Board 8 > Rate the VG Story Day 102: Tales of Vesperia

(+) Yeah! (+)

Todays game is Tales of Vesperia. How would you rate the story on a scale from 1-10?

-

Previous Results:
Planescape: Torment - 9.83 (12 votes)
Omori - 9.67 (6 votes)
Outer Wilds - 9.6 (21 votes)
Nier Automata - 9.25 (31 votes)
Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney: Trials and Tribulations - 9.18 (34 votes)
The House in Fata Morgana - 9.14 (7 votes)
13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim - 9.1 (14 votes)
Red Dead Redemption 2 - 9 (8 votes)
Steins;Gate - 8.94 (9 votes)
Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater - 8.91 (30 votes)
Zero Escape: Virtues Last Reward - 8.89 (19 votes)
Grim Fandango - 8.88 (13 votes)
Return of the Obra Dinn - 8.85 (10 votes)
Silent Hill 4: The Room - 8.83 (6 votes)
Umineko When They Cry - 8.82 (11 votes)
Persona 3 - 8.82 (20 votes)
Xenogears - 8.71 (23 votes)
Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty 8.67 (31 votes)
Metal Gear Solid - 8.67 (27 votes)
Final Fantasy Tactics - 8.65 (23 votes)
The Legend of Zelda: Majoras Mask - 8.56 (27 votes)
Disco Elysium - 8.56 (16 votes)
Undertale - 8.45 (42 votes)
Chrono Trigger - 8.41 (39 votes)
What Remains of Edith Finch - 8.41 (19 votes)
Yakuza: Like a Dragon - 8.4 (5 votes)
Mass Effect 2 - 8.38 (28 votes)
Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic - 8.37 (15 votes)
Final Fantasy X - 8.35 (55 votes)
Final Fantasy VII - 8.28 (37 votes)
Final Fantasy VI - 8.19 (43 votes)
Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective 8.17 (18 votes)
The Walking Dead Season 1 - 8.17 (21 votes)
Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - 8.15 (40 votes)
The Last of Us - 8.13 (35 votes)
Horizon: Zero Dawn - 8.06 (18 votes)
The Wolf Among Us - 8.04 (14 votes)
Xenoblade Chronicles - 7.94 (27 votes)
Spec Ops: The Line - 7.9 (17 votes)
Bloodborne - 7.88 (20 votes)
Life is Strange - 7.85 (31 votes)
Doki Doki Literature Club - 7.81 (25 votes)
Bioshock - 7.64 (23 votes)
Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors - 7.7 (30 votes)
The Sexy Brutale - 7.7 (5 votes)
Celeste - 7.62 (25 votes)
Skies of Arcadia - 7.62 (13 votes)
Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair - 7.47 (29 votes)
The Last Story - 7.47 (6 votes)
Mortal Kombat (2011) - 7.46 (13 votes)
Tales of Symphonia - 7.36 (27 votes)
Mass Effect - 7.35 (28 votes)
Earthbound - 7.33 (19 votes)
Uncharted 2: Among Thieves - 7.26 (29 votes)
Hotel Dusk: Room 215 - 7.25 (12 votes)
Tales of the Abyss - 7.24 (28 votes)
Red Dead Redemption - 7.23 (11 votes)
Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony - 7.17 (24 votes)
Mass Effect 3 - 7.16 (21 votes)
Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots - 7.11 (23 votes)
Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars - 7.1 (30 votes)
To the Moon - 7.07 (7 votes)
Super Paper Mario - 7.05 (22 votes)
The Vanishing of Ethan Carter - 7 (5 votes)
Hollow Knight - 6.98 (21 votes)
INSIDE - 6.93 (15 votes)
Gone Home - 6.91 (17 votes)
Bioshock Infinite - 6.87 (19 votes)
Death Stranding - 6.73 (13 votes)
Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney: Justice For All - 6.67 (31 votes)
Firewatch - 6.65 (10 votes)
Dark Souls - 6.62 (20 votes)
Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc - 6.61 (28 votes)
Chrono Cross - 6.56 (17 votes)
Valkyria Chronicles - 6.5 (16 votes)
Xenoblade Chronicles 2 - 6.5 (13 votes)
Resident Evil 7: Biohazard - 6.38 (12 votes)
The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time - 6.31 (35 votes)
Professor Layton and the Curious Village - 6.16 (14 votes)
DOOM (2016) - 6.15 (13 votes)
Star Fox 64 - 5.8 (25 votes)
Uncharted 3: Drakes Deception - 5.8 (24 votes)
Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice - 5.72 (9 votes)
Final Fantasy IV - 5.78 (30 votes)
Metroid Prime - 5.67 (24 votes)
Kingdom Hearts - 5.59 (30 votes)
The Wonderful 101 - 5.5 (4 votes)
Uncharted: Drakes Fortune - 5.26 (28 votes)
Fire Emblem Fates: Birthright - 4.83 (12 votes)
Final Fantasy XIII - 4.79 (29 votes)
Final Fantasy X-2 - 4.79 (19 votes)
Fallout 3 - 4.76 (17 votes)
Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty - 4.72 (9 votes)
Super Smash Bros. Brawl - 4.64 (40 votes)
Fallout 4 - 4.43 (15 votes)
Final Fantasy - 4.24 (19 votes)
Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops - 3.89 (9 votes)
Resident Evil 6 - 3.74 (17 votes)
Final Fantasy Tactics Advance - 3.69 (13 votes)
Fire Emblem Fates: Conquest - 3.46 (15 votes)
Starcraft II (overall) - 3.4 (5 votes)
Fire Emblem Fates (overall) - 3.32 (11 votes)
Starcraft II: Legacy of the Void - 2.83 (6 votes)
Sonic the Hedgehog (2006) - 2.66 (16 votes)
Starcraft II: Heart of the Swarm - 2.57 (7 votes)
Fire Emblem Fates: Revelation - 2.33 (9 votes)
Tales of Zestiria - 2.14 (7 votes)

You can still rate previous days games if you missed them, just write <game name><rating>. If you want to change your rating you can just specify that you are changing your rating. Nominations for future days are also welcome, nominate as many games as you like and I will get to all of them.

---

7/10

Mediocre to bad story carried by good characters.

---

4

Probably deserves a bit higher, but the missed potential really bugs me. It achieves greatness for like 2 scenes and then...fizzles.

---

6.5/10, probs my fav main cast of characters in a jrpg really wouldn't be anywhere near as high without as good of a cast as it had.

7/10, the Baba chunk at the end is just a real damn shame.

I am not sure if I voted for it or. Not, if not please dob

The House in Fata Morgana - 10

---

5

---

Hoping to play this soon, but until then...

Nominate The Legend of Heroes: Trails to Azure

---

4

A plot of absolute nothingness for too long, with too many loose ends, villains that have nonsensical motives, characters that have too little to do with the plot, no character chemistry for all of part 2, and nothing memorable aside from Yuri's assassinations of two very corrupt bureaucrats. That spoiler tag + Yuri being Yuri are enough to get a 4.
---

8/10

The last act sucks but it's also relatively easy to ignore, and the rest of the story is fantastic.
---

8
---

6.5/10

Starts with tremendous promise, but the last third is such an utter collapse that it kind of wrecks the whole game. I'm not counting the definitive additions, which would actually have made this score even lower. Great core cast though!

---

Oh, man.

5, I guess. It's a shame how easy it is to tell that the three different parts were written by three different people.

---

5, I guess. It's a bit of a mess as others have been saying.

---

3/10

One of the weaker tales stories IMO.

5/10

The story itself is kind of a mish-mashy mess. It's basically 3 mini stories in 1. Act 1 concludes neatly, then oh suddenly here's this other problem to deal with in act 2 that's unrelated! And of course, act 3 as it's been said. And none of the antagonists really get the development you'd want, with barbos coming into play pretty late in act 1 and alexei only really coming to the forefront towards the climax of act 2 without getting a lot of development. More of "oh here's how he was actually behind the scenes the whole time" but there's not a lot of foreshadowing or anything to it aside from the very beginning of the game. Duke you can see coming a mile away too, so meh.

But the themes throughout and how it handles them are pretty good, and the party itself and their interactions with the world help lift it up. The one thing about the theme that I think works against it is how it tries to leave Yuri's vigilantism up to the player to decide how they feel about it...but Yuri ultimately doesn't get any comeuppance from it, so it kind of rings hollow in that sense; the game decided that in this case, what yuri did was okay anyway even if the player felt otherwise.

---

8/10

Definitely the best story of the three Tales games I've played, though admittedly most of that is on the back of great character writing and strong world-building.

---

6

Vesperia is more about the characters, interaction and world building than the overall story.

I was blown away by it playing on the 360 back then but when I revisited it on the PS4, I noticed so many glaring flaws in not just the story but the structure of the game as well.

It still holds dear to my heart but I can't in good conscience say that the story deserves anything more than the score I just gave it.

Also the third act is unnecessary which was something I said even back then.

Retro Vote

The House in Fata Morgana - 9

Amazing overall story when it all comes together. Certain parts I found quite boring which is why I docked that one point. Those parts were Door 1 and 4. 1 was an unbearably bad start, 4 was unnecessary even though the game really tries to tell you that it is not.

Also wish the game wasn't made on such barebones budget where they can't even afford to put in sprites for certain characters that are quite relevant to the plot.

Door 1 and 4 were actually two of my favorites!

---

9/10 even though the last act isnt as good the strong writing for the characters is enough to make you not care too much or at least I didnt. Such fantastic party members.

9 - story in itself isn't anything amazing on paper, but the characters and their interaction really make it shine.

---

Ah cool I think I nominated this after beating it! Echoing what some others have said, it's pretty disjointed and the last act is entirely unnecessary. There's a lot of typical anime tropes I don't care for and the villains are terribly underbaked. But there is some good theme work going on here and there was a moment in the middle of the game where I thought this could really be something special. Yuri's vigilantism, Judith wrestling with her moral code, Yuri and Flynn's relationship coming to a head, Estelle realising she may actually be a blight on the world, they set up some really great stuff but it all gets resolved way too quickly and neatly, and then the game keeps going for another several hours.

The playable characters all have something interesting going on too, even if it's sometimes overshadowed by the game's insistence on Funny Tropes (pirate speak, dragon freak, old man old man old man).

I'll give it a 6.

Emeraldegg posted...

The one thing about the theme that I think works against it is how it tries to leave Yuri's vigilantism up to the player to decide how they feel about it...but Yuri ultimately doesn't get any comeuppance from it, so it kind of rings hollow in that sense; the game decided that in this case, what yuri did was okay anyway even if the player felt otherwise.

I get your point here but I quite like how they handle it! Maybe because I was expecting a didactic 'Yuri has gone too far and should learn to be more like Flynn and work within the confines of the system to reform it' message, personally I found it refreshing that the game didn't punish or judge him for his actions. But I can see that coming from the other side it might feel empty.

---

andylt posted...

Ah cool I think I nominated this after beating it! Echoing what some others have said, it's pretty disjointed and the last act is entirely unnecessary. There's a lot of typical anime tropes I don't care for and the villains are terribly underbaked. But there is some good theme work going on here and there was a moment in the middle of the game where I thought this could really be something special. Yuri's vigilantism, Judith wrestling with her moral code, Yuri and Flynn's relationship coming to a head, Estelle realising she may actually be a blight on the world, they set up some really great stuff but it all gets resolved way too quickly and neatly, and then the game keeps going for another several hours.

The playable characters all have something interesting going on too, even if it's sometimes overshadowed by the game's insistence on Funny Tropes (pirate speak, dragon freak, old man old man old man).

I'll give it a 6.

I get your point here but I quite like how they handle it! Maybe because I was expecting a didactic 'Yuri has gone too far and should learn to be more like Flynn and work within the confines of the system to reform it' message, personally I found it refreshing that the game didn't punish or judge him for his actions. But I can see that coming from the other side it might feel empty.

To be clear, I don't even think it was badly done, I think they handled it about as well as you can handle a moral crisis in a story-driven video game. The problem is because it's a story-driven game, I feel that anything that tries to leave stuff for the player to decide how they feel is ultimately doomed to ring hollow because the story has to progress in one way, and one of those sides typically supports one or the other. Like say Yuri ended up going to jail. This doesn't really fix my initial criticism because the plot progressing still makes a judgment on it, one way or another. And for an extra bit of irony, consider that Ragou ended up getting off scot-free initially due to his connections, which is why Yuri killed him. Yuri ends up getting off scot-free because his best friend is the new commandant. I know it's not exactly the same as ragou was a PoS and Yuri is generally well-meaning and also helped save the world, but it is still there. He still committed crimes and got away with them.

It's less about how they in particular handled it and more that I think it's very difficult to set up such a scenario that truly ends on letting the player decide for themselves.

---

4

---

4

---

8

Act I and II are a 10/10 story and then it falls flat on its face in Act III. Still a great game though

---

Need to play this one.

---

3/10

The story stakes go from 1/10 to 2/10 to 100/10 and it does not feel earned or justified.

People love these characters but I thought they were pretty mediocre except Yuri and maybe Karl. Estelle is confusingly stupid/naive and the other characters are about as tropey as you can get in a JRPG.

Yuri does a few interesting things in a game that is otherwise completely bland and meandering.

---

skullbone posted...

Estelle is confusingly stupid/naive

To each their own, but I thought they struck a really refreshing balance by making her booksmart but sheltered. Honestly one of the things I liked the most about the game's character writing was that it didn't pigeonhole any one character as The Stupid One or The Smart One, but instead gave each party member their own areas of knowledge.

---

imo Karol is the best character in Vesperia who isn't Yuri and it's a shame they gave that story arc to an aesthetically unpleasing kid, dooming him to never be appreciated as much as the main character or waifus

He secretly drives most of the plot

---

Estelle is one of the best female leads in Tales. I don't put any if that game's issues in her shoulders. Honestly maybe just Tear is better? Obviously Velvet, but she's the actual, like, LEAD lead of her game. And Alicia could have been but....lol.

I was never gonna give Karol his credit, though. I get that his story is better than his aesthetic, but I just don't want anything to do with him. I'm never about any of the actual legit under 13 years old kids in any of these games other than Laphicet.

---

KamikazePotato posted...

imo Karol is the best character in Vesperia who isn't Yuri and it's a shame they gave that story arc to an aesthetically unpleasing kid, dooming him to never be appreciated as much as the main character or waifus

He secretly drives most of the plot

Big vouch. I'll forever be a Karol apologist.

---

Laphicet sucks butt.
---

Estelle was the first main girl I really liked in the Tales of series. The rest Ive experienced I havent liked unless you count Chloe over Shirley as the main.

Yeah I can't fathom how someone could say Laphicet is better than Karol. Also lol at shaming a JRPG character for their age.

Rita is 15 and she's a super genius shut-in who lives by herself. Yuri for his infinite wisdom and hardened stance on the world is 21. So yeah I can suspend my disbelief about Karol.

Just pretend he's a 1000 year old dragon living in a little boy's body or something if it bothers you so much.

---

yea Karol's great. i think i just streotyped him as the "annoying kid" first time round coz i remember thinking he was the worst party member when i first went through the game, but really really enjoyed him when i went through the definitive edition.
only character i soured on even a little second time through was Rita, mainly coz i thought she was the worst in skits.

Laphicet is definitely better than Karol, but Laphicet is one of the best characters in the franchise, no shame in that

---

I wasn't shaming him for his age, I was making a general statement about the child characters in Tales games. There are plenty of child characters I like in general, I just COINCIDENTALLY don't like any of them in Tales except for Laphi.

And I just don't like Karol! I don't like his design, voice, or general demeanor. His archetype does nothing for me in general.

---

I'm stunned there's anyone that likes Karol better than Laphicet.

And I don't even dislike Karol. He's aggressively fine.

---

I did move him up from hated to fine on the Definitive Edition playthrough.

Next to Poochie....er, Patty, anyone looks good.

---

Karol is a good character imo, far from the worst playable one in the game! I'd put him at least above Patty, Rita, and Raven without a thought. (Rita is good but also unbearable sometimes, Raven could be good if they stopped reminding us he is an Old Man Pervert every 5 seconds)
Emeraldegg posted...

It's less about how they in particular handled it and more that I think it's very difficult to set up such a scenario that truly ends on letting the player decide for themselves.

Yeah this is a fair point, I guess I never expected it to be framed as up to the player so it didn't bother me.

---

Raven always felt like Zelos if Zelos sucked

Rita' popularity is one that's always eluded me, she has zero likable personality traits and doesn't have depth or humor to offset that

---

KamikazePotato posted...

Raven always felt like Zelos if Zelos sucked

i'm the opposite, Zelos sucked. Raven ruled.

Rita is still a top tier Tales Mage girls, of which there are many! Of who I can speak for...

Magilou > Rita > Tear > Edna > Rinwell > Raine > Pascal > Elize > Lailah

I had to Google Lailah's name.

---

I need to still do a 100% run of this game, my only playthrough was borrowing a friend's 360 and rushing it in a week so I don't remember a ton of it.

---

Really looking forward to when I make a topic to update my Tales character rankings with the Arise cast. >__>

---

NBIceman posted...

Really looking forward to when I make a topic to update my Tales character rankings with the Arise cast. >__>

You were the one who made that absolutely enormous topic with Rose in last, right?

Really wish that was archived, lol.

---

Im so far behind on this series. Graces f (got far and never finished because the plot was so boring), Xillia 1-2, Zestiria and Berseria all owned and havent played yet oops.

UshiromiyaEva posted...

You were the one who made that absolutely enormous topic with Rose in last, right?

Really wish that was archived, lol.

It is archived.

Shirley last, Rose 2nd last.

---