Since the start of the fall school semes­ter, my friends and I have made Tales of Ves­pe­ria as our group gam­ing project of the sea­son, played weekly Fri­day with some spe­cial event excep­tions. We finally beat it last night, as part of our anime club’s finale week­end. This game has def­i­nitely made my top favorites list (not to men­tion Rita, dear Rita), for my expe­ri­ences in it have been absolutely brilliant.

Score: 9/10

Pros (isn’t this like… almost every­thing?):

• Excel­lent cast of char­ac­ters — stereo­typ­i­cal to start, but charm­ing and well-developed
• Intrigu­ing and well-paced plot­line — a fetch quest evolves into a leg­end, full of rev­e­la­tions and grip­ping climaxes
• Smooth and excit­ing bat­tle sys­tem — sim­ple, easy to learn, yet with great cus­tomiza­tion and team-coordination ben­e­fits for the skilled player.
• Great visual pre­sen­ta­tion — Anime-style graph­ics that we know and love in its best.
• Good world con­cepts — lack­ing the usual duo-world, but I was just as amazed when the skies…

Cons (some to fol­low):

• An epi­logue please? I’d like to fig­ure out what hap­pened after the final bat­tle fin­ishes. The world has changed so much, not to men­tion the char­ac­ters them­selves will finally end their grand adven­ture and set­tle down. I’d like to fig­ure how where every­one ended up, espe­cially what hap­pened to Raven since they removed his…
• Karol is use­less, USELESS! Not only is he a cow­ardly brat with an exces­sive sense of glory, he is pos­i­tively hor­rid to use in com­bat as his attacks are slow, low reach, and he pos­i­tively moves at a snail’s pace. The only real rea­son he’s in the party at all is to pro­vide insight into the guilds. Out­side that, his only use in my opin­ion is to serve as Rita’s punch­ing bag. I think it would have been a lot bet­ter (mechan­ics wise) if they made Karol a ranger-type instead of Raven.
• Mini-maps in dun­geons would have been helpful.
• Yuri con­stantly leav­ing the party, while essen­tial to his char­ac­ter, can be a rather pain at times.
• Forced back­track­ing is annoy­ing. I know the Tales of series is game truly enjoyed by hard­core gamers and that this is some­thing stan­dard to the mer­chan­dise, but do we really have to go back to each city we vis­ited every sub-arc inter­val? ( >_>)
• There’s a sub-arc where Karol become your only char­ac­ter with abil­ity to heal oth­ers — ARRRGGGHHHHH!!!

Now for Ves­pe­ria the High School edi­tion! Com­ing to stores near you!

I’ll leave the rest of the nor­mal game review busi­ness up to the respectable sites. Since I play JRPGs for the story and char­ac­ters, and the Ves­pe­ria story is beyond sim­ple spoiler-free descrip­tions, I’ll mostly be fan­gas­ming over the characters.

I’m also hav­ing a tremen­dous amount of trou­ble decid­ing which pair­ing to root for. Three of the over­lap­ping ones are just too adorable together~

Com­par­ing with Tales of the Abyss, my views of the Ves­pe­ria party is slightly split. On one hand, I liked the char­ac­ters and the party inter­ac­tion much bet­ter, although my anime-based views may be biased. On the other hand, Abyss prob­a­bly has the best inter-connectivity between all the party mem­bers (and all the major vil­lains too) I have ever seen in a JRPG. If there’s one game where the party truly belonged together — it was Abyss.

Char­ac­ters & Shipping

Yuri Low­ell: Our dear pro­tag­o­nist is a dis­il­lu­sioned for­mer knight with a heart of gold, styl­ized by his beauty as a bishie and his stun­ning vig­i­lan­tism com­pa­ra­ble to a comic-book super­hero. He may be your stan­dard sword-wielding main char­ac­ter, but he wields those blades of his with the bril­liant style of weapon swap­per — a unique and rare style of bounc­ing the weapon between both hands. He’s easy­go­ing and fun, with just the tinge of sar­casm placed at the most per­fect moments. Com­bined with a sense of self­less­ness to pro­tect not only his friends’ health but their inno­cence, I must claim that he is one hell of a main char­ac­ter. Def­i­nitely one of the cutest most awe­some game pro­tag­o­nists around. Now if only we can get him a but­ler uniform…

Estelle: A naive princess who has never set foot out­side the cas­tle, Estelle’s inno­cence is pos­i­tively adorable and makes every­one want to pro­tect her. At the same time, she has the noble pride and sense of jus­tice expected of a well-raised heir. Her “I read it in a book” moments run in line with that of Hermione’s (Pot­ter­verse) that we all know and love, except even bet­ter as it has none of the snob­bish­ness. Finally, her altru­is­tic com­pas­sion rounds up her char­ac­ter for a saintly per­son­al­ity. Trou­bled by the rev­e­la­tions and bur­dened by world-changing deci­sions through­out the game, Estelle nev­er­the­less faces them with an admirable noble resolve, mak­ing her one hero­ine that one can always root and cheer for.

So adorable, so cute~

Yuri x Estelle: The canon­i­cal and main intended pair­ing of the game, prob­a­bly. The issue is that the game never made any roman­tic inter­est between the two obvi­ous, and most of the time Yuri sim­ply acted as the pro­tec­tive older brother. Nev­er­the­less, I like this pair­ing, even if it’s not quite some­thing I’d Wai~ and Awww~ over exces­sively. Yuri is a great per­son, and would def­i­nitely be the best one to cher­ish and pro­tect the adorably cute and lov­ing Estelle, but their rela­tion­ship, in my opin­ion, is a slow devel­oped one, as opposed to run­ning off pure emo­tions and chemistry.

Repede: Smok­ing (or beef-chewing) dog with remark­able intel­li­gence and unwa­ver­ing loy­alty. What can I say? Repede is cer­tainly the quin­tes­sen­tial Man’s Best Friend.

Karol Capel: Bratty kid who’s cow­ardly to the extreme for most of the game yet has noth­ing but praises for him­self. Not cute at all is the descrip­tion here. I can’t stand him except when he’s serv­ing as Rita’s punch­ing bag. Mov­ing on…

Rita Mor­dio: Seri­ous, shy, and socially awk­ward, this mild tsun­dere mage is kind at heart but has one quick tem­per. Her approach could often be summed up by ‘fire­ball first, ask ques­tions later’, and she cer­tainly never hes­i­tates to get phys­i­cal. But at the same time, her care of blas­tia cores by per­son­i­fy­ing them, her bond­ing with Judith despite ini­tial odds, and her staunch deter­mi­na­tion to make Estelle happy shows that kind­ness is some­thing she lacks only in appear­ance. I love her char­ac­ter to death, not because of the nor­mal fan ado­ra­tion rea­sons, but because in many ways she’s a spit­ting image of myself. I’ve never been able to pre­dict a character’s responses to each and every moment so well…

“So, what do you think Estelle thinks of me?”

Rita x Estelle: Rest assured Rita, as Estelle def­i­nitely thinks of you in a most favor­able man­ner. The Ris­telle pair would def­i­nitely be my favorite if it weren’t for the feel­ing that I’d be deny­ing Estelle of her beloved Yuri (this line can be taken so many ways, darn it Namco!) My rea­son­ing behind this one is, once again, related to my per­son­i­fi­ca­tion views regard­ing Rita. Those moments where she did every­thing she could to help Estelle res­onated with my emo­tions in such a per­fect way, and the scene where she asked Yuri on what Estelle thinks cer­tainly trig­gered some per­sonal mem­o­ries. Darn it, it may be funny to oth­ers, but being a tsun­dere is not cool.

Flynn Scifo: A child­hood friend to Yuri, Suzaku Flynn stuck with the Impe­r­ial Knights, seek­ing to change it from within when Yuri could not with­stand. Although Flynn is an ide­al­ist, a real square, and a bit of a hyp­ocrite, he never really lost faith in Yuri and never betrayed him, at least not inten­tion­ally. No, Flynn may not be a true bro, but he is def­i­nitely a true coun­ter­part, as wher­ever Yuri charged, Flynn fol­lowed to han­dle all the offi­cial details and tedious work that our badass vig­i­lante is too lazy to do. Some­one has to do the paper­work after all, and I was impressed that he stuck up to it, blam­ing him­self for steal­ing Yuri’s accom­plish­ments, rather than falling into jeal­ousy that Yuri was tak­ing ‘all the good parts’.

More than just best friends~!

Yuri x Flynn : What more can I say? Flynn is totally Yuri’s offi­cial coun­ter­part. It’s kind of like Lelouch and Suzaku, they just feels like they belong together.

Raven: His highly accen­tu­ated post com­bat remark of sex­u­al­ity! describes the man per­fectly. A vet­eran of the great war with a dark past, Raven chose to spend his days enjoy life to the fullest, enjoy­ing every­thing from end­less adven­tur­ing to women. He may be sly and sketchy, but his obvi­ously sar­cas­tic demeanor is hilarious.

Raven x Rita: Raven you’re hilar­i­ous and all, and this might make one amus­ing rela­tion­ship, but I’m not sure there’s any chemis… I mean, Raven, it’s not like I like you or any­thing… We’ll just leave it at that. Rita’s too busy with Estelle right now.

Judith: A pointy eared elf Kritya with the blos­somed matu­rity of a woman, Judith is a rare game char­ac­ter blessed with both ratio­nal­ity and intu­ition. Seem­ingly care­free yet deci­sive, impul­sive but not reck­less, witty with just a tinge of flir­ta­tious­ness, there sim­ply isn’t much not to like about Judith. Well, except for the fact that her views towards her mis­sion are a bit mind­less at the begin­ning, but that’s quickly changed by a com­bi­na­tion of her rea­son­ing and Estelle’s presence.

Yuri x Judith: They’re just com­rades and close-friends, mov­ing on…

Raven x Judith: I’m much more sup­port­ive of this one. Only Yuri can take Estelle away from Rita, and while love’s not exactly in the air, I think the two would make a happy couple.

Char­ac­ter Mechanics

With excep­tion to ambushes, I spent the game play­ing Rita, so my views of the other char­ac­ters may be a lit­tle biased:

• Yuri: As expected of the main char­ac­ter, Yuri is a melee well-balanced between speed and power. He also comes with a pos­i­tively insane num­ber of artes and can chain com­bos together with extreme ease. My only com­plaint about Yuri’s artes is that he needs more all-around-attacks that would buy time when he’s sur­rounded (e.g. hun­dred men melee).
• Estelle: The melee tank healer. Her HP and defense scores are still about aver­age, but her med/late game skills allow  her to receive an end­less stream of heal­ing, whether its her own spells or when she gets attacked. Play­ing Estelle resolves between mov­ing in to attack and run­ning out to heal/buff.
• Repede: Fast, really fast, with plenty of charge attacks. Coor­di­nated use of Repede allows one to run in, inter­rupt and combo, then get out of reach before they even has the chance to retal­i­ate proper. His cons lay in the fact he does poorly against air tar­gets for most of the game, and he has trou­ble keep­ing up pres­sure when you don’t need to guerilla-tactic things out.
• Karol: Slow, way too slow. He may have high defense and some very use­ful artes, but he can never chase any­thing down and his attack delays (both pre and post) after absolutely hor­rid. Nobody I know likes play­ing him.
• Rita: As a pure mage whose melee abil­i­ties aren’t even use­ful, Rita is all about keep­ing your dis­tance while preplanning/timing your spells, with the excep­tion of Blade Roll. One thing I really like is that the basic Fire­ball spell keeps increas­ing in hits (maxes at 3500 uses), which makes it extremely use­ful even in late game, par­tic­u­larly against bosses. Chain­ing 9 fire­balls in a row not only cause repeated flinch­ing, but does great in open­ing up green fatal strikes and offer excel­lent chances with stun magic.
• Raven: This Ranger does every­thing. He has decent melee attacks, excel­lent range attacks, a good heal­ing skills, a few spells for the occa­sion, high­est HP, high defense, and good TP. His only lack­ing is a slightly low mobil­ity, but still far bet­ter than Karol and its annoy­ance mit­i­gated by his ranged attacks.
• Judith: An aer­ial combo spe­cial­ist who excels at inter­rupt­ing fly­ers and air jug­gling, Judith is just fun to use. Although again ground oppo­nents she has to knock them into the air to do her stuff. Great when paired with another meleer — Yuri/Karol can send ene­mies up, while Judith knocks them down.

Now that I’ve fin­ished Ves­pe­ria, I really do want to play all the other major Tales games, and not just read/watch about them.

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