One of the best RPGs from the 6th gen now available for handheld.Has an interesting story and great love story.
It's storytelling is great and it has a great love story and it's story in general is very heartfelt and creative and it's battle system is fun and typical of the Tales series and so is it's colorful,charming,anime-inspired visuals and it's music is beautiful and delicate at times and helps add to the heartfelt moments.
The story is about a male character with long red-hair named 'Luke' whom was mysteriously kidnapped and has lost much of his memories.After trying to defend his master from a female assassin,Luke and the female assassin named Tear get teleported to the other side of the world.The world has elements that allow people to use magic and power great machines and even see into the future and this means nations are in a race to see into the future before other nations to gain an advantage over them and being able to see in the future can help them become more prosperous because they can see new technologies and mistakes and events ahead of time and this causes a lot of political tension around the world.
There is more to the story than this and some of the story revelations are quite shocking and can contribute to some every emotional story moments and they're very creative too.Another reason the story is very emotional at times is because it's presented very delicately,especially for when the romance is building and the story is interesting from start to finish because there is so much going on in the world and because the story is creative.
The love story is quite heartfelt because it shows how the male and female will be trying to save each other and also because it's an imperfect romance in the sense the 2 people involved with tease and annoy each other but they do it because they love each other and feel comfortable together and it creates a realistic feel for the love story.
The cast of characters is quite good,the party members are quite likable and the story even shows the potential of a love triangle and the other party members besides Luke and Tear are involved in some intense and interesting story moments.
The battle system is typical of the Tales series,real-time and hack n slashy but quite fun and fast and the longer your combos are the more damage each hit on an enemy will do.Once again the artes system returns for magic use,but a new feature the battle system has is if you stand in a circle that appears on the battlefields and perform an elemental attack that corresponds to the circle it will do more damage and enemies are capable of using these elemental circles referred to as 'field of fonons' to power up their attacks too.
I like how ToTA is traditional in the sense it has towns to explore and lots of people in towns to talk with and a world mape to explore.The game uses anime scenes to give the story a more life-like effect at times and the cutscenes are quite stunning from an artistic perspective,especially when it blends with a starry night sky or sunsets and add a delicate romance scene to them it's quite something.The world has a nice blend of medieval and Sci Fi because even though you'll see castles and rural style towns and knights with swords you'll see quite a lot of futuristic buildings/structures and airships.
It would be nice if the game gave you more info on where you needed to go next for quests though because sometimes I found myself running around randomly not sure where I needed to go next/do next.
The touch screen allows you to access menus without having to press a button which is kinda nice.
The artstyle is colorful and the world map,characters and towns have a charming visual look to them,even the futuristic environments have a nice use of color that makes them look high-tech and not too cold and lifeless but not too cutsey either.
As for the 3D visual effects,the 3D effects look good in some places but in other places they don't.It's kinda nice to see this traditional style JRPG's environments pop up in front of you but in some of the environments the 3D visuals look kinda fuzzy.
The music is beautiful at times and it makes you feel the delicate and emotional story moments even more.
Overall,this game is not only one of the best RPGs from the 6th gen and now it's available for a handheld.