Sorta surprised by some people saying that the series hasn't changed since Phantasia and that's straight-up false. It still uses the LMBS but with changes depending on the game you're playing. Playing multiple versions of Phantasia has made me realize that the evolution of the LMBS throughout the series since then has made the overall system better. Phantasia SFC is just all barebones, and it isn't really my style, I guess. I never liked Phantasia GBA since it was inferior to the PSX version of Phantasia.
NDX version of Phantasia does this thing where it removes the pause when spells are cast, but otherwise there aren't a lot of changes. Pause removal is a change for the better but it still doesn't make the combat very great.
With that said, Phantasia was my first Tales game and it never got me invested in the series at all. It wasn't until I'd played Symphonia after Phantasia and Destiny that I sort of started to like the series. I'd played Destiny Remake and Rebirth after that, and those hit it out of the park for me. Became a fan after I'd played those, even though Rebirth probably has one of the most hilariously bad narratives in a game I've played. Rebirth, Destiny R, Destiny 2, Hearts, and Graces are probably the best examples of evolution of the series' LMBS in general. Most of those are Udo games too.
I don't play the games for the characters or the story, but moreso for the battle system. So in a way, I somewhat understand the assessment that the characters or narratives generally aren't amazing, or are generally, er, fluffy. I don't think people will find that all Tales games will be to their liking at all since every game focuses on a different theme and has a cast to try to fit that theme while continuing to add as much Tales series fanservice in the game as possible. Many people seem to like Vesperia (well, the first two-thirds of it) partially because of the theme of justice, and Yuri's character in general; I suppose because of this, people became more invested in the game not necessarily due to being able to relate to the characters, but rather having a character who was different from the norm. I do wonder if Tales will take that approach again. It wouldn't be bad if they did.
Sort of interesting. Mostly because it gives an idea of how they pick one or two Tales games out of a small selection to bring to the West. Not that it hasn't been somewhat obvious for a while now.
Yeah, that's what I was thinking as I read through the interview. And those one or two Tales games tend to be the more story-driven games out of the series as opposed to the battle-driven ones. I'm still a little surprised they released Graces here, to be honest. I thought they would've gone ahead and released Xillia for consistency between the eastern and western markets. Also, I had a hunch that people here might like Xillia better in terms of narrative and cast...
Innocence DS.
For whatever reason it's nothing more a one-off idea though, unfortunately.
It's too bad that the dungeons aren't very good.
Then we give them to players outside of Japan. If we worried too much about what foreign players might think when we were developing them, we wouldn’t be able to take full advantage of our strengths as game creators. That’s our first priority — to preserve what makes the Tales series so great. It’s up to the foreign players whether they like them or not.
Good answer. I like that.
