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Tales of Graces f English Trailer | Dated for March 13, 2012 in North America
- Thread starter Seda
- Start date
InfiniteNine
Rolling Girl
This has better IQ generally.
R_thanatos
Member
BUt xillia has enough town to get his plot going
witchedwiz
Member
yessss 
What's bad about the presentation? I thought Graces' presentation is ace, but you may have a different definition of it.
I went into the game without knowing Japanese and without relying on any help (walkthroughs and the likes). I expected to have issues, but the in-game helpers (dot on the map, story scenes, usual Tales menu layout) made it rather easy to proceed on and on. The story scenes were fun to watch due to the motion captured animations and happen seldom enough that it doesn't interrupt the fun gameplay (ability to instantly skip text and scenes helps! You hear that, Fi?!). Toward the latter part of the game the story scenes became interesting (and less obvious) enough that I started looking up what's up and I liked it. In hindsight I think this is like the perfect story to play without understanding anything initially, the visuals don't try to showcase something epic, and the narrative doesn't pretend to have epic stuff in store you just never happen to see. In general I like my stories staying out of the way while focusing on consistent and fun gameplay, for an RPG Graces did that well to me. Looking forward to playing it in localized form soon.
Dark Schala
Eloquent Princess
Yeah, I found Tales of Graces f to be pretty import-friendly outside of the Inn Requests, item synthesis and the password system to unlock chests (it might not be that great if you don't know your way around kana at all, I suppose). Maybe you might have had a problem with putting books and food in the Arles Pot for the gambits, but oh well, you'd get it eventually. Not as import-friendly as FFXIII, though, since FFXIII had a lot of loanwords, English and English/western-sounding content.
The facial expressions in Graces, I expect, would have helped players understand the situation a little more without knowing too much of the language. I thought Graces looked pretty nice just for what it was going for after I started playing through it. I was disappointed that they weren't using Vesperia's visual style at first, but I warmed up to Graces' visual style pretty quickly. I can say the same for Xillia -- I really disliked how it looked when it was first unveiled, but when I finally got to play it, I was completely fine with it. Plus the menus in Xillia are gorgeous.
Yeah, Xillia kinda has enough for what it's trying to accomplish, I guess. Some people might be disappointed with the lack of main towns, though... and maybe the repetitive field music at times (but that's because I spent a ton of time grinding in a certain area early on in the game). Area-skip was nice too.
Also, I don't get your dislike of Tipo ("I crave for TIPOyaki", lol). I think he's funny and cute sometimes (actually, I think I can see your perspective a little bit without adding spoilers, but I think he's great). Rowen is pretty boss, but it's too bad he's, like, a glass cannon. Actually Rowen and Malik are kind of similar in that respect. Malik has poor defense, but he's a good long-range spellcaster... though I preferred my party of Asbel, Hubert, Cheria and Pascal/Sophie (kinda depends on the battle between those two since Pascal usually needs to be within melee range to cast her stuff, and Sophie's the backup healer/melee fighter).
Actually, I dislike how imbalanced the amount of Link Arts are in favour of Jude/Milla. If there is a director's cut, I wonder if that's going to be fixed. I don't mind using Jude/Milla a lot for combos and higher-tier artes, but I'd like to have the other characters get their fair share of action.
Plus Graces gets cooking extremely right because it is gambit-driven during battles (ex: if you fall below 60% health or something) and you don't have to manually do it after battles or something. Feels like a huge step back in Tales of Xillia and I find myself expending more gummies more than I want to. It takes up precious melee time. In a few ways Xillia feels like a step forward sometimes, but in a lot of other ways, it feels like a step back from Graces. I like both of them, but I prefer Graces' battle system a lot more.
R_thanatos
Member
@Dark Schala
My dislike for tipo was for act 1 & 2 , Once Elise sort out thing and the twists happens , Tipo vanishes and stay that little annnoying thing that talk a lot.
I got worried early when i saw the tipo familly ( sorta ) quest . Now i can live with Tipo..i learned to enjoy him ...especially since milla doesn't want him into the bishojo senshi team. ( j/k).. it's a Graces F thread so i won't say more.. About rowen , well it's great .. xillia does nothing with him ( dammit that end of act 2 ) .. he is just great in battle and he is a balancer between everyone personalities, giving advices for jude , showing the way for milla, caring for elise safety, , ect ect . there is nothing special about him , but there is nothing wrong with him.
That's true ..it's a real disapointment in this case..
It's just the OP song which is instantly skipable, just like assorted logos before it.
ULTROS!
People seem to like me because I am polite and I am rarely late. I like to eat ice cream and I really enjoy a nice pair of slacks.
Kinda curious how Namdai will deal with Ayumi's Progress for Tales of Xillia when they localize it. BoA can sing in English but I don't think Ayumi can (except for a few lines I guess). I hope they don't totally replace the song.
Man, you guys are giving the overall presentation of the game a freepass or something along those lines. I hope this game sells well and I'm not trying to make people not buy it but it is a dated game as well as the fact that the designs of the game is somewhat archaic now, which is the problem with most JRPGs nowadays.
They did for Abyss and Symphonia.
For Abyss they made it an instrumental, and for both Symphonnias they made a song for it. I doubt they'll make a Japanese song for an intro anymore.
Yes, that's what I meant. They replaced it.
What designs are archaic?
Shouta
Member
Xillia's towns are a lot cooler and there's still quite a few of them. I don't recall it being all that different from Graces in number but the design and setting of each town is like way better on the whole.
R_Thanatos said:
It is in the sense that wish I there were more but honestly, I felt the ones outside of Jude/Milla in Xillia were a lot more useful on the whole. In fact, I think I stopped using Milla (as I was playing Jude) part way through the game, myself.
Dialogue bubbles? The prohibiting from backtracking? Sterotypical narrative archetype? Um... lemme see what else? Uhh.... Can't think of anything else on the top of my head right now.
This is just silly. How are bubbles archaic?
The prohibiting from backtracking? This isn't something new.
Narrative isn't archaic even if it is stereotypical.
Xillia basically did away with them and I thought it was an excellent change. Also cutscenes actually became something instead of just bobbing heads and looking at it from a fixed camera. Honestly Xillia took the presentation design from Graces a whole notch. I'm not saying Graces is horrendous but I feel like Graces is one of the few examples why the JRPGs are still stuck in the past.
PixyJunket
Member
So, nothing relating to the actual gameplay? You know, the most important part of a video game?
I already said that the battle is really really good. I just think that as a whole package, it isn't great. Then again, there is so much combat in the game, the package is basically the battle system. Meh, I'm being overly nitpicky I know but I think that Graces still has problems, not fundamental, but more like.... uh.... Progressive I think.
Huh? Graces still has cutscenes with subtitles instead of dialog boxes, just like Xillia has (such as this). Xillia "got rid" of dialog bubbles for out-of-cutscene dialog just by placing text at the bottom of the screen. Big whoop.
Not as much. Honestly, while the battle system in Graces was better than Xillia, I think I enjoyed Xillia overall as a package that presented its product really well, with the exception of DLC. That DLC style really needs to stop.
PixyJunket
Member
But that's the primary reason one should be interested in a Tales game, in my opinion. It's what sets it apart from other RPGs. The characters and stories are never going to reach beyond very basic anime tropes.
Sure, it has a better presentation if you ignore the single-screen towns, empty fields devoid of detail and every town having the same identical port with NPCs in different locations.
It's a better direction than Graces in my opinion. It definitely needs work for sure but it's different which I appreciate them doing. Honestly, I wish Graces adopted Xillia's style and came out 3 years ago.
Shouta
Member
Graces' presentation was good for a Tales game when it came out but still kind of bad in comparison to other games. Xillia has a few problems here and there but it's at least closer to current styles and the like. Personally, everything outside of combat was kind of boring in Graces but that's also a problem of the story as well.
This pretty much sums up how I feel about the game. While I wouldn't have complained about Graces when it came out 3 years ago as much, I'm just taking the factor of how this is coming out now in the US.
Team Destiny was always below Team Symphonia in terms of presentation. That's why Xillia was supposed to be the dream game: Team Symphonia dudes on presentation/story and Team Destiny dudes on battle. Sadly Xillia ended up having the strengths of neither team in full force, it resulted in some sort of muddied middle ground game that obviously worked great for some but not me.
I heard that you hadn't finished it from the Xillia OT.
I put 30 hours in, I think I can judge the game from that if it's all right with you.
I only finish games I like.
Dark Schala
Eloquent Princess
...I don't see Graces being archaic really. Cutscenes had text at the bottom. Xillia's dialogue is just at the bottom of the screen. I think the bubbles are just a nice quirk. It doesn't really matter to me, though. *shrug* I'm not that picky, lol. As long as the game has some cool mechanics, I'm good with it, and Graces satisfied me in that respect.
There were parts where I found Milla's fighting style alright (ie: when I manually controlled her to get a few trophies), but on the whole, I preferred using Jude, Elise and Leia a lot. I even found Alvin pretty great even though his animation to swing is slow. It's a bit of a shame that they didn't share a ton of link artes across the board together, even though a vast majority of them were extremely useful. :/
I think it's a way better song than White Wishes. Way better. If they can sneak in an instrumental like Abyss, that'd be cool.ULTROS! said:
Yeah, which is why I think it's a little unfortunate that the others don't have as many Link Artes.Shouta said:
There were parts where I found Milla's fighting style alright (ie: when I manually controlled her to get a few trophies), but on the whole, I preferred using Jude, Elise and Leia a lot. I even found Alvin pretty great even though his animation to swing is slow. It's a bit of a shame that they didn't share a ton of link artes across the board together, even though a vast majority of them were extremely useful. :/
Shouta
Member
Actually, I recall complaining about it a little myself but it's been awhile. I definitely like Xillia more than I do Graces on all fronts though.
Oh I'm not saying anything negative about you. I'm just saying that you put enough hours into the game to determine whether you liked it or not. Sorry if it rubbed the wrong way. I didn't mean it to come off that way.
EDIT: What I originally meant to say was "I heard you didn't finish the game because you didn't like it that much."
I understand that you really like Xillia, but one thing I do not understand at all is preferring the shop build system's absorption and homogenization of every traditional Tales system. That is one of the absolute major factors in my disappointment with the game, and the hardest for me to look past.
Second is probably lack of grade from battles which is just totally fricking weird and I expected way more fans to be upset with that than I have seen.
What do you mean by shop build system? I'm sort of confused about that.
The system through which you upgrade shops with loot from enemies and objects on the fields.
Yes, but I mean what your dislikes of it was. I've played through the game and I found it sort of different and amusing compared to the blandness from previous shops.
It replaces cooking and item synthesis, and makes every shop type in the world identical, completely removing any excitement from reaching a new town. It also pretty much requires you to search the plain, boring fields for items in order to upgrade shops unless you fight a lot of unnecessary battles to make up for that. Without putting time and effort into building shops, your entire supply line is cut off - everything from items, to weapons and armor, to food.
RPGCrazied
Member
This has:
Grade Shop
Coliseum
Wonder Chef
Costumes
???
Grade Shop
Coliseum
Wonder Chef
Costumes
???
Dark Schala
Eloquent Princess
Not answering for Aeana, but I can definitely see her gripes with it even though I don't have much of a problem with it. Making the shops' inventories better because it's driven by materials you have to grind for in field or in battle can likely get quite tiresome if you're not taking the time unlocking new difficulty modes or gathering Black Feathers or something. Waiting for a shop to randomly get a x3 multiplier to make shop leveling go faster might be a little lame as well.
Another argument could be that it makes getting to newer towns' shops less exciting because there isn't new gear to purchase in the new town. What would be the point, then, of the newer town's shops outside of convenience if its purpose is not to be there to offer newer, better gear? I guess it would make the newer town slightly less enticing to visit outside of narrative events or having an inn to rest at.
Also, the shop system replaces the awesomeness that is cooking which is disappointing. :/
Grade Shop is a Tales staple. It's always gonna be in main games.
There is a Coliseum/battle arena, yep.
Wonder Chef is a no (I believe; it's been a while), but cooking is so much better in this game because it is gambit-driven, and you synthesize the ingredients and foods yourself with the Arles Pot/Eres Pot (is it really being localized as "Eleth"?). It's really fun. You don't have to wait and wait to get a better recipe in the game because you can just synth it yourself by using the proper ingredients and use it in battle if you meet the "gambit-like" criteria for it.
Costumes... of course. There were a few in-game costumes in the Japanese version, like some ToV costumes for example. I don't know if those'll be in the English version because they were tied to a minigame that... I'm not sure will be in the English version. There were also DLC costumes, some of which changed the battle theme (ex: the Idolmaster ones).
Ah, I see. Actually I feel like they streamlined a lot of the stuff for Xillia. I'm usually hateful of strealining, but in this case I thought the fresh take for the series was an improvement. I can see how you feel though. I too was a bit disappointed like you were at first but then I realized that Graces and Xillia has its own little quirks.
I thought that the towns had more narrative meaning than previous Tales series which is good. I definitely agree with you on towns serve also the purpose of progression and newness especially in items and equipment. I think, however, this can be remedied by the fact that if the town designs were very unique and somewhat lively. I think the design of the towns were great but they were definitely barebones and didn't feel all the abundant with interaction and such. Like I said, the approach their taking is different and I think they just need to work on it, of which I don't think they will... Sadly.
Also, the farming for materials I feel like is unnecessary. It's more like do it on your own pace when progressing through the game. If you see it at x2 or x3, good for you. You get a bonus. However, towards endgame it gets obnoxiously annoying.
I feel like Grade Shop is awesome but I feel like they're trying to take a different approach with it. They've been trying since Graces and I don't feel like they've particularly nailed it. I definitely miss the cooking style from the previous series but it could definitely use a different system than Xillia's. Graces had cooking feel very unique and awesome and I enjoyed that about it. Costumes, please fix this NB cuz it sucks right now. Really? Like 4 in game? and 2 for the same character? What the hell?
Shouta
Member
I was fine with the shop system. It means I never have to backtrack for a certain item, accessory, or whatever. Leveling the shop as I went has the same effect as going to a shop and looking for new inventory. I'm not a fan of cooking either as it was more a chore than interesting and I generally don't like recipe collecting most of the time either so streamlining it like they did was fine with me. Besides, I just played Shining Hearts recently and yeah, Tales cooking is super boring compared to that.
Same with Item Synthesis in Tales games, feels more like a chore. Doesn't feel as interesting as other comparable games in that area.
Grade, I don't really care much for. I don't grind it for NG+ and I don't use it as an indicator of how well I'm doing a battle either so moving it to accomplishments was ok for me.
Supposedly Xillia was rushed out the door and a lot of things never made it to the final game.
http://www.abyssalchronicles.com/?fn_mode=comments&fn_id=780
Just like TotA was (for the 10th anniversary)