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Tales of Zestiria Import Thread - Turning Legends Into Hope

Aeana

Member
Hmm, ok yeah I just fought
Ouroboros
boss by the broken bridge early on and the difficulty spike was crazy. It's almost as if the difficulty level changes don't effect normal enemies much but really effect bosses. Normal enemies on hard are still joke easy and die in 5 seconds, but this boss was killing people left and right with really hard hitting attacks and tons of HP. Had to use most of my items! Was fun though.

That being said I don't really get the guard break system? Like when I was hitting this boss with all the different elements I thought it was the water element that was giving off "weak", so I fused with water kamui and none of my water attacks were doing much damage (or any attacks at all) but then every so often he would basically become guard broken and all hits would be weakpoint criticals and I'd be doing tons of damage no matter what the attack.

Is this another FFXIII's style battle system where it's all about breaking the boss and then piling on the biggest most damage combos/hi-ougis while he's broken and repeat?

I wouldn't say it's all about that, but it's extremely helpful. They also let you combo bosses decently in this game unlike some other recent games. There's also a battle action you want to have on called break charge (which requires you to do 30 guard charges to unlock) which guarantees an unguarded attack if you guard for 2 seconds first.
 

Falk

that puzzling face
Got a favor to ask of you folks who are near the end of/have beaten the game or are watching streams.

We recorded a couple of the vocal songs for Go Shiina, and one of the singers wants to see her track in-game. It's called "Journey's End", and is
13 minutes long, plays on the final night before the last boss
, female vocals with english lyrics. It's not this one (which is Rising Up)

If you run across a twitch (or otherwise) video with it, lemme know. Will be eternally grateful etc.

edit: fixed spoiler tags
 

Bebpo

Banned
When you have two gattai people in your party there's no way to change mid-battle which one you want to kamui with, right? I thought I read a note saying something like you could but I couldn't figure out any way.

I decided to change to second for boss fights after the
Sewer serpent boss was one hit killing my support members when they had plenty of life and would kill them again once they were revive. Was just real annoying. Need my AI members to be able to survive and not be in constant death unless they all sit back blocking and doing nothing.

Might just leave it on second even if normal enemies are a joke. The exp downgrade on hard seems like it might have bad repercussions down the line when your party is incredibly underleveled and missing all kinds of attacks. I'm fine with tougher difficulty but purposely underleveling is never something I've gone for in rpgs. Especially ones with new attacks being granted at set levels.
 

jae

Member
When you have two gattai people in your party there's no way to change mid-battle which one you want to kamui with, right? I thought I read a note saying something like you could but I couldn't figure out any way.
.

In the menu in battle, pressing start lets you change the controllable character. D-pad cycles through the tenzoku. Unless you are asking something else entirely.
 

Bebpo

Banned
In the menu in battle, pressing start lets you change the controllable character. D-pad cycles through the tenzoku. Unless you are asking something else entirely.

Ok, yeah that's what I was asking about. Thanks. I remember it saying something about d-pad, but didn't try it during the battle pause screen. That's good, will be helpful if linked to one of the wrong element for the boss/enemies.
 

Hasemo

(;・∀・)ハッ?
Ok, yeah that's what I was asking about. Thanks. I remember it saying something about d-pad, but didn't try it during the battle pause screen. That's good, will be helpful if linked to one of the wrong element for the boss/enemies.
Not only that, if tenzoku is hurt or even dies, switching to another one which isn't currently in the party will heal the one who has been sent away.
 

RalchAC

Member
Unfortunately, Zestiria suffers from modern Tales balancing where regular enemies and bosses are wayyyy out of whack. Regular fights are too easy, bosses then seem like a big difficulty spike by comparison. It's weird since in the PS2 era, they didn't really have that problem.

I'd never understand this. I mean, in Xillia there was a moment while I was playing (on Hard) that I arrived to a mine where enemies where around 15 levels over me. They could definitely kill me in 1-2 hits if they wanted, the risk was there, but for some reason I found the hour or so that I spent there much more fun than many of the bosses in Xillia.

Sometimes in both Xillia's I felt like some bosses were playing cheap. It was worse in Xillia than Xillia 2. That problem wasn't that bad in Graces. And in Vesperia I remember the infamous wolf fight you get early on the game (where you have to stun him using the flowers spores) that made me drop the game for 6 months :p

Because I'm sure it's totally his choice to spam DLC stuff everywhere in Tales games these days and make tons of money off the fanbase at ridiculous prices.

Namco is the Activision/Ubisoft of Japan. If they see a way to make more money, they do it. Hence why One Piece Warriors 3 is coming to PC. The only reason something like Zestiria isn't on PC is because this whole "oh shit PC Ys Origin just sold more copies than its entire run in Japan!" realization by Japanese publishers just happened in 2014 and Zestiria's been in development for several years prior and the engine may not be something easily ported. I was talking with duckroll about this and I really think the more realistic proportions and large area design you're seeing in Xillia and even more in Zestiria is happening because Tales is one of the few Japanese series that sells something in the west, even if not a ton and they're trying to make Tales more western/global to expand the fanbase through more western fans and going to PC next is no brainer if you're chasing that.

I'm pretty confident that their next PS4 engine will be PC compatible and you'll see a PS3/PS4/PC or PS4/PC release.

So a company wants to make money? That's shocking :p

I don't completely understand your analogy. It seems you're saying the bolded statement as a bad thing, but then you actually talk about something that's good for us. And One Piece PC version is probably a Tecmo Koei thing. They already ported DW8XL to PC and released it on Steam in the West and it seems it has done good enough numbers to them. So they're betting again on the platform.

About Tales on PC... who knows. That's a 100% Bamco game. There are other IPs that would definitely benefit from being on PC more than Tales. Like Tekken 7. Unless we see some of their more "mainstream" (wasn't Tekken selling like over 5 million units WW in the PS2 era?) IPs on the platform, I wouldn't even consider Tales.

And I'd love PC Tales. If that platform got Tales and Persona I would definitely switch there and hold back a PS4 purchase until it was really cheap :p
 

Bebpo

Banned
I'd never understand this. I mean, in Xillia there was a moment while I was playing (on Hard) that I arrived to a mine where enemies where around 15 levels over me. They could definitely kill me in 1-2 hits if they wanted, the risk was there, but for some reason I found the hour or so that I spent there much more fun than many of the bosses in Xillia.

Sometimes in both Xillia's I felt like some bosses were playing cheap. It was worse in Xillia than Xillia 2. That problem wasn't that bad in Graces. And in Vesperia I remember the infamous wolf fight you get early on the game (where you have to stun him using the flowers spores) that made me drop the game for 6 months :p



So a company wants to make money? That's shocking :p

I don't completely understand your analogy. It seems you're saying the bolded statement as a bad thing, but then you actually talk about something that's good for us. And One Piece PC version is probably a Tecmo Koei thing. They already ported DW8XL to PC and released it on Steam in the West and it seems it has done good enough numbers to them. So they're betting again on the platform.

About Tales on PC... who knows. That's a 100% Bamco game. There are other IPs that would definitely benefit from being on PC more than Tales. Like Tekken 7. Unless we see some of their more "mainstream" (wasn't Tekken selling like over 5 million units WW in the PS2 era?) IPs on the platform, I wouldn't even consider Tales.

And I'd love PC Tales. If that platform got Tales and Persona I would definitely switch there and hold back a PS4 purchase until it was really cheap :p

There's also Dark Souls and Naruto. I'd say Namco Bandai is one of the biggest publishers flocking to steam from Japan along with Square Enix and now Falcom (though w/Falcom I'm not sure if it's Falcom or Xseed whose responsible). In 3-4 years I bet we start seeing Gust Tonelico series and maybe even Nippon Ichi getting Disgaea stuff on PC. I'd be surprised if Japanese console games didn't become the norm to be on PC in the west along with whatever console. Japanese games don't sell that many copies, which is why the budgets tend to be so low, especially in the rpg genre outside the big hitter FF and DQ mainlines. So an increase of 200-400k additional sales in the west through Steam is going to be a huge incentive to make game engines easily portable to steam in the future.
 

RalchAC

Member
There's also Dark Souls and Naruto. I'd say Namco Bandai is one of the biggest publishers flocking to steam from Japan along with Square Enix and now Falcom (though w/Falcom I'm not sure if it's Falcom or Xseed whose responsible). In 3-4 years I bet we start seeing Gust Tonelico series and maybe even Nippon Ichi getting Disgaea stuff on PC. I'd be surprised if Japanese console games didn't become the norm to be on PC in the west along with whatever console. Japanese games don't sell that many copies, which is why the budgets tend to be so low, especially in the rpg genre outside the big hitter FF and DQ mainlines. So an increase of 200-400k additional sales in the west through Steam is going to be a huge incentive to make game engines easily portable to steam in the future.

Yeah, that's true. I didn't remember Naruto since the last game I played from the UNS series was Generations. That's a Bamco Bamco game on the platform.

Dark Souls is a From Software game though. In Japan FS is (was, now it's been bought by Kadokawa IIRC) a publisher, so it may not have involved them that much.

There is definitely success to be had on PC and I think Steam users would be quite receptive about something like Tales.

Awesome move with OPPW3, by the way. I'm buying the Vita version day one (unless there is some really big issues) but I'll probably double dip the PC one in a sale.
 

Peff

Member
I love how every time they played that track in trailers and streams they cut it right before it goes full on Short Circuit, haha.
 
So how's the main character.

I can't stomach another Asbel
, just from looking at him I highly doubt he's good like Yuri, I can only hope he's at least bland and inoffensive like Jude.
Don't woprry , he 's nothing like him.

I agree with Aeana. I started becoming suspicious when
I saw Rose in Kamui form. I don't remember seeing Alisha ever getting it (maybe I'm wrong), and it would've made sense for her to have it if there had to be two characters with the ability. She was pretty phased out regarding trailers too. A shame though, I really did like her design. Really stood out for what I would've thought to be the main heroine lol. Once I saw the name Alisha and a spoiler tag next to it in this thread, it was really easy to put two and two together.
That's pretty much how i put it together too.
I'm not even mad.. For me it was something expected , when the battle system was introduced.The final hint was when i've watched the damn opening of the game last week. You can't make it more obvious.

What I've heard of the music has been really great, best Tales OST since Legendia? Wish/hope Shiina does the next one too.

Legendia OST was always what saved that game.
 

RalchAC

Member
That's pretty much how i put it together too.
I'm not even mad.. For me it was something expected , when the battle system was introduced.The final hint was when i've watched the damn opening of the game last week. You can't make it more obvious.

In Alisha's case I think the message was really easy to grasp. She vanished for months, we got really few info from her after she was revealed during the Tales Festival

And they said Alisha wasn't able to see Tenzokus. And they said she couldn't enter in Kamui form. Kamui is a key mechanic in the game for what I've read here.

I think they may have wanted to have her in the party at first (since it has a full moveset, animations and a set of weapons to buy in the merchants) but found it wasn't practical for gameplay purposes.

So they considered the different posibilities and decided that not having her in the party most of the time was the best posible outcome.

That way:

A) She would still appear in the story when it was needed.
B) They could fix (as they can't be removed) Rose and Sorey in your active party. No choice = Less people complaining because they've done things wrong :p
C) Less Bloomers per Second, which is a good thing :p

After they decided to drop her as a party members lord Baba (or somebody in charge of marketing, supervising and that kind of stuff) decided they couldn't waste money so the team was asked to do something so Alisha's moveset was used. So they made the post-story DLC with that girl as the focus and announced it would remain free for the first 2 weeks after its release to make people buy it before the prices drop.

That's my theory :p
 

Mieu

Member
Great to hear. I am currently playing Graces F and I really don't like the music. It feels a lot worse than other Tales game I have played.

Oh... you didn't like the three note underground dungeon music? :D

Alisha's role in TOZ has been defined in the Opening in the game.

Her thoughts were "Why oh why??!!"

10947274_10153062754454674_5054059487114192893_n.jpg


@Aeana
There's really no fix on the camera?
I've watched a fight with the dragon and it wasn't as nice as Graces F

@the colors and the way Zestiria is 3D
Didn't Baba-san mentioned before that they were after the water color effect? Aside from Vesperia, are there any other Tales Of games that really look nice?
 

Bebpo

Banned
The more I play and the more towns and locations I see, it definitely becomes apparent the art direction is the Vesperia guy. The game at times looks very close to Vesperia just slightly less cell-shaded.

A good example is the starting town. When you finally see it during the full blue sky daytime it could easily go for the castle town in Vesperia and everything looks heavily cell-shaded, just not as much as Vesperia and with more realistic proportions instead of the SD look of Vesperia. It also has a ton of color when it's blue sky daytime, so it seems a lot of the game looking faded and low color has more to do with the story choices of the world being overrun by darkness.


The battle system is fun, but it's hard to tell if it's deep or there's balance because despite there being a bunch of sub-systems, it's still a pretty mashy Tales because there's so many enemies in a lot of encounters that it's just pure chaos so you find the most damaging enemy first and run up and mash combos with an element that its weak to, either in Sorey form or in Kamui form of the corresponding element. And if people are dying you tell them to back off and heal. It's definitely way more fun than what I played of Xillia's battles, but don't know if I like it more than Graces. My memory of Graces battles were that they were a bit more strategic than most 3d Tales which made it awesome.
 

Datschge

Member
you can pay and travel to already visited locations. I don't know if there is more to that.
There were skills mentioned that increase the running speed

(impressions)
Thank you for the lengthy impressions. You have been down on the more recent Tales games until this one, what would you say makes this one so positively different? Only the new approach to characters and story?

(impressions)
Thank you too. Agree that the option of a fixed camera should have helped. Should be a given anyway whenever more than one player play, but alas...

They probably need to design a Tales game that doesn't involving linking first.
And for that somebody at the team need to take multiplayer seriously again. After that all the linking, forced soloing and merging as part of the battle system would go away automatically. Maybe somebody should also finally push player vs player battles for Tales so that the games can garner a fighting community and appear on events like APEX or something. xD

The backlash is mostly about one particular thing that because it is not that big of a deal in the grand scope of the game.
fixed

Tales tends to look low-color.
Interestingly enough while "Team Symphonia" games were always low color, "Team Destiny" ones weren't.

Got a favor to ask of you folks who are near the end of/have beaten the game or are watching streams.

We recorded a couple of the vocal songs for Go Shiina, and one of the singers wants to see her track in-game. It's called "Journey's End", and is
13 minutes long, plays on the final night before the last boss
, female vocals with english lyrics. It's not this one (which is Rising Up)

If you run across a twitch (or otherwise) video with it, lemme know. Will be eternally grateful etc.
I already saw a full video of that on youtube, let me look if I can find it again...
Edit: Your link goes to several hours of video so I don't know what you refer to in that. What I thought of and just found again is this (end game spoilers! put it as code so it doesn't show up on mobile), is it it?
Code:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGuX7pjQP7U
 

Bebpo

Banned
Thank you for the lengthy impressions. You have been down on the more recent Tales games until this one, what would you say makes this one so positively different? Only the new approach to characters and story?

I don't think I've been down on Tales that much even if I tend to be pretty negative on the ones I don't like. Xillia was really the first mainline Tales I stopped playing at ~10 hour mark, so I don't really think I played enough to fully judge it, but I found the boring fields combined with the boring battle system and awful shop system (at least in Zestiria new towns have new & better equipment so you don't have to deal with the shop levels if you don't want; also enemies drop tons of good equipment in battle). With all the parts besides the story being dull, Xillia was just a bore to play and talking with people in the import thread it didn't sound like the gameplay ever really got much better; really didn't like the link system (another aspect that is far better in Zestiria; in a lot of ways Zestiria feels like the game they were striving to make with Xillia), so I dropped it. Didn't play Xillia 2 since I never finished Xilla so no comment. At some point in the future I'll start Xillia over and play through both since I am a big Tales fan. I loved the heck out of Graces, so much fun and fantastic game other than being short and a small world and Asbel being Asbel. ToS2 hated the battle system, worst Tales I've played. Really nothing good to say about that one. Vesperia liked it a lot but felt the 2nd half really fell down story-wise and the battle system wasn't particularly deep and was a boring Team Symphonia battle system so it's not one of my favorites even if the first half's story was great. Narikiri Dungeon X was actually pretty fun! And it makes me sad that the Radiant Mythology/Narikiri spinoffs seemed to have died with the PSP. I'd love a new 2d Tales battle system.

What makes Zestiria different so far (and why I'm really enjoying it) is the battle system is a lot of fun like Graces even if it's debatable whether it's better than Graces or not. The story is solid (Aka, not too dumb), the NPCs and minor cast characters are actually tolerable and the main cast is likeable. Also it helps that it's a positive Tales game and it's doing well so far at making you feel good playing it instead of using the usual awful cliches and tropes of misunderstandings and classism and racism and angst and all that shit that is just frustrating to watch play out in badly written jrpgs.

Zestiria's also a fun game because the game is paced pretty well after you finally get through the slow tutorial section that takes place after the great opening and until after the first main dungeon (about 3 hours of slow tutorial stuff with hardly any combat/dungeons). It keeps you wanting to play and not put the game down (and wanting to fight every battle because the fights are fun and character ability/move progression is constantly upgrading every battle or three). Everything's just well presented (seamless transitions are nice), feels good, with fun combat for satisfying game.

So far about 12 hours and 3-4 dungeons in, It's got some problems and it's not perfect but it's a fun, enjoyable game that makes me happy and not want to stop playing. If an rpg can do that, It's a-ok in my book. It reminds me a lot of the PS1/PS2 era Tales in that way. They were fun games.
 
Been avoiding this thread and various other places for spoilers until it was out in english but still managed to be spoilt anyways. Hearing some mixed things about this game but regardless I'll still try to get as much enjoyment out of this as I possibly can. Got 2 questions, is there a time limit for how long you can stay in Kamui and hows the replay value once you've beaten the game?
 

raven777

Member
Been avoiding this thread and various other places for spoilers until it was out in english but still managed to be spoilt anyways. Hearing some mixed things about this game but regardless I'll still try to get as much enjoyment out of this as I possibly can. Got 2 questions, is there a time limit for how long you can stay in Kamui and hows the replay value once you've beaten the game?

nice avatar!
 
I'm more surprised it matters this much to some people.

Same as with the costume deal, I don't like to feel like I'm getting "farmed"; I escaped most of that in gen 7 due to my tastes, but now it's hitting home there too. Thing is, this is a new generation, with new financial realities (aka, we know Hot Deals come down the pipeline within months on the regular).

Also, (and this is just from extrapolating from non-spoilered talk itself), stuff like the PS3 versions of Vesperia and Graces or Xillia 2 were announced much later than this, giving them the (probably quite legitimate out) of "a new business opportunity to take advantage of all those unused ideas and assets we had to cut to make release date" instead of this one's "let's cut this now to sell extra" deal (again, I don't like being farmed and don't like the whiff of this on expansion packs). Them not even trying to hide this is especially off-putting.

Kratos is the real crime here. The only halfway decent character in Symphonia.

Not Raine either?
 

Datschge

Member
(...) It reminds me a lot of the PS1/PS2 era Tales in that way. They were fun games.
That I find to be very good to hear!

The more I play and the more towns and locations I see, it definitely becomes apparent the art direction is the Vesperia guy. The game at times looks very close to Vesperia just slightly less cell-shaded. (snip)
Glad to see I'm not the only one reminded of Vesperia even if the end result still differs. ^^

Same as with the costume deal, I don't like to feel like I'm getting "farmed";(snip)
Please go to the DLC thread if you only want to complain about being "farmed". As for stuff being cut I'm pretty sure this is not the case here, what everybody seems to think as being cut wasn't even planned as such,
Alisha's minor role in the story and her character design being done by one of the internal ones, not the celebrities Fujishima or Inomata
. The expectation that the publishing side initially built simply didn't match with what the developer was actually creating.
 

Shouta

Member
Played a few hours last night after watching the OVA, which was extremely good btw,

Overall impressions so far are great. I like the concept and pacing of the story. The introduction was pretty unique for any game. I can't really think of another that has a similar thing happen. The history of the world is interesting and how the things relate is promising thus far. I also like Lady Like even if it reminds me of a town in another game, lol.

Slay doesn't have a personality that leaves a strong initial impression but I really like the happy-go-lucky and slightly sarcastic attitude he has, at least with Mikurio or however it's spelled.. He also has a certain amount of naivete and knowledge that is a fun balance too. The two Tenzoku members early on are interesting but not has been shown about them. Mikurio (sp?) definitely has more personality showing because of his interactions but Lyra/Laira's starting to get a bit of it too. Alisha is just kinda there and honestly, seems sort of out of place aside of her actual role so far. There's also something about her voice acting that's bothering me but I might have been tired.

Combat is OK so far but I haven't gotten a chance to get new arts. I did unlock Kamui last night though. I like the skill and equipment system. Very nice change of pace for a Tales game and it sure gives me a lot of room to have fun with it. It might be a pain considering the shop system but that'll remain to be seen. I do like the change to the shops to make it more about "regular customers" too. That's really neat.

Overall, it feels like they took a lot of lessons they learned from Xillia in regards to engaging the player more in cutscenes with movement/angles/dialogue but married some of the slower sensibilities from the older games. Not all the dialogue is pertinent but it serves to make the characters feel fuller. It's actually nice to get some of this that's not contained into a skit that is supposed to have a punchline.

Looking forward to getting some more time in tonight.
 

Shouta

Member
Well, Mikleo is easy to remember. It was late and I couldn't remember the exact katakana. Mibo is good though. >=o
 

Fisico

Member
Got Edna earlier today, kinda funny how for the Kamui
There was this matter of needing a weapon, with Lailah's sword being "holy shit it's Excalibur :", Mikulio's bow being randomly in the middle of a ruin, and Edna's fist... juste being there without any kind of introduction.
Can't wait for Dezel's wings and how they won't even talk about it

Overall I am ~15 hours in, I'm still baffled by the lack of AA even now and I keep visiting areas which are grey for valid reasons or not, the game clearly lacks polish on the graphical part and I keep seeing gloomy looking places. From a visual point of view that's kinda a letdown.
I'm confident that it will improve though (as I'm in the town which was showcased in the first trailer and heard some good things of what was coming afterwards).

Otherwise I noticed two different things recently:

- The fights suddenly got longer a few hours ago, I was like destroying the mobs in 15-20 seconds and I know need around 1mn (I'm playing on Second)

- I feel like there's a problem of sound during the cutscenes/battles where voices, music and sound effect are played at the same time, I have a hard time to hear what the characters are saying which is something I never have a problem with before.
Of course I used the default sound settings so I tried to up the voice's one, but it's still not ideal

Regarding the big controversial

- I still have Alisha in my party, which I found funny because I was expecting her to leave earlier than that.

All in all the game is still rather fun to play, way more than Xillia that I dropped 20 hours in a few years ago, I'm playing with the skill and equipment systems a bit, the boss battles feel challenging (could have something to do with the AI doing whatever it wants) and I am happy every time I hear a new Shiina's track
 

Shouta

Member
JP audio tends to have the audio for the SE and Music higher than the voice during many scenes making it more difficult to hear voice-acting. Tales is notoriously bad for that too, IMO, so I just knock those two settings down a level before I start the game to get the correct sound volumes.
 

Fisico

Member
JP audio tends to have the audio for the SE and Music higher than the voice during many scenes making it more difficult to hear voice-acting. Tales is notoriously bad for that too, IMO, so I just knock those two settings down a level before I start the game to get the correct sound volumes.

I see, well I already played Graces with a japanese version on Wii and same with Xillia on PS3, but maybe that's just me being more aware to these kind of details now.
 

Aizo

Banned
I work pretty late some times, but this was waiting for me when I got home last night! I only got to play for an hour, unfortunately. I hope to play more after work tonight.
I wish I could trade someone for Edna.
 

Soriku

Junior Member
JP audio tends to have the audio for the SE and Music higher than the voice during many scenes making it more difficult to hear voice-acting. Tales is notoriously bad for that too, IMO, so I just knock those two settings down a level before I start the game to get the correct sound volumes.

Do you know if the audio quality is on par or better than the Xillia games? The music in the Xillia games sounded a bit muffled. Same with the voices, though that may have been a problem with the localization and not the JP version.
 

Shouta

Member
Do you know if the audio quality is on par or better than the Xillia games? The music in the Xillia games sounded a bit muffled. Same with the voices, though that may have been a problem with the localization and not the JP version.

That was a localization issue rather than a JP one as I recall

Oh! That's who I got for the Rubber Strap, I think it was Edna that I got, lol.
 

kayos90

Tragic victim of fan death
I work pretty late some times, but this was waiting for me when I got home last night! I only got to play for an hour, unfortunately. I hope to play more after work tonight.

I wish I could trade someone for Edna.

I was pretty disappointed when I got Edna lol
 
That I find to be very good to hear!


Glad to see I'm not the only one reminded of Vesperia even if the end result still differs. ^^


Please go to the DLC thread if you only want to complain about being "farmed". As for stuff being cut I'm pretty sure this is not the case here, what everybody seems to think as being cut wasn't even planned as such,
Alisha's minor role in the story and her character design being done by one of the internal ones, not the celebrities Fujishima or Inomata
. The expectation that the publishing side initially built simply didn't match with what the developer was actually creating.

I'll have to decline the offer; I don't really have the desire to anyways, as I've clearly stated the entirety of my peace plus a large number of other topics in my posts in this thread including that one, thanks.
 

aravuus

Member
Everyone's hating on the skill system, so how does it actually work? Pretty much every other Tales I've played has had the regular gain sp, get skills from gear/titles/crystals/whatever system which has always been fantastic, please don't tell me it's nothing like that this time around
 

Shouta

Member
Skill system this time is tied to gear in this game so it's not as straightforward as other Tales games.

The skill system is based around your gear and what's called a Skill Sheet. On each piece of gear, there are 4 slots of a variety of skills. Usually, the 1st slot is set by the piece of gear but the other 3 will be random, I believe. These give you a variety of effects like in previous games.

However, it goes beyond that. These also show up on the Skill Sheet, which is a grid showing what skills you have equipped at the time. What you can do is mix and match skills and your gear to make combinations on the skill sheet to gain bonus skills on top of the ones you equipped. This is done by either stacking the same skill several times, putting on skills that are next to each other on the skill sheet, or creating a full column with your layout (which is called a Unison).

The bonuses aren't anything to scoff at it seems. I got the Unison bonus for Mikleo early on and it gave me an additional 20 per stat for creating that layout on the skill sheet. So you can do some interesting things despite not having the gear that has the most defense or attack at the time.
 

aravuus

Member
I normally prefer being able to just gain the skills and equip/unequip them at will but I have to admit, while that sounds confusing, it also sounds like it could be really cool. At the very least it won't be a negative surprise to me when the game gets released in the west. Thanks for the surprisingly comprehensive reply
 

Shouta

Member
There are also AP skills which function just like the ones in other games. You get a bunch of points and you slot them off and on for certain benefits, so that stuff isn't lost in the game either.
 

Aeana

Member
Skill system this time is tied to gear in this game so it's not as straightforward as other Tales games.

The skill system is based around your gear and what's called a Skill Sheet. On each piece of gear, there are 4 slots of a variety of skills. Usually, the 1st slot is set by the piece of gear but the other 3 will be random, I believe. These give you a variety of effects like in previous games.

However, it goes beyond that. These also show up on the Skill Sheet, which is a grid showing what skills you have equipped at the time. What you can do is mix and match skills and your gear to make combinations on the skill sheet to gain bonus skills on top of the ones you equipped. This is done by either stacking the same skill several times, putting on skills that are next to each other on the skill sheet, or creating a full column with your layout (which is called a Unison).

The bonuses aren't anything to scoff at it seems. I got the Unison bonus for Mikleo early on and it gave me an additional 20 per stat for creating that layout on the skill sheet. So you can do some interesting things despite not having the gear that has the most defense or attack at the time.

Union with the first column is so overpowered, which leads to getting new equipment becoming a chore, because you need to find a way to get the best upgrade while keeping that bonus going.
 

Heyt

Banned
The skills stuff sounds indeed very confusing... So isn't there a way to keep skills on characters and wich them on/off as you want/can? Or you just have to plan your equipment enhancements/customization in order to get a certain set of skills that go active the moment the character carries the gear...?
 

Shouta

Member
Union with the first column is so overpowered, which leads to getting new equipment becoming a chore, because you need to find a way to get the best upgrade while keeping that bonus going.

Well, unless your new equipment is like 30-40 points higher than the old one with the bonus, lol.

The skills stuff sounds indeed very confusing... So isn't there a way to keep skills on characters and wich them on/off as you want/can? Or you just have to plan your equipment enhancements/customization in order to get a certain set of skills that go active the moment the character carries the gear...?

I haven't gotten too far yet so not sure. I do know you can lock certain pieces when equipping stuff so you don't accidentally unequip it, heh. You can also Fuse equipment to try and get gear with the skills you want.
 
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