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Tales of Graces ƒ |OT| Gracing the PS3 with the Best RPG Combat

Aeana

Member
Someone thinking the combat in Graces is no different from Vesperia's just confirms my belief that many people don't pay any attention to gameplay in games.
 

Negator

Member
Welp,
Kurtz
keeps kicking my ass no matter what I do, back to grinding.

Don't get me started on this dude. The difficulty spike on this fight is ridiculous. Oh look, he combos my dude into red life, and I get sniped by his buddy. Oh, that awesome combo I finally had on him got interrupted by his buddy. Oh, they respawned...AGAIN.

After grinding a bit, I just barely beat him. Now all the other bosses I've fought are so easy now :(
 

LiquidMetal14

hide your water-based mammals
Someone thinking the combat in Graces is no different from Vesperia's just confirms my belief that many people don't pay any attention to gameplay in games.
There's absolutely no way I'd compare and I put almost 40 hours into Vesperia.
 

scy

Member
Someone thinking the combat in Graces is no different from Vesperia's just confirms my belief that many people don't pay any attention to gameplay in games.

"A-Artes are just regular attacks and B-Artes are just specials, lol same shit"

:|
 

Varion

Member
Welp,
Kurtz
keeps kicking my ass no matter what I do, back to grinding.
That's always been one of my worst boss fights, and one of the ones on Evil where I just wanted to drop the game and throw it out the window. Eventually did it but I had to use a bunch of Arcana Bottles (and a lot of grinding) to do so.
 

ULTROS!

People seem to like me because I am polite and I am rarely late. I like to eat ice cream and I really enjoy a nice pair of slacks.
Someone thinking the combat in Graces is no different from Vesperia's just confirms my belief that many people don't pay any attention to gameplay in games.

Probably people who think "Jrpgs! All the same!".

IIRC, you
trigger a conversation with Asbel's mom. Go to Baronia Castle and turn right down the corridor and talk to an official. You'll get the trade licence, and then hand it into the Oul Raye Inn.

Got it now, thanks.
 

Dark Schala

Eloquent Princess
"LOL, JRPGs are all TURN-BASED and slow, and their "ARPGs" are all button-mashy" is one I hear sometimes.

So, is Hubert as insanely good as he seems? I can't quite tell but he seems like he might be more effective than Asbel overall. I could be wrong, but Hubert seems like a beast.
Hubert's sorta... extreme. He has the highest physical attack and accuracy, so his A-artes are very very effective and he's pretty quick. His avoid/def stats are low, but not as low as Asbel's avoid or Malik/Cheria's defense.

The unfortunate thing about Hubert is that he gets no skills that prevent stagger, so you have to watch yourself when you use him manually.

"A-Artes are just regular attacks and B-Artes are just specials, lol same shit"

:|
>:|

Don't get me started on this dude. The difficulty spike on this fight is ridiculous. Oh look, he combos my dude into red life, and I get sniped by his buddy. Oh, that awesome combo I finally had on him got interrupted by his buddy. Oh, they respawned...AGAIN.
IIRC, his buddies never respawned in the Wii version. Actually some of the bosses in the later game were apparently jokes in the Wii version until the PS3 version beefed them up a bit.
 

MechaX

Member
Someone thinking the combat in Graces is no different from Vesperia's just confirms my belief that many people don't pay any attention to gameplay in games.

Graces' gameplay is extremely different from Vesperia's gameplay.

Now which one is better... Well.. the jury is still out on that.
 

Big B

Member
Sorry if anyone asked this, why would some Inn Requests disappear halfway through the game, even when I clearly had the item? I thought they all stayed?
 

Yuterald

Member
Yeah, I don't have any hesitation saying this game has the best Tales battle system. Grant it, I have not played the Japanese-only titles (ToDr is apparently pretty cool from what I've been reading), but everything I've seen so far in this game seems to take shits all over the other games in the franchise. I'm not even that far yet either and I already understand why so many people praise this game on mechanics alone. There are layers upon layers upon layers of things going on in this game, it's a bit overwhelming at times to be perfectly honest.
 

MechaX

Member
Is it? It is absolutely no contest in my eyes.

The thing with Vesperia is, despite how broken some characters can be, actually has techniques that people are still discovering about the system (like the various amount of cancels seen in combo videos), and Judith is probably the one character in the series that actually requires a fair amount of skill and technicality to play as effectively.

CC is still a big advantage in Graces' favor.
 

Dark Schala

Eloquent Princess
Sorry if anyone asked this, why would some Inn Requests disappear halfway through the game, even when I clearly had the item? I thought they all stayed?
Are you sure? Or are you not getting an option to do inn requests at inns?

They were all still doable during endgame in the JP version. Inn Requests seemed to stay throughout the game outside of the handkerchief quest. You could always revisit them, at least in the JP version, if you didn't have the item.
 

Negator

Member
Are you sure? Or are you not getting an option to do inn requests at inns?

They were all still doable during endgame in the JP version. Inn Requests seemed to stay throughout the game outside of the handkerchief quest. You could always revisit them, at least in the JP version, if you didn't have the item.

I think the Richard's letter quest disappeared where I am right now, fixing Sophie. I'll wait until she's better again before I start freaking out though.
 
Free Run Canceling in particular actually gave Vesperia's battle system a little more extra depth for me.

That being said, I think I'd still give the edge to Graces, though.
 

Dark Schala

Eloquent Princess
I think the Richard's letter quest disappeared where I am right now, fixing Sophie. I'll wait until she's better again before I start freaking out though.
Huh. That's strange. I didn't do requests at that particular point in the game, so could be narrative-related, then (and that bit is quite narrative-heavy).

With that said, I haven't seen a case where a request outside of the handkerchief quest was missable. When I went through the inn requests looking at a few JP sites, neither wiki or sites with miniwalkthroughs stated that the quests were missable, outside of the handkerchief one. I still got to fight the boss for that trophy on my first playthrough even when I left some of the quests for later since I didn't have the materials, so...

Also, glad more people are seeing what's awesome about the battle system. It's my favourite in the series next to Rebirth's and Destiny Remake's.
 

Big B

Member
I think the Richard's letter quest disappeared where I am right now, fixing Sophie. I'll wait until she's better again before I start freaking out though.

Me too!! and I also see requests missing from Barona and glyside (whatever it's called)

hopefully it's not a glitch or anything.

And thanks Dark Schala for answering our questions.
 
Yeah, I don't have any hesitation saying this game has the best Tales battle system. Grant it, I have not played the Japanese-only titles (ToDr is apparently pretty cool from what I've been reading), but everything I've seen so far in this game seems to take shits all over the other games in the franchise. I'm not even that far yet either and I already understand why so many people praise this game on mechanics alone. There are layers upon layers upon layers of things going on in this game, it's a bit overwhelming at times to be perfectly honest.

ToDR is a 2d implementation of CC.

Rebirth and ToD2 still hold up fine as well, but neither of them use the standard TP system.
 

Dark Schala

Eloquent Princess
Me too!! and I also see requests missing from Barona and glyside (whatever it's called)

hopefully it's not a glitch or anything.

And thanks Dark Schala for answering our questions.
Actually, I wouldn't be surprised that since
Sophie's out of commission, and since some inn requests involve short cutscenes, that the ones that have gone missing involve a cutscene with her, and hence you can't do them at that time.
 

Yuterald

Member
ToDR is a 2d implementation of CC.

Rebirth and ToD2 still hold up fine as well, but neither of them use the standard TP system.

ToDR, Rebirth, and Destiny 2 are the Tales games I've always wanted to play. I really hope Abyss and this do well enough for Namco to bring the older games back in some fashion. I know, I'm not holding my breath. The original Tales of Destiny still holds a special place in my heart. The remake looked and sounded really fucking cool. I always wanted to play Destiny 2 as well because it was a direct continuation of the original game. Didn't you play as Sthan & Rutee's son in that game?
 

Astra

Member
Graces' gameplay is extremely different from Vesperia's gameplay.

Now which one is better... Well.. the jury is still out on that.

After 20+ hours of Graces, I like both systems. Graces' combat has an edge in fluidity, which makes the battles a bit more fun, but it's no problem for me to go back to the TP sytem, and vice versa.
 
Something that's annoying is that the text is a little hard to read on an SD television. In some areas of the game, there's clearly a lot of space allocated for text, but no, the text is small and'll only take up 1/2 the text box.

I followed the guide here and was in and out of that place so fast. I would have hated it otherwise...

Wallbridge was easy once I was able to visualize it in my head.

It also helps that any enemy you encounter and defeat stays defeated (no respawning enemies if you go from room to room in the same "dungeon" or area).
 
It's official, I love this game and am addicted.

Just killed
Queen Slime
on hard... on my first try!... then reloaded and beat it on easy for the trophy.

.... love this game.

PS: Love this game.
 
ToDR, Rebirth, and Destiny 2 are the Tales games I've always wanted to play. I really hope Abyss and this do well enough for Namco to bring the older games back in some fashion. I know, I'm not holding my breath. The original Tales of Destiny still holds a special place in my heart. The remake looked and sounded really fucking cool. I always wanted to play Destiny 2 as well because it was a direct continuation of the original game. Didn't you play as Sthan & Rutee's son in that game?

Yeah you do, and you go on a back to the future 2 style adventure to save your dad from being murdered by a time traveling assassin named Barbatos.

ToDR has a neat callback to this, where if you spend too much time running in circles on the world map, Barbatos shows up and murders everyone.
 

Synless

Member
Please make this sell well enough for us to get Xillia as well.

I'm hoping! I'm also hoping it doesn't take a year to get if they announce it.

Also, I decided to buy the double SP item, does it equip automatically after you use it in the items menu or do I have to do something else for it to work?
 

Dark Schala

Eloquent Princess
ToDR has a neat callback to this, where if you spend too much time running in circles on the world map, Barbatos shows up and murders everyone.
NO AUTO-LEVELLING EVER. <3

Please make this sell well enough for us to get Xillia as well.
Xillia's battle system is much different from this one. ;)

And as you could have guessed from a few pages ago, this may or may not be a good thing. I still had fun with it, but after playing Graces, it does seem like a bit of an adjustment when switching over to Xillia's system.
 

Jiraiza

Member
Question about Asbel's style. I found that when he attacks starting with the B-arte with his sword unsheathed to be pretty shitty. Or maybe it's just me. Any shortcuts to sheathing the sword without having to backdash twice?
 
ToDR has a neat callback to this, where if you spend too much time running in circles on the world map, Barbatos shows up and murders everyone.

Oh wow, that's awesome :lol

Edit: Is this the same guy that instantly kills you if you set it to the lowest difficulty when you fight him? I remember hearing that one of the two Destiny games had that.
 

Dark Schala

Eloquent Princess
Question about Asbel's style. I found that when he attacks starting with the B-arte with his sword unsheathed to be pretty shitty. Or maybe it's just me. Any shortcuts to sheathing the sword without having to backdash twice?
Switching from sheathed to drawn takes little time, as you may have noticed. But doing the opposite--switching from drawn to sheathed has a delay on it. When you learn more skills, he seems to switch faster. Keep playing and levelling up titles.

If you want a faster character to use, go with Hubert. He's like... the Guy Cecil of this game.

BY2K said:
I welcome every and all battle systems.
Xillia... for me, has other issues. Not much with the battle system (though I have a problem with TP in general, and the imbalance of Link Artes that Milla/Jude have with each other in comparison to their links with everyone else; Free Run feels like it was something I ignored a lot since I ended up controlling Jude a lot, so that wasn't really a problem).

I have heard other people say that it's a divisive game à la FFXIII due to it streamlining a lot of stuff and systems, but I haven't checked out other communities' responses to it before. I do like Xillia, but I dunno how other people would respond to it even though it's better than Graces in terms of presentation (outside of the environments because they're horrible, omg).

Seven Force said:
Oh wow, that's awesome :lol

Edit: Is this the same guy that instantly kills you if you set it to the lowest difficulty when you fight him? I remember hearing that one of the two Destiny games had that.
It's Wakamoto-sama. NO ITEMS EVER.
 

BY2K

Membero Americo
Xillia... for me, has other issues. Not much with the battle system (though I have a problem with TP in general, and the imbalance of Link Artes that Milla/Jude have with each other in comparison to their links with everyone else; Free Run feels like it was something I ignored a lot since I ended up controlling Jude a lot, so that wasn't really a problem).

I have heard other people say that it's a divisive game à la FFXIII due to it streamlining a lot of stuff and systems, but I haven't checked out other communities' responses to it before. I do like Xillia, but I dunno how other people would respond to it even though it's better than Graces in terms of presentation (outside of the environments because they're horrible, omg).

I know it was rushed and doesn't have a lot of things you'd normally find in a Tales of. Weird since it was a join effort between Team Vesperia and Team Destiny.
 
Alright GAF, I am pretty much jumping into this blind because I am in the mood for a JRPG lately, I have never played a Tales game (other than like the demo for Vesperia) so I have a quick question.

I am typically pretty bad at RPGs because I have never really been good at wrapping my head around exploiting system mechanics and things like that, does Graces have an easy setting, and is it easy enough that should be able to get through without too much trouble? For reference I recently played and finished XIII-2 on the easy setting and enjoyed that.
 

Rpgmonkey

Member
The battle system is really awesome because it emphasizes the main thing a lot of people did when you can make freeform combos, which is ditch the normal attacks in favor of artes.

I also think the series has been really lacking at providing a more elegant solution to allowing players to have a larger number of artes at their disposal. The artes ball is interesting but kind of clunky and if you didn't use any of those options you're stuck with four artes. When the current trend with Tales encourages mixing things up having only four is pretty unacceptable. Graces might not be perfect but it's a good step with the two styles and the way in which you chain A artes.

I think Team Destiny's guys are good at constantly reworking a concept until it's pretty close to perfect (the transition from 100 TP+SP -> FG -> CC, for example), so I'm hoping that in addition to working on things like the sidestep, they'll improve on the arte system.
 
I am typically pretty bad at RPGs because I have never really been good at wrapping my head around exploiting system mechanics and things like that, does Graces have an easy setting, and is it easy enough that should be able to get through without too much trouble? For reference I recently played and finished XIII-2 on the easy setting and enjoyed that.

From what I've seen as also a Tales virgin is easy is easy. I jumped in at Hard because I want the trophies eventually and I've only had one or two problems so far. You'll enjoy the game a bunch.

Are Tales games best played with friends or alone? Is the AI tolerable or does it make you rage?

I'm pretty early still but if you customize your AI partners well enough they don't seem to be TOO stupid. AI is AI though and obviously a real person will play better. I don't plan on doing any co-op.
 
Alright GAF, I am pretty much jumping into this blind because I am in the mood for a JRPG lately, I have never played a Tales game (other than like the demo for Vesperia) so I have a quick question.

I am typically pretty bad at RPGs because I have never really been good at wrapping my head around exploiting system mechanics and things like that, does Graces have an easy setting, and is it easy enough that should be able to get through without too much trouble? For reference I recently played and finished XIII-2 on the easy setting and enjoyed that.

Graces (and all other Tales games) have multiple difficulty settings. You can make it as trouble free or challenging as you want, so I think you'll be just fine.
 
Awesome, thanks for the answers guys. I have always been a sucker for cool battle systems in RPGs so every talking about how awesome this one is has me excited to jump in.
 
Just a few thoughts after only a couple hours of play:

Being my first Tales game I didn't really know what to expect, but I've been enjoying it so far. I see the combat being praised a lot and it's definitely pretty fun. I'm playing on Normal so the battles have been pretty easy so far, but I still enjoy switching through characters sometimes. Can't wait to see how deep it gets. Got my first Trophy during the
Bryce
fight.

Still playing as kids and the game has some nice charm to it. Got a few chuckles out of some of the dialogue.

So yea, I'm enjoying it so far. Will get to put more time into it this weekend.
 
Forever taking so long to unlock chaos. I actually just got evil and killing enemy at the cliff area in lhant hill. Actually on the adult arc LOL.
 
I just unlocked Evil myself and it's finally making me sweat. But just a little bit.

I think bosses will be more of a problem, but the SP rewards are amazing (and the assumed better item drops).

Risk/Reward Systems are my favorite thing ever. I doubt TWEWY did it first, but that's when I started paying attention to it.
 
Are Tales games best played with friends or alone? Is the AI tolerable or does it make you rage?

The biggest flaw with the AI is how they'll just stand in the middle of an enemy spell casting their own spell (which isn't even close to being full) instead of canceling the spell and dodging, I pretty much have to manually switch and dodge for them to keep everyone alive. I've also seen the AI run into enemy spells while they are in the middle of the attack animation -.-
 

Datschge

Member
I know it was rushed and doesn't have a lot of things you'd normally find in a Tales of. Weird since it was a join effort between Team Vesperia and Team Destiny.
"Team Destiny" actually wasn't involved, Xillia was lead by the Hearts leaders. Xillia is "streamlined" in a way that, while bringing plenty "Team Destiny" details to a "Team Symphonia" style game, it also broke a lot of stuff that has been already perfected before (unusable multiplayer and soloing in battles, useless titles, nonexisting cooking...).

Not that any game reviewer will notice anything of that though.

Are Tales games best played with friends or alone? Is the AI tolerable or does it make you rage?
Except for Symphonia GC (broken camera), Legendia (no multiplayer) and Xillia (broken multiplayer) co-op in console Tales games is a lot of fun. Everyone should try it out.
 

kayos90

Tragic victim of fan death
The biggest flaw with the AI is how they'll just stand in the middle of an enemy spell casting their own spell (which isn't even close to being full) instead of canceling the spell and dodging, I pretty much have to manually switch and dodge for them to keep everyone alive. I've also seen the AI run into enemy spells while they are in the middle of the attack animation -.-

AI in this game is just freaking stupid sometimes. I just let everyone die and do it myself with a healer. Ugh. Anyway, yes everyone who is playing on hard will get raped by
Kurt
if you've never played the game. It's just a stupid boss that's hard to get the dodge timing right if you haven't analyzed with a comb.
 
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