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Game Title: Tales of Graces F
Platform: PlayStation 3
Developer: Namco Tales Studio
Publisher: Namco Bandai Games
Genre: Role Playing
Age Rating: CERO: B, ESRB: T, PEGI: 12+
Release Date: 2nd December 2010 (Japan), 13th March 13 2012 (North America), 31st August 2012 (Europe)
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Game Score: 7.7/10
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Summery:
Thanks to it's excellent battle system and a charming storyline, Tales of Graces F is an enjoyable RPG that focuses a lot on the strengths of the Series.
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For over a long while Namco's Tales of Series has had some localizations but however has remained underground for quite a longtime. Thanks to the efforts of Tales of the Abyss for the 3DS as well as support from various Japan-Only titles it has managed in it's own way to reveal itself to hardcore RPG audiences. It's next following entry into the series is Tales of Graces F, which is a revamped game which was originally a Nintendo Wii game in Japan. The term F stands for future which includes a brand new storyline as well improving on the issues that the Wii version had, making it a more polished game.
Tales of Graces begins in the characters childhood years, the rebellious Asbel Lhant comes across a mysterious girl suffering with amnesia calling her Solphie and also invites a visiting prince named Richard into a friendship pact. They are soon torn apart by a tragic event leaving Asbel responsible for failing to protect his friends and he decides to spend seven years of his life training to be a strong knight so that he can protect those that he cares about. The plot later reveals 3 rival countries that want control over the world of Ephinea and also mysteries behind the amnesic girl Solphie and the Prince Richard. Solphie hasn't even aged and Richard becomes crazed king whose goal is to absorb the power of the Valkines throughout the world for his own deeds.
Like any other Tales of game, Graces is no exception for spending nearly half way through the game building up clues behind the games characters, but the childhood hours are the games slowest building moments. It's supposed to bring some character development but however it takes a very long time for the plot to get going. Once everyone's grown up the story starts to get better and brings a lot of unique story elements that's more involving and interesting characters help flesh out the story.
The writing is solid but however the voice acting is mostly ranged between lazy, dry to laughable and somewhat decent. One of the main villains Lambda has the best overall voice performance in the game while Richard in one scene where he goes crazy isn't too bad.
Like other RPG out there there's shops to buy better equipment and recovery items as well as inns to rest in. Tales of Graces however changes the exploration from other Tales games by replacing the overworld map with small connected areas that you explore kind of like with the Star Ocean games. It makes the exploration more cohesive then in most other J-RPGs out there. Small note is that in the early hours of the game you'll feel contained with invisible walls with a text bubble saying that you're allowed to go that way but eventually you'll get sidequests that you get to take part in to make up for it. You'll later encounter a group called the Turtlez which handle small transportations between areas you wish to go which is time saving and at the end of the game you'll get to fly to all the areas you've explored as well as scan for optional areas to explore.
In the dungeons it's similar to some other RPGs where you'll find monsters to fight, treasure to pick up and a puzzle to solve. Puzzles start out easy to others being difficult that it takes a long while to figure out.
One of the best features of Tales of Graces is the battle system. Like previous instalments you trigger fights by touching the monster on the map allowing you to handle fights at your own pace. The Battle system in the game is called the Style Shift Linear Motion Battle System which combines elements from Tales of Vesperia and the Japan-Only PS2 remake of Tales of Destiny. You take up to 4 characters into battle but you can have friends join the battles because the game supports up to 4 players locally. There are new features and changes to the Tales formula for example the game doesn't use a side scrolling perspective like in older games but a view behind the characters you control. TP is replaced with a CC bar which limits you to how many attacks you are allowed to pull before you need to replenish the bar before continuing to attack. The game also introduces dodging which allows you to escape the enemies attacks that they throw at you. As for your attacks they categorize as of A-Artes which are your sets of Melee attacks and B-Artes which are magic and strike based abilities which you can equip 4 to use from a list that each character can use as you see fit. Chaining these abilities together allows you to create powerful combos and you can later learn Mystic Artes and an Accel ability which can deal major damage. You'll also go into a Eleth Break which allows either your allies or enemies to go into a temporary boost to hammer down your enemies and easily pull off Mystic Artes. After the childhood portions of the game you'll get access to the variety of the battle skills in the game but along the way you'll be given tutorials on how to handle each character as well as other things in the game. While you have direct control of one character you can freely switch between different characters to change up a bit.
One of the series stables are equip-able titles which you unlock as you go through the game. In Tales of Graces titles have various skills, add resistances and various stat boosts which are gained by SP in battle. Some of the titles are related to story while the majority of the titles are earned by doing sidequests and fulfilling certain conditions in battle. These include defeating a number of enemies, using the Arte several times, unleashing a high combo and many more.
You'll also get access to an object called the Eleth Mixer which allows you to create existing items that's recorded to the item collector's book. You can pick up text books which can boost the ability of the mixer which can help you a lot throughout the game. A new thing in shopping areas is that you can craft new items and upgrade weapons armour and gems to deal better damage, protect against status effects and improve stats. These are done by finding different upgradable shards from enemies.
While it's nice that you can choose your battles as you like as well as using Holy and Dark Bottles to manage the encounter rating on the field. However you still need to spend plenty of time grinding and upgrading to stand a chance against some of the later bosses in the game. Some other battles will require plenty of skill so that your party don't end up too injured for the next fight. You can use Strategy settings to change the AI behaviour as well as assigning shortcuts and commands to your party members to make some of your fights much easier. What I actually do like about the game is that whenever you lose to a boss encounter you're allowed to retry that fight without having to watch the events again. You still need to reload from your previous save if you lose to a normal group of enemies which isn't too much of a big deal.
Now I'm on to the games biggest issue which are sidequests. While some of these can be done by interacting with NPC's in the town maps while some involve going to a flashing star. The main majority of the sidequests take in the form of Inn Requests which you can complete by finding required materials to give to the requested person. The real problem is that these sidequests force you to keep hold of the required items to be able to complete them instead of just selling them when acquired. Some of the other items requested require you to spend a lot of time dualizing materials which can get really tedious and boring. You will get minigames like a card game and a shot cube game puzzle game which are brief diversions.
Once you complete the 60 hour campaign you can also take on an optional dungeon and you can do the New Game Plus with various bonuses or you can take on the Epilogue Story called Lineage and Legacies which is a storyline taken 6 months after the events of the main story. You can also take on 27 different challenges in the Trials of Graces mode which your performance in each battle can be placed on online Leaderboards and earn minor rewards. Dispute the poor optional Inn Requests, there is plenty of content to do in the game like all other Tales of games out there.
As a game that was originally released on the Nintendo Wii, the graphics on the PS3 more or less shows it's age. The framerate is not very consistent as one point it can be smooth at 25 FPS while in battles the frame rate is at 50. When there's so much chaotic battles going on the frame rate manages well to remain smooth with all the excellent spell and character effects. The character models are decent looking when they are upclose but the overall environments do stand out much more like the outside fields of Lhant for example. Dungeons are pretty decent and there's some consistency on how they were designed including some of the difficult puzzles. A mentionable part about the graphics are the improvements to the skit system. Instead of simple chat boxes from the old game instead you get actual body portraits as well as some humorous shots of the characters and some strange events.
The game's Audio is a mixed bag. The soundtrack is somewhat passable with some excellent battle music and as aforementioned about the voice acting, some will not like many of the character voices due to the actors somewhat laziness and to top it off the lip syncing in both the gameplay and anime cutscenes which are seen throughout the game is off in some places. There is simply no option for the original Japanese voicetrack available. The best thing about the soundtrack is the opening song, it's called White Wishes by BoA and the tune itself fits well to the games setting. It's probably one of my favourite songs used in a Tales game so far in English.
Dispute the Inn Requests and the voice acting ruining what is a supposedly great game on it's own merits, Tales of Graces F focuses well on many of the strengths and weakness that the series has done so well on. The game gets better after the first 3 hours into the story which should be enough for fans to be able the Tale towards it's conclusion. I'm happy to have finally been able to play this game for myself but it's not a big successor to Tales of Vesperia but it's better then some of the RPG's of 2012 like Final Fantasy XIII-2 for example.
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The Good Points:
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1. Fast and frantic battle system with 4 Player support and Multiple Difficulty Settings
2. Improved Skit sequences from past instalments
3. A nice small but cohesive world map to explore
4. Plenty of good story elements and optional stuff to see and do that are both humorous and engaging
The Bad Points:
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1. Too many Inn Requests that require you to hold on to Materials and Items as well as having too many Dualizing required quests
2. Dry to laughable voice acting and the voice syncing is off
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Reviewed by: Anthony Hayball (AQWBlaZer91)
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