I prefer SoM over SD3 though. (whats with calling seiken densetsu 3 SoM3 anyway? if anything, it should be SoM2. I mean who calls Mother 3 Earthbound 3?) I don't like the battle system in SD3, I like the one with percents better.

OT: Atm, I'm more anticipating ToG than FF XIII. As much as I've seen from FF XIII, I don't like it. While ToG isn't anything special(combat seems good), at least I don't dislike it yet. But yea, Tales games take like 1.5-2 years to come to Europe.

I'm with you there. I, too, much prefer SoM. Being able to play multiplayer was the largest divide between the two for me.

 O Rly? :P

Both games have 3-player support. You just have to patch SD3 to do so (you can get translation+3player patch in one I believe). As in matter of fact, me and 2 of my classmates just beat SoM few days ago and are playing SD3 now (both with 3 players).

there were ones that rivaled them which were never released out of Japan =/ one example being that ToP was easily just as good as Chrono Trigger or FF6, I've always loved Breath of Fire series as well. there were a lot of good JRPGs during the SNES days or PSone days overall on top of alot of SRPGs that never went out of Japan either. you also missed Valkyrie Profile btw, and I guess Star Ocean is pretty much just a Tales clone so not much to say there.

d

     You have to think about what the most prestigious reviewers in the business think.  Ignoring it is like ignoring Dick Vitale's pick for each year's NCAA basketball champion.  You can go on your way believing Eastern Michigan has a shot to win even after hearing Dick Vitale's pick but hopefully you're smart enough not to bet a significant amount of money on Eastern Michigan in the office pool or to be at all surprised when the team that Dick Vitale has been telling you would win since the day after the last championship game winds up the winner as his choices almost always do.

From Casey Loe's review of Tales of Vesperia in Play Magazine:

The one and only way in which Tales of Vesperia fails to improve upon its predecessors is its story. The central plot concerns a material called “blastia” that is widely used to protect human settlements from monster attacks, but comes from mysterious origins and may not be as benign as originally thought. It’s a story you’ve seen before, but Vesperia takes it to such an insane level of technical detail that it ultimately becomes every bit as confusing as it is boring. At least it makes for a good drinking game—a sip whenever someone says “blastia,” two sips whenever someone says “aer krene,” and a full shot whenever you hear “Entelexeia” or “apatheia.” Just don’t play it with real alcohol, or you’ll be dead within 20 minutes.

Of course, Tales games have always relied more on the charms of their cast than the intricacies of their plot, but in that, too, Vesperia disappoints. Despite the generally strong voice acting and fully-voiced skit scenes (a first for a North American Tales release), none of the supporting characters manage to be anywhere near as much fun as Jade or Anise were in Tales of the Abyss. Maybe the problem is the frequently stilted dialogue, or maybe it’s just that so many of the game’s event scenes amount to nothing. For example, after nearly every quest in the first half of the game, your party spends five minutes saying their good-byes to each other only to—surprise!—find some reason to reunite 20 seconds later. You could make a fine drinking game out of that, too.

http://playmagazine.com/index.php?fuseaction=SiteMain.Content&contentid=1396

Ok this guy is off. Tales of Vesperia's story is not that hard to follow. It complex and i love complex stories. Also Anise sucks.

So you don't deny that it says "blastia" as much as Geddy Lee says "oh yeah!" on a Rush album?  that's a negative in my book.

Basically, I think Vesperia in comparison to the coming FF games is like The Last Remnant, Blue Dragon, and Lost Odyssey are and Wild Arms, Suikoden, Beyond the Beyond, and Vandal Hearts were on PS1, just placeholder rpgs to tide the rpg crowd over until the first Final Fantasy game of the gen is released.

Vesperia certainly does nothing to really elevate the Tales series into the upper echelon of game series as Persona 3 and 4 do for the Megaten series.

Ah, I knew it had it, I just didn't think it was available to us in NA. Just wouldn't be the same though, for me at least.