All the time I spent on video games this week was to finish Tales of Vesperia: Definitive Edition.
I’m not sure if other Tales of games are like this, but Vesperia was one of the more linear RPGs I have played. Since every part of the story was very interesting, I did not mind that the game was linear. When I first started the game, I thought that there would be more non-linear parts where you could do some side content. However, I only did one side mission throughout my playthrough and I triggered it by coincidence. I would have liked it if stuff like that wasn’t easily missable, although it did not hamper my overall experience.
The boss battles I encountered during the final parts of the game very challenging. With the fight against Estelle, I only had Yuri in my party. It reminds me of Xenoblade Chronicles 2 with the beginning sections where you only have Rex in your party. The enemies that are usually easy to take down with a full party became almost impossible to defeat. With the Estelle fight, I spammed my limits since it stun-locked Estelle and didn’t take damage. I got annoyed with the fight against Alexei since his Burst Arte wiped out my party in one shot. At that point, I reluctantly leveled up my party by 10 levels with the DLC items that came with the Definitive Edition. For me, the boss against Duke was a good challenge, especially the second phase. Duke’s Burst Arte in his second phase reduces everyone’s HP to 1, which gave me an opportunity to recover and continue the fight.
My only problem with the story was the game’s ending. After the final boss, Brave Vesperia and Duke worked together and stopped the Adephagos. Then the credits rolled. It was underwhelming since we knew that the goal was to stop the Adephagos to save the world. I was expecting something afterwards, like what happened to everyone considering that all of the blastia in the world are gone.
When the party created their first spirit, I had to play a rhythm minigame. However, whenever we obtained the other spirits, I never had to play the minigame, which made me feel that it probably should have not been in the game in the first place. I also recall going into areas on the map that I never had to go to during the game, which made me wonder if I missed out on some side quests.
Being the first Tales of game that I played through fully, Tales of Vesperia is probably the best game to get into the series with. It did a good job in explaining most of the game’s mechanics and eased me into getting comfortable with the gameplay. The writing of each of the party members is the game’s strongest point, with each character’s personalities and beliefs change throughout the events of the story. I am interested in playing other games in the series, especially Tales of Symphonia. I mentioned this in a previous entry, but I tried to get into Symphonia but failed to get past the tutorial dungeon.
J Chang Gaming 