SatelliteOfLove
Member
I'm not as down on Tales narratives and characters as I once was; they try. They really, really try. Thing is, though, perception and history ain't doing them much favors, so these either "starts off with some mid-level nuance done well then slides into trope plot" or "throws real dark here and there but bungles too much for it to stick that well" don't have the OOMF to change that perception. With the Japanese Double Standard raging until recently, this spells doom.
Worst part is, they're getting better, but they're either not going the distance or making mistakes when they do like I pointed out. MrBtongue has more on this,
Warning: Incoming Text wall, I've been mulling over this for a bit.
I love the Tales series, but it is simply not this mistreated darling series that is unjustly shoved to the side while Final Fantasy and other RPGs eat the audience and prevent it from reaching greatness. It's pretty good, but that's kinda... it. I like Tales, but the problem is that you seem to be ignoring the fact that once anyone has anything to say that isn't unanimous praise for the series you completely ignore the actual flaws that Tales still wants to embrace, despite the fact that those very plain flaws are actively holding the series back from being that contender for JRPG king the way Persona is right now considering how Final Fantasy has gone these last few years.
You simply can't say that on a purely visual standpoint, that Tales is not generic at first glance, even for an anime fan. Even if you're an avid reader of Jump, even if you're 100% caught up on the Winter 2015 anime season, you can't take a single look at the cover of ANY of the Tales games and not think "Yeah I've seen this before". It has all the trappings of mediocre 90's anime: Silly Hairstyles and colors, giant swords, Nomura-levels of zippers and belts and what not, you can't expect a game with such a style to have that instantly appealing connection with people when it's already gearing itself towards a visual theme that's very bland. I mean take a look at the Symphonia box art for example:
It's the same box art that you would see on ANY anime DVD. Heck the positioning of the characters and overall structure is nearly the exact same across every Tales box art. Main character at the forefront, wielding his weapon. Main female being demure and quiet looking. Majority of the cast looking at the viewer. It's trying to tell you things like "Adventure!", "Coolness!", "Drama~", "Look at these people doing these things, oooohhhh what could they be fighting!?". Stuff that is the exact same shit that every single manga in Shounen Jump tries to tell you, stuff that is the exact same messages that the Tales series is STILL trying to run with. Compare some other box arts:
For one thing, it's much more minimalist than the Tales one. It only shows you Cloud and his Buster Sword, and it doesn't even show you his face! It does a better job of conveying a more sombre tone, as Cloud stares up at the Shinra building looming in the distance. It's supposed to imply the vast journey that is ahead of you. Then instead of overloading the art with different people trying to all be cool at different times, the box art shows you something cool that is smack dab in the center: Whoa look at that goddamn giant ass sword. What's Lloyd even about to do with his swords? You can't tell, and neither do you care. What's Cloud gonna do with his Buster Sword? He's just holding it, so he hasn't actually shown anything yet which makes you want to actually seem him pull the thing out and put it to work.
This is part of what's holding back Tales. From the very onset, it can't manage to try and grip the viewer with the promise of something more than what's first shown. There IS more to it, which is why you hear complaints of "Well it seems nice but seriously dat anime" when you know it goes beyond that. However if you can't even show me a tiny smidgen of that in the slightest then you can't blame me for not seeing it. The complaints about anime are legitimate, because the vast majority of anime really IS mediocre schlock that lacks even the barest form of complexity and prefers to beat you over the head with messages like "FRIENDSHIP IS POWER", or "I LOVE HIM BECAUSE HE'S NICE" or "LOVE IS POWER" etc. etc. etc., and it is not the job of the consumer to have to sift through every single anime and every single RPG to find the ones that are not schlock. If you're more than Naruto or Bleach, you need to be able to make me believe you are, and without sitting down and playing them, the Tales games have no way to say this with their visuals.
There's another major part to why Tales can't seem to play in the same park as FF and Persona, and that has to do with ambition.
Final Fantasy is a trend-setter. Giant Swords? Final Fantasy. Time loop plots? Final Fantasy. Villains that aren't just "The Demon King of all Evil"? Final Fantasy. Sci-fi mixed with fantasy? Final. Fantasy.
Persona is a trend-setter. Modern day settings? Yup. Actual bonding mechanics with your teammates/supporting cast? Yup. In-depth characterization with modern issues we can relate to? Yup. Mixing anime tropes that are usually in bad taste, with a story that still manages to respect the player's emotions and intelligence? Sounds like Persona. Oh and it has an awesome visual style that, while anime, is actually extremely difficult to mix up with another game/show? Definitely Persona.
How is Tales a trendsetter in any manner? Can you really name things that were definitely 100% exclusive to Tales, that everyone else decided to take for their own? It's STILL using the same generic fantasy settings. It's STILL using the same archetypes for it's cast in most cases (Protagonist is a goody good guy, love interest is either a tsundere or quiet japanese style waifu, rival is... the rival, the old guy is old, there's a kid who is kawaii because there has to be a kid). You could possibly argue that it paved the way for Action-RPGs, but if so then why isn't it more popular? After all, Action-RPGs are the majority of AAA RPGs nowadays so what happened? The reality is that it didn't really do much for Action RPGs. It's a 2D fighting game system, and offense is made up of "Spam, spam, spam some more, keep comboing till your kids graduate from college" and defense is made of "Block until you get hit, heal yourself when you get hit". If you wanted to talk about what REALLY put Action-RPGs on the map, you'd have a better position if you argued Kingdom Hearts (though this is my personal opinion in this case, however the definer of the genre definitely is not Tales). Kingdom Hearts took Action-RPGs into the full 3 dimensions and made use of it extremely well. Let's take a look at a relatively high level fight in Tales:
http://youtu.be/jJX_VXGGBvY
I mean, what is even going on? You try to tell someone "ooooh maaaann dude Tales of Graces has this awesome battle system you gotta try it" and your friend says "Oh okay show me some gameplay" and you pull this up. Do you really think anyone who isn't actively playing the game will really be able to understand? Do you think that people won't look at these characters and think "Oh so this guy is the sword guy and this guy is the punching guy and this girl is the healer" and then immediately think "Yeah I think I know what this is about" instead of "Oh man I've never seen this before I gotta try it".
Let's compare Kingdom Hearts.
http://youtu.be/kXQTsH9YvNE
I personally prefer the Lexaeus fight for comparison. It's stuff like that which is both unique but easily recognizable, and if you were to show off a fight like this people would go "Whoa damn man, what is that" which is when you can say something like "It's an action RPG with Disney characters where you go into the worlds of movies like Peter Pan or Tron and save their worlds and each movie's main character is a party member". It's easy to hook someone with a fight like that, where you see Lexaeus swing his massive blade with some real weight, and causes literal apocalyptic explosions of earth with his strikes. Offensively, you've got reflect magic, attack combos, magic combos, and reaction attacks like Mega Impact. Defensively you've got jumping, dodge rolling, blocking, flying, reflecting, actually USING the 3 dimensional space there, and a wonderfully dramatic sound track to accompany everything. Comparing the two, even if you were to strip out Donald and Goofy in order to get rid of the Disney appeal and just had Sora vs. Lexaeus (which these level of fights basically boil down to) it's plain as day which is more ambitious and immediately appealing.
That's not to say that Tales needs to become Kingdom Hearts to become more popular.
That's not to say that Tales needs to start imitating Persona or Final Fantasy in order to gain better appeal.
It just needs to be more than what it currently is. What it currently is, is a run-of-the-mill JRPG with decent characterization that plays a "Let's save the world" story we've seen in every other JRPG ever, and does absolutely nothing to try and differentiate itself.
I like this post, even if I don't agree with everything (less I think those parts are wrong and more that I don't know if they're true compared with the rest).
