I've been disappointed with how much flak Tales as a series has been taking recently, it really seems like the 'in' thing to do is just wail on it for being a yearly franchise. In my opinion it's always been a "slightly above average" series but for some reason games like Symphonia get revered while anything new they release gets met with "But it's not Symphonia!" Yeah, of course it isn't, the series has taken a hell of a lot of steps forward since then.
In my personal opinion, if we're talking about peaks and troughs, I feel the low point was definitely a few years ago between Symphonia 2 and Graces and the series has taken a number of vast leaps forward since then, and in particular has been getting better with every mainline entry (and also Hearts R was a very solid spin-off).
To touch on a few of your specific points:
| LuckyTrouble said:
Now I know I may get some flack for not liking at the very least Xillia, but bear with me. I thought Xillia was a huge step back. The battle system was simplified to overpowered combination attacks, the story was basically a rehash of Symphonia with a few tweaks, and good god was most of the character development bad. I played over halfway through Xillia and ended up dropping it, half out of boredom material collecting in yet another large, bland field, and half because I wasn't sure how long I could go without having to harm myself just to endure the terrible characters. |
Playing to only halfway through means you do indeed miss out on most of the character development and plot. I mean my god, the whole of the start of the story is world building, the characters and plots really come to their own between the side quests. And the plot is a rehash of Symphonia, seriously? You didn't even finish the game lol. It was actually the highlight for me and gets significantly interest towards the end with the multiple threads and antagonists.
Combat is definitely the weak point of the game, but I dont' agree with "overpowered combination attacks". They felt like a nice bonus to me; never a mandatory part of winning a battle.
| LuckyTrouble said:
Xillia 2 isn't even worth mentioning. It suffered the way a Tales of sequel is bound to by just being bad. The MC was an absolute joke, and otherwise nothing about the game ever rose above average, rounding out the experience with a still awful cast and even worse story. It continues to prove that the Tales of series should really give a wide berth to the idea of sequels, as if Tales of Symphonia 2 wasn't already enough proof of that. |
Christ, I swear most of the people who wail on Xillia 2 barely even touched it. The plot lost itself a little towards the end but up until that point was far the most interesting thing Tales has done in ages. I absolutely loved the fractured dimension aspect and it created some really unique scenarios that were especially interesting if you'd played the original game. Nothing about the game rose above average? 3D Tales combat is at its absolute best in Xillia 2, so I really don't know how you can say that. Beside the fact that character development almost took centre stage in the game due to it being a direct sequel with only two new introduced characters.
Only thing I'm not sure I liked about the game was the grimdark optional ending, but even that wasn't canon so I can't really fault it.
I think you're really going to need to expand on the points in here to make a coherent argument.
| LuckyTrouble said:
The battle system in Zestiria is too dependent on elemental weaknesses. You primarily battle by fusing with your magic capable Seraphim characters, each of which is a different element. This becomes the crux of battles, as you fuse at the start of a fight with the most appropriate Seraphim and proceed to mash the circle button (or your PC button of choice) the entire fight. There were far too many fights where I could just fuse and look away, watching a show while I mashed the circle button and periodically guarded. It's as if they took the Xillia system and thought "how can we make an even more limited and simple system of combat?" |
One of the things I enjoyed most about Zestiria's combat was the fact that Rose & Sorey can trigger any elemental weaknes through their arte attacks. While I will admit that fusing with a seraph makes battles a lot easier, again it felt like a nice bonus. Maybe this is the time to up the difficulty on your playthrough? That's what I did and started getting much more enjoyment from it.
One thing I will fault Zestiria for is the story. It's fairly poorly told, and that's something I defintiely think it drops the ball on.
| LuckyTrouble said:
Thoughts? Am I just being oversensitive here, or is the quality dip a real issue for the series at this point? |
Without sounding overly harsh, I feel like this is a massive problem with gaming in general at the moment - people nitpick for the sake of nitpicking. I don't think the quality has dipped at all, if anything, I think quality has continually increased from the pits of Symphonia 2 and Graces (although Graces had some redeeming qualities).
| Soriku said:
In short I think your post makes a lot of wide remarks that do a poor job of really explaining how the games are like. |
Read your post and was very pleased that someone else feels the way I do about this series. Agreed with all of your points in this post.
