Dedication Through Light said:
Looks at these images, it appears they concentrated all of their efforts into the particle effects and the spells and attacks, and leave so much to be desired in the "character cutscene models" and "overworld design"...I like it
I disagree, overworld design is pretty detailed for what it is, I've seen games like Tales of Vesperia sporting
stuff like this (I've seen better geometry in PSone games, I can count the polygons in the city, and the tree's up the cliff and surrounding the town are all cardboard facing the camera... plus, it's too open, random and undetailed) Arc Rise Fantasia looks several times better than that, city representations in the overworld are way more detailed, the tree's differ and it's certainly more varied; I don't think I could expect much better from a overworld map (tbh I expected some crap engine running at 15/20 frames with Psone graphics like ToS/TotA). This worldmap has loads of detail, and we're comparing it to the entry of a mothership title of a established franchise in a HD platform (whereas the Wii usually gets mistreated when it comes to "pushing for graphics/appearance"). It's done with the appropriate effort, IMO.
And I just remembered a small detail I loved
in this game there's no random battles and enemies roam the field... and there are groups of enemies that actually roam the field together (not just a loner enemy for that radius of terrain), such as migratory birds like flamingo's. It's not "OMG this makes the game 200% better!" but it is a nice small touch I enjoyed.
The character models... you have to remember this is coming from a team of Team Symphonia outcasts... last gen they did games that looked like this ingame:
These models are nowhere near that, and are certainly above average in my book, since the detail is there. This said I don't know against each standard are you pulling them, but I'll say that I think they invested a lot of polygons in the facial animation system and it paid off... the facial animation puts stuff like Star Ocean 4 to shame. That's not leaving to be desired IMO. I think it looks really good, while not pushing any boundaries for the system.
Plus it has motion capture and I believe it is lip synced in the japanese release... the way they move and talk is really believable, something lots of RPG's utter fail. (to the point sometimes I prefer the low profile with cut-in illustrations)
It's a really fine tuned game in that sense, if you look at the characters that are on a cutscene, they're all interacting in realistic ways, they move their eyes, they are not just there looking up front and breathing, in the back you can often see them chuckling, react to what's being said as well and stuff like that. feels really high end in a JRPG. Not everything is high end though, you enter a lot of houses were you're met by a illustration character and a illustrated background for instance... Those remind me how low budget it must be to do a JRPG from the ground without a established brand or a developer like Namco/Square-Enix behind it, but that just makes me want to embrace the effort more.
I mean, Tales of Symphonia Dawn of the New World did nothing of this and it had the obligation... these guys are setting a high standard here and it shows.
Kirashi said:
lol dude you don't have to post so many pictures.
but... but... I love images.
Plus, sadly this is a Wii topic, if it doesn't have some eye candy to attract people I feel they won't even look at it twice. This game deserves every attention it can gather and this is my way to do it.
I admit I go overboard with pictures, I could be doing a lot smaller posts, but I go with the flow, I guess.
Kirashi said:
I spent another 4 hours on the game. It's starting to pick up a little. It's a PITA to level all the weapons though =(, that makes you have to use every single character =(
I love the weapon system. It adds a whole extra layer of complexity to the game.
That said you just have to keep in mind that equipping a new weapon and going straight into a boss battle with it can be a pretty bad idea.
To the people reading, weapon system works like this, each weapon has a 1 to 5 star proficiency gamut (or something along those lines) so theoretically when you start using the weapon it's throughput isn't maxed, so his efficiency with the weapon will get better the more he uses it and while it levels up. Actually... Think Materia, from FFVII... except a little twisted, like with the equipment in FFVII the each weapon has "materia slots" and you have pieces you can fit in there. These "materia slots" thing differ though unlike FFVII where they were orbs here they are like... Tetris pieces you fit the ones you can and want in the space each weapon has for them.
VerTiGo said:
As a "Tales of" fan I can honestly say that at this moment in time I'm far more interested in Arc Rise Fantasia than Tales of Graces. These image caps have sealed the deal. It looks beautiful and from what we know, seems like its doing everything right.
Yup, I catch that drift, it's the same for me (I'm still pshyched for Tales of Graces though)
wrowa said:
If you want to post pictures of the first 15 minutes/ first hour/ the first two hours/... could you please stop to post the images directly and just post the links or the URL to your flickr account? In this thread are some people who are only interested in impressions and news about the game and not about images that spoil parts of the game. It's annoying.
I'm just screencapping the beginning of the game, and stuff that was already partially shown in pictures released by the developer (btw, the pictures released by the developer looked like ass, they clearly don't know how to take them, I was impressed when I popped in the game on my Wii, looked way better than I expected)
If I posted them on a flicker account I'd still post a lot of them in the thread and then leave a link for the account... up to this point I posted I have like +300 images in the hdd for example.
I won't post anything I'd consider spoiler; in fact... I'll even jump the second boss and cutscene that leads to it.
Amir0x said:
that actually means she is like every female character from a jRPG
I don't think she's meant to be any different (I prefer Adeel, she reminds me of Arche Klein from Tales of Phantasia).
But I liked Tear Grants a lot, the fact she ressembles her at some points is good.
The game is not groundbreaking when it comes to plot... boy finds mysterious girl and stuff... I mean, drawing from the same developer think Luminous Arc, certainly by the book but certainly entertaining. (at least for me)
The skits are kinda good at developing the characters though.