Tales of Vesperia

[dimorphic]

So I picked this up on a whim the other day (having not played any previous Tales game) and I am loving it. The anime design, the combat, the story, every thing is so well designed and the game has this certain charm too it.

I am not normally a fan of JRPGs (in fact I don't like FF at all) but Tales of Vesperia is ticking all the boxes for me at the moment.

[Tukenstein]

I'm absolutely loving this game, but the story is kind of trickling at the beginning. Things seemed so much grander in Symphonia.

Oh, and I think I've developed a crush on Rita. =3

http://media.giantbomb.com/uploads/0/112/395393-rita_large.jpg

[dimorphic]

Estelle wants me, I can see it in her eyes. :p

Like I said, I haven't played any other Tales games, but I liked the way Vesperia started. It was very humble and the plot threads were tied together well, jumping from one to the other in a very natural, progressive way. I've thoroughly enjoyed it so far.

[Watchers]

I would be playing this if my 360 didn't die an hour in. Hurry up and come back to me ;_;

[AyatollaofRocknRolla]

I reckon this might be might next purchase. I loved Tales of Symphonia on the gamecube.

[incompatible with life]

Out of curiosity, how is combat like? Pretty much the same as ToS?

[Xanafalgue]

Is it better than Star Ocean: The Last Hope? *crosses fingers*

[TrinityJayOne]

Definitely will be grabbing this at some stage, possibly not for a while though. I won't have time for an RPG once Forza 3 lands. :D

[dimorphic]

Is it better than Star Ocean: The Last Hope? *crosses fingers*

I personally haven't played Star Ocean but from everything I've heard it's a yes.

[Cerebral]

Out of curiosity, how is combat like? Pretty much the same as ToS?

Essentially yes, but if you want to get into the details, there's more emphasis on chaining different types of Artes, as there seems to be a longer dead time than Symphonia after a combo finishes. It's a bit more difficult in this respect.

Edit: easily the best part of the game is when Yuri punches Judith in the face.

http://img182.imageshack.us/img182/5566/yuriabuse.jpg

[FF Freak]

Yes Larz this is easily better than Star Ocean 4. In fact even the voice acting is superior to most JRPGs that are dubbed into English. I'm still kinda annoyed that they didn't include the Japanese dub like was originally announced but oh well. After finishing this and starting to play through again this is easily the best Tales game imo since and with exception to Tales of the Abyss (and I've played a lot of Tales games).

Interesting thing I found about this game and what will also be in Tales of SYmphonia 2 is the fact that they've broken away from the level cap of 100 as the max and in this the level cap is 200. Makes headway for the fact that if you're going to go for some of the achievements like completing the collector's book there is a lot of grinding to do. I also enjoyed the secret missions for boss battles as it allowed for a greater challenge when trying to defeat bosses. There was only 2 particularly hard missions but the extra items/grade (and achievement points) for completing them makes them well worth while.

[JONO RANDOM H3RO]

Hmm judging by the sound of this I might have to buy it :). Might be a good time considering there isn't much coming out until September.

[Char Aznable]

I am 80 hours into this game and haven't completed everything yet. This is my first play through, too. Currently farming grade and mastering all the recipes for the cooking competition!

I am so happy that I love this game so much, it's everything I hoped Tales of Symphonia would be (which I am now going to sell, considering how superior this game is). Yuri and Flynn's complicated friendship is played out perfectly and while I thought Raven was a tool in the beginning, his personality has really been fleshed out and I adore him as much as everyone else (except Karol, who is still annoying).

The art style is beautiful, the soundtrack is perfect, I can't rate this game highly enough. It's very very hard to 100% complete though! I have every secret achievement I can get thus far (I just unlocked the last dungeon) EXCEPT for Yaeger D: ****ing bitch to get. I'm going to try and do it after my next play which will be a speed run.

I ♥ Yuri Lowell.

[Cerebral]

Make sure the copy you sell is not mine, tia

[Char Aznable]

Nope, I still have your copies of ToS, The Darkness and PSU sitting on my shelf in a neat little pile with a DVD Aron lent me >.>

[Slippery]

Amy Rose you're lucky pep has been removed considering you just blasphemed against ToS

[Xanafalgue]

Yes Larz this is easily better than Star Ocean 4.

Thats enought for me :D

[Char Aznable]

Just finished it~ ^_^ 760 gamerscore, woo! Now to go back and play it again and get some of the achievements I missed!

The ending was a bit lacklustre imo :(

[Cerebral]

Currently going through the game again Magic lensing everyone with 10x Exp (the game is ridiculously easy once you carry over items and bump up the Exp, so I've turned up the difficulty for ~extra grade~). I've heard classic Tales characters make cameos in either the 100-man or 200-man melee, but I got owned in the 100-man melee on my old file, and need to work towards unlocking the 200-man one (and I cbb watching a huge youtube video of some wanker spamming tidal wave throughout the entire fight just to find out).

Man, Karol is gay. Nan is way out of his league.

[Char Aznable]

SPOILER FOR ANYONE WHO HASN'T PLAYED THE GAME -

Did you unlock the secret dungeon? It's so sex, I think you have to do a sidequest for it, probably something in Yormgen. I think you're meant to be dead and have to fight to become alive again (it's basically a washed out visit to places you've been before like the pirate ship and Mt Temza etc), and fight 'memories' of all these different enemies in the game. It's pretty sweet and the EXP and Gald with the multiplier will be NUTS. I'm levelling up every time I defeat something on the normal settings (haven't started new game yet). Had to Tidal Wave to defeat one of the last bosses though >_>. I haven't unlocked the final boss and am itching to see who it is!

[Cerebral]

You are going to come in your pants when you see who the final boss is http://uyac.com.au/forum/images/smilies/1.jpg

[FF Freak]

I stuffed up mine when I transferred my stuff across. The first stupid thing I did was save my new game+ file over my clear game data so I was kicking myself when I realized I had.

Second stupid thing was I didn't get the title from Flynn after having completed all 23 secret missions, which you get by reloading your clear game file after defeating the final boss so now I have to go through the game and complete all 23 again to get it. The Yeager one took me an hour at least to get and since I'm playing it on hard this time it's probably going to take longer. Took me quite a few attempts to kill Zagi on hard since I didn't have the grade to transfer them across with the other things I had to.

Gonna use a guide for all the sidequests this time though as I know I completed like 1 total on my first playthrough. Also gonna try and get Rita grade farming down pat.

[Spazzallo]

Picked this up the other day and I'm pretty happy with it so far. The combat feels a lot clunker then ToS though :(.

[dimorphic]

So as people get further into the game I think spoiler tags are in order.

[Manny M]

After playing (and getting really bored with) Eternal Sonata, I grabbed the demo of this and just thought 'urgh, not another one'.

I think I was just really over whiny voices by that stage and couldn't bear to think of going through another game that included them.

[Cerebral]

For the record, the majority of the voice acting is excellent. Karol is the only exception.

However if you didn't like the combat system you probably won't change your mind anytime soon, even though the game expands greatly on what you're given in the demo. That said, this game is leaps and bounds better than Eternal Sonata (though not straying far from the typical JRPG fare you would expect)

[Char Aznable]

Got to the final boss in the labrynth, came everywhere, gaoigoauhsfouhaf

[Cerebral]

Heh... Rita just got called 'Flatty McChesterson'. Owned, bitch.

[Char Aznable]

LOL Kowz. He calls Yuri "Pheremone Boy" ! It's awesome.

[Watchers]

So are there any missable things/dungeons/side stories to keep in mind as I play through (no spoilers though plz)? I'm not one for multiple playthroughs generally, and I'd like to make sure I see as much as I can.

[FF Freak]

There are plenty of missable sidequests. I know I missed a ton on my first playthrough, though I've barely started my second playthrough as I've been playing other stuff.

[Watchers]

I really don't wanna resort to a FAQ for side missions though, since I like discovering them on my own, but I don't wanna miss any. Decisions! :(

[dimorphic]

I really don't wanna resort to a FAQ for side missions though, since I like discovering them on my own, but I don't wanna miss any. Decisions! :(

For the bonus stuff in JRPGs I find FAQs a necessity.

[Cerebral]

There are so many missable things it makes your head spin. I'm using an FAQ for my second playthrough and I'm finding tonnes of sidequests - some of which would be difficult to find otherwise because they rely on completely arbitrary things like backtracking to previous towns at certain points in the game.

Also I achieved ~Secret Mission 17~ Yeaa boy.

[FF Freak]

Also I achieved ~Secret Mission 17~ Yeaa boy.

grats. Took me about an hour + to get that achievement on my first playthrough. Not looking forward to trying and getting it on hard mode especially with the fact that I didn't have enough grade to carry across weapons so I have to build them up from scratch. I'd love to see what it's like getting that on unknown...I've seen a youtube vid but it's probably not as impressive as doing it yourself.

[Watchers]

Wasn't there a way to control who party members would attack (i.e. whether they'd attack the same enemy as you, or a different one)? I remember being able to do this at some point in a Tales game, but there doesn't seem to be the option here. Aside from manually telling every character every time who to fire spells at...

[Cerebral]

Menu -> Strategy -> Edit

[Watchers]

Yeah, found it myself actually. I didn't see the little thing down the bottom of the submenu with "(X) - Edit".

Beat that giant wolf boss in Ehmead Hill. What a ****.

[Spazzallo]

I'm at the place towards the end of the game with 5 different coloured doors and finding it very bloody frustrating, seems like I'm going around in circles! Got 2 down and gave up :(.

The cutscene before this area is very good though :).

[watkinzez]

I'm at the place towards the end of the game with 5 different coloured doors and finding it very bloody frustrating, seems like I'm going around in circles! Got 2 down and gave up :(.

The cutscene before this area is very good though :).

Rita should have kicked him in the balls.

[Spazzallo]

Rita should have kicked him in the balls.

Indeed. Thought Repede was gonna do something as well :D. Didn't really like how they brushed over the fact he was still alive. There are no clues on what his motivation was either (other then the whole artificial heart controlled by Alexis). Maybe it gets explained later but a bit disappointed.

This game really shits me. I can't believe it took nearly up to 2/3 of the way through for it to get interesting. The rest of the game was based around 'lets do this, oh and now lets do that'. Don't think I'll play through it again, missing the charm that Symphonia had :(.

[Cerebral]

Most of the meandering at the start was character development though. I found the game only started getting interesting at Ghasfarost (when you meet Judith), then it got a bit boring again for a while.

Like I said on uyac, Symphonia starts pretty slow then gradually gets better over time, whereas Vesperia is more like a rollercoaster (or ~sine wave~).

I'm probably not going to persevere for all the achievements in the game, since it requires more than a few playthroughs (some of which need to be perfect). I cleared the EX Dungeon and have done the 200-man melee with a few characters, but all I get are titles for beating it now, so it's probably not worth it anymore. Might do the speed/level based runs of the game sometime, but for now I'm probably giving it a rest.

Or maybe I'll play it for like 3 more hours so i can get the 100 hour achievement >_> may as well.

[Second]

Most of the meandering at the start was character development though. I found the game only started getting interesting at Ghasfarost (when you meet Judith), then it got a bit boring again for a while.

Like I said on uyac, Symphonia starts pretty slow then gradually gets better over time, whereas Vesperia is more like a rollercoaster (or ~sine wave~).

I'm probably not going to persevere for all the achievements in the game, since it requires more than a few playthroughs (some of which need to be perfect). I cleared the EX Dungeon and have done the 200-man melee with a few characters, but all I get are titles for beating it now, so it's probably not worth it anymore. Might do the speed/level based runs of the game sometime, but for now I'm probably giving it a rest.

Or maybe I'll play it for like 3 more hours so i can get the 100 hour achievement >_> may as well.
Hey Mate, can I borrow the game in the near future? I'm going to be done with Fallout pretty soon (if I don't get a job), so I'll need something I can invest a lot of hours in. <_<

[Cerebral]

Sure thing, wan trade for something? I'm almost done with Fallout as well !

[Watchers]

Just met up with Judith. This game keeps getting better - something about her voice acting is quite hawt.

[Spazzallo]

Bloody hell the Colloseum is hard. Currently level 46 and doing it. Got up to enemy 65 in the 80 man melee but those druids owned me with their stupid eruption spell. I feel cheated, how are you supposed to heal yourself when you have 4 spells of erruption launching you into the air all at the same time! >_<

[Spazzallo]

Finished the game yesterday. The game definitely got better, however the ending was so damn short! What's wrong with telling us what happens afterwards? :(

Spewing that the PS3 version gets all these new features. The one major one being that Flynn is a playable character! I was waiting the whole game for him to join the party (never played a game with an odd number of characters in your party, so iI figured he must join at som I stage, and then he leaves after that one fight against 10 or so monsters!) I can't see how they're going to be able to bring in that little pirate girl as a character, she's not in the game at all and they'd have to change every scene just to accomodate her.

More information on Raven throughout the game would have been great! Such an interesting character with an interesting past, and then when the lid is blown off the can everyone just forgets about it!

They could've made it easier to find side quests as well. If I played the game through 5 times I would not have been able to figure out that a) there was an extra dungeon and b) how on earth to unlock it if it werent for the internet.

Fantastic game however and 40 hours well spent. Time to try and get all the achievments on my second run (after I farm enough grade for 10x xp ;))!

[FF Freak]

I can't see how they're going to be able to bring in that little pirate girl as a character, she's not in the game at all and they'd have to change every scene just to accomodate her.



That's basically what they're doing. They're changing part of the storyline, adding a sub story that revolves around Patty and changing all the cutscenes to include her just so that she into the game. It'll be interesting to see how they do it, but I wouldn't buy the game again even if I did own a PS3.

[Kasplatza Red]

Picked this game up a few weeks back, started it on Wednesday night. I've already clocked up over 40 hours on it- love it to bits. I've missed a bunch of titles, sidequests, secret missions, whatever, but I heard you can up the experience rate from the second playthrough onwards, so I'll probably do that. I really do want to get 1000/1000 for this (the only other game I"ve done it for so far is Enchanted Arms).

If i have a PS3 when it comes out here, I'll be buying the PS3 version- I can't resist a cute pirate girl, and movie tie-ins and SKIPPABLE CUTSCENES! and 16 Artes shortcuts. I loves me some arts. :D

I gotta admit, this is making me want to track down some other Tales games -what do people suggest?

[FF Freak]

I gotta admit, this is making me want to track down some other Tales games -what do people suggest?

Tales of Symphonia (of course)...second one's not really worth it though as I've been finding it to be rather a drag.

if you've got a modded PS2 (or flash disk) then definitely Tales of the Abyss. This game is brilliant imo. I think it's the best Tales game, the only one better than Vesperia in terms of story once you get past Luke's constant change through the game.

Tales of Phantasia. where it all began and probably one of my favourite snes games. the team that did this moved on to do Star Ocean at Enix after a falling out with namco.

Other ones I've played would be Tales of The World: Radiant Mythology (PSP) spinoff which is pretty low brow. I ended up trading it in for Tales of Eternia which has a pretty poor storyline I'm finding. I've also been playing Tales of Hearts on the DS. WHile it's in Japanese I've been using a game guide to get a general gist of the gameplay. There's about 3 DS games including Hearts that haven't (and don't look like getting) an English release.

[Watchers]

I found Tales of Phantasia to be unbearable because of the stupidly high encounter rate. That, and the horrid engrish voice acting. "FIRSTU AIDU!"

[Kasplatza Red]

ahaha, I might look into getting Symphonia.. though this is like Megami Tensei- the games are bloody hard to find S:

[Cerebral]

If you can't find it anywhere, you're welcome to borrow my copy.

I also would very much like to 1000/1000 Vesperia, but after getting to grips with how much effort this would actually take, I'm not sure I can be bothered. I mean, I've already finished a second full playthrough and am probably going to need a 3rd or 4th...

Finished the game yesterday. The game definitely got better, however the ending was so damn short! What's wrong with telling us what happens afterwards? :(
But you do get to see what happens: Rita builds a flying machine !

[FF Freak]

I know for a fact that I will need 3-4 playthroughs to get it all done since I screwed up my grade purchases and saved over my complete file (I shouldn't save games when I'm tired)

I agree that I'd like to know what happened a bit more after then end. I mean who ended up becoming Emperor or Empress, what happened with the relationship between Estelle and Yuri (There was definitely something going on) and much more. But both Symphonia and Abyss were similar in how little they gave after the events. Symphonia has the advantage however that a sequel was made to explain the aftermath.

[Kasplatza Red]

Ohgod, I just found the poker minigame. D:
THIS JUST IN! Yuri is now a sandwich MASTER. D:
Also, why does Yeager's in-game model look so damn happy?! (Yeager is awesome, btw)

[Cerebral]

Nice troll.

[Crypt]

I also would very much like to 1000/1000 Vesperia, but after getting to grips with how much effort this would actually take, I'm not sure I can be bothered. I mean, I've already finished a second full playthrough and am probably going to need a 3rd or 4th...


I feel the same way. I really liked my first playthrough (must have seeing as I put 110 hours into it) but can't for the life of me be bothered playing it anymore. I was trying to get the speed-run achievement but all the events and talking is too much.

[Xanafalgue]

I'm about 17 hours into this now, it's such a good game!

[Gunblade89]

Anyone looking to sell their copy? Haha

[VanAce]

I saw Game selling it about 9 months ago pretty cheap. I assume it is not there any more. I should have picked it up.

[Xanafalgue]

Isn't it on GoD now?

[Australian Ninja]

Which Tales games are the best people? For PS2/3, Gamecube/Wii, X360?

I'm thinking I'll give one a go, but which is the best one, or at least a good one to start with (out of the 3D games).

[Cerebral]

Vesperia is easily the best.

Symphonia 1 is alright, Symphonia 2 is pretty gay. I've heard good things about Abyss (PS2), but haven't played it.

[Nic Xtreme]

Tales of Symphonia, definitely. Overall, Vesperia isn't as paced well, and I found it more frustrating.

[Gunblade89]

Which Tales games are the best people? For PS2/3, Gamecube/Wii, X360?

I'm thinking I'll give one a go, but which is the best one, or at least a good one to start with (out of the 3D games).

I've only played Tales of Symphonia in this series, it's a good place to start i'd say and an excellent game.

[Gunblade89]

Isn't it on GoD now?

It is, but i would prefer a proper copy :p

[Watchers]

Symphonia on GCN is best, followed by Vesperia. I haven't played the PS2 one(s?), but it didn't review great iirc. Symphonia 2 on Wii is ok if you really like the first one.

[Xanafalgue]

It is, but i would prefer a proper copy :p

Eh, better that than nothing, it's a great JRPG.

24 hours in now! Boss fights are getting difficult and I'm always short of cash :mad:

[Xanafalgue]

and by cash I mean "Gald" :rolleyes:

and someone remove that WEEABOOS tag, I refuse to be associated with that word!!

[VanAce]

In Tales news. Tales of the Abyss is getting a 3DS port sometime next year.

[Xanafalgue]

Is that any good?

[Rambo]

I hope so. Also a Tales of the Tempest 3D port would be wicked too, that angered my not being able to play a Tales game.

[Cerebral]

Is that any good?

It's cool game.