Couple of words about the game. The battle system is a lot of fun and highly addictive, but that's to be expected from Team Destiny. I also had fun with Abyss's system, but Free Run was way too abusable, which they ended up severely nerfing here by making it cost CC for every step - a welcome change. So yeah, the game uses the CC system, which I personally find much better compared to the regular TP system many other Tales games use. In any case, this feel like a healthy mixture of the combat mechanics of Abyss and the Destiny Remake on PS2. Other familiar gameplay mechanics from ToDR make a return here - there's a new and improved version of the "food bag" - a container you can put food (and other items) into, and they will automatically activate in battle when certain conditions are met. As in, "use hamburger when HP is below 50%", or something along those lines.
Another thing is the crafting system, which is called, uh... デュアライズ (Dualize, I guess?). You pretty much mix two things together to create something new. I don't want to go into details (there are guides online), but this is a more or less universal system. You upgrade your weapons this way, combine materials to create new materials (for further crafting, or a sidequest, or whatever), and you can use it to mix together ingredients and cook meals. And you can create special stat-boosting gems, too, but as I've said, I don't want to go into further details or this post will be even longer than it already is.
Now, the plot didn't seem anything special. I had to rely on the bits and pieces I understood of the spoken dialogue, and a few subtitled videos I came across online, so from what I understood it mostly boiled down to
"guy who's the villain isn't the villain because he's actually being possessed by the real villain of the game". Said real villain seemed to fall into the stereotypical "not evil, just misunderstood" category, who wants to destroy the world because no one loves him. Or something. The ending of the PS3-exclusive Future Arc was all kinds of lovely, though. Not sure whether this is because because I've grown attached to the characters, or simply because I'm getting more lenient with generic happy endings as I get older, but in the end, I just liked it.
As for the main cast, I pretty much liked everyone. Though Asbel might become annoying to some people due to his obsession with protecting his friends/everyone. I mean my God. The word "mamoru" is uttered at least a dozen times every other minute when he's around. Sophie does something similar, except in her case it's the Japanese word for "friend". Other than that, I actually liked her a lot, plus she has some of the cutest skits in the game.
Cheria is your stereotypical "chick with a crush on the MC" character, except she's never annoyingly naive or overly girly. And so on.
Also, I find it interesting how only Team Destiny games have full body skits. It just looks so much better, so I'm not sure why other Tales games aren't doing it. I'll chalk it up to laziness.
So anyway, it's pretty good. From a gameplay point of view, I can strongly recommend it. Otherwise, it has its share of anime clichés, though it can be tolerated. The game itself is shorter than some of the longer installments in the series. Took me 60 hours to beat with pretty much every sidequest done and a bit of grinding thrown in there (only because I liked the battle system that much. Not because there's any actual need to grind). So the main story is less than that, probably, uh... 50-55? I dunno. To me, that's still the perfect length, but people who liked the bajillion hours you could spend in Abyss (or Vesperia?) tend to complain, even though a good chunk of that game was pretty boring/filler-y because of this.
Speaking of which, the difficulty is... somewhat lacking. The game's way too easy on Normal if you know what you're doing. I pretty much ended up beating the later half of the game on Second and Hard, the two difficulty settings above Normal.
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Originally Posted by blazinasian
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