Board 8 > Tales of the Abyss

(+) Yeah! (+)

Other characters like Guy and Jade may be more easily liked due to being funnier or just being cooler. But in terms of pure character development, Luke beats out everyone by a mile. He's top on my list too.

That's exactly it, like I mentioned earlier in the topic. Most people adopt the position of "audience" when playing games, and think characters are cool because they are... cool.

When I play games I assume the role of "critic". I judge characters for things like their personal development, the pacing and execution of their story arc, how well they're integrated with the story, believability of their actions, quality of their dialogue, and so on. This comes naturally to me, as a professional in the field.

Guy is a good character, but he's nowhere as well executed as Luke. Take his love for Fontech for instance. It serves no purpose other than making sure one of the characters knows how to put power sources into stuff. It's obvious that they went "Jade is the expert at way too much stuff, we need to have someone else have some expertise at something too so they're not all redundant". Guy's gynophobia also never really went anywhere. It's just stupid and unrealistic, and the cause of his phobia was hard to take seriously. If it was a bunch of male servants who died to protect him, would he have been afraid of men? Doubt it. The whole thing is just a forced character quirk probably conceived to make him more unique and omg-so-funny.

But enough character analysis now, I could go on forever but I don't have time for this because I'm drawing FAN ART(yay) to commemorate beating the game. It will be awesome and you guys will love it.

It wasn't just because the maids protected him, it was because he was buried beneath their corpses. I mean that's gotta be some kind of trauma.

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^If you can find me an example of someone developing an irrational fear of humans of a specific gender after chilling in a pile of corpses, then I'll reconsider. Becoming scared of corpses? Sure. Becoming afraid of women? Sorry Link, I can't give credit.

His obsession with fontech machines was obviously used for Jade to accuse Luke of comparing Guy to Dist.

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Damn right I'm keeping this alive a little longer

should I buy this game

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^ Yes you should.


Oh lol, this topic almost purged. I got distracted with OMG TOONAMI and then sleeping through half the day after that.

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I love Luke and his development.

And Anise is on the bottom where she belongs! I think she's the worst tales Playable character.

LucretiaMerces posted...
I love Luke and his development.

And Anise is on the bottom where she belongs! I think she's the worst tales Playable character.

Claus from Phantasia, or are you talking about personality wise?

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I'm talking character wise.

Haha no way. Shirley, Natalia, Marta, Genis, there's plenty of worse Tales characters.

Then again I never really held that much of a grudge against Anise. It was a dumb twist, yeah, but....eh.

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From: Takfloyd_mkII__ | #245
EDIT: I'm also still missing the final entry in the dungeon list! What's that all about?

Oh no one ever answered this, did they?

The bonus dungeon, The Abyss, is only accessible after you beat the game and load your old save file. (which also gets you the extra Mystic Artes that are all pretty kickass)

Be warned though, it's kinda bad apart from the bosses. I hope you have a lot of Gald.

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I'd rank Shirley 2nd last. But Natalia isn't that bad. Anise on the other hand is just horrible. Sadly there was no option to kill her.

I'll share this with this topic:


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"Don't freeze up girl, you're looking quite a sight." - Adam Ant.
"Baby, can you dig your man? He's a righteous man." - Larry Underwood

Hahahaha that is so wonderful

Reminds me of that fan collaboration "remake" of Star Wars. No budget, lots of passion and irony.

Awesome vid.

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Kinda off topic but remember how I hate random battles and always avoid/run from them?

Playing FFXIII-2 now and there is a segment where you have to look for a small, possibly invisible object in a huge city... while being constantly spammed with inescapable random battles.

This is possibly the most frustrating part of a Final Fantasy game ever.

The game is generally good though.

Also I'm not quite done with Abyss yet so UNPURGE TOPIC

**** Academia 400. So terribly designed.

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That sounds annoying as hell. I think FFII is worse though. In just about any dungeon there are a ton of doors. Most of them lead to empty rooms where you have like a 95% chance to get into a fight per step(that's 3-4 battles just to leave a room). Basically, the game punishes the player for exploring. In a RPG. But I'm getting off topic...

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Turns out the object was invisible. Seriously, wtf? (Okay, so it was actually in a very convenient location free of enemies... but I didn't know that! I searched through the entire place before finding it!)

FFII's trap rooms didn't really bother me much. It's OK as long as you can escape from the battles. In FFXIII-2 you can't. You literally have to quit without saving to get out. Only in a couple of especially annoying locations, mind you.

Don't want to give the game bad cred though, I'm almost at the end now and it's been like a 500% improvement from FFXIII for sure. My expectations weren't particularly high, but I'm positively surprised with the quality here.

So there's a poker game in XIII-2. Funny thing is, with all its crazy production values and voice acted opponents and shiny effects, it's not even a tenth as addictive as the one in Abyss. There you go with Square Enix still being unable to just make something simple and fun.

I cruised around Auldrant today looking for this elusive optional dungeon, but I can't find it. I don't mind you guys telling me stuff now that I've beat the game, so speak up on where I need to go. That goes for these second Mystic Artes as well!

Also I'm still making an unquestionably awesome fan art, check it out!

Gonna start playing Abyss again tonight. I don't remember if starting a NG+ erases the save file used, but I guess I'll find out. It'd be nice to start with some bonuses. I started a NG+ 2 years ago but barely touched it, and I'd rather start from the beginning again. I don't think I did ANY sidequests in Abyss that weren't right in front of your face (or Vesperia, either), and my 108 hour Graces playthrough made me want to go back and redo those 2.

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You have more than one save file slot, use them.

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That is awesome fanart. :)

I don't remember where the optional dungeon is but as for the second mystic artes...


Luke: Be in critical health, and be wielding the Key of Lorlei. Hold down the attack + block + arte buttons. (Once per fight)

Tear: Use Judgement 200-300 times (I don't remember which) and use Judgement during overlimit

Jade: Use Thunder Blade 200 times. Hold down R/L during overlimit.

Guy: Use Final cross 200 times, wield the Jewel of Gardaious(or whatever?), and be below 50% health. I think you'd have to get this one on new game+ since it involves a stupidly forgettable and easy to miss side quest to get Guy's sword.

Anise: Use Lucky 200 times, have at least 10K gald on you.

Natalia: Use Piercing line 200 times, use Piercing Line while wielding the Eleven Bow(craftable weapon).


So... which optional fight are you working on first? >.>

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Woot picked up Vesperia finally.

That is all.

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Second secret dungeon entrance is in Sheridan if I recall correctly, not entirely sure on the steps you need to do...?

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Yeah it's there. Still not certain if it can be done on the first gamesave. Wouldn't exactly hurt to try though.

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From: Dark Young Link | #277
Yeah it's there. Still not certain if it can be done on the first gamesave. Wouldn't exactly hurt to try though.

Long as it's a clear save.

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Ok so how do I open it? I'd try stuff myself, but I'm busy beating FFXIII-2 and since I already basically completed Abyss I don't feel like spending a lot of time figuring it out.

From what I remember, you just talk to someone in Sheridan. You have to have the bridge subplot finished though, which I think you do.

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Yeah that's the thing: I've completed the bridge funding, but the bridge doesn't appear, and Aston keeps saying to come back later. Is this based on real time or something?

You saved all the cheagles at Ortion Cave? If so did you speak to the Chegle Elder again? Otherwise I can't think of much else(You needed to save some guy, but the fact that you have Mieu Fire 2 suggest you've done so)

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I don't think I've spoken to the Cheagle Elder after saving the Cheagles, that may be it, though I certainly can't see how that relates to the bridge!


Think I'm going to watch the anime as well, is it any good? I take it there is no English dub with the voice crew from the game?

I don't think the TotA anime has a dub.

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We'll show her the power of a dream.

Also, did you save your game recently? If not, the game will still think you're on your "first" playthrough. Save files for New Game+ has a star next to them.

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Team Rocket Elite posted...
I don't think the TotA anime has a dub.

Nope. They just released the DVD here with "official" subtitles.

A shame, I would have liked to have the English voice cast.

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Ha, I finished my awesome fan art!

http://takfloyd.deviantart.com/art/Settle-the-Score-296198949

Some questionable anatomy here and there and I suck at colouring but otherwise it's pretty cool!

Also started watching the anime. Wow, it's like a scene-for-scene remake of the game, with an occasional missing or shortened scene. Japan sure knows how to not mess with good source material! (See also: Phoenix Wright movie).

Japanese voices are good, and as expected, Anise is a lot better and Jade is a lot worse(but still great). They don't really do sarcasm over there so of course Jade loses some of his edge.

I'll probably watch it through, I could use some moonspeak practice anyway and it's cool to see how some things were translated, not to mention pick up some references I missed in the English game. Dist introducing himself as "bara no Dist" made me giggle when I remembered that roses symbolize gays in Japan!

Aside from the opening(which sucks with vocals), they don't use the same music, but I'm pretty sure it's still Sakuraba's work, strangely, unless the composer completely copied his style.

Btw I'm not going to do writeups on the anime or anything, that would be a huge waste of time and from my experience there aren't a lot of missables in anime for you people to tip me off on...

Were you able to get into the secret dungeon?

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We'll show her the power of a dream.

Yes. What a random chain of events. This place seems annoying though. Taking money for every swing of the pickaxe, that greedy bastard.

Oh, and I learned from the anime why the place is called Ortion Cavern. It's Dist's middle name, though I think they never mentioned it in the game. So... Dist Ortion. Lol.

Ran out of money after like 3 rooms. Sigh.

Instead of farming money I decided to take a crack at Nebilim with my final boss team. Didn't expect to win, but... I did. Even though it took like an hour. Revive is so broken, I never even got close to losing because Nebilim doesn't have any attacks that can kill characters twice. Drained probably like 100 000 Gald's worth of items though, since all her attacks are OHKOs, so I needed to spam TP items constantly to keep Natalia and Tear's Resurrect/Revive train going.

And whoa, Dist survived again! Jade wasn't kidding with the cockroach thing. Then there's a flashback to Jade and Dist as kids, which I just saw the anime rendition of. That episode was partially what inspired me to take on Nebilim again.

Finally, Dist gets locked away like last time. Is this the last we see of him?

The best way to do that dungeon is taking a map, locating the nearest HP restoration spring, and dig straight for that. Once you reach that, change the amount of Gald you pay to as low as possible and dig open everything that's reasonably close to that spring, returning as often as needed to restore Shiba's HP. Hop from spring to spring that way.

It takes a while, but at least you're not wasting hours grinding Gald.

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Grats on being Nebilim!

The power of the weapons you used to get to her in the first place are now awaken. It won't show up on the stats, but the weapon gains 1 point for every kill that character has under their belt.

Now try to take on that mysterious team in the arena! :) Pretty fun fight, not to mention you'll gain quite a bit of gald. Don't forget to tell us what you think of the music...

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Oh and if you think Revive is broken, you should see what the FoF version does...

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If he can take Nebilim, he's going to destroy the arena. <_<

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Nebilim and the Cameo Team are difficult for different reasons.

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Don't forget to tell us what you think of the music...

For the arena fight? I haven't played any other Tales games than this and Symphonia, so I wouldn't recognize it. I liked it though, it is a meshup of several battle themes, no?

The best music in the game is the final battle sequence. All three phases are great, but especially the first one, "time to raise the cross". Woo check out the radical lack of capitalization in that song title.

Oh and if you think Revive is broken, you should see what the FoF version does...

I think I never got that, actually, even with my constant spamming of Revive. What does it do?

Also, chances are I'm calling it quits on the game now, unless someone can muster a very convincing argument for why I should continue. With Nebilim defeated I've seen pretty much everything the plot has to offer, no? Apart from stuff I missed on the way.

Takfloyd_mkII__ posted...


For the arena fight? I haven't played any other Tales games than this and Symphonia, so I wouldn't recognize it. I liked it though, it is a meshup of several battle themes, no?

Yep, four different battle themes. And the second battle theme is a remix of yet another theme.



I think I never got that, actually, even with my constant spamming of Revive. What does it do?

Angel's Breath does the following.

Acts as an AoE Revive.
Fully heals anyone in range.
Revives any KOed party members and STILL gives them auto-revive.


Also, chances are I'm calling it quits on the game now, unless someone can muster a very convincing argument for why I should continue. With Nebilim defeated I've seen pretty much everything the plot has to offer, no? Apart from stuff I missed on the way.

If you beat Nebilim and the arena fight then that's pretty much it in terms of battles(there's one more in that dungeon and it happens to add a bit to the story but at this point the dungeon doesn't offer too much in terms of difficulty.

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I picked this up for PS2 earlier. Aside from the boon of portability, what else did I miss out on?

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^Quicker load times and 3D, some bugfixes here and there. Nothing worth fussing about.

There's two optional boss fights in that dungeon, actually. But it's a pretty awful dungeon so...yeah.

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