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Nem on 17 June 2018
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outlawauron said:
Nem said:

Really? I played the GC version and the PS3 port shortly after it came out and i loved the crap out of it. Would play again! I wish modern Tales of would take notice.

What i liked? The pacing and the presentation most of all. You are not bored, you don't have to grind. The combat, the dungeons, it is all well paced and doesn't outstay it's welcome. The characters are endearing and all have very interesting fighting styles. It spans 2 worlds (something most recent Tales of games forgot was a staple of most of the series). Why is the combat bad in your opinion? I don't know how you can say that without saying (almost) all Tales of games have bad combat. The combat flows well, especially with Loyd's 2 wielding swords. The combat flows really well and the game looks gorgeous in the cell shading graphics even after all these years. What's there not to like?

I do think Vesperia is the best one. But Symphonia did a lot right. Abyss is pretty good aswell but because of the PS2 load times the pacing took a bit of a hit but it's still a very good game.

Eternia is pretty decent aswell, i can't say i disliked anything. The combat could have been a bit faster paced, but the game just never managed to wow me. There were some really devilish dungeons i would never want to go back to. But it was an alright game. I wouldn't call it a very high point, but it was good.

Xillia and Berseria are worse than trash to me. Those open fields of nothing, that spammy combat, the atempt to have realistic graphics in an anime game. Nothing works (though Xillia at least tries to stick to series roots and the combat is it's saving grace, even though it also felt more spammy with less weight on each hit). The games are slow paced and therefore boring. They checked me out from the series. Though i still bought Zesteria and i played the demo of Berseria. The combat was slightly better, but none of it was good. I have been falling for so called "fans" of the series lies. Saying Xillia is great, Graces is great, Zesteria is great, Berseria is great. There is a point where i see these are people that are just content with little and i stop believing them.

I would argue that the pacing was far too slow. The combat took way too long to get going and even when it "got going" it's still the most barebones of all 3D Tales games. It is the foundation of the modern Tales combat and it deserves praise for that, but it's the worst gameplay-wise. While I played Symphonia on Gamecube when it came out, I didn't play through it entirely until after I beat all of the PS3 Tales and played the PS2/P games. It felt lacking, slow, and very easy.

I didn't really love any of the cast, so that hurts attachment to the plot, etc. As for the graphics, the color palette is nice but those character models are horrible. Hardly acceptable on the Gamecube then, much less now. I don't know if I ever thought about its graphics as a positive.

And while you can criticize the newer games for having barren worlds, but it's not like Symphonia had much going on. Zesty/Berseria's are due to the design decision to have seamingless navigation/battle transitions, which I think are unnecessarily and the game would benefit from more detailed and intentional level design. While I wish they would have improved on Vesperia by continuing in that style, but they choose to save money after their first 7th gen Tales of games flopped hard. I don't understand your complaint about Xillia being slow if Symphonia is well paced considering Xillia is faster paced not only in story but also in combat. Each of these games have expanded on the foundation that was set with Symphonia and Abyss. I don't understand the comment about being content with little considering those games have so much more depth and mechanics than Symphonia. I understand there is something great in simplicity often but I think that is true in some of the 2D Tales, not 3D.

 

You do realise you aren't talking about pace there? Pace as in how long it takes you to go from A to B, to discover a new location, a new piece of story, a new character. How long battles last, how long dungeons last. Also, the combat took long to get going? I don't get that. The combat is basic attacks, artes, arcane artes, mystic artes. It's the same on every Tales of game. You think characters didn't look good, i wonder how? They were super cute. Is it the chibi style you don't like? I really don't get it. Barren fields. No symphonia doesn't have barren fields. Why don't you go compare how many towns and dungeons the games before Graces had and the ones after. Theres a bigger sense of world, of urgency and of scale. That is all lost especially on Xillia onwards. As for difficuty, what is this about? wasnt there a difficulty option? The game was acessable. Beeing easy as you say, meant there was no need to grind and therefore it improved the pacing. But, it wasn't so easy you facerolled every boss. Like, i don't get how you can not see these things, but we are all entitled to our opinions. I think you just went in not wanting to enjoy it for some reason. Either that, or like the other poster you judge the game by it's post main story content. If that is the case, very well. I don't very much care to level to 99 and all that. I care about those main 40 hours of gameplay and storytelling.