I just finished the game as well this morning. Took me about 42 hours and I did a satisfying amount of the optional sidequests.
My review:
story - "Serviceable" is the best word for the job here. The story is perfectly fine and does the job in carrying the game along. It's not a short story and it's not an epic story, it's somewhere in the middle and that's all it's trying to be. Unlike 90% of rpgs, the story will not make you do a facepalm. The characters act logically (even if they aren't very quick in the mind) and the tale doesn't jump the shark and become incredibly stupid or painful to watch from badness. On the other hand the plot is not very amibitous. It's straightfoward, predictable, and simple. It was enjoyable but at the end of the day I doubt I will remember it in a month.
cast - Team Destiny continues to improve in the cast department with their games. The cast is an enjoyable group of archtypes and they play very well off each other. There aren't any great Tales characters like Jade or Yuri or Guy, but it's not as bland of a main cast as Vesperia.
battle - Best battle system in a Tales game. Definitely. The emphasis is on speedy battles that are fun. You get a good size movelist and there are a lot of ways to use it effectively. Because each attack has elements and hitting enemy weaknesses for a weak point combo is efficient, you're using lots of different moves in battle instead of just your strongest few for the whole game. The way the dual-stance system works is really nice because while you're still limited to 4 artes at a time, you have the entire movelist of your A-stance available at any time. Which means you have a dozen or so moves. The A-stance being made up entirely of useful moves also gets rid of the standard "slash/slash/slash" you do all the times in Tales games, which is a good thing. No TP is great as well. Keeps the pace more exciting.
subsystems - Very good. The character growth system (by using titles) is the best in the franchise. There are literally
hundreds of skills to learn along with stat points. You're always learning something new and so the game stays exciting. The bottle instead of cooking is great, although I do miss the wonder chefs. The dualize system for selling goods is kinda ehhh. It's ok, but not really important.
dungeons - Good. Very linear, especially for Team Destiny, but the puzzles are fun. There's no sorcerer's ring and I definitely prefer that. It was getting old. The dungeons are all pretty small. Nothing huge and mazey like Tri-ace games. But it works with the speedy pace that the game has.
exploring - Ok. Not having a world map is fine. The only downside is the game is really super linear because you can't easily revist places until the very end. The map works for endgame. But it's always more fun to have a real 3d map and just stop by new places that look interesting. The world is about medium-size. There aren't a lot of towns, but there aren't too few either.
Graphics - Excellent. If this was a PS2 game it'd easily stand up with FFXII as one of the best looking rpgs. Visually it's really similar to Abyss but with even better graphics.
Sounds - Voices are fine, but the music is really C- rate. It's time for Tales studio to get some new composers. Their games are continually improving but they are always held down a little by the weak synth compositions by 3rd rate composers. The main battle themes by Sakuraba are fine. But the cutscene music never stands out and the town/dungeon themes are zzz.
Replayability - There's the standard new game+ w/good grade shop and lots of side stuff to do at endgame like the other 3d Tales games. The main game sticks to Team Destiny's 30-40 hour lengths instead of Team Symphonia's 50-70. This means less filler, but it also means a smaller and less fleshed out world & storyline. Still, a good 30-40 hour rpg is perfectly acceptable for jrpg length.
Overall - In the end, gameplay has always been Team Destiny's main strength and story/characters has always been their main weakness. Graces continues the evolvement of their excellent gameplay (which was already far ahead of Team Symphonia and is now reaaaally far ahead of Team Symphonia) and it shows good improvement in the story/character department, especially considering ToDII & Rebirth have really really bad stories.
Is it the best Tales yet? There's really no good answer to this. In a lot of ways it is. It's the best playing one and the most fun one. On the other hand it lacks the big explorable world, epic story, and great cast that Abyss had. Regardless of if it's the best Tales or not, the fact it's even up for debate should say enough about the quality of the game.
Standing head and shoulders over most of the Tales franchise and being better than any jrpg released on the HD systems, Graces is a must play game for any rpg fan, Tales fan or not.
9/10
Mr. Wonderful said:
Ranking compared to other Tales games?
For me:
Abyss > Graces > Rebirth = Eternia > Vesperia > Hearts > Symphonia > ToDII > Innocence > Legendia > Phantasia > Tempest > Kor
Rebirth is better than Eternia, but it has the worst furry plot ever so that brings it down a bit imo. Tempest & KoR are disgraces to the franchise but at least Tempest is only 8 hours of awful instead of 20-30!
ToDr is the only one I still need to play.
Datschge said:
For me the current Tales ranking would look like this: ToG > ToR > ToDr > ToH > rest. But my primary focus is the battle system, your mileage may vary.
Yeah, I agree TD games have the best battle systems by far. But the cast, the story, the dungeon design, the length, etc... are all important parts of an rpg as well for me.