awesomeness

KEEP IN MIND THIS IS A JAPANESE LANGUAGE GAME THEY DO NOT HAVE A AMERICAN RELEASE NOR ARE PLANNING TO RELEASE THIS GAME IN ITS IMPROVED VERSION

This game kept me busy for a good amount of time, has high replay-value due to Tales of `grade` system, and has loads of bonus content and side missions to keep you entertained. I never played the `demo` version, but I have played other Tales of Games so will be referencing those for comparisons.

Story: The story is the typical start for a Tales game, a young male lead, beginning a journey usually due to a female lead that they fall in love with inevitably. While the story was satisfactory, it wasn`t as good as say, Tales of Abyss, and was sort of predictable to a certain extent. Still, not complaining, it kept me playing and playing more than once. The movie prequel sheds a lot of light on Flynn and Yuri's relationship, and is animated very well. I recommend if you liked this game, to watch the movie as well.

Characters: these are definitely one of my favorite parts of Tales games. This game has 9 playable characters, and many more supporting characters all fairly colorful.
Yuri Lowell, the main hero, is not the typical `i must save the princess and save the world bla` type of bland hero. More of a `how annoying, stop getting into trouble, complain while saving you type of guy. He isn`t afraid to do the dirty work that needs to be done, and protects things he cares about, though rarely admits that he does. The main heroine, Estelle, is a typical cliche princess type heroine, and while it matched the story, honestly I think these types come out too often in Japanese rpgs. The other playable characters include Rapide(Yuri`s faithful pipe chewing canine companion who fights with a knife) Karl (a kid that wants to prove himself), Rita(a young magical genius), Raven(the annoying yet entertaining old man of the group), Judith(a non-human sexy hot chick), and two new playable characters not in the 360 beta, Flynn(Yuri`s straight-laced best friend who is a knight), and Pattie(the happy pirate girl looking for treasure).

Gameplay: The gameplay is standard to namco tales of style, and incorporates the traditional skills, but to learn the skills you must equip a weapon with said-skill attached to it. It takes a little while to learn the skill, just have to keep fighting with the weapon, and then you are good to go. Free-Run from Abyss is back, which is AWESOME so much easier to escape from things, and there is an option of automatic battling *it plays for you* semiauto battle *just have to push the attack button and it runs to your target and attacks*, and manual, where you control everything yourself. Characters are easily customizable, does take up some time to set up what each should do, and are all easy to play with once you get used to them. The Grade system is back and includes some very good perks like unlock all skits.

Graphics: Better than what has been seen before for tales games, but not as good as other games (i.e. FFXIII)

Music/Voice acting: Loved it. The voices match the character perfectly, and they have added voices to all skits, another favorite of mine for the tales of series, and the music is good.

There are also items you can buy on the Japanese PSstore, you just need to open a account under japan, and get a japanese psstore credits. There are many costumes to add to characters, items, as well as some freebies like skills, and gummies. kind of expensive

the best rpg in this generation.

Despite the fact that the product was made for japanese fans the "tales of" series is a worldwide franchise that carries a lot of responsability due it's quality in each game.
That being said what we have is a unique game in a way only namco can do. The depth plot, carismatic characters and surprises awaits you in this around 40 hours RPG.
Recommended for any ps3 owner.

Tl;dr Never left Japan, so import it you North Americans :P

Vesperia, while not perfect, does avoid falling into the same traps that so many other Tales titles have. Since you can see monsters on both the world map and dungeons, I didn't have to deal with constant encounters like in Phantasia. The stories of Destiny and Legendia felt like two vaguely connected quests with the former getting pretty boring in its second half and the latter attempting to ruin a superior plot by recycling virtually every first-half dungeon for the second half. Abyss came closest to excellence, boasting many of the improvements to the series' formula first seen in Symphonia, but there were some big late-game hiccups, as you seemed to spend as much time running back-and-forth between a few towns to advance the plot as you did adventuring. None of those are issues in Vesperia. Overall, this game's battle system seemed to be an improved version of what I had seen from Tales of the Abyss. While the storytelling may not have necessarily been improved on from that game, it deserves recognition for being on that level, which is a pretty big complement, as I've long felt that this has been where the Tales games truly shine. The PS3 version has a lot of content that the XB360 version doesn't have. Altough it is in Japanese there is also an English tranlsation project on the way, though the game is pretty straight forward so you really don't need it.

very good rpg

Very good!!!!R.P.G
play station3 No1 rpg
Graphics is anmation style.
Good system.
Good Action.
Good Magic.
Good story.

GREAT RPG

I know that this game is in Japanese with no intent for localization, so thats the only reason I would suggest buying this game (if you don't have an XBOX360) and it's a great RPG. I love playing it!