No posts since May? In my defense I havent been playing many games, 360 hasnt been on in months. Fenix needs ot get off his ass and post ;) Any who, finally made some time to finish the standard story in Tales of Graces f, I have yet to complete the legacy and lineage portion, but it seems very interesting.
First and foremost I'd like to talk about the story. It does a great job of bringing heroes together (and apart) for a good reason. Its part cliche and part brilliant and is much less confusing than Abyss' sound based story. This stories theme has a lot in common with Vesperia, and thats a good thing since Vesperia is still my favorite Tales game and Repede is still my favorite character with Raven a close second. My only beef is you have a boss fight multiple times against the same guy, but when you win the fight, the story continues and after the fight the boss guy one hits some one, does the evil thing, then gets away...... same outcome as if you lost the fight. Would irritate me far less if it didnt happen multiple times. Ending is a little obvious and weak, doesnt conclude everything youre involved with very well, but that may change after I finish the lineage portion.
Gameplay is tried and true Tales real time combat. The combo system has been expanded on and is very fluid. They could easily make a open world 3d beat em up using the battle engine and it'd be a fantastic game. They have mixed up the combo system a lot, with the right gear and perks, you can rattle off a nice 20+ hit combo without any help. The title system has also been redone, you can earn and find titles, equipping the title and earning SP from battle will unlock 5 bonus attributes. For example wear a freeze charm so you can't be frozen in battle, wear it enough and evade freezing enough and you unlock the "freezeproof". You can then equip the title and earn perks like 5% less time frozen, that persist even after you change titles. All titles have a 6th perk, that only works when you both "Master" the title, and have it equipped. Its a pretty ingenious RPG element, and one I hope they use again in Xillia.
I took my time and did my best to complete everything first go round, so it took about 65 hours, a good portion of that was grinding (mostly for titles) and I didnt get sick of it, so that really says something right there. My only real gripe about the game was they harped on Asbel and Cheria's relationship a bit too much and the previously mentioned boss fight thing, but overall this one amazing title.
I give it a 9.5 out of 10
~Malenko
Wednesday, July 24, 2013
Wednesday, May 8, 2013
Tales of Abyss (PS2)
So for some reason I found myself in Gamestop a while ago and noticed Tales of Abyss for 3DS. Now not having a 3DS at the time (I bought a pink one for my fiancee but lacked one of my own), I wanted to play it and thought to myself that I knew this game came out for another platform before. A quick Google search on my phone and I found it was a PS2 game. Now of course Gamestop didn't have it in stock , wasn't sure they could order it, and it was $25 used for an 7 year old game. Keep in mind the 3DS version was on sale new for $20 at the time.
So obviously I didn't pick it up, mostly due to the fact I don't think I could log 50+ hours playing a JRPG on a 3" screen but I did start a quest (PUN!) to get the PS2 game. I stumbled across http://pcsx2.net/ which is a down right AMAZING Playstation 2 emulator which allowed me to play the game at a higher resolution that the original PS2's output, which is good because I didnt want to have to go dig my PS2 out of storage. So I snagged the game from Amazon for about $20 + shipping and got to work. I copied the disc to my computer HD, to improve load time, reduce wear on the disc and reduce the noise of the DVD spinning. If only I got the actual PS2 cover and instruction book instead of a blank CD case, oh wells.
Everything ran fine without a hitch, I dropped well over 50 hours in front of my computer doing everything I could in my first play through that was available all in glorious HD. Being a Tales game it always locks things away to keep the 2nd time through fresh, but while I appreciate them trying to keep a second play through exciting I just dont have the time or desire to replay a 50 hour game anymore. I would LOVE to try my hand at the replica dungeon as it sounds pretty awesome but I skirted my way through the Coliseum way too under-leveled (I did it in my 40s, all the guides suggest doing it in the 60s) so I would hate to dump another 30 or 40 hours of my life to not be challenged or even worse get there and be completely frustrated.
I love this game anyway, I looked up old reviews and most of them put this game in the 92/100 mark which I believe is dead on balls accurate. The active battle system (you actually run around the battle field and attack, or hang back and keep enemies from breaking your AI partner's casting) is amazing and significantly more fun that picking "attack" from a turn based menu. I actually played Tales of Vesperia before this on 360 and despite Abyss being a little older and running on an older platform the games are right on par with one another. I started the Tales games with Tales of Destiny, back when I was a reviewer for SegaSages (which eventually turned into gamefaqs.com ) I've already gotten "Tales of Graces f" for PS3 ready to go and I look forward to Tales of Xillia this fall and I hope Namco translates its sequel next year. This is a fantastic series with not a single bad game in the series, something Final Fantasy cant say , I'm looking at you Final Fantasy 8.
~Malenko
So obviously I didn't pick it up, mostly due to the fact I don't think I could log 50+ hours playing a JRPG on a 3" screen but I did start a quest (PUN!) to get the PS2 game. I stumbled across http://pcsx2.net/ which is a down right AMAZING Playstation 2 emulator which allowed me to play the game at a higher resolution that the original PS2's output, which is good because I didnt want to have to go dig my PS2 out of storage. So I snagged the game from Amazon for about $20 + shipping and got to work. I copied the disc to my computer HD, to improve load time, reduce wear on the disc and reduce the noise of the DVD spinning. If only I got the actual PS2 cover and instruction book instead of a blank CD case, oh wells.
Everything ran fine without a hitch, I dropped well over 50 hours in front of my computer doing everything I could in my first play through that was available all in glorious HD. Being a Tales game it always locks things away to keep the 2nd time through fresh, but while I appreciate them trying to keep a second play through exciting I just dont have the time or desire to replay a 50 hour game anymore. I would LOVE to try my hand at the replica dungeon as it sounds pretty awesome but I skirted my way through the Coliseum way too under-leveled (I did it in my 40s, all the guides suggest doing it in the 60s) so I would hate to dump another 30 or 40 hours of my life to not be challenged or even worse get there and be completely frustrated.
I love this game anyway, I looked up old reviews and most of them put this game in the 92/100 mark which I believe is dead on balls accurate. The active battle system (you actually run around the battle field and attack, or hang back and keep enemies from breaking your AI partner's casting) is amazing and significantly more fun that picking "attack" from a turn based menu. I actually played Tales of Vesperia before this on 360 and despite Abyss being a little older and running on an older platform the games are right on par with one another. I started the Tales games with Tales of Destiny, back when I was a reviewer for SegaSages (which eventually turned into gamefaqs.com ) I've already gotten "Tales of Graces f" for PS3 ready to go and I look forward to Tales of Xillia this fall and I hope Namco translates its sequel next year. This is a fantastic series with not a single bad game in the series, something Final Fantasy cant say , I'm looking at you Final Fantasy 8.
~Malenko
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