I've actually finished playing this game 2 weeks ago, but due to Persona 4 fever, somehow I become a busy man and decided to post this after I finished with P4.
I've finished my first playthrough of Tales of Vesperia, completing virtually all of the sidequests except a few, like the Monster Book, Item Collectors, Dog Maps and some character Titles. particularly Yuri's True Knight Title because I failed to do a SINGLE Secret Mission out of all 23 (DAMN YOU YEAGER). So now I'm playing my 2nd playthrough, in Unknown mode, with all bonuses from the Grade Shop (10x exp, skills, artes, gald, items, everything possible with those 18k+ Grade I earned thanks to Rita Grade farming method). Talk about easy way to go through Unknown mode. Well not exactly. It's only easy at this stage because of the uber equipment and skills I have carried from previous playthrough. The difficulty of the battles will rise exponentially after this, because the monster will keep on growing stronger while my equipment is practically remained unchanged.
I've finished my first playthrough of Tales of Vesperia, completing virtually all of the sidequests except a few, like the Monster Book, Item Collectors, Dog Maps and some character Titles. particularly Yuri's True Knight Title because I failed to do a SINGLE Secret Mission out of all 23 (DAMN YOU YEAGER). So now I'm playing my 2nd playthrough, in Unknown mode, with all bonuses from the Grade Shop (10x exp, skills, artes, gald, items, everything possible with those 18k+ Grade I earned thanks to Rita Grade farming method). Talk about easy way to go through Unknown mode. Well not exactly. It's only easy at this stage because of the uber equipment and skills I have carried from previous playthrough. The difficulty of the battles will rise exponentially after this, because the monster will keep on growing stronger while my equipment is practically remained unchanged.
Anyway, this is just the extension of my review from my previous quick look of Tales Vesperia [here]. Since Abyss and Vesperia are the only Mother Tales that I've played (damn you Namco, bring Symphonia eng.ver. to PS2/360 plx D:), my thoughts will mostly revolve around these 2 games.
First, lets look at the story of Vesperia. It starts a bit slow yet wonderfully done, cliche to many typical jrpg but still entertaining. But as the game went on to the 2nd, and then 3rd part, the plot quality somehow went downhill, with a lot of plotholes here and there. For this aspect, I have to admit that Abyss handled this matter far better than Vesperia. Character-wise, Vesperia are better (although Jade can singehandedly top all Vesperia Character, but as a whole I love Vesperia characters much much more than Abyss), but the way the plot of Vesperia is developed is poor imo. For example, why Raven was in the prison early in the game? What is this 'Flynn in danger" that Estelle talk about back then in the castle? Who the hell is Zagi and why he hold grudges against Flynn? All of these still lingered in my mind when I finished the game. Although I can somehow figure out the answer to some of them, I do hope the game would give a better explanation regarding these matters. Oh, and Rita's explanation about Blastia always made my head spinning @.@
Also, no villain in Vesperia is close enough to the awesomeness of the Six God generals in Abyss. Barbos? Zagi? Alexei? The final boss might be so, but the rest of the villains are pitiful, with little or no background history of their involvement to the main story. They appeared for a while to heat things up and once they are defeated, that's it, no more of their faces (except Zagi). Phail villains overall.
As for voice actors, Vesperia is definitely one of the best that featured the perfect English VA to match the characters. I especially love Estelle's cute and Rita's strong voice, which really match their personality.
Then to the in-game itself. As many other rpg, and Tales itself, Vesperia offered many sidequests for the players to explore. From the Colliseum battle, extra dungeons and bosses, costumes and many more. Unfortunately, many of these are easily missable unless you are really patient to go to each and every place everytime the story progress. Hence it is advisable to use a quick guide (kouli's quick chart is excellent for this), at least to make sure you do not miss any major sidequests.
On a minor note, unlike Abyss and many other Tales, non-costume titles in Vesperia offered nothing but a mere name. At least that’s how it is as of current, nobody has figure out what exactly Titles did in Vesperia. In Abyss and World for example, Titles give various field bonuses like Overlimit/hp/tp regen etc but this is not the case in Vesperia.
Then to the gameplay. This. Is what make Vesperia the better jrpg out there. And broken as well. As previously mentioned in my quick review, the gameplay featured Real Time Linear Motion which provide the player opportunities to move around the battlefield and kick ass with their attacks/battle skills. Good for people who prefer some button actions rather than sitting idly, choosing every single menu commands used in many conventional turn-based rpg. And the developer did a good job in improving the gameplay since Abyss. While in Abyss we're stuck with the common normal attacks - base - arcane/FoF Change, Vesperia added the value of Combo to the gameplay, although most of these combo (base to altered, altered to arcane and vice versa, double base, arcane and altered etc) are exclusively available for Yuri. The Overlimit Gauge is degenerated to only 1 gauge for the whole party (meaning no individual OL gauge anymore), but it is compensated by the ability to use artes without casting time, as previously mentioned in my review. So yeah, because of this Overlimit, Vesperia has some of the most broken/overpowered rpg characters in history. Rita's unlimited stunlock spells, Yuri's brutal combo, and Estelle's eternal invincibility. 200 man melee Colliseum is nothing for them.
All in all, Vesperia has been one of the best HD jrpg out there for 360, good enough to lure me to buy a 360 (which I would never dreamed off some times ago) just to play this game. The good feature about Tales series is the interactive gameplay and the humor they put throughout the story, making this an enjoyable game to play. So if you love other Tales series, Vesperia definitely is a must. I am once an FF fan before I discover the awesomeness of Tales series, and slowly transitioned myself from FF series (which went downhill especially FFXII) to Tales series.
*all screenshots are properties of gamespot*
First, lets look at the story of Vesperia. It starts a bit slow yet wonderfully done, cliche to many typical jrpg but still entertaining. But as the game went on to the 2nd, and then 3rd part, the plot quality somehow went downhill, with a lot of plotholes here and there. For this aspect, I have to admit that Abyss handled this matter far better than Vesperia. Character-wise, Vesperia are better (although Jade can singehandedly top all Vesperia Character, but as a whole I love Vesperia characters much much more than Abyss), but the way the plot of Vesperia is developed is poor imo. For example, why Raven was in the prison early in the game? What is this 'Flynn in danger" that Estelle talk about back then in the castle? Who the hell is Zagi and why he hold grudges against Flynn? All of these still lingered in my mind when I finished the game. Although I can somehow figure out the answer to some of them, I do hope the game would give a better explanation regarding these matters. Oh, and Rita's explanation about Blastia always made my head spinning @.@
Also, no villain in Vesperia is close enough to the awesomeness of the Six God generals in Abyss. Barbos? Zagi? Alexei? The final boss might be so, but the rest of the villains are pitiful, with little or no background history of their involvement to the main story. They appeared for a while to heat things up and once they are defeated, that's it, no more of their faces (except Zagi). Phail villains overall.
As for voice actors, Vesperia is definitely one of the best that featured the perfect English VA to match the characters. I especially love Estelle's cute and Rita's strong voice, which really match their personality.
Then to the in-game itself. As many other rpg, and Tales itself, Vesperia offered many sidequests for the players to explore. From the Colliseum battle, extra dungeons and bosses, costumes and many more. Unfortunately, many of these are easily missable unless you are really patient to go to each and every place everytime the story progress. Hence it is advisable to use a quick guide (kouli's quick chart is excellent for this), at least to make sure you do not miss any major sidequests.
On a minor note, unlike Abyss and many other Tales, non-costume titles in Vesperia offered nothing but a mere name. At least that’s how it is as of current, nobody has figure out what exactly Titles did in Vesperia. In Abyss and World for example, Titles give various field bonuses like Overlimit/hp/tp regen etc but this is not the case in Vesperia.
Then to the gameplay. This. Is what make Vesperia the better jrpg out there. And broken as well. As previously mentioned in my quick review, the gameplay featured Real Time Linear Motion which provide the player opportunities to move around the battlefield and kick ass with their attacks/battle skills. Good for people who prefer some button actions rather than sitting idly, choosing every single menu commands used in many conventional turn-based rpg. And the developer did a good job in improving the gameplay since Abyss. While in Abyss we're stuck with the common normal attacks - base - arcane/FoF Change, Vesperia added the value of Combo to the gameplay, although most of these combo (base to altered, altered to arcane and vice versa, double base, arcane and altered etc) are exclusively available for Yuri. The Overlimit Gauge is degenerated to only 1 gauge for the whole party (meaning no individual OL gauge anymore), but it is compensated by the ability to use artes without casting time, as previously mentioned in my review. So yeah, because of this Overlimit, Vesperia has some of the most broken/overpowered rpg characters in history. Rita's unlimited stunlock spells, Yuri's brutal combo, and Estelle's eternal invincibility. 200 man melee Colliseum is nothing for them.
All in all, Vesperia has been one of the best HD jrpg out there for 360, good enough to lure me to buy a 360 (which I would never dreamed off some times ago) just to play this game. The good feature about Tales series is the interactive gameplay and the humor they put throughout the story, making this an enjoyable game to play. So if you love other Tales series, Vesperia definitely is a must. I am once an FF fan before I discover the awesomeness of Tales series, and slowly transitioned myself from FF series (which went downhill especially FFXII) to Tales series.
*all screenshots are properties of gamespot*
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