Simon is a terrible terrible character. Game would be much better without her, even her design is awful!
And what is the point of even having a dragon in the logo? That whole subplot about the 8 dragons pretty much went nowhere the whole game even if I'll go fight a bunch now at the very endgame.
Narrative really seems like they had a good idea (Tenzoku/Doushi, Doushi going on an adventure across the land and having to stop himself from becoming disillusioned by how shitty humanity can be; Doushi collecting seirei to power up [should've been actual Tales seirei though that you can summon damnit!]) but once they hit that point they were like "uh, what do we do now with the plot?" and apparently know one knew!
And the game has a really, really bad problem with shoving what should be minor sidequests down your throat to progress the main quest. This whole "there's a huge war going on and a final boss to fight, but hey, now run around 3 places and help your friends" thing coming right after the "you need to do basically all the sidequests before you can advance the plot with meivin" combined with lack of save teleporting just feels incredibly insulting to the player and anti-player. Side stuff should be side stuff that you can run into and do at your own leisure; they shouldn't have major story stuff going on and then force you to do a bunch of sidequests to advance it.
game seems back on track after the first big dragon fight and done with stupid war stuff. Hopefully that was just a bad 10 hours of game where you had to do a bunch of non-important stuff and then finish off some side stories that you don't care about because the game never bothered to develop them enough to care.
Hopefully now in this last act, the narrative will at least be engaging to the end. I'm back to being interested in playing the game again thankfully instead of it feeling like a chore/work that I'm just progressing in for completion sake.
There are 3 awful trope characters in this game (not counting minor single instance characters like church priest medusa). Simon (the worst), Possed fox hyoma guy, and Marteen. They're all completely underdeveloped antagonists (well Simon may still get more development where I'm at in the game, but she's already far too annoying [ugh, that voice acting] to be redeemed as a viable character) and instead the three are just the usual stereotypical EVIL VILLAINS out of a shitty C-tier rpg, in a game where most of the other characters in the world tend to actually act somewhat realistic and even intelligent (almost a first for Tales!). The story would be much better without them; they really bring it down to the "bad" Tales level whereas the rest is fairly good Tales writing up there with the first half of Vesperia.
Thankfully at this point with fox dude and marteen dead, and with the super shallow and simple war story over, the story has now ditched almost all the bad narrative elements in the game, which should make the last act at least somewhat enjoyable as long as Simon doesn't ruin the whole thing.
That's because Zestiria aims for a classical fantasy story, Hero vs Evil and nothing more. It actually doesn't use the same tropes the series loves so much, like fighting not so bad antagonists like Mithos, Dhaos, Van, Creed and their followers etc. I pretty much agree with what you think about the story though. Beginning was interesting then nothing but a bunch of of forced events happens after the temples. I mean, the Tiamat battle which was really cool with 3 Go Shiina songs and the best directed cutscenes in the whole game was only because of a random Tenzoku turning into a dragon... Helldarf is barely better than Renard/Simone/Maltran to be honest, the whole flashback was pretty dumb.
So I'm on the way to the final dungeon and I get lost at
the starting dungeon because I don't see any exits other than the room where the "angel" is floating around so I think I have to beat the angel to advance the story except holy shit it's the most bs fight in an rpg in a while. If Angel connects a physical attack a single swipe instant kills Sorey and any other character, meanwhile neutral element is her only weakness but reflects 60% and her spell attack instant kills anyone in my party if it hits. The AI sucked for surviving and after dying like 3 times and feeling super frustrated that I'd have to grind (I'm lvl.51 party, she's at least 55 on simple), I give it a last shot using all divide, trying to play smart and dodge all her attacks and interrupt all her magic attempts and I just barely scrape by with all 15 life bottles gone, a ton of gumis gone, Sorey dead and Rose doing the final damage.
Then I find out that was totally optional :/
Oh well, hopefully none of the final boss fights are that bad. I'm a little worried because I gave up on the equipment/skill system at some point so I don't have any good skills, plus my tea, seems under leveled because leveling seems kind of slow in this game if you're not grinding. I mean I fight normal enemies 5-10 levels above me and it still takes a handful of battles to gain one level.
Don't want to grind at all, so hoping I'll be able to finish the game despite being 10 levels below the last bosses.
Ok, done. Last dungeon was good, final boss was bad.
So wait, the game forces you to do dozens of sidequests and yet somehow Edna's brother's story isn't resolved in the main plotline? This is worse than the turtle guy selling Alisha's weapons even in the final dungeon that does sorta of make it seem like Alisha was supposed to be part of the story.
And I agree, the flashback story was really mundane, which made Heldalf's motivations pretty uninteresting, and Simon didn't even get a story! She's just a fangirl and started wars and did all kinds of stupid stuff just because. Ugh. The main cast was good and even through the end I liked them. Zapheed was pretty cool, and the final buddy buddy group scene in Lastonbell before the end dungeon was quite nice.
But the story is so uninteresting in the end. The story of the previous doushi and heldalf was just...who cares. So you give him peace by stabbing him through the heart? Right.
If the point of Zapheed murdering hyouma to "save" them and Rose murdering people to "save" them was to get our main happy go lucky help everyone Sorey to accept that murder = saving in the end...that A) could have been presented a hell of a lot better in the narrative, and B) that's a pretty shitty tale! I like dark and pessimistic stuff as much as the next guy when Zapheed shows up and murders people instead of saving them I wanted Sorey to show him the light, not Zapheed show Sorey the dark. It's pretty unsatisfying!
But yeah, this game is a freaking mess. Like there's a good game in there and it starts off strong for 20 hours+, but so much seems lost on the cutting board floor. I mean you have a DRAGON on the logo and the pre-release hype was Tales VS DRAGONS and then when you meet Edna's brother early on you learn about the EIGHT LEGENDARY DRAGONS and then it's like ...dropped for most of the game and a few times you fight a small dragon and then you fight Tiamat and then if you just do the rest of the story there's no more dragons except the final boss is sort of a dragon but more just like a big hulking final boss transformation. Where is my game about the legendary dragons?
Alisha's story feels weird. Taking all conspiracy theories aside, her stuff just feels like they weren't sure what to do with her character. She's minor, then important, then minor, then forced sidequests, then she has a full moveset and then she's in the ending and it's like wat.
I have a huge problem with how the world map layout and timeline was presented. It's never done very well and like Kamuran was the gate to the north and a military strongpoint...so there's other countries north of the desert but we don't know anything about them?
The combat is ok, it's solid with some interesting mechanics that feels different than other 3d Tales but in the end it felt more repetitive and less enjoyable than Graces. You know, the best fight in the whole damn game was probably final form 1 on 1 Heldalf with Sorey because you can play it like Ys and learn his patterns and perfect dodge all his attacks to get lots of BG and chain combos. I really feel like the direction this team is trying to go is Ys-ish about patterns and dodge timing, but it's just too chaotic and mashy for that to really come into play that much. Maybe the next Tales should try for less chaotic and more Ys 7/Celceta (aka with party members) style.
Anyhow, I'll wrap up a few of the side stories LIKE EDNA'S FREAKING BROTHER DRAGON and speed through the Alisha DLC over the weekend but overall the game was just "ok". I liked it a lot at first but it just got kind of uninspired, lost direction and had almost no budget from from Pendragon on.
Not really feeling Tales right now though; probably won't get around to playing Xillia 1/2 for a while and might skip the next Tales tbh. The games have just felt like they're not a cohesive team making a single creative vision for a long time.
I have finally collected all the Daichi no Kioku (大地の記憶, is there any ways to watch them all again? I can't seem to find any options to do that in the menus.
Edit: Ok, so I just got to that stone monument.
I watched the cutscene and all the Daichi no Kioku again. Is Michael the previous doushi that Lailah was contracted with (but they mention he's with Maotenasu)? It seems like the event happened only one generation ago (since Mikleo and Sorey were babies at that time). From what I can understand, Michael was the doushi at the time and somehow Maotenasu (Mountainous?) bacame a Hyouma and when Herudarufu (Hellroof?) decided to let everyone in the village get killed, Michael use Maotenasu to curse Herudarufu? Is that correct?
Yeah, the lack of a cohesive team is really hurting Tales. Plenty nice ideas though, so I sure hope they are actually already doing some team building there. Thanks for your impressions!
Yeah, after I finish up some of the side stuff and maybe dip my toes into the post-game content I'll write up my overall impressions spoiler-free. Want to play Alisha episode to see what it adds to the story before fully commenting on the plot.
I have finally collected all the Daichi no Kioku (大地の記憶, is there any ways to watch them all again? I can't seem to find any options to do that in the menus.
Edit: Ok, so I just got to that stone monument.
I watched the cutscene and all the Daichi no Kioku again. Is Michael the previous doushi that Lailah was contracted with (but they mention he's with Maotenasu)? It seems like the event happened only one generation ago (since Mikleo and Sorey were babies at that time). From what I can understand, Michael was the doushi at the time and somehow Maotenasu (Mountainous?) bacame a Hyouma and when Herudarufu (Hellroof?) decided to let everyone in the village get killed, Michael use Maotenasu to curse Herudarufu? Is that correct?
Yeah, that's correct. I found it kind of confusing as well; it's not presented well the time aspect (of when this all happened) is pretty confusing. The game makes it feel like all of this happened long long ago, but really it's just one doushi back (20 years ago?) since Sorey baby was taken up to the heaven's and is only now about 20ish.
So what does anyone think about the rumored sequel?
Zaveid talked about the north continent and that Ednas brother went there to finish something. We never got to it... the areas feel quiet lackluster (No snow area e.g.) Ednas Sidequest feels very abrupt and the DLC ending is such a sequel hook lol. Zaveids gun origin is not really explained and more.
I kinda feel like there's enough material left on the table that they they might go back for a sequel eventually. A part of me would be ok with this as they've given themselves room to make a Destiny 2-style sequel that has stuff like a new cast,
a new region to cover
, and an completely new battle system so it feels fresh, and Xillia 2 levels of recycling aren't necessary unless they're trying to make something quickly and cheaply. I'm assuming the most optimistic (naive?) scenario here though where they take their time to make a more fleshed out sequel and a new game would come first.
On the other hand this increases the chances that by time the PS4 generation ends (in what, another 3-4 years?) we'll have only managed to get one or two original worlds out of it, and with series like Tales and Final Fantasy I prefer to move on to the next concept over getting expanded universe stuff.
I've beaten the last boss on NG+ after a bit more than 15 hours.
Now I gotta kill all Giganto monsters again for the HP bonuses, level my way up to 200 (102 right now) and then try to get the remaining trophies I'm missing.
During the leveling process I'm going to farm equipements with at least 3 Pleasure skills on them for Laila so I can complete the Same 16 trophy. Also I'm going to run the hidden dungeon for equipments with as much Dragon skills as I can to help dishing as much damage as possible during a certain fight.
Bring it on, it's the farming before the last stretch.
Alright, did majority of the side content and started Alisha ep but ended up just youtubing all the cutscenes because I realized that
I don't really enjoy playing as Alicia or Rose in combat.
Non-spoiler final impressions:
+Graphics - Great visuals hidden under awful IQ and performance issues. Funny story: I never even realized the game had detailed ground textures until a cutscene where the camera was pointed down at the cast from the air and suddenly the ground was super sharp and detailed in design. Because without any AF, it just looks like PS2 ground textures of colored blur while running around. I think this is probably the worst I've ever seen lack of AF affect visuals and seriously I feel sorry for the texture artists who made all the varied and detailed grounds since no one actually sees them in the game! The cell-shading is actually VERY good. they use a style similar to Vesperia that almost looks like anime in motion at times. If you just squint a little to throw off lack of AA jaggies, it's quite impressive. I'm confident that at 1080p with AA that game will look better than Vesperia and be the best looking 3d Tales game to date. Game also has serious performance problems with streaming in enemies/attacks and so you get drops from 30fps all the time. It never really effects gameplay but it's a blemish overall. Plus 30fps battles is a step back for a series that's used to having 60fps. So for PS3 I'd give the graphics a C, but the underlying art is so good that I think on PC or PS4 at 1080p with AA, AF & locked 30fps or 60fps, this will be a gorgeous A quality graphics game.
Sound: I'm seperating this from music, because the sound mix is screwed up for some reason. It always feel like all the levels are off between battle/field/story and you can't really fix it through adjustment. Was pretty annoying! Apparently the team needs to hire a sound engineer! This gets a C ><
Music: 2nd best Tales score behind Legendia. It's a good ost, with some great tracks and a few amazing tracks. Takes after the FFXIII-2 school in some way with vocal tracks that don't really fit the scenes at all, but hey it's cool having vocal tracks. Overall though don't expect Legendia quality. This isn't a soundtrack you'll listen to for years outside of the game. It's just a fairly good soundtrack and that's especially rare for Tales. B here.
Battles: Good, not great. Takes Graces battle system and takes it in a new linked direction (I'm guessing because they liked that aspect of Xillia?) which makes it feel unique and not just a Graces copy. But for all the complexities, too many battles basically consisted of mashing O x 4 over and over. By making the non-ougi O attacks actually real damage attacks means sometimes there's not even as much incentive as the old O x 3, X combos to mix it up. The element system is too big of deal imo because it turns every battle into just doing the 1 elemental combo combined with some ougis to maximize damage. I do like the idea that you only have to start a combo with an elemental hit and then you're free to free-form your own combo, but sometimes with all the enemy blocking and stuff you don't know which hit will actually connect so you just stick to a full chain of elemental attacks in the weakpoint element. But overall, it's a good battle system, not a great one that is a bit boring in the endgame and Graces did it better. B here.
Gameplay outside battle: Fairly good throwback gameplay the PS2 days of Tales. You have lots and lots of skits, tons of optional content from sidequests to hidden ougis and even hidden villages. It's a small world but there's a lot of parts to it from dungeons to towns, fields, temples to destroyed villages. Optional bosses are everywhere. Dungeons are ok, a couple of good ones, one annoying one, and a bunch of ok ones. They're not a linear line and occasionally they do have puzzles, but they don't really require a brain. The fields have a few interesting things, but some traditional stuff is missing like a real Arena (instead split up into little mini-solo challenges around). Cooking is worse than usual, equipment system tries to be original but is pretty terrible; luckily can be completely ignored and new equipment simply gotten through new shops or enemy drops. Overall there's some hits, some misses, but it's a solid B.
Characters: Splitting this from narrative. This group is great, no question. No lame stereotype characters in your party. No emo/angst bullshit in your party. Main character is a good dude who even if he's not dripping with personality, is interesting enough and likeable. Support playable cast is excellent. I'm not going to talk about antagonists here, because I want to give the main cast an A.
Narrative: Yikes. The narrative is awful in Zestiria. And it's not that kind of usual Tales "We're marrying furries" awful concept. The first 20-25 hours are actually deceptively good because the story has a good concept to it and as I said above the cast is great. But when it falls apart, it falls hard. By the end of the story, the story has no idea what the heck it wanted to be. There's contradicting themes left and right, characters who the game doesn't know what to do with, a backstory which is really uninteresting and a group of antagonists that have no real development and are awful. The narrative also has pacing issues after the first half where suddenly the game loses focus and instead of going on an adventure you're forced to run around doing sidequests before getting to the pressing matter at hand. It starts subplots, they'll disappear for 25 hours, and come back for a rushed cutscene conclusion out of nowhere, or just will never go anywhere with them. Something just feels really really off about the narrative. Like as if a huge portion of the game fell onto the cutting room floor aka the 2nd half of FFXII. The game does feel rushed, so maybe the game needed another year or development but the publisher said "we need our bi-yearly Tales game", or maybe stuff was cut out to be repackaged as DLC or a director's cut, or maybe the team just put their bet on the wrong horse and went with a script that wasn't very good. But it's a shame, because the first half is great and engaging and so it's a huge letdown when the 2nd half not only doesn't live up to the potential, but is just flat out bad and confusing. Narrative gets a D.
Length: Good length, the main game is about 35 hours, but doing all the side content will easily make that go to 50 hours and that's not including the post-game dungeon or bonus episode DLCs. The problem is the pacing of the main story is great for 25 hours and then not great for about 10 hours. Pacing issues aside this would get an A, but pacing included it's a C.
Overall Zestiria is an alright game that misses its potential. There's a good B-tier game in there that's unfortunately dominated by the ever present D-tier narrative which undermines the overall experience in the 2nd half. It's sad because the cast is good, the concept is good and if they had a better script it'd be a quality rpg worth playing, especially with the good soundtrack, solid battle system, great cast and good cell-shading. While the game underneath is still a quality game and there's lots of good old-school content to be had, it's hard to recommend the game to anyone other than die-hard Tales fans because it sure as heck won't give a good impression of the series to anyone else.
-------------------
SPOILER THOUGHTS
Couple of thoughts:
1. The Edna story. WHAT THE FUCK. When you meet Edna and she joins your party she's like "DON'T KILL MY BROTHER THE DRAGON" and Sorey promises to help Edna search for a way to turn her brother back on their adventure across the lands. Instead you never really do that and in the end on a completely optional sidequest you just go back up the mountain go "oh well, we never figured out a way, let's kill him and let him rest in peace" and murder the shit out of her brother and build a grave. From a plot writing perspective, unless Zestiria is supposed to be a satire of Tales writing, that's just...wrong.
2. Deizel's/Zavied's part in the story was pretty dumb. Zaveid is cool. They should have just put him in the cast and not had Deizel. Deizel adds NOTHING to the cast for the entire part of the game he's in. He just goes "..." or walks away during like every skit and conversation. He's a complete non-character and then has his DRAMATIC FLASHBACK which wasn't even that dramatic and then sacrifices himself. Meanwhile Zaveid is cool but uh, he has no character progression at all. He never changes from the start where he's wild and crazy and kills people to save them until the end where he's the same but actually nice underneath. But whereas all the other characters had stories and changes, Zaveid's subplot about killing things never goes anywhere and instead on the opposite Sorey just learns to accept it when they go kill Edna's brother and the final boss. Again, it's almost like this is a satire dark comedy plot. Maybe I'm on to something here.
3. Izuchi really is the best looking location in the whole game. Kind of a cop out to start with it and never do better. Even city wise Lady Lake is the nicest looking city whereas Pendragon is bland and ugly. The game really needed to integrate the tenzoku lands to have more attractive locations through, plus more sense of adventure. Also one of the big Tales traditions is having two worlds and human world + tenzoku world should've been the two worlds. Maybe it was a budget thing.
4. On top of that, the world is small and there's lots more out there. During Mikelo's 2nd ougi cutscene they talk about how there's still a ton of places to see out in the world like a fire mountain or a place made of ice that's written in the adventurer book. Kind of feels like they didn't have the budget to include half the places they wanted to so the entire tale is based around a single continent with two warring countries and maybe later games can expand on the world if ToZ is successful. But it just adds to the feeling that it's not a grand adventure like Sorey's journey was supposed to be.
5. Did not like the chest color thing at all. Even after doing almost all the sidequests, I somehow missed the final key for those red & gold chests so I couldn't even open half the chests in the last 10-15 hours of the game and side-content. Was kind of annoying >_<
6. So uh, the little solo challenges are supposed to be the arena for the game? Laaaaame.
Otherwise I think I've documented the rest of my issues with the narrative in past posts on this page.
I dunno, after Xillia and ToZ I think it's obvious that Tales studio doesn't have the budget/time to do these types of rpgs the way they want them to be. They should probably stick to fixed camera stuff and shorter games. Graces felt pretty complete even if it was a small story in a small world of 3 cities and that's more satisfying than these incomplete messes.
It was supposed to be a companion to the thread throughout the game where Sorey didn't want to kill and Rose ended up doing what was necessary because that was her personality and world view. When the side quest opens up, Sorey has the realization that killing someone isn't always the wrong answer, just sometimes a necessary one. Helmdalfr, or however you spell it, was this realization. He can't be saved by purifying him and killing him with a strong intent to simply kill him would corrupt Sorey too. Edna's brother was in a similar situation. There was no way to revert him from being a dragon and thus the only answer was to give him the peace he needed through Death. Zaveid was his friend and why he was going to kill him at the beginning of the game. Edna realizes her brother was too far gone but didn't want to give up on him but realized by the end it was the only way of saving him.
It's an interesting idea that they really should have explored more, i think. I'm OK with what they intended to do with it, just not how they did it in this game.
Also on Tenzoku stuff.
I don't think they actually have lands themselves. The only settlement of Tenzoku was at Izuchi and that town only really exists for Sorey to live there if I my memory serves me. But I might have missed a skit or something mentioning that.
Would you say the game is worth picking up for 4000 yen? I suppose it'll go for half that price in a year or so.
I really enjoyed Vesperia for the characters, but hated most aspects of Xillia. But I'm looking for something to fill that JRPG void until Xenoblade comes out.
Rose left the party. The character diaglog tells me to go to Ramoraku (ラモラク洞穴 if I want to chase after her, but it has no stars or any clue on where she is.
Please help. The quest tracking in this game is a big step down from Xillia.
Rose left the party. The character diaglog tells me to go to Ramoraku (ラモラク洞穴 if I want to chase after her, but it has no stars or any clue on where she is.
Please help. The quest tracking in this game is a big step down from Xillia.
I think I know where you are, there should be 3 quests if you hold R1 that you need to do before advancing the story. 1 is with Sergei in Laston Bell. 1 is with Rose in Pendragon and 1 is with Alisha on the Highland battle camp side of the war area.
Would you say the game is worth picking up for 4000 yen? I suppose it'll go for half that price in a year or so.
I really enjoyed Vesperia for the characters, but hated most aspects of Xillia. But I'm looking for something to fill that JRPG void until Xenoblade comes out.
I don't think they actually have lands themselves. The only settlement of Tenzoku was at Izuchi and that town only really exists for Sorey to live there if I my memory serves me. But I might have missed a skit or something mentioning that.
This makes sense and I can accept that but it's still a missed opportunity to not create a dual-world with Tenzoku in the heavens and thus more artistic and attractive looking locations to balance the more bland looking human world locations.
it's hard to recommend the game to anyone other than die-hard Tales fans because it sure as heck won't give a good impression of the series to anyone else.
Well, I said it would be a B game if it had a good/decent story. The game is solid but it's dragged down by the plot which affects every aspect of the game itself. With the story it has, it's probably more like a C game.
I think I know where you are, there should be 3 quests if you hold R1 that you need to do before advancing the story. 1 is with Sergei in Laston Bell. 1 is with Rose in Pendragon and 1 is with Alisha on the Highland battle camp side of the war area.
Thanks for the help. I finished all three of those missions, now I need to go to Kamuran (カムラン. However, before that I'm doing some side quests. So I need some more help on the side quests.
Rose just killed the guy that was robbing people then repossessing their art or something, but I'm not sure where to go next. Another one is the cat quest, do I need to talk to every landlord?
Thanks for the help. I finished all three of those missions, now I need to go to Kamuran (カムラン. However, before that I'm doing some side quests. So I need some more help on the side quests.
Rose just killed the guy that was robbing people then repossessing their art or something, but I'm not sure where to go next. Another one is the cat quest, do I need to talk to every landlord?
So I went back to the mountain and killed the dragon (Aizen). Before I fought him, Edna was talking about how I'm breaking my promise to find a way to save him (or something like that). Is this the bad ending to that quest? Was there really a way to save him?
So I went back to the mountain and killed the dragon (Aizen). Before I fought him, Edna was talking about how I'm breaking my promise to find a way to save him (or something like that). Is this the bad ending to that quest? Was there really a way to save him?
Well, I said it would be a B game if it had a good/decent story. The game is solid but it's dragged down by the plot which affects every aspect of the game itself. With the story it has, it's probably more like a C game.
What I still need to do, in almost that order (spoilers for trophies and end game):
1) Finish every main game arenas
2) Level up to 200
3) Kill Helldarf on Chaos without restarting
x) If I cannot for some reason, farm anti-Dragon equipement in the hidden dungeon
4) Kill Dragon Zombie
5) Kill True Helldarf on Hard
6) Do the DLC arena in under 2 minutes
With all this done, I'll be able to put the game down, concentrate on studying for my certification on the 16th, and finally concentrate on Shining Resonance, Tales of Innocence R (paused b/c of ToZ), Bravely Second demo and Tales of Hearts R (didn't want to do it before platinuming ToIR).
Of course it would be in a world where Bloodborne doesn't get released, as I'm sure to put anything else on hold once it's here.
Bebpo said:
While the game underneath is still a quality game and there's lots of good old-school content to be had, it's hard to recommend the game to anyone other than die-hard Tales fans because it sure as heck won't give a good impression of the series to anyone else.
I must be a huge one then because I can't find a lot I don't like with Zestiria. (I know I'm a Tales of fanatic, I've loved them all until now, apart from Tempest)
The skill system doesn't bother me at all, but I just wished I could choose freely instead of relying on luck or enormous planning.
I also liked the story a lot, not much to complain about in my opinion.
The final scene in
Lastonbell
before the final dungeon was awesome, especially the scene with
Edna and Zaveid, I adored her expression after he told her to comfort him in the future, then she turn back to him, smiles and says "iya yo". I LOVE THAT MOMENT.
I'm so dumb to have been stuck so long at (final boss special trophy spoilers)
True Helldarf on Hard difficulty because I used All-Divides (yeah, sue me!) to mitigate the damage.
And because that phase is a lot easier (no resistances) I was doing a lot of damage anyway while the boss wasn't doing anything almost. So yeah I knew that each segment of that phase reset the effects of the All-Divide and so I had to reapply it each time.
However it didn't occur to me, in the five tries I did between yesterday and tonight, that I should use one once more when he charges his mega attack, to null the limiter...which is safe because HE DOESN'T MOVE. So I was doing 50% damage this entire time and couldn't do enough to stagger him once I got to 25% of his health, resulting in my death.
With that thing out of the way, each charge he did lasted for less than 3 seconds 'cause my damage just skyrocketed...yeah...it was easy all along =(
Also yeah, to get that trophy you actually only need to
do the Kamui transformation phase of the fight on Hard. True "Lion" Helldarf on Simple, get killed on True Kamui transformation phase, restart the battle at that point but just change the difficulty to Hard and kill him. the trophy popped for me just when the third phase began, you don't need to hi-ougi his face afterwards if you don't want to.
and I literally lost all the hype I had. I'm not sure even sure if I want to start this since I probably won't even be able to finish it before Bloodborne comes out.
by the way, are there any difficulty-related trophies? Like ones where you have to do something while playing on HARD and if you switch to NORMAL once you're screwed.
by the way, are there any difficulty-related trophies? Like ones where you have to do something while playing on HARD and if you switch to NORMAL once you're screwed.
There are difficulty-related trophies but you only need to do the required fights at the difficulty they ask with some conditions to boot.
If you change at any point before or after, it doesn't matter.
I just fought Simon and got to Kamuran. Some questions related to the fight and before it.
Is Myuzu Michael's wife? Also it seems like she's Mikleo's mom (though I don't remember that's being explicitly said)? Why did Myuzu had to sacrifice herself? It doesn't seem like she did anything.
For the cutscene after the fight with Simon, she said something about Dezel suffering, I couldn't quite understand it, can someone tell me a brief summary what she meant?
I just fought Simon and got to Kamuran. Some questions related to the fight and before it.
Is Myuzu Michael's wife? Also it seems like she's Mikleo's mom (though I don't remember that's being explicitly said)? Why did Myuzu had to sacrifice herself? It doesn't seem like she did anything.
For the cutscene after the fight with Simon, she said something about Dezel suffering, I couldn't quite understand it, can someone tell me a brief summary what she meant?
Myuze is Mikel's sister and Mikleo's mother, it was said when you had the big flashback before fighting Mevin.
Didn't understand properly the sacrifice either, she had to purify something it seems a bit random and half-assed from a narrative point of view but Bebpo already mentionned how in the later half of the game everything seems to be this way.
Don't remember about Simon, Dezel was just consumed with hatred and she must have been blabbering some kind of bullshit about that probably.
Someone may tell you more about your second question, at this point of the game I didn't really try to even understand anymore.
Okay, why can't I progress the final cutscene? The game locks up after defeating the final boss. This is extremely frustrating. At first, I thought maybe it will only happen once but I just defeated it again and it locked up again. I was hoping I can beat this game today but I'm just wasting time now. I can press the start button but I can't skip the cutscene. It just zooms up to the final boss. I just want to see the damn ending.
Hmm, they said they wanted the game out within six months but its already March and they're still being quiet. Wonder if they delayed the localization to have a PS4/PC version ready first...
Anyway, Ive finished the game.
It was a nice touch how Sorey went through the entire story killing no one (that I recall) until the very end. I think they did a decent job of showing his appreciation for life and integrating that into his character development.
I agree with Shouta that it was an interesting angle that could have been explored a little more. It's my OT so I guess I should ramble my thoughts on the game:
The combat is good. Not in my top 5 but definitely in my top 10 (though with 15 games that isnt too hard to achieve). The best thing is that the game retains a lot of the responsiveness Graces had, dodging and chaining attacks feels really good. The Kamui system is interesting but Id say its underutilized, I think the Tenzoku should have been able to fuse or something, or at least give the current fusions more attacks. I think the rock-paper-scissors setup is an interesting idea, but its a concept that I think works best if the game moves at say, Rebirth or Abysss pace, Zestiria moves fast enough that its hard to keep track of what kinds of attacks are being used. I think the worst things about the combat are the camera and the 4 chain limit thats a little difficult to increase. The camera I can bear with for the most part but the limit is annoying and hard chaining limits make some fights turn into repetitive attack loops. It seems like extending a chain of attacks is easier if you fuse afterwards, so maybe that was the idea.
The general gameplay has a lot of ideas but its held back in some ways. One thing I appreciate is that the game appears to have a decent amount of stuff to find and do. Its not quite at the level of variety youd find in Vesperia, but more than Xillia. I think it would help if they brought back a real collection of mini games and costume-related quests. The fields have obstacles, Normin, Giganto monsters, arenas, treasures, (semi-)optional dungeons, and discoveries, which makes them far more diverse than the fields in Xillia and even Graces, it's the kind of evolution from Graces' fields I think Xillia should have been. Only problem is theyre so huge at times that even all this isnt quite enough to make them feel dense with content, so theres a lot of empty space between all these things. There also should have been some kind of vehicle to ride, even in a fantasy game running on foot through all these big areas is a little odd and tedious... The equipment system is an interesting idea but I think a poorly thought out UI holds it back and makes it harder to work with, and I wish it were a little easier to find and apply the skills you want. Some changes to make it less tedious and more user-friendly, and it could be amazing. Support talents are cool, it takes a lot of the functions Gracess Eleth Pot had and also adds in its own set of features. Cooking is ok but to me half the fun of cooking in Tales is using ingredients to make recipes, leveling up a shop or inn or whatever to get new ones just isn't as interesting. The accompanying character idea was woefully underutilized, I thought you could pick any party member to follow behind Sorey to get unique conversations and stuff, but I think you can't...
In terms of art the game looks nice, or at least for the most part its diverse in scenery and somewhat consistent in quality. I really liked the towns in Xillia but beyond that you had very little to work with, for every nice area there were two or three generic canyons or tunnels. Zestiria does a much better job of this, with a better job done of creating a world diverse in culture and geography beyond the towns, and it reaffirms my opinion that Iwamoto, who also did a great job with Vesperia, may be the best art director they have for Tales right now (Sawadaishi was the other artist whose work I thought was a perfect fit for Tales, but hes gone apparently). That said the game is jaggy, the pop-in/draw distance is pretty bad, and you can tell they tried to cut corners for the inessential places you likely wouldnt spend much time in to save time and money.
The music is probably the first thing Id bring up where the game has an clear edge over several of its predecessors. Shiina's work is pretty great, and Sakuraba actually composed what Id say is an above average number of good tracks. You can easily tell whos composing what, but at the same time I find their styles pretty complementary to each other. A future project with more of a 50/50 split in composed tracks could be good, especially if it offers Sakuraba more time to focus on quality over quantity and maybe more resources.
With story, Zestirias narrative is a lot like Vesperias to me. The first third/act is great, the second is solid, and the final third/act is when the narrative starts to overstay its welcome, but due to unresolved subplots, aspects of the universe that they wanted to use but barely touched on in the first two parts of the story, and a bunch of characters who have yet to be fully developed and reach the end of their arcs, the final act pretty much needs to exist. I guess a good way to describe Vesperia and Zestiria's plots is "top-heavy": there wasn't enough character progression, foreshadowing, and world-building spread out to the first two parts, and it came back to bite them in the ass when they had to finish off the story and realized they had a bunch of characters that didn't really go anywhere and events that popped up out of nowhere and had to make a large portion of the final third of the story about solving that problem.
I would say my biggest positive surprise from the game is the cast of playable characters. Some people like to say Tales characters subvert tropes and all that but Zestiria is one of the few Tales games where I had particular first judgements of the cast and they turned out to be more interesting to follow than I expected, with some having very different personalities as well. My biggest negative surprise was the overall lack of importance Dragons had to what was going on. From what they were saying before release I expected them to be super important creatures that you'd be meeting and interacting with constantly, but they're basically like the magical creatures or entities in almost every other Tales game: they play an important role in the "structure" of the world and pop up from time to time, but it's very much a story centered around the humans or humanoids living on the planet.
I haven't played the DLC episode, but from what I've seen and heard, alongside their statement that it'll be the only DLC episode, it sounds a lot like it was primarily meant to be a bridge/teaser for an eventual Zestiria 2 in a year or two. I'll get to it someday I guess.
Overall, it's a solid entry to the series. Of the current generation of Tales games released between 2007-2015, I think it's leagues better than Innocence, better than Xillia and Xillia 2, but not as good as Hearts, Vesperia, and Graces. I wouldn't say you need to be a diehard Tales fan to like it: if you have a passing interest in the series (you don't actively follow and buy every game but you enjoyed the ones you have played and kinda keep tabs on whatever the most recent game is) I think you'll probably like it, especially if the western release will have a PS4/PC version that can fix the technical issues. If you feel you have less than a passing interest then maybe wait for a price that you find acceptable, Bamco drops the prices on these games quickly anyway.
Here's how it falls in my general ranking and opinions of Tales games, in no particular order within the ranks:
5 (Games I think do the best job of showing what they can put out when they're feeling really driven or creative. I have one or two big issues with all of them that I was willing to overlook because I enjoyed everything else about them so much)
Vesperia
Rebirth
Destiny R
4 (More complaints than the 5s, but I think they're all good games and worth a shot if you're a fan of Japanese RPGs to see if you like the series or at least certain aspects of it)
Graces
Hearts DS
Abyss
Symphonia (After Symphonia HD I might demote this to a 3 soon)
3 (Entries I think are totally worth playing if you like the series, but due to being old, design choices I don't care for, or issues with polish, you might like them more or less than me)
Zestiria
Destiny 2
Eternia
Phantasia
Xillia 2
2 (Entries I think show enough signs of competence to be solid though bland games and maybe even have a few really great things about them, but are kinda all over the place due to inexperienced staff or time/budget issues. I don't feel you'd be missing out on a whole lot if you skipped them)
Xillia
Legendia
1 (Entries I think are pretty much bad and recommend to skip)
Innocence DS
Here's a pic of what's happening to me:
Spoilers, don't click unless you defeated the final boss: http://i.imgur.com/lUp6Sf7.jpg
I can press start but since this is supposed to be playable, you can't skip it. I'm using a PS3 super slim. I tried deleting the data file and redownloading it. I don't know if I should bother cleaning the disc, it looks fine to me. I had to youtube the ending. This really sucks. I was really liking this game...
After viewing the ending, it seems like a decent ending.
Anyway, positives about this game:
+The characters is where this game shine for me. Rose made this game for me. The first part was kinda boring to me until we met Zaveid and Edna. But Rose made this game click for me. Just liked her personality. The character interactions were great and the one cutscene that stood out for me was when we first entered Lowrance. The game is filled with great interactions in cutscenes and skits. I did most side quests except for the ones I can only complete in new game +.
+ The music. Finally, the tales of series has great music. Good job to the composers.
+ The length of the game. Took me exactly a month to finish it.
+/- The story grabbed my attention until late in the game, I found myself not really caring. I don't know if it was because I took a break, I was just rushing to beat it, or it was just bad.
+/- The battle system. It's great when it works. Works meaning the camera doesn't fuck up. When it does fuck up, it's terrible. There are also some mechanics I can easily abuse
and I did. Other than that, I enjoyed it.
Minor issues:
- Skits being only available through save points/discoveries
- Force of being Sorey and can't change into any other human character like Rose or Alisha (like in the world map).
- technical issues like slowdowns at times. Don't know if it's just me.
Terrible:
- this game breaking bug I'm encountering.
Myuze is Mikel's sister and Mikleo's mother, it was said when you had the big flashback before fighting Mevin.
Didn't understand properly the sacrifice either, she had to purify something it seems a bit random and half-assed from a narrative point of view but Bebpo already mentionned how in the later half of the game everything seems to be this way.
Don't remember about Simon, Dezel was just consumed with hatred and she must have been blabbering some kind of bullshit about that probably.
Someone may tell you more about your second question, at this point of the game I didn't really try to even understand anymore.
That sounds about right. Yeah, the common thread for most players seems to be that somewhere around the last 20-30% of the story, most players just give up caring about the story and making sense of it. Something about the story telling, especially when the flashback kicks in, is just done in a really poor way that and the 2nd half drops the momentum of the plot so it's already starting to falter even before that.
Myuze is Mikel's sister and Mikleo's mother, it was said when you had the big flashback before fighting Mevin.
Didn't understand properly the sacrifice either, she had to purify something it seems a bit random and half-assed from a narrative point of view but Bebpo already mentionned how in the later half of the game everything seems to be this way.
Don't remember about Simon, Dezel was just consumed with hatred and she must have been blabbering some kind of bullshit about that probably.
Someone may tell you more about your second question, at this point of the game I didn't really try to even understand anymore.
I'm at the what I think is the final dungeon, but the damn maze is impossible to solve. I'm going to wait for either a save editor or a detailed turn-by-turn walkthrough before I will continue. Otherwise by the time I get to the final boss I would rate this game 1/10. I hate maze puzzles like this, they weren't fun in FFX and sure as hell it's not fun 10 years later.
I'm at the what I think is the final dungeon, but the damn maze is impossible to solve. I'm going to wait for either a save editor or a detailed turn-by-turn walkthrough before I will continue. Otherwise by the time I get to the final boss I would rate this game 1/10. I hate maze puzzles like this, they weren't fun in FFX and sure as hell it's not fun 10 years later.
Not quite. It seems Zestiria as umpolished as it may be, feels complete to most people. Was the DLC what forced the storyline to remain somewhat incomplete at the end, or so I understand it.
I just beat the game. The game started out really good, but it kinda lost momentum towards the end. They also added an unnecessary maze dungeon at the end, it was infuriating to try to solve that dungeon. I'm new to the Tales series, the only other Tales game that I've played to conclusion is Tales of Xillia. I felt like Xillia had better characters, and the late story was better. Overall I think I would give this game a 7/10. It's not bad, but by the end it felt kinda bland.
Sorey's motivation is pretty straight forward, he's just an innocent kid that wants to fix everything and help everyone. But the villains' motivation is not that well developed. We know that Herudarufu (I'm just going to call him Heldaroof for now) wants to reset the world because he got cursed, but what about the rest of his subordinates. It wasn't really explained why Simon and Maltran would join him. Neither of them became a hyouma, so that means their intentions were "pure". So it would've been nice for the devs to give these characters some proper back story.
Also some questions about the story that I probably missed from the dialogs. It seems like Mikleo was supposed to be a sacrifice? Was the reason for that ever explained? Are Sorey and Mikleo cousins (because Michael and Myuzu are siblings right)? Is Rose related to any of them? It doesn't seem like she was in the flashback.
If Heldaroof was the God of Catastrophe (災禍の顕主, who was Michael fighting against? Was it implied that there were another God of Catastrophe before Heldaroof? Also, Maoterasu appeared as a white light figure when he's contract with Heldaroof was broken, so why did he contract with Heldaroof to begin with? Is it because of Michael curse forced him to be contracted?
Some last thoughts, I didn't follow the game's announcement or anything, but I have read some news about Alisha leaving the party early in the game. I was kinda bummed out as I started playing. Alisha was a much better character than Rose. She has that idealistic characteristic just like Sorey, while Rose felt like she's just like any other character. When she kills someone for Sorey, it doesn't really have the same impact if Sorey or Alisha was to be forced to do it. The reason that Alisha got written out was kinda lame too, if the whole contract system allows for a follower, then the impact to the Doushi's health should be minimal. Even if it's not, they could have it were having a follower will dramatically shorten the life of the doushi, but yet Sorey agrees to do it (something like in Chrno Crusade). Rose should've been an NPC that they meet, and do some trading or sidequest with, but she doesn't have the charisma to be a main character. Also all the sidequests to check on Alisha sucks, you basically just evesdrop on her conversations, how about have Sorey at least give her some encouragement or even help her do something as a sidequest. As long as the enemies in that quest is designed correctly, not having two kamui characters shouldn't be an issue.
As I said in the beginning, this is not a bad game, but there were so many bad decisions that lowered the enjoyment for me.
Edit: So I reached the cat village, from the cutscene viewer it seems like I'm missing the last cutscene on that list, can someone tell me how to get that?
Also, I'm missing one of the 穢れの坩堝, it's the 4th one on the list, I can't find the entrance to it, please help. Thanks.
Well that sucks, because it either confirms a sequel (ugh) or a Director's Cut PS4 version with FUTURE EPISODE (I'm fine with this since it's not like I'll replay it).
Just would rather have no more Tales sequels and each new entry every few years be a fresh cast/world/story.
