Not the best RPG ever, but it grows on you.
Note: It's my first time doing a review so please bear with me. Any mistakes, complaints and everything else, send me a PM. English is not my primary language so expect some grammar mistakes. I've tried to keep them down to a minimum, but I may have skipped some.
Tales of Innocence is a JRPG released in 2007 for the DS platform and developed by Alfa System, whose previous work was Tales of Radiant Mythology, released for the PSP one year earlier. It's considered a mother ship title and the first game for the DS platform with that title. Because it hasn't yet being released in the US and my Japanese is pretty basic, I'm basing the review on the unofficial translation done by Absolute Zero.
Story/Characters (mild spoilers here)
You play as Luca Milda, a 15-year old boy who is really shy and insecure and wishes to be as strong as Asura, a strong god who often appears in his dreams. One day, while doing an errand for his bullying classmates he met Iria Animi, a tomboy girl who was being chased down by a woman named Mathias. Even knowing he was a weak guy, Luca stepped down and helped her. Even so, he managed to defeat the persecutors. Iria told him the truth about his dreams: they were memories of their past lives. She told him that she was being chased down because of that and asked him to join her in vengeance for Mathias for destroying her village. Along the journey, you meet several more "Avatars" (people who were gods or related to gods on their past lives) who join your side and some others who fight you. Later you find out that your past lives had a great impact on the world as it is now and end trying to save the world.
As for the characters, Luca is at first a crybaby and insecure kid but has his strong moments when his friends are surrounded by danger. Actually the game centers in how Luca manages to become strong without relying on Asura. About the characters that join you: I liked that Iria wasn't the damsel in distress stereotype. She is hot-blooded and secure of herself and tends to crash with Luca for that. The second one that joins your party is Spada Belforma, a wandering swordsman. Actually, Spada is my favorite character in the game because of his "punk boy" attitude. But actually, even with all the teasing, he shows that he cares for Luca a lot and tries to support him in his somewhat bullying way. The next one is Ricardo Soldato, a hired mercenary who is always serious and calm but tends to get in "soldier mode" in the battlefield. He has also funny moments like getting embarrassed for silly stuff. Then is Ange Serena, a "holy maiden" who isn't that pure and innocent as she might appear, being skilled with knifes and stealing. A recurring gag on the series is her appetite. And finally Hermana Larmo, an orphan girl with a motherly attitude towards Luca, besides her being 2 years younger than him.
The villains are not that developed but they manage to get the job done. Some manage to join your side late on the game but some others stuck with revenge from their past lives and try to exterminate you. And even others tried to get you to the dark side (of the Force). The main antagonist (Mathias) might have being a little shallow, being obsessed for her desire of revenge but I guess she was done that way to show the contrast between her way of thinking and Luca's way of thinking of forgiving the past and living the present.
The interaction between the characters was really well done. Each one of them had different personalities and you saw how they grew up in the game. Maybe Hermana was the least developed character in terms of character growth but that might be because you recruit her late on the game. Yes, the story might me a little cliché: "Youths saving the world together". But what I liked was the portrayal of the past life theme. On how some people could live without regrets of their past life and how some just lost it. The interaction between the three main (Luca/Iria/Spada) and the paralells with their past lives was really well done. The past life interaction didn't felt so strong with the remaining three (Ange/Hermana/Ricardo) but their present-life interaction was really good and sometimes amusing.
Graphics
The graphics are quite good for a Nintendo DS game. The 3D models of the characters feel solid and well done. The animation mostly consists on the characters in 3D talking as the anime-like cutscenes are few. The nice touch is that the characters actually show expressions and body gestures during those cutscenes, making them more enjoyable. The "skits" (small conversations between characters) feature is also present. The scenery is really detailed too, as reflected by the different weather of each one of the cities in the world (dessert, snow, jungle). The battle animation is really well done too, with no hints of lagging down during the fights. One little letdown is that some parts in towns are magically blocked even if you can see them on the map. A visible wall or something like a fence would have been better.
Sound
The sound track was nothing special. I can remember at most 4 or 5 tracks. The Guild track got annoying after a while. On the other hand, the Tenos theme was quite enjoyable. I researched on Internet and the OST contains 43 tracks, too bad I can't remember them at all. It is not a bad soundtrack but it was totally forgettable.
The voice acting was a lot better. For the protagonists, I could recognize Yuji Ueda (Sagara Sanosuke from Rurouni Kenshin) as Spada because of the "punk boy" voice. As for the other characters, their voices were quite good too. It was quite obvious Luca was voiced by a female and for some people not used to young boys being voiced by girls it could be annoying. But I think the voice really suited the character as Luca is a really shy and bullied boy. Iria's voice was fine except of her laugh which was a little creepy (as noted by Spada usually in the game). As for Ange (sweet maiden voice), Ricardo (deep and serious adult voice) and Hermana (little bratty girl), their voices also fit their characters a lot.
As for the antagonists, I could recognize Norio Wakamoto (Charles zi Britannia in Code Geass) as one of the antagonists (Gardel). Another good known seiyuu is Tomokazu Sugita (Kyon from Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuutsu) as a minor antagonist (Albert). The voice acting for the bad guys was really well done too. The only one that got in my nerves was Hasta (even the game characters hated him). I actually can't explain that but his voice made me turn down the volume on the DS. But his way of talking really fit with his creepiness.
Gameplay
According to Wikipedia, the battle system used is the Dimension Stride Linear Motion Battle System, which contains elements of Tales of the Abyss's Flex Range Linear Motion Battle System and Tales of Destiny (PS2)'s Aerial Linear Motion Battle System. Unfortunately I have played neither so this section is how it appeared to a Tales newbie like me.
The combat system is quite complex. You move three characters but you can only control one as the other two rely on AI. The good thing is that you can make the AI "intelligent" by doing a priority list on which skills to use. Take Ange for example. As a "healer" class, she has bad physical defense but you can make her do spells and healing at distance as a priority and then do physical attacks only if necessary. Also you can switch the P1 control to other character as the battle progresses. There's the Tension Gauge, which is similar to the Limit Break feature on FF7 or the Trance feature of FF9. For those who haven't played those, it's a bar that fills when you receive damage or do combos and when full, can unleash the hidden power of your character. There's also the "Infinity Jam", which allows you to do powerful combos between your characters when the "Tension Gauge" is full. Unfortunately, I never got how to use it. Later in the game, you can use the "Awakening" feature which makes your character do a powerful move against the enemy. Again, just like Trance or Limit Break from FF.
There is also a feature called Styles. In short, is like the FF jobs system. Each style gives the character special abilities like casting magic faster or an increased attack. Styles also affect the characters stats. For example, the Wisdom style (used for magic users) can make you do spells faster but reduces your defense. The good thing is that when you learn a certain skill you can switch styles. Again, with someone like Ange you can make her learn to cast magic faster by setting her on Wisdom and then switch to Guardian, which increases defense.
You can also set four spells/attacks (called "Artes") to assigned shortcuts. For example, with Ange, I could cast Barrier just pressing the B button and Heal by pressing Down + B. The only downside that I found it's that I couldn't make some shortcut combinations to work but maybe that's because I never got totally the combat system, as a Tales newbie.
About the difficulty, the game was quite easy until the last boss battles which took me hours to beat, even on Normal difficulty. Again, I was not that familiar with the combat system but if you get it, the game should be way easier. The only downside is that the dungeon design wasn't that good. Some mazes looked exactly the same and without a dungeon map, it could take hours to reach the objective. Fortunately, there were save points before almost all bosses battles so you won't start all over again. That was quite useful on the three last bosses, as that dungeon design was made to have a really high enemy encounter, with really difficult enemies.
There is also the Guild feature, which makes you do some subquests in order to get special items. Guild items need to be bought with Grade, which is a ranking system on how well you fought the battle. The interesting thing is that Grade can be obtained more quickly by doing those subquests. The not so interesting part is that quests tend to get repetitive and boring.
PD: Ange was my main character almost all the game, so that's why all the references to her.
Value/Enjoyment
Value: The game itself is a little short. I beat it in 34 hours and that includes doing the Guild requests up to level 9 and getting lost for four hours early in the game. I guess you can beat it in 25 hours. But the best thing is that you can actually replay the game because there's a New Game + option (like Chrono Cross). The only downside is that, unlike Chrono Cross, you have to "buy" the options to keep your items, level, artes and other things on the Guild and the Guild part tends to be a little repetitive. But if you are a collector maniac like me, you will find out that the effort done by doing the Guild quests is rewarded.
Enjoyment: I really enjoyed this game. It was the first Tales I've managed to finish and that's quite the accomplishment because I absolutely hated Symphonia. Of course, there were some annoying things. The lack of a dungeon map was unforgivable. Dungeons like Galpos Jungle could make you nuts without a map. And the final boss battle was a nightmare. But those were minor annoyances in front of what the game has to offer. The plot, while a bit generic on the "saving the world" part is unique in how it portrays the issue of revenge vs. forgiveness. The past vs. present lives parallels were also well done. I actually tried to get all the skits for knowing more about the characters, a thing I never thought to do on TOS because I didn't care at all for the cast. I'm actually replaying this because I missed some skits.
In summary, I recommend this title. Of course, the part about the dungeons being a mess was solved thanks to the marvelous FAQ done by black murasame63 on GameFAQs. The translation by Absolute Zero was top notch also. I only noticed some minor typos but they were really small and didn't affect the story. It gets 9 out of 10 for me. Thanks for reading!