Can some Tales-veterans help me out with understanding the combat?

[Twinrehz]

Hi

I started playing Tales of Vesperia quite recently, because of fond memories of Tales of Symphonia on Gamecube some 10 years ago, but I'm having some serious trouble with the combat system. To me it seems extremely unintuitive, and I don't seem to get the hang of it, I just end up randomly mashing buttons, and while it for the most part sort of works, the last bossfight I encountered was a particular thorn in my side. His name was Pteropus, and forced me to once again turn the difficulty down to Easy just to get past him, as quite a few boss fights have done before. (If you don't know or remember this particular boss, he occasionally splits up into a huge horde of bats and start annoying you 'till you want to set something on fire).

But even on easy difficulty I had serious problems, much of the problem being that all the mobs are flying, and I don't know how to handle that, and at the same time being stun-locked by the same water fountain spell 2-3 times in a row doesn't help my blood pressure the slightest.

I'm very much a button masher, I will admit that, but while I really want to get over that particular hurdle, I always end up mashing buttons anyway, because the tutorials that I've gone through haven't been much help, some things just doesn't make sense, and some fights end up being such a mess that I can't see what I'm targeting, what is attacking me, how far away from my target I am, and sometimes I don't even realize I'm swinging my sword in the wrong direction until I've started waving it. Needless to say, I need some help, but I haven't found any guides at all on how to even get started with the combat, and I tend to forget details very quickly.

(Also, hooray for first forum post).

 

[Exius Xavarus]

Don't stand around. That's asking to get hit. You can free-run for as long as you like, so take advantage of that and keep moving, unless you're attacking or guarding. In fact, you can cancel your free-run with an attack, so keep going until you see an opening to exploit and immediately begin a combo when you get close.

Judith is exceptionally effective in aerial combat. Rita and Raven can handle aerial mobs pretty well, too. I recommend spamming magic at them whenever you run across an aerial foe.

It doesn't matter whether you mash the button or meticulously time your button presses. I'm a button masher, too, so I know what it's like. Just keep time with what your character is doing on the screen and press the necessary buttons accordingly. You'll be fine.

If you're finding yourself consistently swinging your weapon in the wrong direction, try switching from Manual Mode to Semi-Auto Mode. When you attack, you'll automatically run toward the enemy you're targeting and attack it. Keep in mind that while in Semi-Auto, you can't jump unless you're guarding(Manual has no such restriction). It's good for people that are still getting their bearings, but it's much less flexible than Manual Mode. I prefer Manual, personally.

 

[oceanwavezero]

You see mages, you kill mages. That's the solution to your water-spell stun-lock.

Just whenever you fight a group of humans run immediately to the back if you're a melee or target them with a spell if you're a caster, because once you start hitting them they aren't at all scary.

As a melee character always play in semi-auto to avoid the situation you're describing in your last paragraph.

I'd put an arte or two that drives you airborne and spam it against aerial enemies, every character's got one, Judith has almost a dozen. Once you've used the aerial arte you can follow up with a melee combo or another arte that can spike the enemy toward the ground.

Bosses are intended to be difficult. It's fine to grind a bit if you aren't able to cut it with skill alone.

EDIT: Oh, and find the button on the controller I think it's RB or LB to free-run. Allowing you to move tactically toward the enemies you want to fight or away from ones you want to avoid.

 

[Twinrehz]

I think I'm gonna stick to manual, because there was something about semi-auto that annoyed me, and I liked the freedom that manual gave me. Thinking back, I'm wondering if my error was having set all characters to not use TP if their TP-bar went below 75% or something, because I was worried I'd run out of TP by the end of the dungeon. I feel very much like a scrub, but I guess it's the kind of game you're supposed to spend 3-400 hours on or something.

Does the battle formation do anything?

 

[FPLOON]

Does the battle formation do anything?

They do sometimes, but only if you care about who in your party is playing more offense than defense and visa verse... For me personally, I keep all of my main casters in back, all my melee characters up front, and anyone that can do both in the middle for any of the Tales games I play (which has only been Symphonia, Legendia, Graces, and Xillia though).

As for everything else, since I tend to play the straight-up melee character, I tend to combo most of my normal attacks into my TP combos before trying to see if I could do it again without leaving myself wide open for a counter... It also makes sure that my overall TP consumption doesn't get too low in battle...

 

[Ashley Fream]

on vesperia at least, free-run is your best friend, whenever you see someone casting, change them to your target and use free run to evade the tankier/physical enemies, once mages are down battles are normally fairly one sided as yuri can easily tank/evade/destroy most melee enemies. have you been keeping up to date with your artes? the later ones nearly always do significantly more damage and as a tip some require you getting 50+ uses on an earlier move. Personally I have an arte equipped and use it lots in fights to hit 50 uses before swapping it out for a different arte. I could give you a load of info on pteropus specifically but it wouldn't really help now

The 75% tp save thing probably hurt a lot as some spells fairly early can use a lot of tp (compared to max) as a general rule when I get the 'upcoming boss' feeling I use a few lemon gels (I think it's lemon, tp ones) on my casters so that they are capable of going ape on the boss. an alternative is to just go through the strategies and set one up to your liking specifically for bosses (strategy can be changed mid fight using the d-pad I believe it is). this way you can save tp for the boss and still go postal.

I cannot stress enough how powerful free run can be though, there are attacks that can almost one shot you that you can just walk out the way of and you can completely prevent an enemy from using a mystic arte (probably not come up yet, read: massive damage to entire party)simply by leading an enemy in a circle and avoiding any base artes that lead into a mystic.

sorry for the wall of text and if some info is a little off, it's been a while since I played vesperia XD, although its my personal favourite, so stick with it!

 

[Twinrehz]

Thanks for the replies. I was told there are guides for artes online, so if I need them, I'll look them up. I tend to get furious when things don't go my way, and at that point small details like battle strategy goes out the window while I yell at the characters on screen for being so bloody useless. :/ But yeah, thanks to all of you, if I could give you a forum karma, you'd get one.