Tales of Zestiria

Tales of Zestiria is a JRPG in the long running Final Fantasy. I have only played Symphonia and Vesperia in this series and vaguely remember them. I believe it is similar to Final Fantasy where the majority of the games have no relevance to each other, but there are common enemy types and mechanics.

I thought the game was keyboard only at first, but I think you need to have your controller connected before you boot up the game. Keyboard controls seemed okay at first, but the combat becomes very clicky so I think it's best played with a controller.

The main character, Sorey, is a keen explorer with his friend Mikleo. They explore a dungeon where they find a girl named Alisha, who turns out to be a Knight from the capital. She brings news of war, famine, and political struggles. Mikleo is revealed to the player as a Seraphim who appear invisible to humans, although human Sorey is somehow special and can see them, and was raised alongside Mikleo in the seraphim village. A vampire-looking fox attacks their village and Sorey deduces it was after Alisha. He takes this as an opportunity to finally leave the village and begin his adventure.

He reaches the capital where the Sacred Blade Festival is occurring. Villagers take turns pulling out a sword in stone but are unsuccessful. Hellions attack, and Sorey pulls out the sword, becoming the new "Shepherd". "The Lady of the Lake", Lailah, is a Seraphim and accompanies Sorey, also allowing a human to accompany him as his Squire. This title gives them the ability to communicate with the Seraphim and battle the Hellions (deemed the "Power of Purification"). Lailah also gives them the "Armatization" ability where a human combines with Seraphim to gain elemental damage in their attack artes. The Shepherd's aim is to defeat the "source of all malevolence"; Lord of Calamity.

The Hellions seem to be animals or humans consumed by malevolence, but humans will see them in their true form, whereas the Seraphim see them in their monster form. This causes some interesting scenarios early on where they need to battle away from human eyes.

Lailah is quite obnoxious, and when she is asked for information about the Shepherd, instead of just refusing to answer, she tries to deflect the conversation in a blatant way. This becomes a running gag throughout the game. "OH A BUTTERFLY" when there's a serious conversation going on.

The game often presents itself more as a comedy and you could probably cut about 30% of the dialogue if they didn't go for this approach. I thought a lot of the dialogue was really humorous but it sometimes tries too hard to be funny and it slows the pacing down because of its frequency. Some of the really forced humour is intentional as the other characters react with face-palms or similar emotions. It makes me wonder what the dialogue is like in other languages since there's loads of jokes that are play-on words and "dad jokes" which I don't think could work if it was a direct translation. Surely they must have to write a completely different script.

Another comedic character is Edna who is really brutal with her insults, and delivers in a deadpan tone. She seems to have a natural aversion to humans but ends up tagging along with Sorey, and becomes a bit more compassionate at times.

The dialogue can be quite hammy even when it's not trying to be funny:
Alisha: "Sorey, Sorey is that you Sorey?"
New character: "Who is this?"
Alisha: "It's Sorey"
<Some more dialog>
Sorey: "Thanks, I'm Sorey"

There's various presentation styles. It's got a cartoon aesthetic in the world, but then there's some standard in-game cutscenes, detailed anime cut-scenes, then some basic comic anime in the skits which rely on static drawings with limited movement.

Some of the environments could do with some more objects to make them more interesting. Many dungeons seem to be made from copy-and-paste rooms and corridors. This is tedious when the corridors are overly long. Dungeons often just have a different colour tint to differentiate them and have similar maze structures. It's quite easy to get lost especially after a battle. There is a small trail on the map to show you where you last moved but the trail is a bit too small to be useful. There is an item that removes monsters which I often used in the dungeons for ease of navigation.

Some dungeons have puzzles but it is often basic. Over the course of the game you unlock 4 abilities corresponding to each element:

Water - Invisibility
Fire - Flame
Wind - Dash
Earth - Smash

You can use these to start battles with an advantage. I initially thought that the torch puzzles were trial-and-error for a while before I noticed the roman numerals on them. The other abilities are often just used without any thought. When there is a gap, you use the dash. When there is a rock, you use the smash.

Monsters appear in the dungeons and world, although it seems low-framerate versions are used in the distance which look weird. The battles occur in the environment you find them in rather than teleporting you to a generic arena. So any walls and objects are there in battle, although you are limited to a circular boundary. This is possibly why they made some areas long and wide, since adding more interesting objects would hinder the combat. The camera can be problematic in more enclosed areas.

You can see health, level, type, resistance, weaknesses in a pop-up when you press and hold RB. Health is also represented in a shield icon above the targeted enemy.

When you have a full party, you will have 2 humans and 4 seraphim in the party at once, but you can only have 2 humans and 2 Seraphim active in battle. You can switch Seraphim mid-battle to take advantage of elemental weaknesses or when they have low health. You control Sorey by default but you can set a different character if you wish, switch mid-battle for finer control, and I think you can even play multiplayer. Alisha leaves your party surprisingly early on, and you only get to use her again much later in the game, and only for a very brief time. Her equipment still seems to appear in the shops which is a bit annoying. The objectives can sometimes be unclear but then you can talk to Rose who will give you better guidance.

The game slowly introduces battle mechanics, and there is a lot to learn. Most of these tips are given to you when you find the Monuments (others are provided via skits). Weirdly, there's some fairly basic mechanics explained towards the end of the game. You can get by for a long time (~15 hours) just by understanding a simple core concept of: physical attacks with one button, then magic with another, dodging, and your energy drains with their use. However, it is much more complex than that, especially if you want to take down the boss characters efficiently. I never thought I really understood how to fully take advantage of the mechanics.

My explanation as I understand: Martial arts are basic slashes with the B button and can chain 3 combos, but you can press the Right Trigger to deplete BG to chain further. Your special magic-infused attacks are called Hidden Artes which have an elemental component and also have a specific creature type it is strong against, and are quick to use. Seraphic Artes having a charging time. Mystic Artes requires 3 or 4 BG and are a very powerful elemental attack.

At one point in the game, Dezel states "Hidden artes are stronger than martial artes, seraphic artes are stronger than hidden artes, and martial artes are stronger than seraphic artes". So it's basically a rock-paper-scissors type mechanic. If you hit an enemy charging a seraphic arte with a hidden arte; it reduces their casting time - giving them the advantage. Attacking a seraphic arte caster with martial artes can cancel their attack. Seraphim just use martial and seraphic arts. Humans can only use seraphic artes when armatized.

Attacking with a weakness is denoted as a "Power Hit" and results in successive attacks also producing Power Hits regardless of type.

Gear have attributes (attack or defence increases) but then also have skills assigned to them. You can "fuse" (combine) the same gear to make a stronger version and gain stronger skills (there's loads of jargon here like "stacks" "g-unions"). Gear is sometimes dropped by enemies, or you can return to the stores to see if they have restocked. There's a grid of skills, and your full set of weapon and armour can stack skills or have sequential skills resulting in bonus skills. So you don't just equip the gear with the highest attack/defence etc, you strategically choose based on the skills assigned. You might want ones with the most amount of skills, or switch them out to be strong against the enemies in that region.

I think many bosses just involve chipping away at them, then once they get down to 25% health, they then start increasing their attack frequency and sometimes just wipe you out. I hated that, it just felt cheap, and I don't think you have enough control over your team. You can change behaviour in the Strategy menu, then use the Right Analog Stick to switch overall strategy. If you tell them to defend they sometimes just back off and stand there, then take a long range attack without blocking or dodging. If you tell them to attack, they often just run in and suicide. I often found it was better to armatize because at least it is keeping one of them out of trouble. I often felt the best strategy is to get the boss down to low health then aim to finish them off with a Mystic Arte that they are weak to.

There's some character abilities which are used outside battle, and are given to you over the course of the game, and you can activate one per character at a time. Abilities like the Treasure Detection have such a small range, it often triggers as you are opening the chest. It can be useful if you somehow miss it as you walk past it. Later in the game, you will teach it to a second character, but even then, stacking these skills didn't seem to have a great range either.

You can save anytime with the Quick Save option but there are also Save Points. These double-up as quick-travel locations although some story sequences disable the use. There are save points before any boss, and losing usually gives you the option of restarting, but it puts you in the menu to allow you to use items and change equipment.

Quick travel costs gold and it seems to be a percentage, so it encourages you to splash out in the shops. The shops level up when you spend gold which I think makes them stock better equipment.

It's one of those games where you quit to the menu, have to skip the intro cutscene, wait for the menu to load, then you can actually quit.

I think the game generally has slow pacing. The story doesn't really develop from its initial premise. Sure, there is some background revealed for a few main characters, but I don't think there really is a dramatic twist to make the plot interesting. It's mainly "go to this town" then there's some problem or evil malevolence that you need to resolve. At 35 hours, I was a bit bored, but it took me 66 hours to actually complete it. When you think of the better RPGs, they may drag in places and require grinding at times, but they have better plot pacing and some major plot twists to really make things interesting. I think this just did everything competently, but mainly excelled in the comedy.