Game Ramblings #147 – Tales of Arise

More Info from Bandai Namco

  • Genre: JRPG
  • Platform: PS5
  • Also Available On: PS4, Xbox One, Xbox Series, Windows

The Tales of series has always been one where the combat has always trumped any other problem I’ve had with the individual titles, and this one really isn’t that different. The stories of the various titles have always been fine to good but generally fall into pretty typical anime cliches, and this one isn’t really different. The presentation aspects have always been a bit behind the AAA curve and as much as this one is a huge step forward for the series, it’s still distinctly AA. Where this one again greatly succeeds is that combat is a lot of fun – and for probably the first time in the series for me, I’ve found a defensive style to actually be extremely fun while still being practical to play.

Games like Berseria started really pushing the game away from the mana-heavy skill usage of prior Tales games, and this one definitely kept that going. Where it kind of differentiates from that title is that basic attacks are split into their own chain separate from Artes. Functionally though, it’s very similar to Berseria. You attack, you try to break the enemy’s defense, and if you can break them you get a big attack and go AOE ham on the field. From an attack perspective, it still has a great flow in terms of chaining attacks with your team to keep the enemy in a hit chain and increase the chance of stunning them. In general I was able to quickly fall into a nice rhythm to where I could get in my attacks while keeping an eye out for the enemy’s incoming volley, then get out of the way as it came through.

Where this game really separates itself from the past is that it finally feels like 3D navigation is here to stay. General in-combat movement is more typical of recent action RPGs, with left stick being independent movement and right stick being the camera. It’s a small change, but it makes the game flow less like the generally fixed in/out movement of even 3D Tales games. This one also felt like it really had the biggest mindset towards defensive maneuverability in the series to me. Past titles had side stepping and that sort of thing, but the feel of it is much more natural to me. A heavy focus on dodging became part of my default toolset, rather than being an oh shit button that I used on big fights. Avoiding incoming damage and not relying on healing was a big difference for me, and it really encouraged active participation in the fights, rather than simply being a button spam with little damage mitigation.

Healing in general also went through some big changes here. Where Berseria encouraged character swapping to let characters heal out-of-combat, this one is kind of a more typical experience. You’ve got characters that are fairly traditional healer mage types. However, healing is tied to a single resource pool for the entire party. Having two healers has choice benefits, but it doesn’t have resource benefits. What it ended up doing was allowing me to bring in a dual-healer approach on bosses while using a more damage-focused party for regular combat, without really being able to cheese the game with a double mana pool for healing.

It’s an interesting change that had some ramifications on overall item and resource balance. Your typical orange+ potions that refilled MP in past games are now tied to that new resource, and given the stack limits (still 15 like past Tales titles…), double healers can burn through the resources incredibly fast. This ties all back into the damage mitigation, where reducing the need for your healers to actually use the resource becomes incredibly important.

Unfortunately, some of the negative parts of combat have been carried over as well. Put simply, the AI are incredibly stupid. They will not reliably dodge incoming attacks, even if there’s a giant obvious laser line tell going right at them. The healers will not first get away from the enemies to start the healing, even if it’s clear that they are in danger range. They do not have good target prioritization, and the tools to manage AI decision making don’t really do a good job of exposing this functionality to the player. It ends up in a situation where combat works great against single targets, then falls into chaos as more targets enter the fray. Luckily, bosses are largely party vs 1 affairs, so it’s generally not a big issue.

Some of the power curve decisions are also interesting, but I’m not sure I particularly liked them. There’s typical weapon/armor/accessory slotting, but there’s also now skill points tied into title trees. As you earn titles for doing things (ex: finishing specific character-focused side quests, doing specific activities, etc) you’ll earn the series typical titles. However, they’re now tied to four additional skills that can be purchased with SP. Earning all skills for a title will then unlock a larger passive stat boost that sums to the character.

Compared to the mastery stats on gear that Berseria used, this felt oddly boring to me. It’s an effective system, but it didn’t really encourage me to do anything. I kind of found the most useful next stat, then bought the skills for it as I could. The titles are kind of naturally gained by just playing the game normally, and you really don’t have to go that out of the way to get them all. The mastery stats in Berseria, despite being similar in practice, felt a lot more influenced by player completion than this. In that system I was still effectively building SP to get a skill but I was only getting one per piece of gear, so I was spending more time focused on making sure that I had backup gear ready when I left towns, and spent more time trying to make sure I wasn’t missing any chests that might have more gear. It’s a subtle change, but the title skills just got rid of a small stress factor that I feel really let the system down in Arise.

Overall though, this was a fantastically fun game to play. I could sit here and nitpick the story and make notes about how it was pretty cliche, but frankly I don’t play these games expecting a great story. I jump into them because I want JRPG math combined with an action-focused combat system and I got a heavy dose of that. 50 hours later, I was still enjoying jumping into battles, and if that’s the only thing I have to say coming out of a game, that’s a pretty good indication that they did it right.

Game Ramblings #82 – Tales of Vesperia: Definitive Edition

More Info from Bandai Namco

  • Genre: JRPG
  • Platform: PS4
  • Also Available On: Xbox One, Switch, Windows
  • Originally Released On: Xbox 360, PS3 (Japan only)

TL;DR

  • Roughly decade old Tales of title remastered for current generation, first time seeing expanded PS3 content in North America
  • Game that has aged well despite some of the improvements to the overall Tales of gameplay since its release

I had the weirdest lack of memory about the second half of this game as I was playing it, as if I hadn’t ever gotten that far in the original release. This is despite me basically finishing all Tales of titles since Symphonia. From playing it this time, I knew it wasn’t because I didn’t enjoy the game – the combat in this entry is probably what I’d consider the best representation of the more classic side-scrolling Tales of combat. I also know it wasn’t because of a difficulty spike as I never really had a point where I felt like the difficulty curve was anything but correct. At the end of the day I never did figure that out and I never hooked up my 360 to figure out how far I had originally gotten, but in my 50 or so hours with this game, I came away knowing that this still holds up as a fantastic RPG worth playing.

Combat is still the main focus here to no surprise.

Combat in Vesperia is about as close as I could point to this series’ classic combat style still playable on a modern platform. Games after this added new elements that really played with the system – Graces removed TP and added a bunch of side stepping, Xillia played around a lot more with a 3D battle space, Berseria played around with swapping characters in real time while pushing further into 3D. Basically, Vesperia pretty closely represents the end result of years of them iterating on a 2D system, and it is still a thrill to play.

The main focus here is still some really fun and fast paced combos consisting of basic attacks and special attacks. Where this game really pushed things is in the use of gear skills. Some armor, and nearly all weapons have skills that can be earned over time. Once earned, the character permanently unlocks the skill as a toggleable item. These can range from passive stat boosts to attack replacements. The real fun ones for combat end up being the combo modifiers.

These can extend your combo, make parts of your combos different elements, make parts of your combo scale better and more. It basically becomes an involved metagame in trying to build out your attack combo in a way that best suits your style in order to maximize both damage, and in many ways maximize the amount of time you can stun lock your opponents. After all, more stuns equals less damage taken equals better chance at winning. The balance here is incredibly rewarding when you find the skill setup that best meets your style, and gives a lot of flexibility to the player in fighting specifically how they want.

Get used to these guys, you’ll be spending all your time with them.

That’s not to say that all parts of the combat system have aged incredibly well, but they’re in ways that are sadly familiar to Tales of players. The AI in general can basically be depended on to do the worst thing possible, even if you tweak their AI setup. In the end my best course of action was usually keeping one person on full time healing, and not allow them to attack, thereby keeping them out of danger and having to focus on healing only themselves. The other AI generally had their best result in using ONLY basic attacks, or they’d sometimes stand around just waiting to use skills. I’d much rather them be doing basic attacks to stun the enemies, and allow me to run around doing larger damage under my own control. The stun locks also work both ways, with some of the later bosses being basically stun lock management and a setup where I spent more time free running avoiding attacks, then doing poke damage when possible instead of actively being in combat. In a lot of points bosses can basically stun lock you 100->0 if you get hit with the wrong thing and your AI partners don’t interrupt the chain.

Visually the game has held up well, with a few more modern enhancements keeping this one up to speed despite its age.

The rest of the experience is unsurprising. Visually, the anime style that the Tales of series has always used has aged really well. The resolution bump on the new consoles has helped out a bit, and some light use of depth of field and similar screen effects has given this a bit more modern flair. The story is a bit take it or leave it, with the usual amount of incoming apocalypse melodrama typical of the series. However, the characters are generally likable and the banter between them is a lot of fun. This one also has pretty solid voice acting, and the entire set of skits has also gained the voice acting done for the PS3 Japan release. Overall, this one really didn’t need to do much to still hold up, but the little pieces done to remaster the title keep it up to modern expectations for the series.

I guess my end recommendation here is basically to play this, especially if you’ve liked any of the Tales of games on modern consoles. The battle system would be a bit different than those, but still has great flow despite its often 2D nature. The gear skills in particular are a customization wrinkle that I wish more games in general would take advantage of. The rest of the experience is typical of Tales of games, and that should frame whether or not you think you’d like it. However, even having played it before, I still put the 50 hours in to finish it again so that should give the best kind of idea of how much I think this is worth playing.

Game Ramblings #32 – Tales of Berseria

More Info from Bandai Namco

  • Platform: PS4
  • Genre: JRPG
  • Also Available On: Steam, PS3 (Japan Only)

The Tales of series has been going on for a long time.  Most people’s familiarity with it is directly tied with the GameCube release of Symphonia, but that’s just one of many main line titles in the series.  Berseria in a lot of ways feels like a final act in the PS3 game line and a natural progression of the PS3 titles starting with Xillia.  With this being a direct universe prequel to Zestiria this makes quite a bit of sense.  However, there’s been a number of changes that have pushed the gameplay ever further towards a direct action RPG style.

The biggest high level difference long time Tales of players will notice is that this story is decidedly darker than your typical titles in the series.  The surface level of the story is very direct with this in that you are playing the bad guys.  At its core, your group is basically out to destroy the world, even if their motives are somewhat more selfish than that.  However, beyond the surface layer, there are a number of themes that play on negative psychological aspects that I was surprised to see in such detail.  All that said, the progression and ultimate redemption of the party in the final act is worth the pay off.  Players of Zestiria will also connect a lot of dots about how the game’s shared universe works, and the return of a handful of characters from the previous title adds a nice layer of depth to the universe, even though the thousand year gap between the two games means they are largely disconnected from each other.

At a gameplay level, things are largely as they have been for a while, with some key differences once the battle system is reached.  Like Zestiria and the Xillia titles, there is no distinction between dungeons and a larger scale overworld.  Everything is interconnected using realistic scale environments, so moving between towns, fields, and dungeons is fairly direct.  The environments are scattered with non-random battles that start with interacting with enemies.  There are also your standard assortment of treasure chests, as well as the return of herbs and item spheres that can be collected around.  The only new addition to item pick ups are Katt souls, which serve as a secondary currency for unlocking some specific chests largely filled with outfits and visual accessories.  The end result is that if you’ve played a Tales of  game on PS3 in the last 5 years, you know what you’re getting into here.

Battles are where the gameplay has changed the most.  Pretty much every Tales of game in the past has had standard attacks on one face button, and Artes attacks using a secondary resource on another face button.  This is all gone.  For one thing, all attacks are now set by the player across the four face buttons based on a position within a combo chain.  All attacks and artes now using a single resources that determines how many attacks can be chained in a single combo.  The resource stack grows by applying negative conditions to enemies or properly timing dodges, and shrinks when negative conditions are applied to the player.  With 3+ resources available, the player can also activate a special overdrive-like mode or special attacks, depending on the character, giving a boost to damage as well as a significant heal.  Because of the constant back and forth in changing the active combo length, as well as the layout of the custom combos, the game feels very distinctly like a 3D fighting game in battle.  While these titles have always been very action-focused, the changes here have pushed the game in a direction that is a distinctly fresh take on the gameplay, even if a lot of the core pieces are very recognizable to returning players.

Also of note to the core gameplay loop are some changes to the gearing system.  Stats are still very much there, but the most important aspect to gear is a mastery stat.  Every piece of gear has a mastery stat, which can be anything from flat stats (+x Defense, etc), to type-specific increases (+x% damage to undead), to very specific effects around status conditions (-x% time to applied poisons).  Once an item mastery has been earned, it is permanently applied to the character.  Because of this change, I was typically wearing whatever gear was not mastered, rather than whatever gear was the best.  By the end of the game, the summation of all these individual masteries was easily more important than changes in stats between two pieces of gear, so I was constantly searching both in shops as I got to them, as well as for treasure chests in all the environment areas for new gear that I hadn’t seen before.

Given that we haven’t heard anything about the next Tales of title, my assumption is that they’re now digging in to get going on the true next-gen progression of the series.  While Zestiria and Berseria were on PS4, they were direct ports from PS3 titles released at the same time.  Given the departure that the PS3 titles were from some of the past games, I can only assume that we’re going to see a similar change in gameplay for whatever the next title will be.  However, it feels like the changes have already started here.  The action focus of the battle system is a very distinctly new feel to the series, even if a lot of the core pieces feel the same.  Because of the constant healing and changes to gear mastery, the game felt more focused than ever on the core combo-based action, rather than the number crunching typical of most JRPGs.  Like Final Fantasy 15, it feels like they’re moving further away from what started the series’ popularity, but like FF 15, I’m also pretty confident it’s for the best.  Technology has progressed to the point where we can have the grand adventures, as well as fast paced gameplay, and I feel like we’re only scratching the surface of where this series will be going in the future.