Yep, there are school costumes in this one, and a few crossover costumes with Hatsune Miku, Code Geass, Idolmaster, etc. Dunno if these are going to be in the English version yet.
Nah. Cards are randomly found in sparklies. Don't worry too much. You can play the card game on Easy as long as you have 10.
Namco ended up selling Card packs as DLC after a while on JPSN, so if the card game is *really* important to people and they're not finding the cards in the game, they can buy the unlock, I guess?
And you're probably thinking of the "Duke of Dalen".
After being tempted by the higher SP gain (as well as wanting to get into the battle system a bit more) I turned my difficulty up to Hard. I think I'm going to keep it there for the time being.
Can someone explain why I'd ever want to use the book of restraint? Only restore 1/4 of the usual HP at half the eleth cost? So if I'm reading this right
Normal Heal 100 use 50 Eleth
Restraint Heal 25 use 25
So I net less health then I did without it? Or am I misinterpreting it?
Oh lol, I forgot GT likes to spoil things. I'll watch it, then, since I guess other people don't want to spoil themselves.
"Does the 'f' stand for "fantastic" or "forgettable" in Tales of Graces F?"
Edit: Yeah, don't watch this if you don't want to be spoiled. They spoil a bit in the story. Hell, they spoil a lot.
-They dislike the Childhood Arc to no surprise.
-Find the story predictable
-Personalities of the characters grow on you after a while since they chat about a lot of stuff throughout the journey
-Exploration is dictated by the story, find overworld small and restrictive
-Invisible walls, and text bubbles telling you not to go that way
-Dislikes the fetch quests and requests
-Don't care about the quests outside of the story arc
-Feels as though there's a lack of freedom
-Battle system isn't a huge departure from past games; battles in real time, with regular attacks being called A-Artes and B-artes.
-Feels like combat is chaotic and button-mashy
-Issue: difficulty starts off so low that it takes a while to get a grasp on the battle system, and battles are over in 10 seconds or less so you don't get a lot of time to experiment.
-seem fine with titles and dualization
-no mistake that this was a Wii game and there seemed like no effort to bring this up to "PS3 standards"
-lighting and textures are flat, animations are stiff and lip-synching is a joke.
-presentation are weak; dungeons are cut and paste; scenes fade to black showing lack of animations for some stuff
-dry voice acting of most characters outside of Pascal
-music is lacklustre
Oh lol, I forgot GT likes to spoil things. I'll watch it, then, since I guess other people don't want to spoil themselves.
"Does the 'f' stand for "fantastic" or "forgettable" in Tales of Graces F?"
Edit: Yeah, don't watch this if you don't want to be spoiled. They spoil a bit in the story.
-They dislike the Childhood Arc to no surprise.
-Find the story predictable
-Personalities of the characters grow on you after a while since they chat about a lot of stuff throughout the journey
Oh lol, I forgot GT likes to spoil things. I'll watch it, then, since I guess other people don't want to spoil themselves.
"Does the 'f' stand for "fantastic" or "forgettable" in Tales of Graces F?"
Edit: Yeah, don't watch this if you don't want to be spoiled. They spoil a bit in the story.
-They dislike the Childhood Arc to no surprise.
-Find the story predictable
-Personalities of the characters grow on you after a while since they chat about a lot of stuff throughout the journey
-Exploration is dictated by the story, find overworld small and restrictive
-Invisible walls, and text bubbles telling you not to go that way
-Dislikes the fetch quests and requests
-Don't care about the quests outside of the story arc
-Feels as though there's a lack of freedom
Oh lol, I forgot GT likes to spoil things. I'll watch it, then, since I guess other people don't want to spoil themselves.
"Does the 'f' stand for "fantastic" or "forgettable" in Tales of Graces F?"
Edit: Yeah, don't watch this if you don't want to be spoiled. They spoil a bit in the story. Hell, they spoil a lot.
-They dislike the Childhood Arc to no surprise.
-Find the story predictable
-Personalities of the characters grow on you after a while since they chat about a lot of stuff throughout the journey
-Exploration is dictated by the story, find overworld small and restrictive
-Invisible walls, and text bubbles telling you not to go that way
-Dislikes the fetch quests and requests
-Don't care about the quests outside of the story arc
-Feels as though there's a lack of freedom
-Battle system isn't a huge departure from past games; battles in real time, with regular attacks being called A-Artes and B-artes.
-Feels like combat is chaotic and button-mashy.
Most of those are valid points though. There is lack of freedom in the overworld. Oh well, it's a well known fact that Tales games aren't for everyone.
"little effort was made to bring it up to PS3 standards"
Hmm, I guess 60fps in battle isn't up to standards. Gotta lower that down to an unstable 15-28 and add slightly better textures. Mmmm, that'd be great.
So I guess turning the difficulty up to hard is a must?
I do agree with most of the problems GT got. The character rigs during cutscenes aren't much better than the ps2 gcn games, and the completely random invisible walls are pretty annoying out in the fields.
Can someone explain why I'd ever want to use the book of restraint? Only restore 1/4 of the usual HP at half the eleth cost? So if I'm reading this right
Normal Heal 100 use 50 Eleth
Restraint Heal 25 use 25
So I net less health then I did without it? Or am I misinterpreting it?
Oh lol, I forgot GT likes to spoil things. I'll watch it, then, since I guess other people don't want to spoil themselves.
"Does the 'f' stand for "fantastic" or "forgettable" in Tales of Graces F?"
Edit: Yeah, don't watch this if you don't want to be spoiled. They spoil a bit in the story. Hell, they spoil a lot.
-They dislike the Childhood Arc to no surprise.
-Find the story predictable
-Personalities of the characters grow on you after a while since they chat about a lot of stuff throughout the journey
-Exploration is dictated by the story, find overworld small and restrictive
-Invisible walls, and text bubbles telling you not to go that way
-Dislikes the fetch quests and requests
-Don't care about the quests outside of the story arc
-Feels as though there's a lack of freedom
-Battle system isn't a huge departure from past games; battles in real time, with regular attacks being called A-Artes and B-artes.
-Feels like combat is chaotic and button-mashy
-Issue: difficulty starts off so low that it takes a while to get a grasp on the battle system, and battles are over in 10 seconds or less so you don't get a lot of time to experiment.
-seem fine with titles and dualization
-no mistake that this was a Wii game and there seemed like no effort to bring this up to "PS3 standards"
-lighting and textures are flat, animations are stiff and lip-synching is a joke.
-presentation are weak; dungeons are cut and paste; scenes fade to black showing lack of animations for some stuff
-dry voice acting of most characters outside of Pascal
-music is lacklustre
Outside of perhaps the button-mashy comment, none of the criticisms are wrong or off. Gametrailers just had less patience for them than the fans (duh).
I think GT were a little harsh in terms of scoring, but I can't disagree with what they said in some of the bits. The music is lacklustre. Some of the animations do feel stiff, invisible walls aren't appreciated, etc.
To be fair, if I were to give Graces a numerical score, and I really dislike doing this, I'd give it maybe 7.5-8. It isn't perfect, but man is it fun as hell. I definitely disagree with what they have to say regarding the battle system, though. I wonder which difficulty they played at? If they're finishing battles in 10 seconds or less, I'm guessing Normal or Moderate?
Like. I'd been finishing battles between 15-30/40 seconds (depending on amount of enemies or if I get swarmed) on Chaos on my second playthrough, so...
So I guess turning the difficulty up to hard is a must?
I do agree with most of the problems GT got. The character rigs during cutscenes aren't much better than the ps2 gcn games, and the completely random invisible walls are pretty annoying out in the fields.
I remember watching their Vesperia review when I was getting close to the 2/3 point and realizing they showed the last boss in the video. I have no idea who can conciously take footage of the very last battle in an extremely long game and nonchalantly show it. I've never watched a review of theirs before I beat a game since.
But from the list of critiques it doesn't seem like they were all that unfair. Game isn't for everyone.
I remember watching their Vesperia review when I was getting close to the 2/3 point and realizing they showed the last boss in the video. I have no idea who can conciously take footage of the very last battle in an extremely long game and nonchalantly show it. I've never watched a review of theirs before I beat a game since.
But from the list of critiques it doesn't seem like they were all that unfair. Game isn't for everyone.
Oh lol, I forgot GT likes to spoil things. I'll watch it, then, since I guess other people don't want to spoil themselves.
"Does the 'f' stand for "fantastic" or "forgettable" in Tales of Graces F?"
Edit: Yeah, don't watch this if you don't want to be spoiled. They spoil a bit in the story. Hell, they spoil a lot.
-They dislike the Childhood Arc to no surprise.
-Find the story predictable
-Personalities of the characters grow on you after a while since they chat about a lot of stuff throughout the journey
-Exploration is dictated by the story, find overworld small and restrictive
-Invisible walls, and text bubbles telling you not to go that way
-Dislikes the fetch quests and requests
-Don't care about the quests outside of the story arc
-Feels as though there's a lack of freedom
-Battle system isn't a huge departure from past games; battles in real time, with regular attacks being called A-Artes and B-artes.
-Feels like combat is chaotic and button-mashy
-Issue: difficulty starts off so low that it takes a while to get a grasp on the battle system, and battles are over in 10 seconds or less so you don't get a lot of time to experiment.
-seem fine with titles and dualization
-no mistake that this was a Wii game and there seemed like no effort to bring this up to "PS3 standards"
-lighting and textures are flat, animations are stiff and lip-synching is a joke.
-presentation are weak; dungeons are cut and paste; scenes fade to black showing lack of animations for some stuff
-dry voice acting of most characters outside of Pascal
-music is lacklustre
I was "meh" on the child arc as I was playing it, but I think it leads to some nice payouts in the later game. But I'm about 9 hours in and 6.7 seems too low. IMO, This game is better than FF13, FF13-2, Lost Odyssey, and every other JRPG this gen except ToV. I prefer a well executed simple, predictable story to a bat-shit insane, indecipherable pile that many JRPGs seem to have now days.
So far, my only true beef with the game is the lack of a real world map and all the invisible walls along the paths.
I never really found a use for it, so I didn't use the book much. With food, the book that doubles food consumption, Cheria healing, and me dodging attacks most of the time with melee characters, I didn't really have too many issues with HP.
To be honest, the books I used were the Fleet-Footed Grimoire, Collector's Grimoire/Mining Grimoire, Dextrous Grimoire, Full-Stomach Grimoire, and Zero-Style Grimoire (though this is when the Eleth Pot gets a lot of slots and I switched around books a lot for levelling up the pot).
Papercuts said:
But from the list of critiques it doesn't seem like they were all that unfair. Game isn't for everyone.
That's how I feel about it. A lot of their points were reasonable. The only thing I take issue with are their gripes about the battle system, making me feel like they didn't really explore it much.
kayos90 said:
So I was right about that archaic crap, right? invisible walls, text bubbles, fairly restrictive linear crap? Don't kill me. rofl.
That's true. Though I thought they generalizing battle times throughout the game from the way they were going on about it. But this sort of thing is certainly not exclusive to Tales.
Hell, FFXIII/FFXIII-2 (and I hate making comparisons in this thread, sorry) makes the player finish the battle as quickly as possible, sometimes sub-10 seconds.
Where are battles finishing in less than 10 seconds? That seems like a difficulty orientated thing not something to ding the game on. I hope boss battles arent finishing that fast.
Where are battles finishing in less than 10 seconds? That seems like a difficulty orientated thing not something to ding the game on. I hope boss battles arent finishing that fast.
I never really found a use for it, so I didn't use the book much. With food, the book that doubles food consumption, Cheria healing, and me dodging attacks most of the time with melee characters, I didn't really have too many issues with HP.
To be honest, the books I used were the Fleet-Footed Grimoire, Collector's Grimoire/Mining Grimoire, Dextrous Grimoire, Full-Stomach Grimoire, and Zero-Style Grimoire (though this is when the Eleth Pot gets a lot of slots and I switched around books a lot for levelling up the pot).
That's how I feel about it. A lot of their points were reasonable. The only thing I take issue with are their gripes about the battle system, making me feel like they didn't really explore it much.
Well, you were spot-on with regards to how some NA media would respond to it. :lol
That's true. Though I thought they generalizing battle times throughout the game from the way they were going on about it. But this sort of thing is certainly not exclusive to Tales.
Hell, FFXIII/FFXIII-2 (and I hate making comparisons in this thread, sorry) makes the player finish the battle as quickly as possible, sometimes sub-10 seconds.
Honestly, that score is the right score in my eyes. 6ish score is below average and the game as a whole is below average. As much as I want combat to be a bigger factor it's not. It's about the experience and the packaging and Graces f does a terrible job of doing so. Part of it is because it's a port of a Wii game and I understand that limitation. If this bombs, which it will, it's all on NB. They should've known that it would get bad/mixed reviews. As for people bashing the 6.8, I'm not being specific to GAF, they're dumb. If you can't recognize the faults that Graces has and exaggerate it's good parts, then you're not doing the devs a favor. I don't want cookie cutter JRPG design choices in EVERY JRPG. Xillia, did a good job in that aspect even if it had shitastic environments.
To be fair, if I were to give Graces a numerical score, and I really dislike doing this, I'd give it maybe 7.5-8. It isn't perfect, but man is it fun as hell. I definitely disagree with what they have to say regarding the battle system, though. I wonder which difficulty they played at? If they're finishing battles in 10 seconds or less, I'm guessing Normal or Moderate?
Like. I'd been finishing battles between 15-30/40 seconds (depending on amount of enemies or if I get swarmed) on Chaos on my second playthrough, so...
If you think Hard Mode will make the game a chore, you shouldn't feel pressured to change it.
And yeah, I concur with regards to the invisible walls.
I feel like the Wii version, had it come out, would have done better in reviews. But being a simple Wii port-up on the PS3 is just going to doom this game.
Also, reviewers tend to just go with whatever the default difficulty is in order to be fair/simply the process. Which, of course, is not in Graces' favor since the default is normal.
Not sure if anyone can help but figure I'll ask anyway. Me and someone else on here decided to share DLC for this game (the pre-order stuff) and I tried downloading the costumes and theme but it keeps telling me that I already have 2 systems active. To my knowledge, there were only 2 active on my PS3. So I deactivated 1, still wouldn't work. Deactivated both, still doesn't work. Why?
Honestly, that score is the right score in my eyes. 6ish score is below average and the game as a whole is below average. As much as I want combat to be a bigger factor it's not. It's about the experience and the packaging and Graces f does a terrible job of doing so. Part of it is because it's a port of a Wii game and I understand that limitation. If this bombs, which it will, it's all on NB. They should've known that it would get bad/mixed reviews. As for people bashing the 6.8, I'm not being specific to GAF, they're dumb. If you can't recognize the faults that Graces has and exaggerate it's good parts, then you're not doing the devs a favor. I don't want cookie cutter JRPG design choices in EVERY JRPG. Xillia, did a good job in that aspect even if it had shitastic environments.
Fair enough; I don't disagree with your points regarding Graces. (Oh god, we're going to have this argument again. :lol)
For all of Graces' fetch quests (+EX Dungeon, Arena, etc), Xillia has its fair share of them too, and Xillia's environments devoid of any detail (especially having to traverse them again and again and again for Black Feathers) and (most of the time) 1 screen towns really don't do it any favours. Even the ports in Xillia are... well, they're the same but with some lighting differences and NPCs in different locations. But Xillia's style could probably be considered as comparable to other HD games, so... I guess people would be okay with it.
But I have a problem with how Xillia handled titles, cooking, and loot accumulation to build up shops. I like the shop build system in the game, but I don't care for the loot accumulation much because farming for materials feels obnoxious towards endgame. But on the other side of the coin, I can see why someone would dislike the shop system: if you don't level everything up every now and then, you're cut off from your supply line from items to armour to weapons. I hated how the game handled cooking and it essentially boiled down to "hey, buy the food from the restaurant, eat it, and it'll have an effect for X amount of battles". And titles were the worst since they're just achievements for grade or trophies.
Xillia's trophy set isn't even particularly engaging given that it's all grindy (use this attack 150 times, link with this person and have them use this 150 times, exploit enemies' weaknesses and kill them 1350 times (or 800; I don't remember), acquire 459 Black Feathers, etc) and boring.
Edit: While the two protagonist angle was an interesting choice for storytelling,
Milla's side was ultimately worse-off from Jude's side. Anyone who starts with Milla's side might feel like they're not getting the whole picture, which is unfortunate.
Though, I like Xillia... but I don't like how it treated some of its auxiliary systems, and it didn't feel as fulfilling as Graces did, even if I liked the cast and other parts of it. Also, TP/Free Run/Milla and Jude have a ton of Link Artes and everyone else doesn't, etc...
And we both knew Graces wasn't going to do well here. Xillia might have been the more palatable game to release in terms of presentation, especially since it's the most recent one.
grandjedi6 said:
I feel like the Wii version, had it come out, would have done better in reviews. But being a simple Wii port-up on the PS3 is just going to doom this game.
Also, reviewers tend to just go with whatever the default difficulty is in order to be fair/simply the process. Which, of course, is not in Graces' favor since the default is normal.
Definitely agree with this. If it were still a Wii game, it would have fared better. If it's on an HD console, they might expect more from it? Not sure how this works. Their points regarding a lot of stuff were certainly valid. And yeah, I suppose they probably went normal, which definitely is not in Graces' favour at all. The average player may play the game on Normal, too.
From people that have ordered from Planetaxel before, how long does it usually take games to arrive (ideally the U.K, but anywhere in the EU is fine) after shipping? My order shipped yesterday and I'm wondering how long it might be before it arrives.
Honestly, that score is the right score in my eyes. 6ish score is below average and the game as a whole is below average. As much as I want combat to be a bigger factor it's not. It's about the experience and the packaging and Graces f does a terrible job of doing so. Part of it is because it's a port of a Wii game and I understand that limitation. If this bombs, which it will, it's all on NB. They should've known that it would get bad/mixed reviews. As for people bashing the 6.8, I'm not being specific to GAF, they're dumb. If you can't recognize the faults that Graces has and exaggerate it's good parts, then you're not doing the devs a favor. I don't want cookie cutter JRPG design choices in EVERY JRPG. Xillia, did a good job in that aspect even if it had shitastic environments.
What in the world am I even reading here. The so-called "experience" you're referring to is exactly what makes Graces more than an above average game thanks to the mixture of amazing gameplay, a simple story that conveys what it wants to convey without trying to dive into the typical OH SO DEEP areas that people seem to love for some reason these days, and the fun and likeable cast. Some aspects of it can be a little bit tedious, sure, but there's nothing that's so bad it outshines what's already really great about the game. Even you've been saying throughout this thread that the game is really fun and you've been loving it, so why go and contradict yourself here now?
And I hope you're just referring to the field maps with Xillia. I really do.
Edit: This is why numerical scores are just pants on head retarded and should forever be abolished.
After playing Graces for a considerable amount of time I feel that Kayos might have been a bit harsh.
But then again, that IS Kayo's job. He has to be harsh about this shit because most people will be turned off by the stuff that doesn't bother a lot of us here.
Edit: That said I can't quite disagree with GT either. I can't recommend this game to any of my friends even though I love it.
am I just having bad luck?
