Tales of Vesperia (PS3) Review

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Last year in the beginning of January of 2018, I started streaming Tales of Vesperia (PS3) on Twitch, Youtube, and Mixer and finished mid-November of 2018. And honestly, it was mediocre the whole way through, but this has to due with how highly acclaimed the Tales fanbase gave this game. But at least I wanted to finish the game (where I couldn't finish the other two trinity heralded games). The game's cut-scenes were great and had great dynamic camera angles and were plentiful; however, I'm not a fan of the 3D tales cutscenes at all. They're all so stiff and badly animated, but I get why they come out that way, but I can't ignore it (I laughed viciously seeing the dude with the chainsaw sword fly off into a distance with a shrinking motion tween). There are still pretty cool cut-scenes in the game despite my own issues with the provided in-game ones. The voice actors really add a lot of depth and emotion to each of their lines of dialogue that helped me feel accordingly for each circumstance (or skit).

The story and the story alone was rather mundane from beginning to near the end:

• Act I: I still don't get what happened in the first act story-wise, but I know it sets up a wide variety of things: Yuri's anti-hero-ness and his perspective of justice in comparison to Flynn's own lawful good approach. The dragon-rider and the goal of blastia wrecking, Estelle's importance (at the very end), and I think the biggest of them all, the argument between the empire and the guilds as well as the involvement and development of the Leviathan Claw.
• Act II: A wild goose chase of save Estelle and how the group feels within their resolve. Everyone seemed to love this act, but man did it feel stretched. I have to admit though, it was challenging playing the game without a proper healer for so long. Huge kudos to this game with the whole betrayal character. At least that wasn't stretched out, and I like how the character as well as the others saw it in terms of "he died long ago" type thing. It fit the cast well considering everyone's background, so it was easier to move on about after it had happened. Alexei as a villain was pretty bad. It's not fair for me to go too far into it, but it's a common trope in a lot of JRPGs, but his motivations were lacking and generic at best. I can only give the guy a pass because he fits the game's questioning of what is right and wrong (e.g Flynn's decisions vs Yuri's).
• Act III: I liked this act the most, but it seemed rushed. This act had the most potential and should have had a larger focus with integrating elements from the second (as far as character development goes and the Entelexia). Most Vesperia fans talk down about this act because of how short and lacking it is, but I saw so much potential in this act that not only affected the characters, but the world. Other than the townspeople being affected by the empire, this act could have done a lot better with the blastia being gone thing much sooner and how the world had to adapter rather than at the very end. The final boss was rather weak, but I get that character archetype and it fits well to "what's to be done with people" that Flynn and Yuri seem to discuss every now and then. After the final boss' defeat is when the true dungeon could have fit into place properly (which is what I was expecting the whole time). Yet the game ends there and I understand as the whole purpose was to reseal the ancient evil. It's a bit jarring considering the whole focus was on the Entelxia and the war and that the ancient evil should be sealed, but it was really Duke that allowed this because he saw humans unfit; the guy is another Alexei with a bigger extreme and a different perspective. At the very least Duke gets more background to his motivations and given how cliche it is, it works, but it would've worked so much better if it had affected Yuri and the gang for a final confrontation with the Adephagos further finalizing the ancient war between the Adephagos, Entelexia, and humans, and the beginning of a new age without blastia and now spirits. A lot of what happened in the second arc could've easily happened or been integrated with the third and could have given more meaning to the characters in the hunting blade and the leviathan claw- maybe even some political talk from Ioder and the guild's viewpoint after the Don's death. 

My problem with this game's story is that no one else other than the main characters, the higher-ups in the empire (council and Ioder), and the current antagonist were the only main ones being affected and driven while the whole time the Entelexia and this war was being subtle in the background. I drew a lot of parallel's to the The Legend of Dragoon with the war between the empire's as well as the Dragon Campaign and the moon child (Estelle) and a little bit of Final Fantasy Tactics with Ramza similar to Flynn and Delita similar to Yuri. A lot of this game's story on its own is pretty weak, but I think that's because the main focus of the game was the characters overall. And to its benefit, the characters are pretty good with some few exceptions.

• Yuri: I can see the appeal of this guy. His motives are something I can get behind and he's very charismatic for someone so calm and collective. He's a supportive underling to his guild boss and casts no judgement to Judith despite his warning to her. I just wish his flaws were actual flaws and not blemishes. Really it's fair to say that the rest of the cast is there for Yuri more than he is for them. 
• Repede: Woof! A doggo that does doggo things (with a sword in his mouth)! 
• Estelle: Eh... really boring. The first act she gets a pass for her character development, the second as well since she becomes an object of literal power at that point, but the third she falls flat and remains who she was at the beginning. The skits she's involved in and her ending battle quotes are comical at least. 
• Karol: A lot of people give this guy a lot of shit and I think it's because he's the kid character. But he isn't an annoying kid like everyone made him out to be. Honestly, the kid was literally being a kid and reacting like a kid would given the situation. Sure the hunting blades saw him as weak or a nuisance, but his character development falls in line with allegory to kids and how they can be matured if given a chance and confidence to prove themselves like Yuri gave him as well as the comical hardships from Rita and Raven. He also had a good role for the first and second act of the game narrative-wise— so that's another plus. 
• Rita: The worst. I think she was supposed to parallel the otaku life-style or those who have obsessions and have a hard time socializing, but it didn't really develop to anything. Very one-note, but she was vital throughout the whole game from a narrative perspective. I think that's all she was there for, really. 
• Raven: I'm a fan of the older characters in tales of games like Malik, Gall, and Roen. Raven isn't too far off to why I like this character, but other than his own arc and shocking reveal, eh. He has the same comedic role as Karol does, but as an older person and that's all. Really, I wish he went more into detail about the ancient war once Schwann was defeated, but what we got is what we get. He didn't have much involvement like Malik or Roen did in their respective games, but he did play off other characters well for their development (Karol and Yuri) and had more than one involvement in the game's narrative. His introduction to the game made me think he'd do more, but it was just foreshadowing if anything. 
• Judith: The eye candy with a story and purpose! Her introduction as a "foe" at the beginning was well done to the point where she has to duo with Yuri to escape the fortress (whose name I forget). Her character development doesn't really falter and actually gets a bit better in the second arc, but towards the middle, she ends up being a type of red herring for raven given her background. Her and her people had a lot to give as far as world development could've gone, but nothing much happens. Other than Ba'ul, I really don't see too much use of her from a narrative purpose. Raven or Rita could've done the same with books or with a small guild quest or something. But like Rita, her one-note purpose of being connected to the Entelxia is all she has going for her and it doesn't really go much further than that. Judith reminded me a lot of Ines (which is fitting considering she wears Judith's default garments) from Tales of Hearts R by way of her archetype and humor on sexuality at the very least. And like Ines, both were one-note for the most part, but at least Ines was played as a double agent of sorts like how I mentioned Judith seemed like she would be the traitor. 
• Patty: Another kid character. How annoying. Only not really! I really enjoyed Patty a lot and fitting to how much I enjoyed her like I did with Beryl (again, fitting considering she wears Patty's default attire). Granted she is a PS3 exclusive character with a couple of extra dungeons, she fit rather well to the cut-scenes as well as her own dialogue exchanges with the group. I can't fault her at all for having no narrative purposes in the game. While I can attest that she was included in cut-scenes after her permanent joining in the game, that seemed more like a plus if anything. She did add a sprinkle of world-building with the whole Aifread shtick, but other than that, she's the true comical extra character just like Max and Chat were in Tales of Eternia. 

My main gripe with this game is the battle system— and before I continue, I would like to state that I like playing jrpgs for their game-play first and foremost. While I never finished Tales of the Abyss and Tales of Symphonia, Vesperia did run smoother and felt more responsive within its battle system engine; however, the skill system in which you develop your skills and being able to equip them was nothing but a handicap throughout the whole game. I played it on hard from beginning to end (except when I switched it to easy mode to farm for materials). I like learning abilities through weapons and armor like in Final Fantasy IX since it promotes strategy on when to learn them or equip them for a battle, but Vesperia goes fucking nuts with this one to the point where you either you learn it or you don't.
The game's is incredibly easy on normal mode, but this may have to do with the fact that I learned how to efficiently manual-cancel basic attacks and artes early on through manual mode (essentially you dash after an attack, running attack, or arte which hastens your recovery to continue brandishing your weapon on foes). In Hard mode, skills matter to an extent. Certain bosses will have you wanting to get the extra defense here and there— and that's about it. There are other skills you can equip, but for the most part, the other skills aren't that useful or are already equipped since weapons carries most of the viable skills (like extra HP or TP). You can't do much after that since the skill points you get here are scarce and are there to limit how much you can do in the game unless you grind. And let me tell you, I hate grinding. I like being fairly challenged when playing a JRPG, but if I have to grind to play the game and have fun (for materials and skill points), then I don't see a purpose of the battle system at all.
A huge margin of JRPGs can easily be overcome simply by grinding and becoming so overpowered, there's no point in what difficulty you play in (excluding specific encounters or bosses). Usually in Tales of game, playing in hard mode allows you to take advantage of the battle system without enemies dying too quickly and still promote a challenge in which items and the cooking system becomes viable and not negligible like in normal or easy mode. The whole game can be played at easy and nothing of value will be lost. I think the only reward for playing at higher difficulties is grade. If I recall correctly, you do not get more gald or experience to help compensate for difficulty (since playing in hard should allow more skill points to effectively continue playing in hard mode for random/trash enemies).

I find a lot of fault with this battle system and how boring it can be as well. Especially when the A.I. can straight up ignore being staggered whenever they feel like and recover and attack instantaneously in mid-air or on ground. Not to mention how arduous the A.I. will get when you focus on one enemy. They'll just run away the entire time. Thank goodness for free-run and the A.I. pausing every now and then or else you couldn't catch up to them. In hard-mode, this is really annoying. I'd expect more aggression even from the A.I. being targeted, but they just run and barely counter. Really, the whole fun aspect of playing in hard-mode was the bosses and that's it (especially since the secret missions were fun).
Sure a boss can destroy your party if you slip up, but it can also be remedied by using the proper skills and equipment to mitigate damage or bolster effective tactics. All your party members become can become viable since they all learn a different set of skills throughout the game's progression. One character might learn magic defense more than physical, or another might learn a skill to add more health. But all of it doesn't matter since the game wants you to sacrifice your damage for defense, or useful traits that allow you to link artes for damage in general for the defensive skills.
For example, maybe I want to link two basic artes together before finalizing it with an arcane arte. Well to do that, I'll have to spend about 15 of 60 skill points just for the extra basic arte. I'll have to sacrifice a bunch of other skills for those 15 points such as extra defense, or a 15 hit combo giving slightly more TP. Even something as simple as a backdash or increased guard might have to be removed just to do that. You gain so little skill points where the game asks for so much for so little, it's almost baffling. All of this becomes redundant once you finish the game since you'll be earning SP points much sooner. I should be having fun playing the game as I progress the story, not when the story is done with. Vesperia has so many fun skills, but the restrictions are so much of a handicap, the game feels like a slog if you decide to play in hard mode and a chore if you play on normal or easy.

If anyone is going to defend this battle system, I guess it's because it's "more fun" once you finish the game. And I feel that's like everyone who says "Final Fantasy XIII gets fun once you get to pulse". I'm strictly speaking battle system and gameplay here, but FF XIII, despite some battles that can be played using its auto-battle feature, still had some thought to it like the older 2D tales game had— and not just the boss battles.
Tales of Phantasia's game-play is simple to it's core and does slow down for spells and summons, but the latter has to do with its hardware limitations. At the very least, the TP system in Phantasia felt a lot like the MP system in the later FF games, and every random battle wasn't too difficult, but did wear you down where the cooking system and item use was encouraged. This carried onto Tales of Destiny and Takes of Eternia where not much was changed for the most part, but it still worked effectively.
But the battle system that Symphonia, Abyss, and Vesperia has feel a lot more dated than the 2D counterparts if you ask me. My only bias is that I enjoy random battles more than enemies you can see on the screen, but holy bottles are a thing (and I am aware in Phantasia and I believe in Destiny, it just lowers encounter rate). I think a game should be fun as you progress in the game and not feel like a wall preventing you from having that fun throughout the whole game. And fatal strikes was all they had. And that wasn't even used effectively!

Fatal strikes are rare to use as the enemies die very quickly (unless it's a boss battle, a giganto monster, or in hard mode). In hard mode, fatal strikes and their skills that bolster their use become effective as some skills will heal your TP or HP once you used a fatal strike (there are much more, but these were the most used in my hard-mode play-through). Every enemy has a chance to succumb by the fatal strike system since they have more health for you to wear down. And that's great! It's just limited and confusing. The game encourages you to use fatal strikes by doing more damage or restoring TP and HP, but you use skill points to equip those skills (unless you are learning those skills on a weapon, in which case, the skill points are not spent). Now you lack maybe damage or defensive skills to use those fatal strike skills; thus, your reward is also punishing you more than it feeling like a valid trade-off.
I didn't want to switch from Yuri once I got a new character and tried them out because I knew that those other characters will only be fun once you get all their skills which will only happen near the very near end of the game or post-game. And that sucks. I saw a lot of potential with Karol, Raven, and Judith, but the skill points needed to use them properly, with an A.I. that can de-stagger themselves easily, deterred me altogether. The only usable character other than Yuri was Repede, but the doggo is such a TP hog in an already TP draining hard-mode— again, no point. My only regret is realize too late to play the game in easy mode and switch it to hard mode only for boss battles.

JRPGs need proper gameplay progression. Tales of Hearts R had the chase-link system as well as counters in-between attacks and skills and I loved that game so much for it (playing in hard-mode wasn't enough and I wanted to amp up the difficulty— just not to evil until post-game; even then the game felt too difficult without proper equipment). Everyone was viable in that game once the chase-link system was introduced, and that's very early on in the game once you recruit Beryl Benito I believe (which is roughly about 5 hours in). I didn't want to play just as Kor/Shingu, but I wanted to play as Hisui, Kohaku, Beryl, Gall, Ines, and Kunzite once I got them. Everyone was viable at any given time.
The same can be said again with Tales of Graces f. Despite how generic the game's story gets, the battle system is possibly one of the most engaging Tales of systems throughout the entirety of the game. Tales of Destiny: DC did a great job and is crazy on its own in a 2D platform, and Tales of Hearts R's chase link's system does make the game easier, but Graces felt fair throughout the whole game and didn't hound you during random battles and challenged you in boss battles (despite hard-mode) because of its CC system.
You weren't hindered as much as you were in Vesperia through the title system because all the other skills were still viable since the game designers made it that your best weapon would learn an arte that helped you with enemies with specific weaknesses at the time. And playing in hard-mode, you still didn't need all the skills (learned through titles), but you had to decide strategically what you needed for the enemies you would come across or an opponent giving you trouble. In Final Fantasy IX, you can remedy enemy hurdles by equipping the weapon/armor/accessory for that fight; the same can be said with Graces where you can bolster equipment via synthesizing. That is not to say you cannot do this in Vesperia, but again, you would only most likely do that for defensive skills to save skill points for something else (and honestly, the most time I had happiness 1-3 on and that didn't really seem to do much).

However, I can see the appeal for Vesperia. This is one of those JRPGs. The ones that have so much goddamn content you'll be there much longer than you want to be. For a JRPG completionist, it brings back specific moments you can pick-up a side-quest and complete it, so many things to collect and learn, and massive post-game content. I normally don't do this anymore, but the last game to make me want to find every skit, side-quest, macguffin, was Tales of Hearts R solely because I enjoyed playing the game every time I ran into an encounter. In Vesperia, if I wanted to do all that, I would have a holy bottle on at all times under easy mode. I didn't even want to fight the rest of the giganto monsters because it didn't matter anymore. And that sucks because learning an altered arte by spamming it 101 times (51 for spells) can only be properly linked half-way into the game if you have the right skill for it. Later on, that same arte can be connected to another level-arte and vice versa, but only if you have the skill points for it. And the skill points are better spent off on other things at that point.
The combat system is gorgeous when you have enough skill points to use them, but you never will until after beating the game and grinding a little more for the skill points (there are a lot of great videos out there demonstrating this). I understand that allowing players to do all the neat and crazy things can be overwhelming at first, but it's near the very end (the third act) is when you can start to see how fun the battle system can be; thus, it's too late to keep players wanting more since the story is almost done (which for people who are into playing a video game without feeling overpowered via grinding are probably still sticking around for since the game is driven by endearing characters). And even then, you have to do with what all the other tales game before it did, rely on stagger-locking the enemies into submission. If there's no challenge, there's no fun in it for me anymore. There's no purpose to playing a video game. At that point, I may as well just watch a video of someone showing the cutscenes and dialogue exchanges.

I can't recommend this game to anyone if they want to play it and enjoy it throughout, but knowing how easy normal mode is (and how easy easy mode can be), it's easily a 6/10 game thanks to its characters, voice acting, and art design. This game is heralded as one of the best tales games, but I won't. Yet I am one of the black sheep in the JRPG community in which I seek out game-play more than story or characters— or at the very least a decent balance of having fun and enjoying the narrative (which is why I believe Chrono Trigger is heralded as a great JRPG altogether).

Sub-comments: Zagi is so goddamn fucking annoying as a character (fun to fight at least). I thought what's her face (Agria) in Xillia was bad, but goddamn this guy. Yeesh. Talk about one-note. Zagi easily replaces Pascal on my most hated Tales of character. And the map functionality in Tales of Vesperia is horrible!

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