Tales of Vesperia (Xbox 360, 2008)

Story

[edit] Setting

Vesperia takes place on the planet Terca Lumireis. The people of Terca Lumireis have come to rely on "blastia", an ancient civilization's technology with a wide array of capabilities, such as providing water, powering ships, or creating barriers around major cities and towns to protect them from monsters. The Imperial Knights and Guild members also use "bodhi blastia" to enhance their abilities in combat. The blastia are created from a substance called "aer" that lends its power to the blastia's ability, but can be fatal to humans in large concentrations.

[edit] Plot

When the aque blastia core is stolen from Zaphias's lower quarter, denying water to the lower class that lives there, Yuri attempts to chase down the thief, but is arrested and jailed in the castle. He escapes and flees with Estelle, after discovering that she is searching for Flynn. The two, along with Repede, chase after both Flynn and the thief. They meet Karol and Rita, who takes great interest in Estelle's healing artes. The group is able to catch up with the thief, and, with Raven and Judith's help, recover the blastia core, thwarting the plans of an evil guild leader, Barbos, in the process. Yuri then turns the core over to Flynn to return to the city. As the group recovers, Rita discovers that Estelle does not actually use her bodhi blastia to cast healing artes. Estelle soon comes to learn that she is the Child of the Full Moon, and an omen of an impending disaster upon the planet.

Judith leads the group to Myorzo, the home of the Kritya, who explain that the Child of the Full Moon, if used as a tool, could bring forth the Adephagos, a being that feeds off aer and would convert all life on the planet back into pure aer due to their use of blastia; the group is encouraged to kill Estelle as soon as possible to prevent this from happening. As the group comes to terms with the revelation, Raven, revealed to be the Imperial Knight Captain Schwann Oltorain, kidnaps Estelle and takes her to Alexei. Alexei is able to take control of Estelle's power, and uses it to reveal the Enduring Shrine of Zaude before the group can save her. Raven has a change of heart and regroups with the team as they chase Alexei to the Shrine. Before Yuri can kill him, Alexei activates the huge blastia at the top of the Shrine, causing the Adephagos to break through a magical seal and send tentacle-like appendages across the planet, Alexei then dies. As the group recovers, Duke appears and states his intention to help destroy the Adephagos and save Terca Lumireis by sacrificing the life essence of all humanity, including himself.

The group comes up with a strategy for stopping the disaster, but at a cost: by creating spirits of the elements from the apatheia of the four Entelexeia (Belius, Phaeroh, Gusios, and Khroma), they will be able to convert all the blastia cores within the planet to an energy weapon that can destroy the Adephagos. The group decides to push forward with the plan and work their way through the tower of Tarqaron, a gigantic, hidden city-turned-weapon underneath Aspio that Duke activated, meeting Duke at the top. The group is able to defeat Duke, and Yuri attempts to convince him that all humans are willing to give up blastia to stop the Adephagos. Duke recognizes Yuri's honesty and assists the group. The combined power of the Elemental Spirits, the converted blastia cores, and Dein Nomos slices the Adephagos in two and destroys it.

I bought this game because it's apretty solid JRPG, for those who don't know, that means Japanese Role Playing Game. This game provides excellent voice acting that has great flow and doesn't have that air of, "Am I supposed to take these guys seriously?".

It's the same as all the other RPGs out there in the sense that it starts you out on a simple search mission that blossoms into your garden variety catastrophe of global proportion, but it doesn't give you that ho-hum love story plot between the main character and some other random chick in the party.

The gameplay is solid and the fights follow a real time, fighting game feel. Like your expecting to be fighting Ryu or M.Bison at some point. And the button scheme while fighting makes it able to pick up and play easily while being able to explore each character's different fighting styles and skills, but it still provides a lot of depth and strategy so that your hardcore RPGer won't get bored with the regular hack-slash-special move gameplay. That is if you are willing to take it to that level.

There are tons of very interesting quests and extras to find in the game that can carry over to other playthroughs via the grade system, so that offers some replayability and makes fnding everything worthwhile, but the game still gives you that option to make your second playthrough freakishly difficult or ridiculously easy. Either way, you're in for a treat.

The most interesting aspect in this game is how the characters interact with each other via skits and the regular storyline. This game tries not to take itself too seriously and really heavy moments are tactfully made brighter by your character's quirky behavior.

All in all, if you're not really into RPGs, this game might not appeal to you, but people looking for a good RPG experience will find lots to do in this game. There is over 100 hours of gameplay if you are trying to get everything out of Tales and I'm sure the underground fans of the Tales series will not be disappointed.

Tales of vesperia is a rare RPG, your best bet is buying online, cause if you get lucky and find one at a game store the prices are generally higher than online. This is my second favorite Japanese RPG ever next to Final Fantasy 7. They are very different. but both have a very deep story. The fighting in tales of vesperia plays more like an action game it is not turn based You can free run and enter button combos to do pre set attacks that you have unlocked and choose to use as your heavy fighting Arts, you can play as any Character, and they all have differt strenths and weaknesses, be it speed, range, power, healing, magic. If you like Manga and action RPG's this game's for you. I loved it. It's like playing through a manga comic novel, as it is a comic series.

I'm a fan of the Tales series in general, and this has been seen by Tales fans as one of the best. This story follows Yuri Lowell and the companions he meets along the way on the planet ofTerca Lumireis. The people of Terca Lumireis have come to rely on "blastia", an ancient civilization's technology with a wide array of capabilities, such as providing water, powering ships, or creating barriers around major cities and towns to protect them from monsters.

Just like the other Tales games there is a great focus and depth on the backround of the characters. There are skits that can be triggered during the with conversations related and sometimes unrelated to the main story. These skits are seen as out-dated by some reveiwers but I see them as enjoyable and are a good way to get to know the characters more. While many Tales do not have voiced skits for the US released, this game does, making them all the more enjoyable.

Tales of Vesperia uses an updated version of Tales of the Abyss's battle system, called the "Evolved Flex-Range Linear Motion Battle System" (EFR-LMBS). As with previous Tales games, characters can move freely around the battlefield in real-time (my personal favorite type of battling). The players plays a character while the AI controls the rest, though characters can be set to perform a certain way in battle (ie a character can be set to heal only; a character can be set to keep thier distance from enemies).

While many Tales games brought to the US have instrumentals of the Japanese openings, this is the first game to have an English opening "Ring a Bell", performed by the same artist who performed the Japanese opening, Bonnie Pink. The character design is done by Kouske Fujishima, who has done the character designs for Tales of Phantasia, Tales of Symphonia, and Tales of the Abyss.

This game is currently a favorite of many Tales fans and RPGers. For those who have never been intorduced to the Tales series will find this to be a compelling RPG with a story line, multiple side quests, and many in-depth dialogs and conversations.

With the best main character in the series, Yuri Lowell, we embark on a great journey that has tendensies of over using certain story elements like the BLASTIA, but there are twists and turns that's never been done in RPG's before, especially on the Character developement side of it all.

You can get extra costumes that gives a total renewal of the feeling you get from the characters on your second playthrough.

The battle system is just awesome, best yet in a game.

What can I say, get it. It kicks ass.