Title: Tales of Innocence
Platform: Nintendo DS
Genre: RPG
Developer: Alfa Systems (Shikigami no Shiro series, Tales of the World: Narikiri Dungeon 2/3 and Radiant Mythology, Phantasy Star Portable)
Publisher: Namco Bandai Games
Character Design: Inomata Mutsumi
Size: 1 GBit
Release Date: December 6th, 2007
Score: Famitsu - 9/9/9/8 (35/40) Dengeki - 90/85/90
Official Site: http://namco-ch.net/talesofinnocence/index.php
Staff:
-Directed by Taketoshi Inagaki
-Music by Kaz Nakamura
-Image Illustration by Tomosaki Okada
-Lead Game Design by Tsuyoshi Sakurai
-Lead Visual Design by Kyosuke Onoue
-Lead Programmer by Masatoshi Fukazawa
-Scenario written by Masami Kajio and Ayume Suzuki
-Produced by Hideo Baba and Ryuji Odate
Story: The Imperial Capital of Regnum kept itself in peace during the long-lasting world war. Slowly, people with a "special power" began to appear. Feared by normal people, Regnum set out a law to capture all people with special powers. One day, Ruca, the son of a merchant in Regnum, realizes the special power within him...
Features:
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The Next Main "Tales of": Innocence is the 9th Main entry in the "Tales of" Series
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Dimensional Stride Linear Motion Battle System (DS-LMBS): An all new battle system based off of the Flex Range(Tales of the Abyss) and Aerial(Tales of Destiny R) battle systems that'll allow for full 3d movement and air combo chaos!
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Guild system: Returning from previous "Tales of the World" titles is the guild system that'll allow you to partake in various sub quests for good and more.
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Advanced AI: The most advanced AI system to date for the "Tales of" series with features similar to that of Final Fantasy XII's gambit system.
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Style and Ability System: You can develop your characters with various different "Styles" that'll determine how they'll grow.
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Infinity Jam and Awakening: Similar to Tales of Symphonia and Tales of the Abyss's "Overlimit". Movement speed and attack power are increased, and TP consumption and cast time are reduced, allowing for devastating attacks and strings.
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Opening and Ending themes by KOKIA: Renown artist KOKIA performs "Following the Nightingale" and "Say Good Bye and Good Day" as the OP/ED of Tales of Innocence
Cast:
Ruca Milda:Lives in the Imperial Capital, Regnum. While he is an honors student that gets excellent grades, he is an introvert who is often made fun of by his classmates.
Voice Actor: Akiko Kimura
Iria Animi: A girl who ran away from her village because she was being chased by a mysterious group. Impulsive and quick-tempered, she has a personality where she is honest with herself. She has some sort of strange animal with her.
Voice Actor: Yuko Sasamoto
Spada Belforma: A young man who originates from an aristocratic family of nobility. For unknown reasons, he cut off ties with his family and siblings and never came back to his noble home. Spada is kind and warm-hearted and believes in righteous justice. Things get interesting as he meets Iria, whose own personality contrasts with his.
Voice Actor: Yuji Ueda
Ricardo Soldato: A sniper who wields his bayonet with remarkable ability; he is wise, experienced and rationally makes agreements. He appears before Ruca as a mercenary for hire, but what are his reasons...?
Voice Actor: Hiroaki Hirata
Hermana Larmo: A young girl who became an orphan because of the recent wars. She is one of the many street children that now roam the Kingdom of Regnum. She carries her own unique individual at her own pace.
Voice Actor: Yuki Matsuoka
Ange Serena: A sister who works at a sanctuary in a certain city. Possessing powers of healing, she is considered a "holy woman" in the sanctuary, and has gained popularity because of this. She is a woman who is skillful in terms of worldy and political matters within the society.
Voice Actor: Kaori Nazuka
Coda: A strange creature that accompanies Iria.
Voice Actor: Etsuko Kozakura
Mathias: Head of the Arka Religious group. She is out to take revenge on Iria for some unknown reason. Her face is hidden, as she wears a long, hooded cloak at all times
Voice Actor: Atsuko Tanaka
Thitose Cxarma: A female ninja who is 18 years old. She is also part of the Arka Religious group. She seems interested in Ruca, and is against Iria. She is dressed in a red kimono.
Voice Actor: Rumi Shishido
Hasta Ekstermi: A mercenary who wields a spear. He seems to be after Ricardo, and has a strange manner of speech.
Voice Actor: Mitsuaki Madono
Gardle: Gardle is a man from the world above who shows affection for that world and tries to protect it, he is after all of those with powers. He detests anyone who attempts to destroy the ground. He likes money and is willing to do anything to get things to go his way.
Voice Actor: Norio Wakamoto
Sian Tenebro: A boy who has been orphaned due to war, but was saved by Mathias. Because of this, the only one he trusts is Mathias. His skin is brown and he is always in the company of a dog.
Voice Actor: Miyuki Sawashiro
Albert Grandeioza: A boy in the Tenos Royal Family and also the leader of the army in the North country that opposes Regnum. He dresses in extravagant and richly-woven clothing.
Voice Actor: Tomokazu Sugita
Oswald fan Kuruela: The commander of the Regnum army, he wears an eyepatch and seems to be part of a secret organization.
Voice Actor: Bin Shimada
Trailers: http://namco-ch.net/talesofinnocence/video/index.php
Impressions:
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kiryogi:
The story is actually a pretty interesting take this time around. There's always a lot more to the plots and this doesn't hold back in that regard. Don't let the description in my OP fool you. This new plot device really gives you a different outlook on the cast. In general, the characters are very lovable and well portrayed by their actors. It definitely feels like a real Tales. Most of the main story scenes are voiced, while 90% of skits remain voiceless unfortunately and that gets somewhat annoying with the amount of skits there are. Like other Tales, you'll get skits after events, or after some achievement. And it's just full of fun development and personality.
The music has a few decent tracks, but the overall pace is certainly ho-hum compared to Sakuraba's work. I do really love the world theme though. That aside, it's also probably one of the best looking DS games to date. Although, there are a few framerate hitches here and there when too many models are on screen and moving at once. But that's usually only during the non battle portions of the game, like in town.
Now the gameplay itself? Well, Alfa really did manage to give it a good amount of depth. The 2nd screen usage is pretty handy too. You have the ability to view status, condition, world map and a navigation map on the touch screen. But there really isn't much touchscreen usage outside of that. The navigation map is a bit limited in terms of what you can control, but overall very useful as it does have landmarks and locations, which the world map lacks. It also helps that there's a compass on the field screen itself to help keep things in proper orientation.
Innocence also has a few subsystems. The Styles/Abilities system will let you customize your characters in many different ways with abilities like max hp up or combo+1. It also dictates your statistic build. The cooking system also retain changes similar to that of former Alfa Tales titles. You don't cook and eat like a normal tales, you just make the item separately. Unfortunately, it doesn't replenish you anymore, instead, it's a temporary stat modifier.
The AI system is one of the most advanced Tales AI to date. You can actually prioritize what your members do with different script commands, just like FFXII's gambit system. You can even purchase additional AI scripts for more customization. There's also a friendship system where your decisions in skits and events affect your bond with other characters. Finally, you can also customize your weapons with different elements or abilities.
Onward to the battle system. Innocence's battle system is Dimensional Stride Linear Motion Battle, which is a mix of Abyss and Destiny R's battle systems. You have the ability to free run, but also you can switch to other chars on the fly if need be. Legendia's Crossover mechanic also makes a return here to really mix up tactical movement. There's also no shortcut ability in terms of controlling your other members on fly.
The biggest thing though was how they built DSLMB around the influences of ARLMB. Your normal down and up attacks are redone in a manner where you can launch or follow up to the enemy with ease. Most moves work in the air, but they don't quite link like ARLMB. Also, like other Tales, there's a tension gauge that when filled, will put you into Awakening mode where you become faster, stronger and have cheaper TP costs. Once in this mode, you can activate Infinity Jam, where everything stops and you can focus all your attacks on one enemy. The big deal breaker is the ability to have your party members appear right next to the target when you switch to them, which lets you set up some devastating aerial combos. Another new thing to battle is how you accumulate enemy drops and gald. You actually have to physically pick them up as they are dropped the instant an enemy is defeated.
What's really outstanding about the battle system itself are the characters. Alfa's previous experience shows and they really refined the different types you can use. Not to mention adding all new types such as Iria and Ricardo. But as stated above in that post I quoted from Namco Tales forum, they've made advances that even the former series never could do properly.
My final thoughts so far as of tonight? Innocence is absolutely wonderful and I really don't know where I'd rank it. I really love the cast, and love this new direction a Tales is taking with it's plot. I also don't know if I would say it feels like an Alfa battle system. But it did take a certain point before things really clicked and it just felt like a proper Tales all around and not that it's "Alfa". In fact, they met and exceeded my expectations, that's really how good I feel about this entry.
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Magicpaint:
-This game is really good.
At first I was kinda agreeing with Bebpo that the battle system felt loose compared to the others, but I really only needed to get the hang of things before it started to feel right. New elements like Free-run attack and using the R button to free-run were the major obstacles. The battle system is definitely awesome, and it's like it's designed to encourage maximum carnage. It's really fast (just as fast, if not more so than Abyss', though the frame rate takes a hit when multiple attacks/spells are being used every once in a while).
All characters are super fun to control. Abyss and Destiny remake started this, but Innocence perfects it. Since you can dictate what style your character is, everyone is capable of lots of combos and everyone can use spells too (though this isn't dictated by the style system). For example Ruca uses fire and stat buff spells, Iria has a few healing and water/Ice elementals, Spada is wind, Ange heals and has status recovery and light elementals, Ricardo has earth and dark elementls along with some stat and recovery spells AND healing (how cool is that?), Hermana has lots of high level magic but it takes a while before she learns them. Another new thing is that normal attacks don't give you TP.
Another thing I like is the enemy aggressiveness; rather than populate battles with many, but slighty dumb AI, Innocence packs 2-3 enemies most of the time, but they can sometimes get really aggressive and can all attack simultaneously. They're good at staggering you and comboing you to KO, and they're fast too. It's a lot harder to abuse free run here, than in Abyss as the characters a slower and running backwards is gimped now. I also like how unlike in Abyss (where every character could have every AD skills under the sun), you can't have every single ability, this is more like the EX skill system in Symphonia where you have to choose.
It's a really polished battle system and lots of fun, no doubt.
The only things I'm not happy with are the dungeons (they're like Legendia's minus the retarded puzzle booth, so they can drag a bit), the towns (they look amazing graphically, but apart from weapon stores, Guild and Inn, none of the buildings can usually be entered :/) and the abundance of unvoiced scenes, skits and cheap anime-style slides instead of proper animation sequences and the world map (not the overworld which is very smooth to traverse).
But I'm very happy with this game overall.
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Jesusraz:
- Stacked full of voice acting at every turn
- The new low-poly, higher-detailed trade-off for characters works a treat, making them actually look more realistic
- The music is 'nice', but hasn't really hit home yet (5 hours into the game)
- Battles are fun as you can hold R to free up your character and run around the fighting arena to dodge attacks
- Seems much easier than I expected. Not had any characters die yet, anyway...
- No random battles! Huzzah! Enemies just magically appear and disappear again as you wander round, meaning you can normally dodge out of their way, unless they appear right next to you, of course
- Again, LOTS of speech...very good quality speech as well (I reckon)
- In-town camera is static, which is fine, but thankfully the camera becomes fully rotational when out around the main world
- Loads of skits!
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Bebpo:
Ok, I put a couple hours into this. Some thoughts:
Story/Presentation-wise this is the next game in the main tales line. Outside about 50% of the game being non-voiced, all the non-controllable parts of the game feel like a proper big epic Tales game with good characters/cutscene direction/voice acting/pacing/worldview. The graphics are obviously a step down from Abyss, but as long as they aren't doing face close-ups it looks close enough that it feels Abyss quality.
Battle system is good. But it really, really feels like an Alfa System battle system and not a Team Symphonia/Destiny one. It's hard to explain it, but like Tales of the World, the battles feel a lot more loose and quirky. They're fun, and in the end that's what matters. But they don't seem to have the strategy/depth/balance of the other major Tales entries.
Being able to switch characters on the fly and command other characters is good to have back. Free run is a lot more quirky here with the coin collecting, but again its fun even if it feels a little shallow.
I like the sub-systems. Has a bunch of unique stuff like every major Tales game these days.
Graphics are pretty good in general, music is fine. Voices are good, but sound quality is just ok. Voices are just decent quality samples and they're mixed REALLY LOUD compared to the music in cutscenes so you just hear these radio quality loud voices. I got used to it quick, but I think the music mix should've been higher in those scenes.
Menu text is really small >_<
Now, a few real problems:
-First of all the camera kind of sucks. Towns remind me of Tempest where buildings take up a lot of space but if you can't see their entrance you can't go in them so you have these big towns with tons of buildings and you can enter like 4 doors or less. It's also really easy to get lost in towns because you can't rotate the camera and the view is the type of 3d camera view you expect in rotatable camera games. Also some general downsizing to portable like not being able to enter rooms in buildings (inns, etc...), just the main area. Another thing is just d-pad controls on isometric view always feels weird compared to analogue controls. Oh and the main dudes run animation inside buildings is badddd.
-Related to that, the mapping is really bad on the world map. The zoomed out map is too distant to tell where the fuck you are going and the close up map is too close and only shows what you can basically see already. There is no good map to keep track of where you are and where you are going and what paths to take. At least you run fast across the map, unlike Tempest.
-I think enemies spawn far too often one after another on the map and in dungeons. Normally in rpgs even though you can run past enemies, you still generally fight most of them because you want to. But the enemies spawn so quickly here I'll be running past most. Especially if you get lost in a dungeon and get sick of non-stop fights.
-Again related to the camera, dungeons are confusing because everywhere looks similar and the non-rotatable camera angle makes it even more confusing.
So in summary, my only complaint is the camera/mapping sucks in towns/world map/dungeons and makes it too easy to get lost/confusing.
Also a small dislike is how the game doesn't make a big deal about leveling up. You get a little box real quick after battle when you level up, style up, gain skills, but it's not in your face enough and you can not even notice it. Leveling up in rpgs is always a big deal and I like rpgs to make a noise/music do some sort of cheer.
For more Tales of Innocence and Tales of discussion, stop by the Tales IRC channel!
http://www.taleschannel.org 
