Quick Glance: Tales of Vesperia & Infinite Undiscovery

So it's been about 2 week since I bought my xbox360. And all these time I only have 4 games to play around: Ace Combat 6/Beautiful Katamari which came preloaded with the 360 package, and Tales of Vesperia/Infinite Undiscovery, the games that made me want to buy 360. And in fact I even bought these games way before I bought my 360 :3

rambling aside, I thoroughly enjoyed my two weeks playing these 2 games, especially Tales of Vesperia. And within 1 or 2 days, I expect 2 more games which I've already ordered via PlayAsia to arrive at my home, namely Fifa09 and The Last Remnant.

Quick look: Tales of Vesperia

AWESOMENESS. That's the first thing that came out on my mind if I would describe ToV. I'm currently halfway through part 3 after the rise of the "tower", so I can say that I'm almost done with this game.

[Tales of vesperia on Wikipedia]

Story: The usual save-the-world theme in many other rpg. Just like Abyss, the plot manipulate various terms and elements to enhance the story. While we've seen Hyperresonance, Miasma, fonon, fonstone, Score etc in Abyss, in Vesperia we're introduced with terms like Blastia, Entelexeia, Aer and many terms that made up the backbone of the story. As for character, for sure I'd pick Vesperia characters any day than Abyss. With Estelle's cuteness, Rita's tsundereness and Judith's mature-ness, these trio beat even the best combo of Abyss girls :3 Oh not to mention, whenever you look at the main hero, Yuri and his childhood friend Flynn, you can't help but thinking that they are really similar to Lelouch and Suzaku (Code Geass). You got the point.

Gameplay: One of the better Tales gameplay. Sure I'd missed Field of Fonons in Abyss, but Vesperia gameplay make it up with even more fascinating features. The skill point will eventually enable you to chain combo your Artes from Base, Altered and Arcane interchangeably, creating various powerful combos (especially Yuri, the king of combo in Vesperia). Another new feature is the introduction of Fatal Strike (FS), which grants player extra bonus depending on the type of FS that appear. Think of this more or less like the Break Mode in Valkyrie Profile Silmeria, except that you didn't actually break the enemy parts, but rather you hit them with specific elements to trigger the FS. And the Overlimit in Vesperia is broken/overpowered. While it does no longer provide immunity to staggering as in other Tales, it enables you to chain Artes continuously with virtually zero casting time/delay. And what does this means? Imagine Rita (she's a Jade+Anise type mage) chain-combo AoE spells (Tidal Wave, Meteor Storm etc). This is why Rita is called the most broken character in Vesperia :D

Nevertheless, I expect to finish this game by the end of this weekend, or probably by next mid-week. I'm currently kinda addicted with material and Grade-grinding, coliseum battle, as well as the Nam Cobanda minigames (Poker lulz). And I'll probably replay this game later, just like Abyss :3

Quick look: Infinite Undiscovery

I only payed this game for like 2 or 3 days, then stopped temporarily because I want to concentrate on finishing Vesperia.

[Infinite Undiscovery in Wikipedia]

As a product of Tri-Ace, I definitely would want to get my hand on this game, regardless of their quality. Playing this game for the first few hours, I'm quite satisfied with the gameplay. The gameplay is similar to the free-field battle introduced in FFXII, but without those bullshit red and blue lines of course. I believe I have yet to explore many features of this game, so my brief review will just based on what I've explored so far. By the time I put this game on hold, I've completed the quest in Castle Prevant - that is right after Sigmund, Eugene etc joined the party and headed to Nolaan. In battle we can only control the main character afaic, that is Capell. The basis of battle is similar to Star Ocean, where player can attack with A (weak) and B (strong). Comboing A and B produces different end-combo tech - (think of this like the combo in Samurai Warrior). And of course the learned battle skill can be assigned to A and B button, like in Star Ocean. Other additional features is the introduction of "Connect", where player can interact with the assigned character in the party to do various jobs for them. In battle, they can shoot the enemies from afar (Aya ftw), or use specific magic. Connect can also be used in town, where Capell can link with any available character and speaks with the people in place of Capell.

Anyway, it might be another week before I'll resume playing this game. I think I need a HD monitor to play this game at its fullest, because playing using my current sdtv really hurts my eyes, particularly due to the game's rather small font. And the graphic would even be more awesome should I play this on HD.