Wednesday, February 29, 2012

The Tale, Completed

I finished Tales of the Abyss tonight with a game clock of 35 hours and some change.

I must say, I really enjoyed the majority of the game. If I had the time to really delve in to the subsystems and minigames and sidequests, I'm sure I would like the game a lot more. However, I have Devil Survivor 2 sitting right here next to me and that cannot be ignored for too long.

I rather enjoyed the story of Abyss, though. There was quite a bit of weird techno-babble, but my mind always replaced "fon" and "fonic" with magic, at which point everything makes sense (sort of). There were some aspects of the story which were strange or confusing, but I feel like the overall tale of most of the characters was compelling (aside from a certain betrayal that is forgiven by the main cast WAY too easily). I did miss the characters being complete dicks to each other throughout the game, although Jade did stay his normal jerk self the whole time, so that was refreshing. The motivation of the main enemy still seems a bit oddly thought out to me, but I'm sure I missed something somewhere (especially since for most of the last ten hours, I couldn't be bothered to sit through the skits).

As an aside, I don't understand why the skits don't let you skip through the text faster. I can skip voiced dialogue during the main game by pressing a button because I can see the text, but why can't I skip through the skit stuff? I would have watched every skit had I been able to just read through it at my own pace. They also tended to pack like three skits back-to-back-to-back right after a plot point, so you had to sit there for minutes at a time as text would just scroll by with no input from you whatsoever. Also, none of the skits are voiced, so any sort of pacing the game would have from preventing you from skipping through the text faster is lost anyway.

But I digress. I ended up getting some cool Fonic Artes by the end of the game, and had quite a bit of fun during battles. The last battle was pretty dumb, though, because the boss could basically kill everyone in one hit if he so decided. I'm sure I was underleveled a bit, but I decided I didn't feel like grinding so I just cheesed my way through the battle with strategic item use. I probably would have ground had the enemies in the last dungeon given me more than a THOUSAND EXP PER BATTLE! That was ridiculous since a few dungeons ago I was getting near two thousand. That sort of crap drives me nuts. It's like training in Pokemon all over again.

Overall, though, I would say the game is worth a playthrough, if only to see how well-written the characters are, especially near the beginning. I don't know if I could recommend the PS2 game since apparently there's some pretty bad load times, but the 3DS version was fun. I don't know if I'm ready for a Tales game again so soon, but now I'm thinking of picking up Tales of Graces f and maybe looking into picking up Vesperia at some point.

Anyway, Devil Survivor 2 awaits. Hee-ho!

Sunday, February 26, 2012

Now I remember why I wait like eight years between Tales games!

It's not because they're bad, but because they're insanely long!

I mean don't get me wrong. I just got done with a four hour Tales of the Abyss marathon. And as soon as I'm done with this post, I'm going to jump right back in. But man! I'm 25 hours in and thought the end was in sight, but it's not!

The characters, though, have gone through some "growth." I won't explain why, but Luke is no longer a petulant little asshole. He rarely tells people to shut up any more. However, Jade has become more and more of a jerk, and I absolutely adore him for it. He is definitely my favorite character in the game by a long shot.

Story aside, though, let me talk about the pacing. That four hour marathon was great and the next few hours will presumably be just as interesting, but the last couple of times I played Abyss?

It was... Abysmal.

Sick burn.

It was, though. The game decided to make me run back and forth between the same like five towns a million times, with not much battling in between, while the game just threw out plot point after plot point after exposition after plot point. And while a good chunk of the plot was interesting, it took too goddamn long to get through. And the swamp dungeon was retarded. "Oh, getting bored with all the exposition, player? How about a dungeon where you spend the majority of your time getting into a fight with a giant monster who can't be beaten? A monster who your party members tell you to run from? And they're right, too, because the thing can kill you in like three hits. Oh, and while you run from it - how about we halve your walking speed on the world map? WOULD YOU LIKE THAT, PLAYER?!"

I can't remember if I had gotten this frustrated with Symphonia. Despite playing that game forever and enjoying it quite a bit, I remember very little of it. I don't know how much I'll remember about Abyss, but I hope I remember how entertaining the party is as they bicker and bitch at each other.

That four hour marathon sure was fun, though. I got to explore some pretty neat dungeons, including one where the party was split up halfway through and had to spend the rest of it getting back together. It kind of reminded me of that dungeon in Final Fantasy VI where that happens, although it was no where near as hard (plus, with the ability to avoid battles if you can run away from the enemies, you don't lose a ton of time or HP).

Hopefully the rest of the dungeons are as interesting as that one (and with boss battles as fun!), because I can't guarantee I'll stick with the game once Devil Survivor 2 comes out if I'm not having fun...

Saturday, February 18, 2012

Tales of the Abyss

A few days ago, I bought Tales of the Abyss for the 3DS. I was a bit hesitant to buy it, since of all the Tales games I've played, I've only liked Symphonia. However, I hunger for RPGs, and haven't played an action-based one in a while (with maybe the Ys series being the last ones I played, last year).

Tales of the Abyss (the version I'm playing) is a port of the 2006 PS2 game with some minor 3D effects added, while fixing some - apparently pretty bad, I'm told - technical problems. The 3DS version has no load times, which means this version is likely going to be the definitive version of the game. The 3DS gets one of those, for once! ...Okay, Devil Survivor Overclocked is better on 3DS, the 3DS port of Ocarina of Time is probably the new definitive version, and the same goes for Star Fox 64 3D. I guess I'm just bitter that bit.trip.SAGA has technical problems the Wii versions don't have.

As for the game itself, though, I must say I'm really enjoying Abyss so far. I'm about nine or ten hours in. Let me just say this:

The characters in this game are complete assholes, and I love them.

The narrative of Abyss throws your battle party together out of necessity rather than choice, so no one in the party is really comfortable with each other, much less nice to each other. So, whenever one of them screws up, the others pile on that person and make fun of him or her. The main character, Luke, spends most of his dialogue saying dumb things and then telling other people to shut up after they make fun of them. The quiet girl, Tear, the first to join your party, rips on the Luke whenever he gets cocky after battles. She, in turn, is made fun of by Luke for being "ice cold." And not in a flirty way! He means it! As in "You are an ice-cold bitch, Tear."

Then there is Jade. I have no idea what role he will play in the narrative overall yet, but I must say he is already my favorite character in the game (and quickly becoming a very memorable character overall). He's a bit older than the other party members, and he makes it his job to make fun of, embarrass, and just generally be a dick to all of the other party members. He goes out of his way to do this. He's not always overt about it, either. Sometimes, he just stays silent as he watches the other characters make idiots out of themselves. Once, he was called out for not saying anything, and he said something along the lines of "Oops! You caught me. I was enjoying that." My favorite line, though, occurs if the party enters a battle by being chased down by an enemy on the map: Luke will panic and act like everyone is going to die, while Jade says in the most sarcastic voice you'll ever hear "Oh no, this is terrible!" after which Luke tells him to shut up.

I love that guy.

The battles, though, seem to be built on your typical Tales system. It has been years since I've played anything in the series substantially (probably since 2004's Symphonia), so I'm not sure how much different it is from more recent entries. I will say, though, that the system feels just like what I remember of Symphonia's. The enemy groups are all visible on the map, and you don't enter battle unless you touch them. The battles themselves take place is 2D, although you can run around the battle in 3D when you're not attacking by holding the L trigger. Don't worry, it's more intuitive than you'd think. You spend the battles doing button combos, while trying to chain in special attacks throughout, to keep your hit count up to do more damage and keep the enemy from attacking you. If you need to use an item or want to tell one of your AI-controlled companions to use one or cast a spell, you can press X, which will pause the battle while you cycle through some simple menus to do what you need to do. A cooldown timer will then appear on the upper left of the top screen to let you know how long it will be before the item or spell is used. I haven't seen one for longer than two seconds, either, so it's not like you have to wait forever.

From what I can tell, the AI is programmed fairly well, so I don't think you'll have to worry too much about babysitting them or wasting revival items on them too much. You do have the option outside of battle to tweak your party's AI a bit. You can tell the characters to only cast magic when they have 75% or more of their MP unless they need to cast a healing spell, or reduce that number to 50%, 25%, or to use magic willingly. You can pick and choose which spells and abilities they can use as well, so if you don't like them wasting MP on, say, a shield spell that only protects you over a certain area of the battlefield, you can turn that crap right off and they won't cast it anymore. You aren't forced to play just as Luke, either - you can switch your party members at any time and play as a spellcaster if you so choose. I like Luke's gameplay, though, so I've spent the whole game playing as him so far.

The main story so far is basically about averting a war, so I'm not too enthralled with that, although the constant banter between the party members definitely keeps me interested. Supposedly, Tales games subvert genre stereotypes about halfway through, so maybe that will change. I hope it does! But I'm having a blast so far, so I'll keep playing.

It's too bad Inazuma Eleven finally came in the mail a day after I bought Tales of the Abyss. Oh well! I'll get to it eventually...