LogFAQs > #951188832

#11 - Tales of Vesperia (Xbox 360, 2008)

Back on the GameCube I played through my first Tales game, Symphonia, and found it to be a very good game at the time I played it. And while the translation for GBA Phantasia was somewhat questionable, I still enjoyed the gameplay of that one as well.

Fast forward to 2008. The PS3 had barely any games to speak of at the time, and the 360 was collecting a good amount of jRPGs at the time that I was somewhat interested in, including this one. (This one would be the only 360 exclusive jRPG that I would actually play on the 360, though.) I got a 360 for Christmas at some point and this was the game I played the most on it, and is still the Tales game I think is the best.

Vesperia's main character is Yuri Lowell and he is one of the best jRPG protagonists around (and the Tales character polls show that Japan agrees, as they had to take him out just to give other characters a chance), as he's very different from the usual Tales protagonists who do nothing besides talk about friendship for 80 hours or so. Yuri is a true chaotic good protagonist and has mostly unique or altered artes, while his friend Flynn has most of the basic ones such as Demon Fang and Sword Rain - and he acts like you would expect a Tales main character to be. Following Yuri throughout the game is a much better Tales experience overall, and though the party isn't really the kind of friendship you would expect in a jRPG, they play off of each other very well. This is also one of the first Tales game to have voice acting in the skits as well as the cutscenes, which adds to the game a lot as well.

The game's story does kind of drag on a bit - I think it would have been much better overall to have it end at the end of part 2 rather than adding a whole new chapter to the game - especially since practically the whole map had already been explored by that time. The gameplay is not as good as some of the Tales games I've played since Vesperia, as I've noted in my writeups for both Graces f and Xillia, but it's still solid enough to hold up today, unlike Symphonia which I really can't go back to after playing some of the later titles.

I haven't played the remastered version that came out more recently, and I feel without Troy Baker voicing Yuri the whole way through and adding Patty to the party will just ruin my enjoyment of how great I felt this game was overall. I will eventually, though finding time to fit another 100 hour RPG is definitely more difficult these days than back when I was in college instead. Still, my memories of playing this through my first year of college definitely place this game all the way up at #11.

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