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

I disagree.

The cast is, in my opinion, better than Vesperia's (I said it.) and Abyss'. They just play off with each other better than just about 99% of the localized Tales titles (with the exception of Legendia). The story is not anything to write home about, but the pacing is pretty good for the most part and is largely inoffensive. Also there isn't that much incoherent jargon (fonon fonon fonon fonon fonon) and long, drawn out explanations. The only thing remotely "meh" about the game is the music (battle themes can be changed anyhow, simply equip a Costume that changes the theme) and dungeon design.

The only part of Vesperia's cast that didn't suck was when Yuri was talking about killing people. Judy was ok too, but like Karol? Come on, the guy was a tool.

The only actual character that sucks in this game is Asbel. Everyone is generally pretty likeable, but they're brought down a notch by the voice acting. And even then, only Richard's voice acting is seriously offensive. Asbel isn't great, but at least his poor delivery fits his character's poor personality
 

scy

Member
I wish this game had healing skills that weren't spells. For all the good they did with the combat system in this game, it still falls into the old Tales pitfall where if your healer(s) get overwhelmed, you're pretty much screwed since there's really no reliable way to keep enemies away long enough for them to cast, especially if you've got one or two characters on the ground.

All the healers can insta-cast them via A-Artes and, as otherwise noted, there's a lot of passive healing. Food per fight (+ post-battle; more if you slot the book) also helps alleviate a lot of the problems.

Also, Hubert has a healing A-Arte and Asbel's B-Artes -> A-Artes will heal him.

Edit: Though, yeah, multiple revives on enemies that can one-shot them is pretty rough. If it's just one enemy, though, then it's usually easy enough to get everyone back up. Honestly, I just try not to "screw up" enough to get to a 2-3 down position (or just reload it at that point) since uphill fights on Chaos are rough.

Hmmm... I actually didn't do a ton of dualization on final equipment towards the end because my level was high enough that I didn't really need it outside of the CC boost. I'd stick with Keen, Sharp, Rigid, Wild, Plain, etc attributes when dualizing gear, though. The best thing to do is look at the dualization book and see which qualities you want the characters' weapons to have based on the bonuses they give.

Not sure why you'd stick to the low-end Qualities unless there's some hidden "these are actually terrible" variables on the better ones.

On that note, finally got around to using dualize to make money. Hooray, ~200-300k equipment to sell and filling up stamp cards. Rare equipment everywhere!
 

Dresden

Member
Of the Tales games I've played (basically the sorta-modern quartet of Symp, Abyss, Vesp, and Graces), the cast here is probably on par with Symphonia (which is to say, tied for worst).

Abyss had Jade and Tear, at least.
 

scy

Member
The cast (and story) are pretty hit-and-miss with people. I like the story and basically the entire cast so eh.

Taste, subjective, etc. etc.
 

Dark Schala

Eloquent Princess
I feel like I'm reading posts from Bizarro World. This game's cast is on par with Star Ocean 4.
I think that's a little hyperbolic. I hated everyone in SO4 by comparison. With regards to Graces cast, my range is from likeable to indifference.

Though this likely comes down to personal taste. To be honest, I didn't think anyone here would like this game's narrative or its cast because a lot of the subject matter concerns protection and friendship and all that saccharine stuff.

Not sure why you'd stick to the low-end Qualities unless there's some hidden "these are actually terrible" variables on the better ones.

On that note, finally got around to using dualize to make money. Hooray, ~200-300k equipment to sell and filling up stamp cards. Rare equipment everywhere!
So you can combine them with better attributes to get better builds, but if you're short on really good qualities (and honestly the best shards are in the Zone Cage and that's where you should do your shard farming, imo), I'd go with those.

LOL, you know, I miss the accessory glitch. I gained money naturally on my first playthrough and then cheesed it on my second with the accessory glitch. Here, since I don't have access to it, I kinda miss it.

cpp_is_king said:
The only part of Vesperia's cast that didn't suck was when Yuri was talking about killing people. Judy was ok too, but like Karol? Come on, the guy was a tool.
Karol in the Japanese version was irritating, especially his voice. Yikes.
 

kewlmyc

Member
I disagree.

The cast is, in my opinion, better than Vesperia's (I said it.) and Abyss'. They just play off with each other better than just about 99% of the localized Tales titles (with the exception of Legendia). The story is not anything to write home about, but the pacing is pretty good for the most part and is largely inoffensive. Also there isn't that much incoherent jargon (fonon fonon fonon fonon fonon) and long, drawn out explanations. The only thing remotely "meh" about the game is the music (battle themes can be changed anyhow, simply equip a Costume that changes the theme) and dungeon design.

The cast isn't bad, but it's not anything to write home about nor is it a selling point for people. Hence why I said it was "meh". If you buy this game or are interested in it, it's for the top notch combat. Compared to past games where some people got interested for both the combat and characters/story (like Symphonia and Vesperia), most people I talk to about this game only mention the combat and nothing about how they enjoy the story or characters. Not to say either characters nor story are bad, just mediocre, which I think most people can agree with.

Also, you act like having a better cast than Abyss is a hard thing to accomplish. :p
 

Coxswain

Member
All the healers can insta-cast them via A-Artes and, as otherwise noted, there's a lot of passive healing. Food per fight (+ post-battle; more if you slot the book) also helps alleviate a lot of the problems.

Also, Hubert has a healing A-Arte and Asbel's B-Artes -> A-Artes will heal him.

There's ways to heal, but most of them are pretty conditional, and (from what I've seen) they're almost all just self-heals. Compared with Vesperia where you had three healers who all had pros and cons (Estelle: Full healing suite, but you had to deal with spell cast times; Karol: Most powerful spike healer and no cast times, but limited to close-range on a slow-moving character and didn't have a revive; Raven: No cast times, unlimited range, but no spike healing capability, no condition healing, and no revive) it seems like a pretty huge leap backward in that particular aspect of the game.

All the cool stuff you can do offensively or in terms of evasion still doesn't help all that much when there aren't any healers who don't buckle under any sort of enemy pressure.

This is a pretty big hyperbole. :p
It's really not. Asbel is the same character only even more pathetic than Edge, Cheria is Reimi with red hair, Sophie is identical to Lymle* only ToG saw fit to put their underage girl in tights instead of a dress, and Pascal has the exact same personality as the girl in the Item Creation room. The only advantage Tales of Graces has over Star Ocean 4 in terms of the quality of its cast is that there are fewer characters. Except that the characters talk a lot more than they did in Star Ocean 4, and you have to actually pay some attention to them to know what's going on, instead of being able to skip cutscenes and get a text summary, so even that is sort of a wash.



*Only instead of ending every sentence with "'Kay", she does that fucking stupid 'tilt her head to the side' fucking shit GODDAMNIT I HATE YOU SOPHIE ARGH
 

Dark Schala

Eloquent Princess
I'm grinding in the castle to Super Sonic Racing and Reach Out to the Truth. It's pretty awesome.

...

If only this supported custom soundtracks at all. It'd be much easier that way.

Coxswain said:
*Only instead of ending every sentence with "'Kay", she does that fucking stupid 'tilt her head to the side' fucking shit GODDAMNIT I HATE YOU SOPHIE ARGH
Sophie was the character I was lukewarm towards when I finished my first playthrough. It's not that I disliked her... I was indifferent towards her, both in terms of character and battle ability. She was probably the last character I warmed up to using manually, actually.

Second time through made me like her a little more, and the English playthrough... oh wow, her English counterpart is better. I'm still indifferent towards her character, but I think the way they handled her in the localized version is better.

DarknessTear said:
I think the only reason I was able to stand platinuming that game was because of the music, honestly.
I have Man of Means and a few weapon trophies left out of the grinding ones. I'm doing most of my grinding in the DLC but I wonder if there's a better alternative.
 

scy

Member
So you can combine them with better attributes to get better builds, but if you're short on really good qualities (and honestly the best shards are in the Zone Cage and that's where you should do your shard farming, imo), I'd go with those.

Oh! Thought you were saying to just stick with those Qualities. Was a little confused since, yeah, you go through the low-end shard qualities to get to the better ones and I can't think of any reason to stick to the low-end qualities.

LOL, you know, I miss the accessory glitch. I gained money naturally on my first playthrough and then cheesed it on my second with the accessory glitch. Here, since I don't have access to it, I kinda miss it.

Curious as to what this was now. The process of dualizing up the chain repeatedly is a bit annoying. Thankfully, the right food combinations makes it relatively painless but it still costs a lot of Gald investment and shards.

Then again, I want to burn through my shitty shards anyway :x

There's ways to heal, but most of them are pretty conditional, and (from what I've seen) they're almost all just self-heals. Compared with Vesperia where you had three healers who all had pros and cons (Estelle: Full healing suite, but you had to deal with spell cast times; Karol: Most powerful spike healer and no cast times, but limited to close-range on a slow-moving character and didn't have a revive; Raven: No cast times, unlimited range, but no spike healing capability, no condition healing, and no revive) it seems like a pretty huge leap backward in that particular aspect of the game.

All the cool stuff you can do offensively or in terms of evasion still doesn't help all that much when there aren't any healers who don't buckle under any sort of enemy pressure.

Sophie and Cheria are the two primary healers and do play (and heal) differently. With the way CC + Casting works, they really do end up functionally different due to how they approach combat. And I'd contest that both the Graces healers aren't completely screwed over when enemies look at them; I really haven't had that kind of issue on Chaos at all except fluke double/triple simultaneous deaths.

Hubert's spot healing is pretty shitty but, like Sophie, he'll combo a lot so it's basically an instant small area-of-effect heal; Vital Flair when fully upgraded is a nearly 50% self-heal off a 3->4CC A-Arte so it comes in handy.

But I didn't really have a good outlook on Vesperia's healers that you seem to. I never gave Karol a shot (since I hated him) and Raven always felt inferior to Estelle so I just stuck with her despite the fact I didn't like her; just "dealt with" using Raven eventually.
 
When I bought the game I expected the graphics to be way worse. Just how enhanced are these over what was in the Wii version? I probably came in with low expectations but the quality of the graphics seem mediocre to me rather than something embarrassing like I was expecting. It almost looks better than what I've seen of Xillia.
 

Neki

Member
You gotta run at least Yuri/Estelle/Rita though. I guess I could have replaced Judith with Karol. But Judith is awesome.
 

Rpgmonkey

Member
There's ways to heal, but most of them are pretty conditional, and (from what I've seen) they're almost all just self-heals. Compared with Vesperia where you had three healers who all had pros and cons (Estelle: Full healing suite, but you had to deal with spell cast times; Karol: Most powerful spike healer and no cast times, but limited to close-range on a slow-moving character and didn't have a revive; Raven: No cast times, unlimited range, but no spike healing capability, no condition healing, and no revive) it seems like a pretty huge leap backward in that particular aspect of the game.

All the cool stuff you can do offensively or in terms of evasion still doesn't help all that much when there aren't any healers who don't buckle under any sort of enemy pressure.

Sophie has single-target heals with shorter cast times with the added bonus of being fast and capable of taking a few hits, Cheria has wide-range or multi-target heals with the disadvantages of longer cast times and being really squishy. Hubert and Richard are just very minor support, Malik has no heals but has a ton of HP and is mostly a medium to long-range fighter, and Pascal has like one heal but is more reliant on her glyphs to provide defense and crowd-control.

It also follows up Rebirth and Destiny R's idea of making you more reliant on using items, weapon/armor/accesory effects, skills, and cooking for healing or give you other advantages that can help turn around a battle. Healing artes are useful but more to help out when things cool off a bit, outperforming the enemy's damage output is something they're not going to be able to do.
 

Datschge

Member
When I bought the game I expected the graphics to be way worse. Just how enhanced are these over what was in the Wii version?

Higher resolution and AA. The art direction being very clean profits a lot from that already. Some assets (like the tree of
Garden of Innocence
) are no longer scaled down, but that seems to be the exception. One could do a comparison with Graces Wii in Dolphin, should look mostly the same.
 

CrazyDude

Member
I disagree.

The cast is, in my opinion, better than Vesperia's (I said it.) and Abyss'. They just play off with each other better than just about 99% of the localized Tales titles (with the exception of Legendia). The story is not anything to write home about, but the pacing is pretty good for the most part and is largely inoffensive. Also there isn't that much incoherent jargon (fonon fonon fonon fonon fonon) and long, drawn out explanations. The only thing remotely "meh" about the game is the music (battle themes can be changed anyhow, simply equip a Costume that changes the theme) and dungeon design.

The cast is probably the worst in the series.
 
Higher resolution and AA. The art direction being very clean profits a lot from that already. Some assets (like the tree of
Garden of Innocence
) are no longer scaled down, but that seems to be the exception. One could do a comparison with Graces Wii in Dolphin, should look mostly the same.

That's pretty amazing actually. What sorcery did Namco cast to coax something like this out of the Wii? I notice some of the cheats they did especially with the backgrounds and smaller environments but even then they deserve major kudos.
 
Hard bosses are for no joke. regular enemies don't have enough HP to be any real danger beyond maybe one character dying no matter their number, but bosses have SO much HP and LOVE spamming casts the instant they're free sometimes. You come out of that alone on the battlefield. Max CC of course, but everyone else is dead.

I'm having some better results putting my others on Aggressive and tackle casting or far from me enemies to take out adds while I harrass the boss and milk any back attacks for Eleth, but that huge-ass HP bar gives them alot of chances for some bosses to Vesper and Decus my ass many new ones. :O

I also wish Team Destiny had set up A/B artes mechanic early on in the kids section, just the one B arte per, to make it second nature earlier. I can't imagine not using it now, it's too integral to delay it that long.

I feel like I'm reading posts from Bizarro World. This game's cast is on par with Star Ocean 4.

It's not the cast themselves, but what's done with them (not terribly much). Reading synopsis about early plot and character development had the game taking on a fair bit darker and involved journey, but in action it's mundane but not offensive in the least (unlike SO4's cast who squicked me off it even before The Youtube Links of Doom).
 

Bladenic

Member
The cast is probably the worst in the series.

Abyss, yuck. Graces at least has two great characters, two (or 3) good ones, and a meh (kinda sucky) protagonist. Abyss, well it's just IMO, but had two good characters, a somewhat ok protagonist, 2 annoying characters, and one abysmal, insufferable character whom I consider the absolute worst of any Tales game.

And after having done all the end game sidequests before finishing the final dungeon and game, I've come to the final conclusion that I really like the cast in sidequests and skits. Most of them just suffer in the main story scenes I'm afraid.
 

Error

Jealous of the Glory that is Johnny Depp
kureakureakureakureakureakureakureakureakureakureakureakureakureakureakurea

/rebirth
 

Ties

Banned
kureakureakureakureakureakureakureakureakureakureakureakureakureakureakurea

/rebirth
ccBlu.png

KURRRREEEEAA
 
I didn't mind the romance itself, but the clueless hero stereotype killed that subplot for me. I hate that trope.

There a romance I found very strange and out of place though (Future Arc spoilers) :
Hubert and Pascal. It just pops out of nowhere during Future Arc. In the main plot there's clearly nothing between the two of them and there's even a strong hint at Hubert actually having a crush on someone else in Yu Liberte. Comes Future, he's head and heels over her, wat.
That felt terribly forced, as if the writers suddenly thought they needed to make Pascal be more relevant. Like "Hey, let's put her in Hubert's plot even if it doesn't make a lot of sense!".

No, they referenced it but it was subtle, unlike typical Tales where they throw it right in the player's face.

When Pascal saved Hubert from getting tackled by the boar, that was Step 1 (he realized he'd been unfairly railroading her and Malik when they thought of him as a friend). Then came Step 2, all the various skits with Pascal that suddenly now bring Hubert into them when otherwise he wouldn't be involved. Her coming to find him when he thought everyone "got lost" is one such scene. Then for good measure, they threw in Step 3 with Pascal having doubts about her relationship with her older sister Fourier just like Hubert did with Asbel, and his clumsy efforts to console her (even though he was tsundere about it and insisting he wasn't). By that point I was like "yeah, he's gonna want her before this is over". Besides, they didn't need to make Pascal more relevant, the group would've been screwed on like 7 different occasions without her anyway so she was pretty darn important already.
 
I didn't mind the romance itself, but the clueless hero stereotype killed that subplot for me. I hate that trope.

That isn't what annoyed me about it honestly, it was Cheria who pissed me off. The "childhood friend with secret feelings for the hero but acts tsundere about it and won't ever man up and tell him" is irritating on so many levels. I like character like Colette and Marta, they're childhood friends with the hero but they're basically like, "No I like you and I don't really care who knows it".

Oh, and I'm pretty much at the end of the main game, and Asbel still has done nothing to make me dislike him. Dunno where you guys are getting your hate from, but you should save it for douches like Anise from Tales of the Abyss, or that Akzeriuth shit where I wanted to smash the entire party's face in with a rock, except for Luke.
 

Datschge

Member
With regards to Sakuraba, iirc, he composed Graces at the tail end of the time when his name was everywhere and his music was being used in everything. It's probably a case of being overworked.
I doubt he's ever overworked (he breathes composing), in my eyes that's just an myth by people overwhelmed by his output (though take out everything Tales and it already looks like a lot less). In interviews he keeps emphasizing that delivering results on time is most important. And we have info like that Symphonia was done in two weeks, the FMV pieces for Rebirth overnight, still no single live musician used except himself etc. it's pretty clear that there never was a budget (time and money) comparable to his other works. I don't think many composers would work under comparable circumstances (which is why Sakuraba's involvement was always such a sure bet up to now). His actual amount of Tales work is negligible though, most pieces are very short compared to other works at the same time (Tales soundtracks are usually looped twice while his others CDs don't loop), the complexity of pieces are very low (cue the amount of piano pieces and simple movie like orchestral pieces) and until Xillia the mastering/EQing (which is more time consuming than composing itself) was very raw to non-existent.

For comparison: based on the amount of live musicians Dark Souls was likely the biggest budget work Sakuraba was able to do since Star Ocean 3.

I guess the sound isn't wholly Sakuraba's decision, then (especially noting that he can do some good stuff like with VP, BtL, ES, and Dark Souls).
Sound direction is usually not up to the composer at all. Camelot was known to leave Sakuraba a lot of leeway unlike other developers which resulted in plenty fresh pieces in their past games, though that changed with GSDD. VP's battle tracks were created by him being told to do "cool music" in place of the usual more detailed directions. The last interview makes it seem like Sakuraba is pushing for bigger stylistic changes, but as a freelancer that's a thin line to walk. Composers (like all creative people) tend to get typecasted.
 

Ties

Banned
That isn't what annoyed me about it honestly, it was Cheria who pissed me off. The "childhood friend with secret feelings for the hero but acts tsundere about it and won't ever man up and tell him" is irritating on so many levels. I like character like Colette and Marta, they're childhood friends with the hero but they're basically like, "No I like you and I don't really care who knows it".

Oh, and I'm pretty much at the end of the main game, and Asbel still has done nothing to make me dislike him. Dunno where you guys are getting your hate from, but you should save it for douches like Anise from Tales of the Abyss, or that Akzeriuth shit where I wanted to smash the entire party's face in with a rock, except for Luke.
"It's okay I believe believe and trust in you and you're my best friend now etc etc"

He's not a bitch like anyone from Abyss, but it was so cheesy that I couldn't help but roll my eyes. I don't hate Asbel at all, I like him for what he is. He just tends to say things that makes me want to vomit, especially during the F Arc.

I don't particularly like that character trait in regards to Cheria, but I like her for her personality
and design oop
. She's pretty rational about things and her benevolence really touches me. I see her as the mother figure in the group
 

kewlmyc

Member
Quick question. Why does everyone hate Anise? Sure she was annoying and the
battle to the death with Arrietta was SO FUCKING UNNECESSARY, but the whole cast is to blame for that for going along with it
, but being called the worst character in Tales history sounds kinda harsh.
 

Ties

Banned
Well.

She was
directly responsible for Ion's death, when it could of been avoided had she informed the party prior that her parents were being held hostage. Seriously, you have a team that consists of a Seventh Fonist that is capable of singing Yulia's hymns, the Prince of Hod, a Princess, the son of a Duke, and a Colonel. They could of saved your parents.

Not only that, she also is responsible for Arietta not knowing that the Ion she accompanies everywhere is not the Ion that she fell in love with. The last time that Ion had the opportunity to tell Arietta, she interrupted him. Also, she's a damn spy that continually deceived the party in multiple occasions and she dares to bitch at Luke for causing the destruction of Akzeriuth (when I believe she was responsible for even more deaths due to her treacherous treachery). And she is rude as hell to Arietta for no damn reason. By the way, no character development either.
 

FSLink

Banned
Quick question. Why does everyone hate Anise? Sure she was annoying and the
battle to the death with Arrietta was SO FUCKING UNNECESSARY, but the whole cast is to blame for that for going along with it
, but being called the worst character in Tales history sounds kinda harsh.

She
betrays your party and the cast doesn't seem to care much about it after the fact. Though that happens with a lot of the stuff int he game.
 

kayos90

Tragic victim of fan death
Quick question. Why does everyone hate Anise? Sure she was annoying and the
battle to the death with Arrietta was SO FUCKING UNNECESSARY, but the whole cast is to blame for that for going along with it
, but being called the worst character in Tales history sounds kinda harsh.

I hate kid characters. I also hate annoying little girl kid characters. That's just me though. Unless the character development is done extremely well, I stand by my previous statement.
 

Bladenic

Member
Quick question. Why does everyone hate Anise? Sure she was annoying and the
battle to the death with Arrietta was SO FUCKING UNNECESSARY, but the whole cast is to blame for that for going along with it
, but being called the worst character in Tales history sounds kinda harsh.

Feel free to nominate someone else. I hate that bitch. And you're forgetting the whole
betrayal deal where she fucks the party over, causes Ion's death, acts like a cunt to Luke, gets re-accepted to the party with no repercussions, acts like a complete bitch to Arietta, etc etc. And I don't want to hear the shit about the fact that she had no choice. She could have fucking told the party, saved her parents, ETC. I fucking hate the cunt.
 

Ties

Banned
Feel free to nominate someone else. I hate that bitch. And you're forgetting the whole
betrayal deal where she fucks the party over, causes Ion's death, acts like a cunt to Luke, gets re-accepted to the party with no repercussions, acts like a complete bitch to Arietta, etc etc. And I don't want to hear the shit about the fact that she had no choice. She could have fucking told the party, saved her parents, ETC. I fucking hate the cunt.
Normaskit3.png

You hate her for the same reasons I do, I see. We are going to be exceptionally close in due time I believe.
 

kewlmyc

Member
Feel free to nominate someone else. I hate that bitch. And you're forgetting the whole
betrayal deal where she fucks the party over, causes Ion's death, acts like a cunt to Luke, gets re-accepted to the party with no repercussions, acts like a complete bitch to Arietta, etc etc. And I don't want to hear the shit about the fact that she had no choice. She could have fucking told the party, saved her parents, ETC. I fucking hate the cunt.

I haven't played in years, I forgot about the
betrayal. I forgot what the cause and effect of her betrayal were. I can understand the hate a little more now. It's a shame that her character design is cute though.
 
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