I'm getting to the climax and goddamn this story actually makes me want to keep going despite the increasingly miserable dungeons. Currently I only expect good JRPG stories out of Falcolm and Atlus, and certainly not from Tales. I've played most of the Tales games but it's been almost a decade since I've outright finished one, literally the last one was the Symphonia Sequel which I rather forced myself through. I got through Graces but quit at the last dungeon, and I stopped ToZ halfway and pretty much wrote off the series. I kinda bought this game as a whim half expecting to get a Steam refund, but the story has been surprising me at every turn.
It looks like ToZ and ToB share the same writer so I'm curious as to what changed that drastically improved the quality between games. Tales of games keep trying to go back every other game to a traditional hero saving the world kind of deal while moralizing about life and all that, but I think their best stuff comes when they try, just a little, to subvert things.
Also anybody know much this game cost to localize? All the VAs do amazing work (minor notable exceptions aside...) and there's like a bajillion skits in this one and half as many voiced town-events too. Apparently there's ~400 skits, all clocking in at between 1-3 minutes or so, and like 200 exclamation point events, not to mention the main scenario and all the battle shouts. Velvet's VA alone has to have put in at least 200 hours of recorded dialogue.
I think this may be the most VA heavy JRPG I've ever played just in terms of the utter volume of things said.
I really can't get a feel for Eleanor. Her spear moves don't flow into each other as smoothly as Velvet's kicks and I guess I have weave in magic artes on top of that, too?
Eleanor seems to have her best artes unlock way late into the game, but basically every single move she learns has large AOE and crowd control. She also has alot of moves herself around the map, so it's pretty easy to accidentally whiff an attack but also lets her pick up crowds. Tends to work best with mob clearing, but not all that great with bosses unless she hits alot of their weaknesses. Her magic on the other hand is pretty weak and probably best ignored outright, maybe tack it onto the end of a combo as a shortcut but even then it's questionable if it's even worth it.
Most of the melee characters though are overshadowed by Velvet if for nothing else than the on-demand overlimit that you can sometimes extend infinitely.
