Support NeoGAF

[rhandino]

No materials with those large fields seems kinda strange. But if that's the case, I actually don't mind, because I think the recent-ish trend of Japanese RPGs switching over to picking up loads of materials is kind of tiring. Even DQ9 did it. :¥

Oh, May I ask what kind of things you can do in those massive fields? They reward exploration? or have secrets scattered everywhere?

I just want to know since they seem so big and I just hope that they reward at least exploring then with exp or chest or banter between characters...

 

[RPGCrazied]

It's already been confirmed and groaned that it'll be Sorey.

That's even worse. lol

 

[Bebpo]

Yeah, it'd be a fun thread one day to compare Japanese pronounced katakana names with their "official" English translation. I know there's some real bizarro ones out there.

Tida in FFX still sounds weird to me for Tidus. It's one case where the English version sounds MUCH better than the official Japanese pronunciation. Tida sounds like a girls name to me honestly.

 

[Cess007]

Same here. I envy them. I want to learn japanese (my university does courses) but I won't do that until my German is decent, since one is a must for me while the other would be just for "fun".

This reminds me that when i asked for the university course here the schedule overlapped with my work. And for some reason they canceled the Saturday courses

This games makes me want so bad to learn japanese!

 

[dramatis]

When watching one of the streams I had my first "this is really amazing" moment: In some scenes the transitions between exploration, cutscenes and battles are completely non-existent, even without any camera cut. In theory it might not be really special, but in execution this was really exhilarating to watch, especially as the transitions happened regularly. Bet it's even more so when in actual control. ^^

This was something I thought was nice while watching the streams too. I thought, this is going to be something nobody notices, and yet here you are! I think the transitions and effort kind of indicates that they've got a solid engine good for future work. For all the complaints about 'How come not Vesperia graphics?!', I'm more impressed with things that their tech allow them to be more ambitious in subtle ways, I suppose.

 

[Mifec]

Oh, May I ask what kind of things you can do in those massive fields? They reward exploration? or have secrets scattered everywhere?

I just want to know since they seem so big and I just hope that they reward at least exploring then with exp or chest or banter between characters...

There is banter and there are ruins/statues that give you boosts IIRC

Yeah, it'd be a fun thread one day to compare Japanese pronounced katakana names with their "official" English translation. I know there's some real bizarro ones out there.

Tida in FFX still sounds weird to me for Tidus.

Yeah Mikelo also sounds weird in japanese when they pronounce his name as Mikulio

 

[Mendrox]

They cannot change his name.

 

[dark10x]

Hmmm, I'm very curious about the games soundtrack here. I wonder how involved Go Shiina really was here? His work on Legendia stands far FAR above the entire Tales series, as far as I'm concerned, and I would love to see his work attached to an actual decent game.

 

[Rhapsody]

I almost caved on importing. Going to just wait... probably.

 

[Bebpo]

I'm not fluent, but I understand it when spoken, I can read somewhat good too.
I don't have a lot of possibilities to actively practice it, so I can speak but not fluently enough as to hold a high flow discussion. Writing, however, is the worst area for me.

I've been watching films, drama, anime, and playing games (normal ones like RPGs, platformers and so forth, but also a lot of Visual Novels) for a bit now so unless it goes all metaphysical or something really specific, I should be able to understand.

I could improve on A LOT of aspects, and probably should by taking this even more seriously than I have until now, but without any sort of immersion in a group and the like, there are walls I won't be able to climb that easily.
Wait and see in a few months if I can get a position in Japan. It could work out, but nothing is set in stone yet.

[/off-topic]

Plus playing Japanese games can help improve reading a lot. The more you read, whether it's games, manga, books, etc... the faster you'll get at reading Japanese and you can learn words through context or use a dictionary to look up words you don't know if they come up regularly.

On top of that Tales of games are some of the easiest Japanese rpgs to play as they're aimed at kids, anime-style and use really simple Japanese and grammar like most anime does. They also are almost always full-voiced so it helps hearing words/kanji that you might not be able to read. I've always recommended people looking to get into playing rpgs in Japanese to start with Tales games.

Best of luck on getting the position in Japan btw!

 

[Alex_Mexico]

Sony should've moneyhatted Namco to assure a Zestiria PS4 port.

The console is struggling in Japan as it is with few titles that talk to japanese consumers. The fact that this high profile game is coming to last gen a year after the PS4 has been available is a sad thing to watch.

We need the PS4 to do well over there. The world needs more japanese made console games.

Persona 5 and FFXV can't come out soon enough.

 

[dark10x]

Plus playing Japanese games can help improve reading a lot. The more you read, whether it's games, manga, books, etc... the faster you'll get at reading Japanese and you can learn words through context or use a dictionary to look up words you don't know if they come up regularly.

On top of that Tales of games are some of the easiest Japanese rpgs to play as they're aimed at kids, anime-style and use really simple Japanese and grammar like most anime does. On top of that they're almost always full-voiced so it helps hearing words/kanji that you might not be able to read. I've always recommended people looking to get into playing rpgs in Japanese to start with Tales games.

Best of luck on getting the position in Japan btw!

Listen to Bebpo on this, he's right on. My reading improved dramatically from playing through so many RPGs - some of which he suggested to me back in the day. The Tales games were definitely among the first that I really dug into with Abyss actually being the first one I played to completion in its original form. Ah memories.

Now I'm doing it all over again with French (which is easier in some ways but harder in others, I'm finding). :\

 

[kiryogi]

Tales and Final Fantasies are fantastic as entry level for importing. On the other hand something like Fire Emblem would be a giant wall. Maybe not recent entries, but when I picked up FE for GC that was a giant wall of text without much voice to support it and was YIKES! Otherwise, most other importing has been a jiffy. IE I've done both all the idolmasters as well.

 

[Rpgmonkey]

When watching one of the streams I had my first "this is really amazing" moment: In some scenes the transitions between exploration, cutscenes and battles are completely non-existent, even without any camera cut. In theory it might not be really special, but in execution this was really exhilarating to watch, especially as the transitions happened regularly. Bet it's even more so when in actual control. ^^

Yeah relative to how the other PS3 games executed on all this it's pretty impressive and does benefit the cutscene direction in a noticeable way.

I assume the eventual end game here is to have our active party and all enemies present at (nearly?) all times. It seems like Zestiria actually will do this for cutscene->battle transitions, but maybe they couldn't get good results out of it for general exploration.

 

[Peff]

The problem with Tales games is that sometimes it's hard to tell whether something is going completely over you head or if it's really as stupid as it seems to be, haha. Level 5 is very consistent with using Furigana, even Time Travellers uses it. Kingdom Hearts is also fairly accesible since most of the skills are in katakana.

Hopefully we get some Go Shiina goodness soon!

 

[Datschge]

I wonder how involved Go Shiina really was here?

Quality or quantity? Quality wise I already like his tracks (which are easily distinguishable from Sakuraba's) far better than his work on God Eater 2. Quantity wise I feel people shouldn't expect too many tracks. As sole indication (which may refer to the soundtrack as a whole though) the video interview with Sakuraba mentioned he composed around 100 tracks, and the soundtrack is set to contain 109 tracks. But I don't think Shiina should get too many tracks anyway, on God Eater 2 there were some stinker fillers that would fit right in as Tamura replacements. =P

Sony should've moneyhatted Namco to assure a Zestiria PS4 port.

Has been mentioned several times in previous threads, Tales hasn't been a series to quickly switch to the current gen last gen either. When Vesperia was released, Xbox 360 was already out for nearly three years!

 

[Aeana]

Level-5 squarely targets young boys, the same people who buy magazines like Shounen Jump, so they are definitely reliable for furigana, and you're also generally safe in terms of language level with the majority of their games as well.

 

[RalchAC]

This reminds me that when i asked for the university course here the schedule overlapped with my work. And for some reason they canceled the Saturday courses

This games makes me want so bad to learn japanese!

Be patient, bro. At least we know it's coming in a few months. Now it's a good time to be a Tales fan in the west. We even got the Vita game.

They probably canceled the course because there wasn't enough people inscribed.

 

[dakkumauji]

Tales and Final Fantasies are fantastic as entry level for importing. On the other hand something like Fire Emblem would be a giant wall. Maybe not recent entries, but when I picked up FE for GC that was a giant wall of text without much voice to support it and was YIKES! Otherwise, most other importing has been a jiffy. IE I've done both all the idolmasters as well.

For understanding the story of FE, yes, it's a giant wall of text.

Playing it on the other hand isn't so bad.

 

[Dark Schala]

Mine shipped at 4 in the morning. Both it and Legend of Legacy are in different orders so I'm not sure which one will get here first.

Adding insult to injury, I'm still going through Boxboy (that one HAL game that came out last week after the ND), finishing Sen II's postgame dungeon, FF7 FC patch, a Mega Man fangame I've been chipping away on, a game a friend made, and a few other games on PS4 so it's like "wow, soooo many gaaaames".

Could probably clear a few out this weekend, though.

All you importers, do you understand Japanese? I know rpgmonkey does. I envy you. Get to play jRPG's way in advance before its western release.

Learning a new language is always on my bucket list, and when I was in high school a few friends and I started trying to learn Japanese together. I used reference books, and started playing little easier-to-understand games like famicom DQ games or easier-to-understand SNES games. Was fun playing a game in Japanese like FF5 then checking the patch out to see if I was right. The trick to learning a language for me is to make it fun and not make it a chore.

I'm more well-versed in Romance languages, though. I analyzed those structures more when I majored in linguistics in undergrad and learned several different versions of Latin. Surprise-surprise when my Advanced Syntax prof was Japanese and all of his examples were in Japanese or Gaelic, lol.

 

[Falk]

Could be worse, I call Loewe in Trails in the Sky Rave half the time because レーヴェ sure sounds like a weird romanization of Rave on first read (Re-ve). And Sorey sounds like a weird romanization of Slay, so I'll probably be calling him that too.

Sometimes I have to force myself to remember the "correct/official" romanization of character names because they don't make much sense and in my mind I think of them as a different name.

#soreynotslay

All you importers, do you understand Japanese? I know rpgmonkey does. I envy you. Get to play jRPG's way in advance before its western release.

I've been kinda 'forced' to pick up Japanese in the past two years because of work. Importing (or getting free copies of heheheheh) the Japanese versions of RPGs both feeds into that and gets fed by that.

Tales seems especially good for this because of so much of the topical banter contained in skits.


edit: Now that the game's actually released:

Hmmm, I'm very curious about the games soundtrack here. I wonder how involved Go Shiina really was here? His work on Legendia stands far FAR above the entire Tales series, as far as I'm concerned, and I would love to see his work attached to an actual decent game.

Shiina also did a few vocal songs for certain parts of the game.

Spoiler

I shouldn't say more than that for now since the game's still fresh out the oven

Spoiler

because spoilers

edit2: I don't think watching Sorey punch shit with his fists on the field will ever get old lol

 

[Jathaine]

As long as we can all agree ToD2 JPN's is the worst.

Sorry, we can't.
You, Link, won't always have the key to my heart.

 

[Datschge]

Shiina also did a few vocal songs for certain parts of the game.

Meh, that's my least favourite part. I just don't like vocal songs in my games. =(

 

[SatelliteOfLove]

Man, I hope that Kamui system functions better than Links and the dialogue is snappy.

Alisha had better become playable or that $80 figure of her I have preordered is looking to be like quite a rash purchase indeed.

The harshest of buyers remorse from Tales Tchochkes!

They're sorta like the Eleth Pot, you make them while traveling. There's other skills that'll make Gels and stuff too. I don't think they use materials, in fact I don't think materials exist at all in Zestiria, for food or equipment. I've never seen any in menu screenshots or mentioned in gameplay details.

GOD the Eleth Pot was so goooooooooooooooooooooood.

 

[RalchAC]

Man, I hope that Kamui system functions better than Links and the dialogue is snappy.

The harshest of buyers remorse from Tales Tchochkes!

GOD the Eleth Pot was so goooooooooooooooooooooood.

Was that thing that had like 5 slots, were you could put the items you wanted to be made? Plus there were some books that improved it. It was filled when you walked or something like that and creating stuff costed eleth points.

Man, I'd replay Tales game mores often if Bamco didn't released a new one every 4 months. I like getting them, but it has certainly been tiresome.

 

[dakkumauji]

Was that thing that had like 5 slots, were you could put the items you wanted to be made? Plus there were some books that improved it. It was filled when you walked or something like that and creating stuff costed eleth points.

Man, I'd replay Tales game mores often if Bamco didn't released a new one every 4 months. I like getting them, but it has certainly been tiresome.

Yes, but you could grow the number of slots and energy and it was pretty fun to have something passive happen especially with foods in battle.

It was really neat, even more neat was when you were able to duplicate items that have a tiny percent of chance of duplicating.

 

[Datschge]

Man, I'd replay Tales game mores often if Bamco didn't released a new one every 4 months.

At this point this is only true if one has a backlog and treats ports as new entries. Tales releases has been comparably very few since Xillia 1.

 

[RalchAC]

Yes, but you could grow the number of slots and energy and it was pretty fun to have something passive happen especially with foods in battle.

It was really neat, even more neat was when you were able to duplicate items that have a tiny percent of chance of duplicating.

Yep. Now that we're talking about it I remember trying to find what was the best way to get X and Y material using the different books (some for faster recovery, some from extra chance, some for less cost) and arranging the different slots.

It was certainly good. I remember the crafting system had a lot of stuff to make too. And the idea of using titles to unlock skills or stats and improve them was quite cool. They seem to be doing something similar in this game but using the armours you get from random drops, shops and chests.

Can't wait to hear some people impressions. Games looks quite good and I'm getting more hype as the conversation goes. Not going to read a single spoiler though. So mark all of them, guys!

Spoiler

Please

At this point this is only true if one has a backlog and treats ports as new entries. Tales releases has been comparably very few since Xillia 1.

Well, in the past 2 years I've played 4 Tales games. Graces and Xillia in 2013 (Graces 5 months after release in EU, Xillia EU day-one) and Xillia 2 and Hearts in 2014 (both EU day-one). When I started to fill "I should replay" this I usually had another game two weeks away

 

[Falk]

Was that thing that had like 5 slots, were you could put the items you wanted to be made?

It was dinky at the start but with proper nurturing you could turn it into a self-refilling (Book of Maintenance etc) auto-heal auto-buffbot.

 

[SatelliteOfLove]

Was that thing that had like 5 slots, were you could put the items you wanted to be made? Plus there were some books that improved it. It was filled when you walked or something like that and creating stuff costed eleth points.

Man, I'd replay Tales game mores often if Bamco didn't released a new one every 4 months. I like getting them, but it has certainly been tiresome.

Pretty much. It was amazingly fool proof and convenient, yet didn't degrade player agency, restriction, or depth.

Spoiler

this successful effort of course means it was doomed to not spark iteration

 

[dakkumauji]

Pretty much. It was amazingly fool proof and convenient, yet didn't degrade player agency, restriction, or depth.

Spoiler

this successful effort of course means it was doomed to not spark iteration

Well on one hand, it never coming back at least meant there wouldn't be any trophies like maxing the energy on the pot.

 

[Falk]

That... took two playthroughs at most and if you were aware of it you'd have it maxed long before the rest of the plat.

 

[keisuke999]

OOh, look what was waiting for me at my desk this morning )))

 

[dakkumauji]

I'm jelly you got Slay.

Now I want my copy just so I know who I got. :x

 

[Mifec]

Heard Zavied in action, his VA is GREAT.

OOh, look what was waiting for me at my desk this morning )))

Congrats

 

[keisuke999]

I have no idea where on the TOZ site to put in my serial code for my pre-order bonus... anyone know?

EDIT: Seems the site isn't open yet... ugh.

 

[Falk]

You're going to beat me on the plat for this one aren't you lol :C

 

[keisuke999]

You're going to beat me on the plat for this one aren't you lol :C

Revenge for Kingdom Hearts

 

[Falk]

#soreynotslay

 

[RyougaSaotome]

Is anyone playing who doesn't know much Japanese? Seems like that would be hard.
I only ask because I didn't know some people posting know Japanese! That's a nice surprise.

There's a pretty sizable amount of people on here that know Japanese, myself included. =)

Gonna be buying this after work and probably streaming my scrubbiness on Twitch.

 

[RangerBAD]

There's a pretty sizable amount of people on here that know Japanese, myself included. =)

Gonna be buying this after work and probably streaming my scrubbiness on Twitch.

Don't you actually live in Japan?

 

[kayos90]

My order from PA hasn't shipped yet. Sort of getting worried.

 

[MaximumSpider]

The opening got me so hyped for this....
But I still can't justify firing up the old PS3 just for this.

 

[Aeana]

My order from PA hasn't shipped yet. Sort of getting worried.

Don't. I checked my e-mail and literally every single release-week order I've made with Play-Asia for the last five years has shipped Thursday between 1-3 AM central time. Always FedEx shipping. Always received on Friday morning.

 

[kayos90]

Don't. I checked my e-mail and literally every single release-week order I've made with Play-Asia for the last five years has shipped Thursday between 1-3 AM central time. Always FedEx shipping. Always received on Friday morning.

You told me the same thing when Xillia 2 came out. I have faith in you!!!!

EDIT: Just listened to the Destiny OP, and I forgot how this song sounded. Aeana. I stand corrected. I think I was thinking of a different song.

 

[Alex_Mexico]

Has been mentioned several times in previous threads, Tales hasn't been a series to quickly switch to the current gen last gen either. When Vesperia was released, Xbox 360 was already out for nearly three years!

Just because they've done something in the past it doesn't mean it has to continue.

And even then when they did bring Vesperia to new gen it was only on Xbox 360! Something I'm convinced was a mistake for Namco in the long run. It took them a year to bring it to PS3 and only in Japan. The first PS3 only Tales they did release, Xilia, went on to become the best selling Tales game in history!

Anyways, as we know the jump from PS2 to HD was bigger than what you can get away with when porting over to PS4 from PS3. I'm not asking for a new gen only Tales. I was saying they could've ported straight to the PS4 as is with a higher resolution and call it a day.

 

[Aeana]

You told me the same thing when Xillia 2 came out. I have faith in you!!!!

EDIT: Just listened to the Destiny OP, and I forgot how this song sounded. Aeana. I stand corrected. I think I was thinking of a different song.

Good. I knew you were crazy, but I didn't think you were quite that far gone.

 

[kayos90]

Good. I knew you were crazy, but I didn't think you were quite that far gone.

There were parts of that song that sort tickled me in the same fashion as the Inuyasha OP and ED. lol. I love them OPs and EDs yo.

EDIT: God Eater 2 costumes are announced as DLC. Sorey gets Julius and Rose gets Nana. This is very weird. I thought Rose would get something like Alicia. Whatevs. Alisha getting the shaft again though. lol.

 

[RangerBAD]

Just because they've done something in the past it doesn't mean it has to continue.

And even then when they did bring Vesperia to new gen it was only on Xbox 360! Something I'm convinced was a mistake for Namco in the long run. It took them a year to bring it to PS3 and only in Japan. The first PS3 only Tales they did release, Xilia, went on to become the best selling Tales game in history!

Anyways, as we know the jump from PS2 to HD was bigger than what you can get away with when porting over to PS4 from PS3. I'm not asking for a new gen only Tales. I was saying they could've ported straight to the PS4 as is with a higher resolution and call it a day.

I feel like Japan is trying to transition to the PS4 faster this time, even though it doesn't seem viable in their domestic market at the moment. That's why we're seeing so many cross generation stuff still.

 

[Mifec]

The face of pure evil