Ah the Tales series. This a series that you either love or hate. The Namco Tales studio made a career out of keeping old school JRPG tropes alive, as the series never really strayed away from its roots and its trademark anime look and tone. I love most of the games and those that i don't love i just like, so yeah, call me a fan of the series. Before this game came out games were being developed by 2 separate teams, which are known to fans as Team Symphonia(They make the larger scale games) and Team Destiny(Smaller scale games). In recent years though, Hideo Baba became producer of the series and a new policy was implemented: The 2 teams now work together to assure games of higher quality, even though the team behind the original idea of each game still makes the major decisions to keep artistic vision intact and keep the games with enough distinct differences. The game we're looking at today was developed with Team Destiny calling the shots, and it was originally a Wii game in Japan, but because of serious bugs, the Wii version was discontinued and the game was ported to the PS3, with better graphics and extra content, including a new story chapter and some new music.
Hideo Baba's role as producer so far looks like a great idea, as the first game in this new era of the series is the best since Tales of the Abyss. Let's take a look:
The Story:
This game tells the story of a young boy named Asbel Lhant. While playing in a hill outside his hometown with his brother, he finds a weird girl in a meadow with amnesia. With the help of his friends and family, Asbel starts investigating the mystery of who she is and where she came from, with tragic consequences that will forever change their lives. This game has the first great story of the series in a while. It's for the most part a tale of friendship, with elements of resentment, redemption, young love and the value of life to mix things up. For the most part the script is great, filled with humor and honest tenderness, even if there's still the occasional cringeworthy lines that plagued the least good games in the series. As always there are skits(Optional conversations between characters triggered by the Select button) and the skits in Graces are by far the best the series has ever had, as they range from mildly entertaining to wildly funny or sincerely sad. The big strength of the story however are the characters. All of them have strong personalities, and are very well developed, except for one, who despite being really funny, doesn't go through enough development to make her a fully realized character. Also the first ending of the game, which was the definite ending in the Wii original, is kinda lackluster. It's not bad, but it leaves some subplots unresolved and the final cutscene before the credits is worthy of a facepalm because of how corny it is. Fortunately the developers added an extra story chapter in the PS3 port that solves all those problems and gives us a far better ending that ties all the loose ends in a satisfying way.
Overall it's a great story with great characters.
8/10
The Gameplay:
As the first game in this new era of Tales games, Graces makes some noticeable changes to the gameplay formula. The combat system in particular is the first in a 3D Tales to not be a refined version of the Symphonia battle system. It's still essentially the same action based combat where you fight in a 3D area everytime you touch a monster and perform physical attacks and fighting and healing abilities called Artes while dodging enemy attacks. One of the major differences is that Technique points(This series equivalent of MP) was replaced by Chain Capacity points. Almost every action you perform costs a few CC, even physical attacks. However, characters are always regaining CC points when they are not doing anything that requires points. This obviously means there are no orange gels in this game. CC points make combat much more intuitive and fast paced, as you won't need to stop and go to the combat menu to use items to recover mana. Depth was not sacrificed though, as you'll need to use CC cleverly if you want to keep combos going and cause massive damage, which is essential against tough opponents. Another major difference is how this time there are 2 types of artes: B-Artes and A-Artes. B-Artes are performed by using the button inputs they're mapped to, like in previous games, but while performing these you can extend you attack combo by following it with an A-Arte if you have enough CC. Some enemies are weaker to a specific type of Arte, so good choices of which Artes to use is essential. The Over Limit(Unison in the Symphonia games) gauge that in the previous games allowed you to perform powerful Mystic Artes when full was replaced by the Eleth gauge. There's 2 sections of the gauge, every time you attack an enemy sucessfully or guard/dodge an attack the blue section fills a bit. It also works in vice-versa for the orange section. Depending on which section gets full, you or the enemies will go into an "Eleth Break" mode for a few seconds where CC is unlimited and you can perform Mystic Artes, powerful attacks that cause massive damage. This adds alot of strategy to the combat, since it forces you to constantly think about your strategy to avoid being on the receiving end of a Mystic Arte.The traditional title system from previous games where characters gain certain titles that affect their stats in some way(Except in Vesperia, where titles were useless for some reason), is in this game the first new character development system of the series since Symphonia. Every character in this game can gain titles through side-quests, story events, and mostly by fighting battles and they can get around 200 titles, the biggest selection in the series thus far. Every title has a particular effect on the character when equipped just like older games, but by gaining Skill points at the end of every battle, you can learn a total of 5 skills from each title which range from stat bonuses to Mystic Artes. It's the primary way of making characters stronger and it's recommended you check which title gives what so you can learn the more useful skills as early as possible if you want to stand a chance in the toughest battles of the game.
The overworld while containing a lot of towns, dungeons etc., has a linear structure that resembles FFX(Probably because of the original game being limited by the small space of the single-layer DVD), despite being much better executed. One of the main strengths of the gameplay are the side-quests. Every side-quest tells a story that ranges from entertainingly funny to heartbreakingly sad and even dark. They develop the main characters further and flesh out some minor characters, making them very rewarding. A lot of love and care went into creating the world of this game and it shows.
Overall, the gameplay is fantastic. It excels at literally everything it does.
9/10
The Audio:
Just like every other Tales game, the music is composed by Motoi Sakuraba, veteran RPG composer that recently gave us fantastic music in Kid Icarus: Uprising and Dark Souls. His music for this series tends to sound bland to me most of the time though. Symphonia and Abyss had great soundtracks, but after that he just seems to go on autopilot when he does music for a Tales game. In this particular game i can only recall the wonderful main theme and its variations(Not the vocal version though, that's terrible), the cool battle themes and a few nice town and overworld themes. Most of the soundtrack, despite being well composed is just not all that memorable, it's just JRPG generic soundtrack. Personally I think it's time Sakuraba does what Koji Kondo did and just be a sound director, so some new composer can be brought in to bring much needed life into the music of this series. The voice acting is overall stellar. Every actor does a fantastic job of giving life to the characters, especially experienced anime VA Cassandra Morris in her first VG role as Sophie.
6.5/10
The Graphics:
Since this is an HD port of a Wii game, the graphics obviously aren't up to par with other PS3 games. I have to say though, these are some of the best graphics I've seen in a Wii game. The animations, while not stellar, are very well done and do a great job of expressing the character's emotions. The textures despite its standard definition roots come across nice-looking in this HD port. The character design by veteran Tales artist Mutsumi Inomata gives the characters a lot of charm. The monster design is also very good. This game may have not have had many resources, but the artists did the best with what they had.
8/10
Overall, Tales of Graces f is a great game that captures what makes this genre great when developers know what they're doing. It's not groundbreaking and the formula is still essentially the same, but this game proves that radical rethinking isn't always necessary for a series to retain its quality. Graces stands as a great example of how you can take old conventions and still make a great game if you put a lot of heart and thought into it. The story is very well told, the gameplay never gets dull and the visuals, while simple, are still charming. It won't blow you away, but if you give it a chance, it might remind you of what makes old school JRPGs so endearing.
Final Grade: 8/10
All i can say is well done Tales Studio, and now bring on Tales of Xillia. Join me next time when i review Ni no Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch. See ya then ;)
