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
