The Platinum Series [12]: Tales of Grace F

It's not me if I didn't get a platinum for arguably my favorite JRPG series, the Tales.It's been quite awhile since my last Platinum (FFXIII-2), added to the fact that I didn't have as much time as I used to for games. Overall, it took me about 3 months to platinum this game, or roughly 150+ hours of in-game time. Not so much I guess, compared to the time I spent on Tales of Vesperia or Star Ocean 4.

Title: Tales of Grace F
Developer: Namco Tales Studio
Platform: PlayStation 3 (PS3)
Genre: Japanese role playing game (jrpg)
Release date: March 2012 (NA)


Overall Platinum Difficulty: 5/10 (moderate) 

 If I could compare Tales of Grace F with another games that I've platinumed, I would say the difficulty is roughly similar to Resonance of Fate - there's not too many overwhelmingly skill/technical-based trophies, and most of the time you need to spend time grinding for a few trophies. In Tales of Grace F's case, it's the trophy that require you to develop your Eleth Mixer to its maximum capacity of 9999. A time consuming process, considering you normally get only a few eleth increase (sometimes NONE) when you cooked a dish in battle. Thankfully there's this wonderful dish called Miso Stew that made the task much faster - going from around 6.5k eleth to the maximum 9999 eleth in about 4 hours (though the non-stop grinding is boring).

Talk about skill-based trophies, there are a few of those, but none of them are as gruesomely annoying and frustrating than special challenge 17 in Tales of Vesperia (aiming Yeager's heart core). (Probably) the most difficult trophy to get; the "Beat _______ in 60 seconds"; beat the last boss on Chaos mode; beat the secret bosses in Zhonegace/Coliseum etc; are all easily attainable in New Game+ with little to no effort, especially on Easy mode. They are harder to accomplish in your first playthrough, but still attainable through title grinding/eleth gauge preparation/duelizing weapons. 

And then the rest of the trophies, in which largely requires you to unlock about 100 titles for each characters (except Richard). That's it. We really don't have to go through the tedious process of completely do everything like we need to do in Vesperia. No need to fight every single enemies, no need to complete every single Collector's book, no need to watch all skits, no need to get all items etc. I kinda wish there's a trophy for getting every single titles in the game, and THAT's what I call a real difficult trophy to get.

guess what I'm playing right now XD

Overall,  Tales of Grace F was a real enjoyment for me. While the "friendship" theme of the story is a little bit too generic and boring, the characters and good voice acting made up for that. But most importantly the gameplay is one that I really enjoyed the most out of recent Tales series. It's fast-paced, balanced, easy to chain, and nowhere near as broken as Vesperia (blablabla Tidal Wave!). The Grade system in this series also ensure that we can't really "farm" grade for subsequent playthrough (again, blablabla Tidal Wave!). The only other disappointment I had for the series are the forgettable musics, it was definitely one of the least memorable OST in recent Tales's series. 

Okay, time to anticipate the next Tales series to be localised into English, Tales of Xillia!!!! 

Speaking of which, where oh where is Tales of Vesperia PS3 English !!! ＼(゜ロ＼)

 

The Impression Series: Summer 2012 [Part 1]

(No) thanks to Tales of Grace F, my time spent watching anime last spring was severely limited (in the end I ended up with only Hyouka, Kuroko, Amnesia and Sankarea in my weekly watchlist while others were still in my on-hold list). But now that I’ve nearly platinumed the game (only 1 trophy left), I should have more time to spend on anime, or at least keep up with more titles this season than last spring. And so far, Summer 2012 offered quite a number of series that have taken a lot of my interest.  I guess I'll just make this a quick of an impression.

p/s: Hakuouki without Yukimura is kinda boring : (

Moyashimon Returns 
MAL/OFFICIAL SITE 
Genre: comedy, microbiology (lol)
Studio Production: Shirogumi Inc
Number of Episodes: 12

Comments: So, why not start with the series I wanted to watch the most this season, Moyashimon Returns. I can never forget the first season, one of the few series that actually brought me deeply into anime back then in 2007. It's good to see the series back. The stories needs no explanation, and being a former agricultural student who partially involved in bacterial work and fermentation processes, I found the theme really engaging. Everyone returned and still haven't changed much, though I would say the art for some of the characters seems to be tweaked a little (especially Oikawa and Sawaki). The microbes were cute, the comedy was funny, and just like season 1, the story did a great job in explaining a lot of fermentation and bacterial stuff in the series. Especially the ED song, that was awesome (and always made me smile when they introduce those microbes). As for where the plot will go after this...well as long as they keep the story interesting, funny and informative, I'm all in for the series. Oh yeah, I'm still kinda interested about why Kei drop out of college and changed into a Trap : )

verdict: 5/5 (absolutely must watch!)















Arcana Famiglia 
MAL/OFFICIAL SITE 
Genre: action, comedy, drama
Studio Production: J.C. Staff
Number of Episodes: 12

Comments: Okay, I thought I was in for some Baccano treat, but I realized I was wrong after about 10 minutes into the first episode. The premise of battle tournament between group members, each with their own arcana powers (being arguably the strongest, it's no wonder that the Papa and Mama are The World and Judgement respectively) to select the new leader for the group were interesting to say the least, and the animation art was quite excellent to boot. Unfortunately, the characters left me a bit unimpressed. Yes they are unique, gifted with special powers blablabla, but I just can't help but finding the guys in the group typical, boring and uninteresting, especially the reckless Liberta (Fool arcana, huh?). It's gonna be interesting to see how each of them are going to develop and utilize their Arcana power for the battle, if that ever happened.

p/s: somehow I prefer Nova-Fecilita pairing more than Liberta.
verdict: 3/5 (might continue watching)















Tari Tari 
MAL/OFFICIAL SITE 
Genre: comedy, drama
Studio Production: P.A. Works
Number of Episodes: 13

Comments: Am I weird for saying that the title is awful? Nonetheless, the first few episodes gave me quite a good impression. A likeable and fascinating story of a group of student in their final year of high school, each with their own unique backgrounds and pasts, trying to live their dream  (or rather, a person's dream), brought together and ended up creating a club that benefits all of them, one way or another (Choir and Sometimes Badminton Club, really?). Neat and beautiful graphic as expected from P.A. Works, from the background scenery to character creation, as well as great choice of seiyuu. And, True Tear's Reflectia OP song certainly caught my attention in episode 1, that choir was great and brings back good old memories : )

verdict: 4.5/5 (watching)















Hagure Yuusha no Estetica 
MAL/OFFICIAL SITE 
Genre: action, drama, fantasy, romance
Studio Production: ARMS
Number of Episodes: 12

Comments: Hagure Yuusha no Erotica...? So much of my impression in the first 2 episodes, but it changed a little in episode 3, because surprisingly there's not a single uncensored stuff! Thank goodness (lol). I like the story - imagine (or some sort) Tidus beat Jecth and Yu Yevon, take its daughter (whoever it was) and back to his other world of Zanarkand, and the story started from that point onward, where he still inherited whatever combat skill he learned in Spira and had to enroll in some kind of college. Okay, pardon the lame analogy. But you get the gist, that's what the anime basically is, and I like it. The fact that Akatsuki is not your usual weak guy, a bit perverted yet kind-hearted and love to tease people around him (esp those from Student Council) were refreshing and funny. The graphic, action, musics (Faylan!), my favorite seiyuus, I love all of them, and I certainly would not want to miss this anime.

verdict: 4/5 (watching)















Campione!
MAL/OFFICIAL SITE 
Genre: adventure, fantasy, romance, comedy
Studio Production: Diomedea
Number of Episodes: 12

Comments: Okay, normal student-turned Godslayer Godou Kusanagi, the Campione, now being hunted by all kind of divine beings for his accomplishment and powers. I've never bothered to read the LN, so my impression was totally based on what I saw from the first 3 episodes of the anime. The story was okay and entertaining at times, but I feel some of the scenes were very predictable and lacked proper buildup (what's the deal with Athena and Krancar, again?). Not to mention that the subpar graphic and battle effect made it a bit less interesting for me. One more thing, while being totally different, I can't help but thinking about 2 other similar shows that's being aired at this same season whenever I watch this anime.

verdict: 3/5














Yuru Yuri 2
MAL/OFFICIAL SITE 
Genre: comedy slice of life
Studio Production: Dogakobo
Number of Episodes: 12

Comments: I have to admit that I love the first season, probably one of the very few all-girl, mild yuri shows that I like to watch - mostly because of Kyouko and Ayano lol. And of course, I also like the show because I enjoyed comedy slice of life, if it's done the right way. So now that the second season is out, I guess there's no reason for me "not" to watch the show, although sometimes I feel the random stuff they put in there was... too random? If you know what I mean. Good for some laugh, at least.

verdict: 3.5/5

that's it for part 1.