Ah, good old Tales, always playing with your expectations of final bosses and dungeons! This is so great after that shitty Graces
I was hoping we'd get to
visit the other side and sure enough, here we are!
Also,
I usually despise Disney deaths from the bottom of my heart but I have to admit, I was glad to see Milla return. Even if the scene was anime-stupid as fuck. I do hope this won't end in a love triangle though... Fuck those.
I'm sad the game will end soon, it's very likely I'll reach the end tonight. And I doubt the story has any twists left, the last ten hours have been insane.
People don't like Teepo? I actually love him, A LOT better than the likes of Mieu. Ugh.
I am enjoying this A LOT more than Graces F, all the party members in Graces F were so up tight, in this game everyone is just so... casual, makes for a better adventerous atmosphere.
Ah, good old Tales, always playing with your expectations of final bosses and dungeons! This is so great after that shitty Graces
I was hoping we'd get to
visit the other side and sure enough, here we are!
Also,
I usually despise Disney deaths from the bottom of my heart but I have to admit, I was glad to see Milla return. Even if the scene was anime-stupid as fuck. I do hope this won't end in a love triangle though... Fuck those.
I'm sad the game will end soon, it's very likely I'll reach the end tonight. And I doubt the story has any twists left, the last ten hours have been insane.
Already thinking about tackling Tales of Destiny after this, it's probably the one Tales of game I haven't played. And it's the best selling one, and I've seen a couple of people call it (or the remake but hey, same game) the best Tales of so should be pretty good.
e: oh yeah, motherfucking sword that
cuts THROUGH TIME AND SPACE!
GODDAMN that may be the coolest JRPG weapon I've seen
I'm not too optimistic about that, I know it's very condescending to say the translator's aren't doing shit when they are using their free time to do it, but it's still irritating. I'll play the remake if the translation ever comes out but for now, I'll check out the original.
As for Teepo, I like how important he is story and character development wise. I think it's a really cool way to give Elize more depth, her being timid girl with
a loudmouth doll that speaks out aloud her true feelings.
2d tales games have always been the best because of how t hey address ai. You rarely have ai issues because you pretty much handle the frontline, keeping aggro and comboing enemies while you leave your waifus in the back magic bombing.
Might as well play Destiny now anyway. If the translation patch is ever released, it'll be years from now anyway so it wouldn't be as fresh in your mind by then.
Might as well play Destiny now anyway. If the translation patch is ever released, it'll be years from now anyway so it wouldn't be as fresh in your mind by then.
2d tales games have always been the best because of how t hey address ai. You rarely have ai issues because you pretty much handle the frontline, keeping aggro and comboing enemies while you leave your waifus in the back magic bombing.
Maybe it's because I like to just have fun with my Tales games and play on normal and be overleveled all the time, but I've never had anything bad to say about 3D Tales AI. Sure they don't seem to grasp the concept of guarding which is a shame, but it's never blatant enough to irritate me.
I understand how the AI could frustrate people who like a good challenge and normally play on the hardest difficulty, though.
Might as well play Destiny now anyway. If the translation patch is ever released, it'll be years from now anyway so it wouldn't be as fresh in your mind by then.
If I wanted to play a (good) JRPG I haven't played before, ToD's the only one I can come up with. There aren't many at least somewhat good JRPGs I haven't played anymore. Well maybe there are lol, just can't find anything worth my time anymore
moderate seems like a decent enough difficulty atm. taking like 20ish seconds to defeat trash mobs usually, but bosses give a good enough challenge and i end up beating them with most of my life bottles used (having both elize and leia on the field does make it substantially easier though).
Haven't fought any bosses that can mystic arte yet though, so thats gonna be fun
I finally got to play the game yesterday. It's my 5-player group, but we didn't get a full party until towards the end of the 7-hour session.
So, my friend apparently is a half-full kind of guy, because he didn't think the linking stuff was as bad for co-op as I yelled at him about. You can't even build up one bar of the overlimit gauge without linking for a decent amount of time. Now that we have a fourth party member, I'm very much of the opinion we should just do 4-player Hard Mode No Overlimit and be done with it.
Also, Hard is hard, but mostly because of enemy damage. The various enemy attack patterns are harder to predict over time just because there are so many different variants. You really need to pay attention to back step well, which has caused most of us depend more on Flash Guard and that 50% damage reduction while guarding skill.
As for general fights, even Elize can easily keep a random enemy busy in the corner. Most of the fights give you even numbers to your opponents, so as long as it isn't something like a treant you can take the easy way out and have everyone spar off with a single enemy. It's when you try to get clever or quick (for bonus xp) that things start becoming troublesome. I'm probably going to watch some videos of the early game to see how the AI characters deal with all the enemies running around while protecting you.
AND THE AI MOVES SO SMOOTH! You link a character and they just move around and get into attacks like they don't have to deal with a controller. I'm trying to use Free Run and position myself faster to up my game, but I think I've played too much Graces. In fact, most of the group had a problem with not jumping by accident at first. I finally have it memorized to start every single fight with Free Run held down.
Quick Character impressions:
I played Alvin for the whole time, and I learned that Sonic Thrust isn't as useless in this game as it is in the other games. If you're playing as him, it's an arte you should get early as it's both a gap closer when needed to keep combos, and it recovers quickly making it an extremely good move to build charges with. With a charge, it then becomes a Beast like move to blow enemies away and give you a couple seconds to go gang up on a different enemy with a teammate. Before I started using it Alvin felt like a slow and methodical character. With it, he feels much more like the burst-of-speed character I was hoping for. If you're great at backsteps, this is a great move to jump back in with.
Jude just looks and feels awesome. He also seems like a much better character for the usual Tales 1v1 battles throughout the story. We played on Jude's story while one of my friends is playing Milla's story on the side, so we get filled in on most of the cutscenes we miss. From what it sounds like, it's not that Milla's story is missing anything important, it's just that ALL OF THE WORLD-BUILDING EXPOSITION AND INFORMATION IS ONLY ON ONE PATH. Seriously? There isn't even dictionary of terms you can look up. That's one point in FFXIII's favor.
Milla seems all about options. She can fire spells at range, blast enemies point blank, and even has a number of good mid-range abilities.
I'm happy I learned that you get to equip 16 artes later in the game like Vesperia PS3.
Unfortunately, we don't have the TP to keep up with her spending, and it's looking increasingly so like she doesn't have the defenses to keep up with everyone, so her player can't be careless. She died a lot. The times she didn't were simply just because Jude, Alvin, and now even Elize can heal her at the same time.
We had Elize for only about 30 minutes before stopping for the day. She looks like she's really good at defending herself, and we found out it's possible to aim healing circles with the stick. Didn't get to spend enough time with her to really see anything other than the fact she's not a very hard character to play. Thankfully with her there I don't have to spend as much TP using Guardian Field.
Overall...
I'm happy enough. The game feels fun, and while there are things that annoy me those things annoy me mostly because they were in Graces F and I want them back. Stuff that looks fun or interesting to use include food (25% of your TP back for the next 5 fights! Eat it, eat it now!), the improved back attack encounter system (you don't always need to hold the button down to sneak up on enemies to get the stun), the new focus on backsteps and forward steps (and the fact that the first one you use doesn't cost AC)... I'll manage to have some fun.
The only thing I dislike is that we're back to hard mode bosses meaning "dodge every attack or lose 80% or more of your life." I was fine with it in Graces it was all about dodging, but here it just means if you're not blocking you're Free Running.
you know, something i noticed that might work out well later... linked folks tend to come to you... so if you are in a boss fight or a tough normal fight and one of you ai guys is getting destroyed, link to him, and free run away and he would come around to you.
having played some new little king story recently, would actually be pretty nice if you can link together with all your party and move as one lol.
People don't like Teepo? I actually love him, A LOT better than the likes of Mieu. Ugh.
I am enjoying this A LOT more than Graces F, all the party members in Graces F were so up tight, in this game everyone is just so... casual, makes for a better adventerous atmosphere.
As far as mascots that can talk, Teepo is high up there (although the only one I can remember is Mieu, and not for good reasons).
My opinion on the combat is that attack animations should start out - as in at level 1 - much faster than they currently are. Maybe this is because of coming off Graces with its snappy, fast-paced combat that encourages going all out as opposed to the measured pace this game has in the beginning. Also linking and linked normal attacks just morph spontaneously to me, and I don't really like that as I prefer my actions and their resolve time be not random so I can keep track of what I'm doing and not wasting/dropping inputs and lose my rhythm.
The only thing I dislike is that we're back to hard mode bosses meaning "dodge every attack or lose 80% or more of your life." I was fine with it in Graces it was all about dodging, but here it just means if you're not blocking you're Free Running.
I didn't find Hard mode THAT unforgiving. Then again, I only fought two bosses on Hard, the boss of the water dungeon and the boss of the foggy mushroom dungeon.
The latter was really hard for me, but I took every opportunity to do the dual arte where Jude does heal and the young girl does Pixie Circle. The dual arte restores everyone's HP a little.
The hardest part of that battle is when the birds came out. Their large numbers and high HP made my team drop like flies.
you know, something i noticed that might work out well later... linked folks tend to come to you... so if you are in a boss fight or a tough normal fight and one of you ai guys is getting destroyed, link to him, and free run away and he would come around to you.
having played some new little king story recently, would actually be pretty nice if you can link together with all your party and move as one lol.
Pretty much what I do. As Jude, I often link with people with low HP, wait for them to come to me, and I heal them. If they don't come in time, I heal anyway, which gives them a bit of HP. It sucks, though, because I don't like playing the healer in Tales games, but it isn't so bad in this game for whatever reason.
Hey guys, I'm looking for good wallpapers. Kind of like the ones that cycle in the bonus PS3 theme. Anyone know where to get them? Minus the XMB icons of course.
This game has some of the best bosses I've ever faced in a Tales game. Them breaking out of combos was annoying at first, but as I played on, it actually made sense as I had to study their attack patterns to know which attacks to dodge and which attacks to guard.
I was having a lot more fun fighting those bosses than I ever did with Graces.
I didn't find Hard mode THAT unforgiving. Then again, I only fought two bosses on Hard, the boss of the water dungeon and the boss of the foggy mushroom dungeon.
The latter was really hard for me, but I took every opportunity to do the dual arte where Jude does heal and the young girl does Pixie Circle. The dual arte restores everyone's HP a little.
The hardest part of that battle is when the birds came out. Their large numbers and high HP made my team drop like flies.
We didn't get to the end of the forest yet, but at that water boss we nearly wiped. On hard it has that grab move that can't be blocked, the beam that has an extremely long range so you either block it or make sure you're not 90 degrees in front of him, and the ground stab move which was surprisingly hard to to run away from. For a lot of the fight, anyone who wasn't blocking would die in 2 or 3 hits.
and I'd pay double for it. Seriously those 2 people are more interesting then the whole cast combined. I'm gonna look for any sidequests or anything involved with those 2 because their back stories are probably interesting as heck.
I'm looking back through the thread and remembering why I left over a week ago. Avoiding story spoilers is tiring, and it looks like I'm going to be playing Xillia a lot slower than everyone else...
I won't even get a shot at the forest boss until two weeks from now...
I thought I was seeing this, thank god that's not the case. I could swear I had like 30 or something and then I had none... maybe when you finish the chapter you lose them?
2d tales games have always been the best because of how t hey address ai. You rarely have ai issues because you pretty much handle the frontline, keeping aggro and comboing enemies while you leave your waifus in the back magic bombing.
Destiny Remake has some AI problems too imo. If you put the difficulty up, you're pretty much going solo.
They'll usually just run past you and try an aerial combo and just get surrounded and die.
This game has some of the best bosses I've ever faced in a Tales game. Them breaking out of combos was annoying at first, but as I played on, it actually made sense as I had to study their attack patterns to know which attacks to dodge and which attacks to guard.
I was having a lot more fun fighting those bosses than I ever did with Graces.
I'm looking back through the thread and remembering why I left over a week ago. Avoiding story spoilers is tiring, and it looks like I'm going to be playing Xillia a lot slower than everyone else...
I won't even get a shot at the forest boss until two weeks from now...
Yeah, it's mostly the reason I've been avoiding this thread until now. I came back here once just to check where everyone was at, and saw a spoiler just layed out for me. So I decided to come back to the thread after I got far enough in the game.
Which is one of the main reasons I usually dislike JRPG protagonists most of the time. There's usually that rare one that wants help but is still strong as heck, which are usually my favorites.
I thought I was seeing this, thank god that's not the case. I could swear I had like 30 or something and then I had none... maybe when you finish the chapter you lose them?
I don't think so. When I first visited the dude I traded 45 of my ~60 feathers, then when I went out in to the field and got another one it said I had none left besides the one I just picked up. I'm not even sure what a chapter finish looks like.
Which is one of the main reasons I usually dislike JRPG protagonists most of the time. There's usually that rare one that wants help but is still strong as heck, which are usually my favorites.
I thought about getting a platinum for this game but the trophies seem too grindy for me. I guess I'll beat the game again but with Milla, then see where I stand.
It's not as grindy as other jRPGs plats are. Since you have to do two playthroughs anyway and you can cheese the second one with grade shop, it's pretty doable.
If any one is wondering about the skit trophy you can easily get it on your second playthrough, by purchasing the unlock skits in the grade shop. If you do this you'll have to watch 220 of the skits. The game will keep the same number from your first playthrough but won't increase until you rewatch the same number. (you don't even have to fully watch the skits you can press circle once you start playing it and it'll count, but then you'll miss the great writing)
You don't even have to buy all the skits. The skits you saw the in the first playthrough carries over into the second, you just have to see the total amount so yes, you'll just spend the 20 minutes viewing the old skits and then see whatever skits are exclusive or that you missed in your second run.
I don't think so. When I first visited the dude I traded 45 of my ~60 feathers, then when I went out in to the field and got another one it said I had none left besides the one I just picked up. I'm not even sure what a chapter finish looks like.
You're handing them over to him, you can still use them to trade in for an item at a later time. It's just that he has the feathers now. Also thanks for getting "muttons, fresh muttons" in my head halfway through work.
I've hit a bit of a wall with Xillia, which is a shame as normally my JRPG wall comes just before the final boss
I've played for quite a long time, although I suspect I'm not out of Chapter 1 yet -
I'm off to get Teepo back from being kidnapped
and it feels as though absolutely nothing has happened - and the battles are pretty easy so it doesn't feel like I'm having to work at it, it's just a bit of a grind trudging through the poorly designed fields in particular.
I guess I also like a bit more positive feedback - Graces was excellent at constantly making you want to carry on battling due to the near-endless flow of stars filling up in your title lists, whereas the feedback from Xillia comes much slower and less noticeably ("bung four points somewhere in the Lillium Orb, fail to notice the difference because everything dies the same as it did before, prioritise Arts over everything else"). Maybe I'm just employing reductio ad absurdam but it just hasn't grabbed me like Graces did most recently - although at least it's not the boring "use Art 50 times to get new one" schtick from Symphonia/Abyss/Vesperia.
Yes, I prefer Team Destiny titles, why do you ask
It's not like I think it's a terrible game - it's a decent enough JRPG, which is more than a miracle this generation - but it's treading a fine line between "fun" and "grinding".
I thought I was seeing this, thank god that's not the case. I could swear I had like 30 or something and then I had none... maybe when you finish the chapter you lose them?
Which is one of the main reasons I usually dislike JRPG protagonists most of the time. There's usually that rare one that wants help but is still strong as heck, which are usually my favorites.
Definitely one of the worst aspects of many JRPG protagonists, along with being naive and just plain stupid. And hypocritical.
Jude isn't bad, thankfully. I agree with him on some things, disagree on others. He's been stupid from time to time, but he's not insufferable. A good enough protagonist, I'd say.
I wonder if we'll ever again get someone as perfect as Yuri as a Tales protagonist.
You're handing them over to him, you can still use them to trade in for an item at a later time. It's just that he has the feathers now. Also thanks for getting "muttons, fresh muttons" in my head halfway through work.
