By the standards of Tales of Graces character development, the Star Ocean 4 cast does get development. Lymle is reticent and withdrawn when you meet her, and by the end of the game considers the rest of the party her friends, to the point where she's the one who kind of gets through to Faize once he goes all bad guy. The catgirl finds a place she can call home, and the dumb girl with the angel wings learns to fly.
It's dumb, it's shitty, it's meaningless, and I wouldn't ordinarily call it character development, but it's every bit as well written and meaningful as the garbage in Graces.
But how are most of the Graces' characters similar? For many of the Star Ocean 4 characters, what challenged them to spur a change? Why are they even in the group? Is their challenge relevant enough to justify being in the group or could it have been solved in solitude?
Asbel is the lead perspective of the game, so he has to be there. His drive for his actions over the course of the journey is uncovering the mystery of Sophie, saving the world, attempting to resolve political strife, help Richard, and to claim and protect the land he leads. He's challenged by events as a child, where he sees his brother and friend hurt and one friend (seemingly) killed, and this spurs a change to be less rash, know his boundaries, and become stronger. As an adult his challenge is basically to know how he can protect all the things he cares about, and after some stints where he gets mopey or too forceful, he comes to the conclusion that he either can't protect everyone, or he needs help, possibly from the person or people he's trying to protect.
Hubert's initially driven to be there by the chain of command, and from there he's challenged based on his dedication to or loft relationships with his friends, family, and country. As a child he's weak and constantly following behind and under the shadow of his younger brother, then as an adult he has to remove the weight of being the "cast-off Lhant", and come to terms with not being "better" than his brother, but still someone who's admired and strong.
Sophie begins as robotic, having started with essentially one hollow and straightforward goal in life. Her challenge in the plot lies in her intended fate, coming to terms with the mortality that she lacks (yet the people she cares about possess), and learning through the various people she meets and learns about that humans diverge on different paths due to their motivations and preferences, but can intertwine with the lives of people you care about, instead of being a straight path to the end. This is what gives her directive purpose, and allows her to become more like a human.
Malik is similar to Hubert in that he's become disillusioned with the world, and has to get over his past and understand where his loyalties lie. Events in his past relationship left him cynical to the world, believing that there's little he's capable of changing (and thus nothing will really change) and that he might as well follow whoever commands over him. After losing to Asbel, returning to his home country, and meeting Kurt again, he begins to have a more positive outlook and instead of blindly following a commander, learns that while he may not have the power, youth, know-how, or influence to push in every single change he desires, he can at least help out those who do. I'd also say the he learns that he still has something to lose if the adventure fails, instead of being all lonely from the adventure.
Pascal and Cheria I will admit were fairly weak characters compared to the rest. Cheria gets stronger and that's mostly it. Pascal, while odd, seemed like a well-adjusted character from the beginning and outside of the relationship with her sister didn't really seem to have anything to gain.
Not that I'm saying these were too interesting, and it's portrayed in bland, goofy, or repetitive dialogue, but it's better than SO4. If Lymle changes, is there anything that really brings that about or is she just more friendly all of a sudden? Why did other characters, like the Cyborg and big-boobed girl hang out with Edge's crew and overcome an obstacle, and if they did overcome one, did they gain anything of worth from the adventure? Does the winged girl's plight tie into the main plot at all? Was the cat girl even looking for a home, and how does finding a home do anything to change her character? Did Reimi have more to her besides her five minutes of fame with that one boss?
Well, first, I didn't ignore any of that stuff. Even if you watch every cutscene, every Private Action, and every Skit, Tales of Graces rubs your nose in the shit(ty writing) a lot more than Star Ocean 4 does, and because of that I think the writing is worse.
What I'm saying is that if you do hate the character writing, you have the option to ignore the Private Action scenes in Star Ocean 4, because the game draws a sharp line in the sand with them and says "These are the Private Actions, they have no bearing on the larger overall plot, and deal exclusively with inter-party relationships." Your understanding of the plot of Star Ocean 4 is no poorer for having skipped the Private Actions than it would have been otherwise.
You can't skip out on all the skits in Tales of Graces, because while most of them are just about inter-party relationships, some of them add to or flesh out the game's actual plot, and there's no differentiation between the two. Your understanding of Tales of Graces is diminished if you skip the skits."
Well if you watch every single scene from Star Ocean, and every single scene from Graces, I don't see how one is pushing anything in your face more. At worst, they're at the same level.
It's been a while since I've played the game so I can't just bring up exact recollections, but I'm also not sure at point in Graces where the main plot is noticeably diminished if a certain skit isn't watched. I remember a lot of extra but unnecessary story and world details, but nothing where understanding of the main plot becomes inexcusably diminished if you don't watch a skit. An example would be interesting.
I'm not sure what to say, you basically supported my post by saying you zerged the bosses, especially that blurb about Emeraude.
Sorry, not going to go and explain the entire dualize system but the basic idea is... everything about it.
The entire point of dualizing weapons is getting the right qualities on them and leveling those qualities. If you know the process behind that you know why it is tedious. I think you understand that considering you said you can see why one would think it is tedious. I didn't really think it needed any explaining.
That said, its also generally annoying to get the qualities you want via dualizing and its actually sadly best to just farm them (which is tedium in and of itself).
I can see some aspects that makes one thinks it's tedious, but I'm not sure which of those apply to you. That's why I'm asking. I can't suggest anything if you're not pointing anything out.
For the last part where you do finally explain something, yes that can be annoying. It's just one of those systems where it asks you to put in a lot of work (and possibly have a guide on hand) to get something out of it, like Pokemon or whatever. I find it inaccessible if you're after high-level stuff, but it's not inherently bad and generally you're given things over the game that make it possible to use dualizing and will still help out greatly.
You thought you'd pull a fast one on me, huh? Well, unfortunately I've played plenty of other Tales games and none of them work like Graces in the boss department so this part of the statement is a bit of a throwaway.
I can't think of too many bosses in other games that continually spawn grunts that are actually more dangerous than the main boss itself. The main reason its easier to zerg most bosses in graces is that you can actually stop them from calling their allies. Most of the bosses would be a cakewalk compared to what they are if not for this.
The few that are annoying solo (very few) like Emeraude are only this way due to gimmicks that previous bosses didn't need to rely on like being able to pushback/damage/stunlock simply by moving and randomly breaking out of combos to do exactly that.
I mean, it is one thing to have a high penetrate value so I can't just easily get a combo going but if I have one going I don't understand why they would make a combo just randomly end on a boss even as you are still hitting it (granted Graces isn't the ONLY game to do that, but at happened in other games you generally aren't punished so hard for it seeing as all she has to do to kill a character is walk forward a bit).
Well I've played every single mainline Tales game, and some of them are kind of similar to Graces' method, others are different. And I'm not sure why you cut out the last part of that sentence. Generally the best thing to do in all of them to win is craft the most effective offense possible, nothing more. In a lot of (arguably all) Tales games, the bosses aren't designed well to cope and thus are a cakewalk. Some Tales games have different ways of coping with this (random jump outs in Vesperia, adds in Graces, combo breaking in Xillia), some executed better than others, and you can usually get around their coping method anyway.
As I said, when it comes to breaking out of attacks, it focuses a lot on certain stats (namely Accuracy) and simply how well you (ab)use the mechanics. Even Emeraude can be hit with long combos.
