests, solving puzzles and fighting monsters.
Once you've encountered a monster or something else in need of a sound thrashing the game switches to something that, according to Wikipedia, is called the Evolved Flex-Range Linear Motion Battle System. What this hilariously overblown title means in practice is that you are warped to an arena to fight a group of enemies in real time. You control one character, the rest being under the command of the AI. Luckily enough, you can set strategies for them, which are reasonably effective at stopping them from doing anything too suicidal. You have eight shortcuts you can assign to your myriad of special moves. While hotkeys aren't exactly a revolutionary gameplay development, in this case it makes the battles feel like a fighting game in which the controls are tailored to make sense to you, rather than requiring you to memorise a dozen complex combos. Get it right and it feels smooth and intuitive. Supplementing these basics are equipment, skills, Overlimits and half a dozen other arcane and unsettling game mechanics that would take far too long to explain even if I fully understood them. The upshot of all this is a combat system with a good deal of depth. If you feel like it, you can spend hours fiddling with menus in order to find the perfect setup. Or, if you're like me, you can wade in and start pummeling and you'll probably get by just fine. In the end, Tales of Vesperia makes jumping around hitting things fun, and it's one of the few RPGs I've played where grinding is a pleasure rather than a chore.
Unfortunately, Tales of Vesperia also contains many design decisions that might charitably be called questionable. Among the nasty tricks the developers pull on you are unexpected difficulty spikes, puzzles involving spotting small grey objects in large grey rooms from unhelpful camera angles, forcing you to play a boss battle as the character you've never touched before because he's insufferable and steers like an aircraft carrier, and at least three separate situations where a cutscene followed by a boss fight is followed by another cutscene followed by another boss fight. While none of these are deal breakers, they cause moments of frustration that would have been extremely easy to avoid with a little thought and an extra savepoint or two.
Tales of Vesperia's worst gameplay crime, however, is its side quests, which are legion. They are also extremely easy to miss, many involving a complex series of actions that require trekking halfway across the world map and back again. These are rarely hinted at and often necessitate doing things the player would have no conceivable reason to do. And, as if to prove that Namco really do hate you, you're often given a very short window of time to complete them, after which they're gone forever. Knowing this before I started the game, I decided that I would succeed in finding these quests where others had failed. After every major event I journeyed diligently around the world map, checking each settlement, talking to anyone promising and following up any clue that suggested a possible sidequest. After completing the game, I discovered that I had missed nearly all of them. Without a guide you are going to miss a good deal of this game's content, which is a shame for those of us who take joy in discovering things for ourselves. Once again, however, it's not a deal breaker.
[HEADING=2]Flaky pastry[/HEADING]
[img_inline align=right width=300 caption=Much more delicious than Tales of Vesperia]http://i700.photobucket.com/albums/ww6/photoscobie/7.jpg[/img_inline]
But Scobie, I hear you cry, what is this legendary deal breaker you keep yammering about? If the game looks good and plays OK, what exactly is your problem? Well, as some of you might know, gameplay is only the filling of the JRPG pie. Story is supposed to be the delicious crunchy pastry, and it's at this point that the game, rather like my metaphors, breaks down and starts dribbling on itself. From the moment the opening narration intoned "Our world . . . Terca Lumireis" I realised, with a sinking heart, that I was in for a lot of bad acting, melodrama and overwrought exposition. What I didn't realise was that a bit of cheesiness was not even half of Tales of Vesperia's problems.
As you might have guessed from the fact that Namco apparently hired a pretentious fifteen-year-old fanfic writer to name their planet, Terca Lumireis is less than convincing as a world. The entire planet is very obviously constructed only to facilitate the plot, and to shuttle the player quickly from one pretty location to another. Of course, this is true in most every game of this kind, but if the player is constantly reminded that this is the case then something has gone wrong. There's no sense that the world you're in has a history, even when characters spout it at you at great length. Above all, there's no sense that this world was made with the idea that someone might live in it. Terca's Lumireis' sheer genericness compounds the problem. It's possible, with a bit of imagination, to put a fresh spin on things that can make even the most hackneyed settings feel new, but the developers have stalwartly resisted this temptation. Tales of Vesperia is unquestionably at its most interesting when it steps outside its Standard Fantasy Setting comfort zone, but that happens far too rarely for it to make a difference.
Unfortunately, the story that this world was constructed to facilitate probably wasn't worth even the little effort displayed. Ladled over the standard kill-the-abomination-to-save-the-world concept is a thick porridge of unresolved subplots, pointless diversions and redundancy. The plot is a bloated monster, staggeringly drunkenly and aimlessly from place to place like me after that time I decided it would be a good idea to mix up a pint of Malibu and Jack Daniels and drink the lot. It takes thirty hours of faffing about with political intrigue and minor villains before the main plot deigns to reveal itself. Kind of. It's hard to say when the game's main plot begins, because there doesn't seem to be one. The party's ultimate goal changes about once every half an hour, so what is presumably supposed to be an epic quest turns into a series of mini-quests. The only thing that marks the real start of the plot is that everything beforehand is suddenly reduced to complete irrelevance. At the sixty-hour mark the writers throw up their hands in despair and the rest of the plot is powered exclusively by magiteknobabble, courtesy of the resident teen genius.
On top of this mess is some extremely lacklustre storytelling. A lot of Tales of Vesperia's cutscenes give the impression of being done on a budget. Only about half of them are voiced. Apart from the occasional lavish FMV sequence for important bits, everything is done in-engine and with the minimum of effort. Things are often implied rather than directly shown, presumably to save on animation, and while this sometimes works, it often makes it unclear what's just happened. Combined with the game's length, and the profusion of subplots that dive in and out every few hours, the result is that quite frequently I had no idea what the hell was going on. Here is a sample interaction between me and the game, in my imagination represented by a talking dog on a trampoline:
[img_inline align=left width=300 caption=Tales of Vesperia: it's kinda like that.]http://i700.photobucket.com/albums/ww6/photoscobie/trampoline-dog.jpg[/img_inline]
ME: So who are these ninja dudes again?
DOG: They work for that guy with the comical German accent.
ME: Oh, I remember. He turned up about twenty hours ago. So what's he up to?
DOG: He's working for the other guy. The one with the hair.
ME: Ooooookay. Any hints as to why? Or what exactly he's trying to accomplish with all the ninja dudes?
DOG: I 'unno. Didn't I mention something about it ten hours back?
ME: You know what? Just forget it. What I really want to know is: why does he have a German accent when there only seem to be two countries on this planet and neither of them are Germany?
Tales of Vesperia is cliched in its generalities - I had all the major plot points down by a third of the way through - but in its specifics it is frequently mystifying. I had no idea what was going to happen next, because I had no idea what was happening. I suppose you could count writing a story that is simultaneously predictable and impenetrable to be an impressive achievement, but honestly it's impressive only in the sense that the Chernobyl disaster was impressive. The fact that this whole narrative soup appears to be merely a device to deliver environmental moralising as simplistic and heavy-handed as anything from Captain Planet is just the icing on the cake. Which, according to my earlier metaphor, is a pie. And to tell the truth I can easily imagine this game's writers being the sort of people who would ice a pie.
[img_inline align=right caption=Mmmm . . .]http://i700.photobucket.com/albums/ww6/photoscobie/220px-DC-DouglasPSA.jpg[/img_inline]
But rejoice! There is a light at the end of the tunnel, even if it is a weak and ghostly shimmer. This being that some of the characters are not totally insufferable. Our hero is unfortunately the only one who manages to break out of the shackles of cliche. As well as being generally heroic he has a refreshing tendency to murder people, which is nice. The rest of the cast stay resolutely one-dimensional, but after ninety hours of listening to them talk even I, a person who lost his soul down the side of the sofa about five years ago, found myself getting mildly attached to them. In the end, it was the characters who pulled me through where the story failed. Except for Karol the comic-relief kid. And Estelle, the aforementioned naive princess. The writers, reliably predictable as ever, took "naive" to mean "as thick as very very sticky treacle pudding", so Estelle's job is to drive the plot through idiocy, occasionally get kidnapped and demonstrate a complete inability to make a decent egg salad sandwich[footnote]This is not a "make me a sammich" joke. She really can't.[/footnote]. The minor antagonists are similarly lacklustre, being cartoonishly villainous, campy and once, in the case referenced above, humorously foreign in defiance of geography and common sense.
Voicing is also spotty. For the male leads it's passable, whereas children, women and minor characters get the short end of the stick in the acting department, something that does not serve to make Estelle and Karol any more likeable. Of course, this is all rendered moot by the fact that one of the major characters is voiced by D.C. Douglas, a.k.a. Albert Wesker of Resident Evil 5. I cannot criticise the voice work of a game that has D.C. Douglas in it. His deep voice and delicious hamminess automatically make up for the shortcomings of the rest of the cast, along with the not-insignificant side effect of giving me the man-tingles. Naturally it would have been much better if everyone in the game had been voiced by D.C. Douglas - it might even have made Estelle bearable - but for some reason this never occurred to anyone on the game's production team.
[HEADING=2]The verdict[/HEADING]
Much like me, what Tales of Vesperia needs more than anything else is an editor. The game feels rushed and underfunded[footnote]I'm told the PS3 version is more complete, but that isn't much help to me or, in fact, anyone outside Japan.[/footnote], and I'm inclined to believe that this is not a product of insufficient time and money but of unrealistic ambition. Cut out the first third of the game and pour the money saved into polishing up the rest, and you've got a shorter but considerably more satisfying experience. As it is, the best you can say is that there's a decent game buried under all the flab. Tales of Vesperia is by no means unremittingly awful. I still pick it up and hack at some monsters every now and then. But in an RPG like this the transient fun you can get from nice visuals and decent combat is not enough to make up for the game's large-scale structural flaws. If you're seriously desperate for some story-heavy RPG action, and think you can get past the narrative problems, then give it a go. Otherwise, it's best avoided.This is the beginning of a series of reviews by Scobie, in which he will cover games, films and whatever other cultural detritus he can digest at great length. His main aim is to improve his writing. If he manages to be informative and amusing in the process, so much the better. Any advice will be greatly appreciated. Donate to the Henry Scobie Illeism Relief Fund today!
Next review: You think I plan that far ahead?