Tales of Vesperia

I’ve been a moderate Tales fan for a decade now and it was high-time I checked out Vesperia, considered by many fans of the franchise to be the best one. And what better way to experience its glory than the Definitive Edition released in 2019? How did it fare for me?

Coming from later Tales games, Vesperia’s combat is stiff and awkward. While it might have been the apex of that era; that “Symphonia” era of the Tales franchise before Graces injected a lot of energy and finesse into the series, I had a lot of issues playing ToV. In fact, even if Symphonia was the first game of the LMBS and was damn basic, it often played better than this one!

Its combat system is touted as being a great action experience once you get later in the game and unlock lots of skills but that takes a long time to get there and along the way its hard to train up your ability to interact with those systems. There’s a gap between casual mastery and digging deep into the systems and you need to put in so much effort to cross it. It’s a not a gradual thing. Even past that, I don’t enjoy mastering these systems. I don’t care about getting high combos when the movement and animation of simply attacking are uncomfortably rigid. That manual cancel part of comboing is so jank I could never feel comfortable trying to learn it.

A lot of things in this game are pretty good. The plot is pretty good; sometimes aimless and not good at explaining all of its lore but there were plenty of moments that affected me. The characters are pretty good, too. I wouldn’t say I loved any character but they’re distinct and likeable and their arcs were satisfying to see play out, with the exception being Yuri; I never thought his arc hit unto anything substantial. His arc just waved at themes without touching them.

The music was pretty good too. Unfortunately this was the last time Tales had a pretty good/solid soundtrack. There are memorable melodies in this one. That would be gone by the time Graces and Xillia came around.

Despite my heavy complaints and lukewarm enjoyment of several elements, I think this game is more than the sum of its parts. There might be many gears in this machine that are pretty good, but they come together to make something borderline great. This game might not be as good as people say it, but it still has that classic air about it.

If this weren't one of the exceedingly few co-op JRPG series, we'd be calling these games out for how mediocre they are, but alas, Tales serves a niche and holds a monopoly on it. That doesn't, however, make it less of a chore to play. Tales of Vesperia follows Yuri and a ragtag band of one-dimensional cliches as they continuously meander away from the plot at the whims of a pink-haired princess, so the writers bring the plot to them, wherever they may be, because they can't focus and lack the foresight to pen a natural progression. This goes on for 50 hours, even though the game seems ready to end after 25-30. This all might be forgivable if the combat was great, but it isn't. The interactivity of arts is really great on paper, but it all starts to lose its allure where you realize simply moving your characters around feels awful. They're locked to running in straight lines unless you hold down the shoulder button, at which point they move as if traversing invisible molasses. Multiplayer also barely works. Pulling off a tandem art is badass but requires uncommon levels of coordination and will usually be an accident. Not to mention someone being stuck playing the princess (the only truly dedicated healer), who is an absolute drag to use. But if you let the AI handle it, she'll chew through her mana for no reason in 10 seconds. Fights controlling a single character against a mob are also awful, as you'll quickly be locked in a knockback stun loop as you generally lack good mob attacks. So as you focus on one, you'll be interrupted and then murdered without input. These fights are still easy, if you're willing to cheese them by running away and intermittently using a ranged attack, which, again, feels awful. Exploration sucks as all the dungeons are straight lines, and the environments are artistically generic and lack any level of personality. What I will give Vesperia is that Yuri, its protagonist, is pretty unique. Unfortunately, even though he has some great moments, they generally only cause him to stick out like a sore thumb juxtaposed against the idiotic world of teenage tsundere supermages and pirate lolis. You're liable to spend the entire game wishing you were learning about Yuri and his philosophy in a better game.

A 5/10, only because I had a decent time mocking the writing while playing with a friend, and a couple of the boss fights were decent. Overall though, Vesperia skirts by on its stylistic framework as a co-op JRPG than it does with its actual content.

Better than Abyss, i'll give it that, but honestly this series is really mediocre. I would have been content with the story ending with the second act, as the third act dragged it's feet the whole way to the end for me. Combat feels like a chore as the skills are fed to you through an IV drip. You won't be able to fully realize combo potential till you are 90% done with the story. I don't think the shit available in NG+ is enough of an incentive to play this over again either. Saving grace is some of the dialog is witty and a couple of the characters are charming. Patty is everything. Probably the cutest character ever. Her subplot with the pirate ship was one of the best parts in the game. Her moveset is mostly luck based and really fun as well. Dual casting luck spells with Rita/Estelle while you aggro with Yuri and Repede/Karol is usually a very effective strategy

Zagi and Duke are mega cringe. Also, it really irked me that during cutscenes, Yuri would have the same exact complacent look on his face no matter the situation. It's so dumb, especially because he is easily the most interesting character in the game. The dueling philosophies of Yuri and Flynn throughout the game was actually kind of entertaining. But with that said, I am sure there are much better JRPGs out there. I probably would have legitimately liked this if I played this when I was younger.