Yo Schalla, what'd you like and dislike about Tales of Heart?
Are they localizing it as Tales of Heart? That's weird. Hearts rolls off the tongue better because it's essentially end-word alliteration. Then again, ツ (su). Edit: sorry, tsu.
...I don't like it. I dropped it for a reason. I know the game looks like it uses aerials a lot, and that's true, but they made a change to the system where when you need to recharge the combo and the enemy starts to fall, they recover from the combo almost instantly to make your combo start over. The battle system ends up not feeling as fluid as it originally did, and besides that, it's a completely different system altogether that tries to be halfway between Abyss and Xillia's instead. And you guys know how much I looooove Abyss's battle system. It's so boring.
The last Tales story I genuinely liked was Vesperia's, and the story I liked before that was Destiny R's. Go figure. The triverse idea is stupid and always was stupid. You don't need to link Tempest/Innocence/Hearts because they don't need to be linked that way. That's why we're waiting on Tempest R; it's part of the triverse.
Shing is typecast as fuck: he's good-hearted but knows nothing about the outside world, like many RPG protagonists. Hisui is the hot-blooded older brother who takes really good care of Kohaku. The object of the game is to essentially fix Kohaku because Shing broke her Spirune (which is the source of all emotions) and they need to look for her emotions. Innes is a strong person with a strong Spiria and a big weapon. Beryl's the kid magician, who is like most Tales kid characters. Kunzite is a mech human who is bound to Kohaku's every word. The game loves to bash it into the player's head that the game is about love and friendship. Not as much as Graces f, but man, it really tries to bash it into your head. It's not as saccharine because the game deals stuff in a darker tone. So it's kinda like Destiny, I guess? Only with current anime trappings.
The most interesting thing about Hearts' cast/name stuff is that it comes from the earth. Every character is named after a rock or gemstone, the dream eaters are named after plants, etc.
So in the original Hearts, you can use your Soma linked with your Spiria (your soul) in battle to basically use skills and level up and stuff. A person with a strong Spiria needs to be resistant to most emotions. Hence Tales of "Hearts".
The original Hearts ended up having several things to its disposal. Every character's Soma could not be replaced. Most of your money, then, is spent on materials to strengthen your skills and learn new ones. It's partly because your Soma is linked directly to your Spiria, so it gains EXP as your character. Remember? A person with a strong Spiria is a stronger person? It's like zen Buddhism or something. It's up to you to evolve your Soma correctly. You learn everything, from stat upgrades to Artes, through Soma Build. You also spend a lot of your gald on the Heal Stone, which basically functions like gambits. You will upgrade the heal stone by buying gambits like "When ally's knocked out"/"when under 50% health after battle"), varying percentages of HP to heal, additional conditions such as healing status ailments, additional uses, and more capacity of energy to use. So if you've played Tales of Graces f, it's a less streamlined version of the Arles Pot. Eres Pot. Whatever it's called in English.
Spir mazes are probably the worst parts of Hearts because they function a lot like Symphonia's EX dungeon. Defeating enemies gives you more time to complete the dungeon in, touching red boxes gives you more time to complete the dungeon in, etc. Some sidequests have spir mazes for you to complete to restore the emotions in a person.
Regarding battles in the original Hearts, it worked so well with Aerial combat. There is no TP at all. Every attack and arte instead costs EG (emotional gauge). The EG fills as the enemy attacks you or if you block something. CG (combo gauge) fills as you attack. If you fill it enough, you can summon guest characters or cameo characters to attack for you via Connect Panels. Just use the stylus to do it.
Regarding combo chaining, it's like an inferior version of Destiny Remake. What does this mean? You can basically combo ad infinitum if you wanted to. It's because EG can refill really fast in the right conditions and thus you can aerial as much as you wanted to. Just be aware that the enemies can have the capacity to lock you into a combo of their own too.
It's really cool how all of the systems in the game basically link to the game's title and its theme. It's just like Graces in some respects wrt that. Hearts didn't feel very stiff. Backstepping, frontstepping, and movement felt very fluid and
fast.
OK. Let's talk about the Vita version.
The Chase system is new. It involves pressing on the d-pad with a face button to activate in order to follow up with a chase attack, a chase link, and a chase finisher. This is mostly for trophies, though. At least using all three of those consecutively.
All of those systems I talked about that basically linked the gameplay to the game's title and theme? Gone. Tales of Hearts R's growth system ends up being streamlined and very similar to Xillia 1's system instead. In this game, you can have 4 party members in the party as opposed to three in the original. I don't really think this means much since if you've played a Tales game, you know that quality > quantity with respect to battles. They also removed a lot of artes for some inexplicable reason. I guess it's because of the new way the Soma Build works in this game now. Kohaku loses her signature spells like Sunburn/Starlight, etc. They've implemented TP in this game instead, and that really bothered me. They ended up turning it into a by-the-mill Tales game instead of keeping it unique and having the Hearts theme strewn throughout the game, even in its systems.
The only thing I feel like this game has going for it is the Guard Counter. It should be implemented in every Tales game from now on. Otherwise it's really stupid, sucks the heart out of the entire game, and I prefer the DS version by a large margin because of the battle system/systems changes alone. It isn't because of the additional anime-like scenes to make Kohaku look more like a ditz or anything (okay, maybe that's part of it). Chase Link and Guarding (guarding is really good!) are alright. I think most people will have beef with the fact that the game has random encounters instead of on-screen encounters.
When I played Tales of Hearts for the DS, the one thing I hated was that they added bosses breaking out of hits far too soon. I didn't feel like the Vita version of this game had that problem since comboing wasn't too hard. Outside of that, I love looking at the DS version (it really did have some of the better sprites in the series), I like reading the text in the DS version even if it is standard-Tales-game stuff, and the combat felt so much better than the Vita version. I do think they should've brought Innocence R over because, despite the bar being so so so low for that game and the cast being kind of unlikeable, its improvements are much better over Hearts R's. The only thing it doesn't have over Hearts is its menu aesthetic. The Hearts R menu is really nice to look at. Innocence R's menu can look a little bland by comparison. Hearts R's content is cut, which is really unfortunate. It took me less time to get through the midpoint of Hearts R vs how long it took me to get through Hearts DS's midpoint.
Oh, and they gave the Hearts music over to the Tales of Innocence composer to somewhat, well... the effects are far less desirable. How fun. Shing has a stupid run animation this time around, and some of the areas run like jank, so going into it, I realized how much of a budget they threw at this thing. It's weird how Innocence turned out well, and Hearts didn't because they probably didn't give a shit and wanted to put something out on there for easy money. But since a lot of Japanese players
also slammed Tales of Hearts R for completely changing everything about Hearts, I'm not alone in my assertion. Even kiryogi said it best:
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=45751548&postcount=573
But hey, don't mind me. I don't post in Tales threads because most of the people in them are complete buttheads who can't accept another person's opinion of it, even if she's played the game probably more times than you probably have and know the ins/outs of the entire thing.
Honestly, if you want to know why I don't post on the gaming forum anymore, it's that. I'm so sick and tired of being afraid to say what I want to say about a game because a few folks will be so overly defensive that you're criticizing their favourite game that you're essentially made to shut up and take it. So half the time I feel like I'm backed into a corner because the voices on either side are so loud that no moderate view is allowed, or the other half, I can't say what I want to say about a game because it goes against either the vigilant defense or the vigilant offense.
So fuck it. I ain't participating in Tales threads unless someone asks me to help out (which usually happens with the threads kayos or Ultros works on). I'm really tired of it and I guess I'll just sulk in this thread for a while.
Edit: Double-post, but I don't care.