Some General Questions About The Tales Series

[gamernerdtg2]

I found one thread with similar questions here:
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/9.383204-Poll-The-Tales-series-I-love-it-but-do-you-If-yes-tell-me-why?page=2

My questions are a bit different.

1.How many have you played? Has anyone played every single Tales game since the first one?
2.If you've played more than one Tales game, which one is your favorite?
3.What is the strongest aspect of your favorite Tales game?
4.What do Tales games do well overall, and what don?t they do well?
5.Does Zestiria seem like a winner, or not?
6.If you could throw an element from Tales into another RPG series, what would it be?
7. Not a question, but please to share any other thoughts on this series.


My answers:
1. Vesperia, Legendia, and Xillia. Currently playing Xillia. Will revisit Legendia later. I can't fathom anyone playing every single Tales game made to date - that's a true fan.
2. Hands down Vesperia. Amazing game.
3. It's a tie between the combat and the personalities of Vesperia.
4. So far, they do combat really well, and they do characters really well - especially pre-teen and teenage characters. I wish that characters could run when you're in towns/dungeons etc, and I didn't really care for the cooking system in Vesperia. Xillia remedies the cooking thing for me so far. I also don't see the point for playing automatic battles, but that's my perspective.
5. Zestiria doesn't really seem like anything exciting yet. I think the name is kinda lazy.
6. I really like the way you can enhance the shops of Xillia by investing materials that you discover in the world, or through Gald. It creates a greater incentive to loot.

7. I'm hooked on Xillia right now and I'm psyched for part 2. Vesperia 2 needs to happen...like tomorrow. If there was a Xillia 2, there should be a Vesperia 2.

 

[Ultress]

I've played through Symphonia,Legendia,Abyss,Phantasia and Vesperia. My girlfriend and I are working through Graces F and Xillia albeit very slowly.Abyss is probably my favorite for the tight combat and excellent characters. Luke's arc is one of my favorites in any video game and is insanely well done. I don't even know what Zestria is nor did I realize there is a sequel to Xilla. Hope it's better than Symphonia's sequel.

I'd probably add the skits to other games as it's a great way to add development to your characters and expands upon the group dynamic. I started with Symphonia and have loved the series every since.

 

[ecoho]

ok so I cant answer some of your question cause im too tired(ill try to add more later) but lets get at least some down;

1. ive played pretty much all of them thought the only ones ive liked enough to finish were vesperia, gracias, xillia, and symphonia.

2/3. symphonia by far my favorite one of all of them because the combat is just ridiculously fun and the story its just generic enough to get into easy but different enough to truly care.

4.combat and music they do great. the story is usually hit or miss.

5.yes

6. the combat and music should be in every jrpg.......

7. coming soon going to sleep

 

[AdrianCeltigar]

1. I've played Phantasia (GBA port), Symphonia, Abyss, Vesperia, Xillia and Innocence. I didn't finish the last two.
2. Vesperia maybe? All of them do something better than the others, but Vesperia had my favourite character to play as.
3. It had Judith, who was a wet blanket in terms of personality but was my favourite to use in battle of any of the Tales games.
4. They all do combat well, single and multi-player. Music too. I never like their protagonists, and I usually only like one or two characters in each game.
5. I don't think there's enough information on Zestria to draw any conclusions.
6. Being able to pick what perks your New Game+ has.
7. Xillia had the best moment of any of them ever. I'm of the opinion that Xillia had self-parody level dialogue, but it had one line that was just so bad - delivered with utmost sincerity and garnering absolutely no reaction whatsoever - that I couldn't stop laughing. My brother and I were incapacitated with laughter for roughly 20 minutes. Easily the most memorable moment in the entire series' history - and I've done some pretty memorable things throughout the series.

 

[gamernerdtg2]

Zesteria is the 20th anniversary of the Tales games in general.


I wonder from what's here if the combat will be a bit different.

 

[WhiteFangofWhoa]

1. Phantasia, Legendia, Symphonia. Didn't like Legendia but the others were good, certainly better than their spin-off series, Star Ocean.
2. Symphonia.
3. Memorable cast.
4. See above. Also TV Tropes outlines well how they usually create their plotlines by subverting and deconstructing traditional RPG plot stereotypes (your mentor is actually the villain, the chosen one will actually destroy another world to save yours, etc.), and how before that big twist they are sometimes cliched enough to turn some people away from them.
5. Zest-who?
6. Character skits. Often funny and occasionally good at developing relations between characters a la Fire Emblem.
7. My primary beef with the series has been the flaw in most other real-time action RPGs; you can only control one party member at a time and I've yet to see a game with a truly reliable friendly strategic AI. However, watching a Let's Play of Xillia and seeing how you can force party members to stick with you and perform combo attacks with one button press gives me hope for the future.

On a similar note, I'd like to see suggestions for a particular RPG cliche you'd like to see subverted and deconstructed in a future Tales game, possibly one that's always annoyed you.

 

[Atmos Duality]

1&2:
I've played Tales of Symphonia (including the...*cough* sequel...), Tales of the Abyss and a bit through Vesperia.
Symphonia had the overall more likeable cast, but Abyss had a much better story IMO.
I prefer Abyss over Symphonia ever so slightly (while I'd rather not remember my limited experience with Vesperia).

3&4:
Strengths: Character development and pretty dynamic combat.
Weaknesses: Token characters and by-the-books-tropes. For all the "subversion" going on, they're still pretty reliant on JRPGs tropes.

5: No comment.
6: Uh...I dunno.
7: They kinda need to dial back on the pandering tropes, but at the same time that's...kinda what keeps them in business in Japan.

 

[Biggyzoom]

1.I've played Phantasia, Symphonia and Vesperia
2.Vesperia.
3.It's graphically gorgeous, contains way more voice acting than symphonia and I love the characters so much more.
4.The combat. neg: Some of the music in Symphonia was a bit stock and it all had that MIDI sound to it.
5.Never heard of it.
6.N/A
7.I'm not sure if this applies as much nowadays but it sucks how few games of the series got released in Europe and the UK. As I recall they tend to be rare and pricey.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

1. I've only played Tales of the Abyss.
2. Since I only played Abyss, that's my favorite and least favorite Tales game.
3. Luke's character arc.
4. I guess the combat system is a little weird and feels randomized.
5. No idea.
6. Again, no idea.
7. The music's pretty good.

 

[NeutralDrow]

1. Only three, so far. Symphonia, Symphonia: Dawn of the New World, and Abyss.
2. Symphonia, absolutely. One of my favorite games ever, actually.
3. Hard to say, but I'll probably go with the combat system (the characters make a close second). Actually applies to all the games; I can't recall many other RPGs where I ended up overleveled entirely by accident just because I was enjoying the fights so much.
4. It's the character interactions that endear me most to them over other RPGs. The humor is good, the emotions and relationships believable, and Jade Curtiss. What they don't do well...the stories have kind of a cliched structure. Though in fairness, I'm only saying that because apparently other people care about that kind of thing.
5. Haven't heard of it. I'll look into it.
6. Motoi Sakuraba's music. Or maybe I should save that for if you ask about the Baten Kaitos series...
7. Random thoughts? Okay, I feel like one of the few people who loved Symphonia's sequel. Sure, it wasn't nearly as good as the original, and the new voice actors for the returning characters didn't capture them nearly as well, but the new characters were all well-voiced (seriously, Emil, Itsuki Koizumi, and Yukimura Sanada are why I love Johhny Yong Bosch's work so much), the story was surprisingly good, and Emil/Marta is one of my favorite game romances now. Also, while Abyss had overall better combat (integrating the new free-running much better), Emil is probably my favorite character in the series to battle as.

 

[brenz]

Only played Xillia, so I will answer a bit differently.
I know some of you will say I havent seen the best, or cant fully judge the Tales series on one game, but I shall anyway.

Combat was fun and nicely intricate, but they needed more sayings after the fights, or none at all, as hearing Jude asking if we really need to fight 100+ times in the game became a bit annoying.
Characters are a bit shallow, I only ever cared about Milla, everyone else I felt the same as I would toward a wet blanket.
Shop upgrade system was cool.
Story was shallow at first, then took a decent twist to make it interesting, then all fell down at the end as Gaius was right, they were wrong, the whole goody happy everyone happily ever after we can do it feel at the end ruined it for me, Jude was such an indecisive crybaby most of the time, and couldnt even rock a move on Milla, even in the end, such a let down.
A more open world would have been nice, the corridor "dungeon" feel of the all the highlands and roads became repetitive, world map next time please.
If you can invest the effort into all that voice acting, and put the effort into a vendor selling "fresh mutton", then you can fucking invest a little extra effort to make the vendors in different towns shout different things, my god man, is mutton the only meat those fuckers eat, all sold by the same vendor in two different worlds, its the little things that take your experience from good to great.
More interactive world, your quests and help make a difference around you.

some of these things might seem mundane or silly to mention, but as i said, little things take you from good to great, difference between a 7/10 or a 9/10 rating.

 

[Zetatrain]

Always nice to see a Tales series thread

1)In order of played: Symphonia, Legendia, Abyss, Vesperia, Xilla, and Graces F (Finished all of them)

2)Tough call, its a tie between Abyss and Vesperia

3)Both had very good Story and Characters. Abyss had the better story and Vesperia the better characters (Yuri Lowell is AWESOME!!!). Both had good combat too, but Grace F and Xilla have the best combat systems in the series.

4)PROS:Always have good combat systems and group dynamic which is largely thanks to the skits and victory speeches/poses.
CONS:Being a long running JRPG series it does have some common tropes used by the genre. While most tropes of the JRPG genre don't really bother me, subversion is always a nice thing. I also felt that Xilla's Cooking and weapon forging mechanics were too stripped down. Xilla also needed more variety in enemies and better dungeon designs. I also wish they would bring back the overworld.

5) Err...not much to go on at the moment. Based on what little we see in the trailer it does look like they are going for a more free roaming world with a third person view (think Elder Scrolls series). If so then it will be very interesting to see how it turns out. I also heard from a friend that they will be implementing a side step/dodge system similar to Graces', but I have no idea where he got that info. Also it seems this will be set in a more traditional fantasy setting akin to ones common in WRPGs. Normally i'd be meh about this, however considering the fact that none of the Tales game I played fall into that kind of setting I am interested in seeing this.

6) Skits, definitely skits. Its a great way flesh out characters or just to have some fun banter between the characters. It really helps the characters grow on you.

7)DAMN IT NAMCO BANDAI GIVE ME THE PS3 VERSION OF VESPERIA GIVE IT TO MEEEEEEEEEE!!!! Also looking forward to Xilla 2 and the remastered version of Symphonia this year.

 

[Launcelot111]

1. 5 games- Symphonia, Abyss, Vesperia, Graces, and Xillia
2. If I had to, I'd say Graces over Xillia by a hair. That battle system is as close to perfect as I've seen, and the cast was fun
3. Finding a way to keep random encounters reasonably fun.
4. They're bright, fun, and not too serious in terms of tone, and the battle system is always a plus. On the downside, the villains and the main stories tend to be some degree of incomprehensible garbage
5. Seen a few pictures that looked fine, but it's a Tales game so I'm excited.
6. Extensive sidequesting and the ability to customize character appearance.
7. DLC costumes are lame.

 

[JasonKaotic]

1. I've played Graces, Vesperia, Xillia and Abyss, in that order. Although I've only played about half an hour of Xillia and about 5 minutes of Abyss, so they may not count.
2. Graces. Love me some Tales of Graces.
3. Story and characters, as I'll bet most people here will say.
4. From what I can tell they all do story and characters well, and the ability systems are really cool, but they seem to really really suck at endings. Graces and Vesperia both ended waaay too abruptly.
5. I haven't looked into it. I prefer to let games like these surprise me.
6. I suppose it'd be pretty cool to see other games use a similar skill system to Tales of Graces. There are probably some out there that do something like it but I haven't played any as far as I can remember. Also every game should let you revisit cutscenes and stuff like Graces F does.

7. WHY WERE WE THERE BACK-TO-BACK, WHY WERE WE THERE FACE-TO-FACE, I MUST BE THE LIGHT WHEN YOU'RE IN THE DAAARK

 

[michael87cn]

I couldn't stand to play any of them because of how your character annoyingly yells out their attack with EVERY press of the attack button.

 

[FPLOON]

Hmmm... Let's see...

1. (in order of first play) Symphonia, Legendia, Abyss (PS2), Phantasia (GBA), Abyss (3DS), Graces f, Xillia
2. Symphonia... (Oddly enough?) Though, both replaying Abyss on the 3DS and Xillia, in general, are tied at a very close second... (I'm pretty sure I would keep switching between them for quite some time...)
3. The story pulls me in and the characters keep me in alongside the combat in general... (The perfect JRPG trap for me...)
4. Combat and characters... even the ones that aren't personally my favorite (or just ones I haven't played yet due to "reasons") I admire them for their combat and characters... (Also, skits and certain character sidequest come at a close second...)
5. *after seeing the trailer* It's definitely not the title that would bother me... That's for sure... (Also, fuck yeah dragon!)
6. Agreeing with OP... Investing materials in the shops in Xillia was, to me, the most satisfying thing I have ever done in terms of getting more (and/or cheaper) items and weapons in a RPG... It added a new dept to how much you wanted to upgrade your gear or just to make sure certain items you keep buying are more cheaper than before... (I spent WAY too much time on this "little" mechanic and I don't regret a single second of it...)
7. Well... I originally started playing Symphonia just to see why one of my middle school rivals found the game so "enticing" to always want to talk about it at any given time, despite only him having... It wasn't the first JRPG I've played beforehand, but the one I invested the most time in, with Persona 3/4 coming at a seriously very close second on the in-game total time, alone...

I couldn't stand to play any of them because of how your character annoyingly yells out their attack with EVERY press of the attack button.

Demon Fang!
Demon Fang!
Demon Fang!
Demon Fang!
Demon Fang!
Double Demon Fang!

Joking aside, you have the option to basically "shut them up" during combat... It's just that that particular option is not the "default" option...

 

[Zetatrain]

Graces and Vesperia both ended waaay too abruptly.

I agree with Vesperia (though the ending credits do act a bit as an epilogue)but Graces? Are you talking about before or after the Future Arc? If its before then I agree but the future arc's ending IMO was probably the best Tales ending (among the ones I played)in terms of closure and even by itself it didn't feel abrupt.

7. WHY WERE WE THERE BACK-TO-BACK, WHY WERE WE THERE FACE-TO-FACE, I MUST BE THE LIGHT WHEN YOU'RE IN THE DAAARK

Best Tales OP ever!

 

[Darkanine]

1.I've only seriously played Legendia,Symphonia and Symphonia 2. And maybe Keroro RPG if you count it (Same gameplay and dev team but based off the Keroro gunso anime)
2.Probably Symphonia. The characters in Legendia and Symphonia 2 were unlikable as hell. (Keroro RPG by far if its counted)
3.Gameplay, I never liked there stories or characters.
4.See above.
5.Meh, looks like the other Tales of games.
6.Gameplay, the games are really damn fun.
I personally don't care for tha games as much as most people do, but I can see why people do. I love the battle system (both the 3D and 2D one, just not the GBA ones). I just never thought the story or art direction was all that good.