One of my favorite RPGs from this gen.
The story for the game is set in a fantasy world where a kingdom is surrounded by some sort of barrier powered by some ancient energy source called 'blastia' that is supposedly used to protect it from monsters because the world is filled with countless dangerous monsters that like to attack people and will even attack towns.Nobody knows how big the continent/world they live on really is because people can't explore much due to the dangerous monsters.
However,the kingdom is very corrupt and the lower class people are treated very poorly.A knight named 'Yuri' sees somebody trying to steal the aque blastia core(which provides fresh water to many of the poor people)and Yuri tries to catch the thief but gets accused of being the thief and put in jail.He escapes from jail and meets a pink-haired princess named Estellise who's never been outside of the castle she lives in and everything she knows about the world is from reading books.Estellise decides she wants to leave the castle and search for her friend named 'Flynn',so Yuri,Estellise and Yuri's dog Repede go outside of the barrier and search for Flynn.
On their journey they'll meet other characters who'll join them and they will make discoveries about different ways their world is being threatened and they'll have to resort to different means to overcome these threats and some of the story revelations are quite surprising and can be on a more epic level than you first thought.
I like the variety of characters,such as how Yuri is the strong knight,Estelle is the innocent girl who's never seen the world outside of the castle and she wants to help people,one of the characters is a dog,one is an attractive,flirtatious,blue-haired female elf who dresses revealingly and another is an older type of warrior and one of an archaeologist studying ancient,blastia technology.
This battle system for this game uses a real-time system.You can button mash and use skills and against tougher enemies you'll need to be more strategic with how you position the character you're controlling and with the orders you give to the AI controlled party members.The battle system also has a block button too.
The battle system feels fluid,fast and fun.
I love the cel-shaded graphics the game uses.They're very beautiful and the cutscenes have a good amount of detail and give some nice close up views of certain cutscenes.The game also has nice FMV style anime scenes(some of which are very colorful and beautiful).
I like the heart and cuteness in Estellise's voice.Especially when she narrates the opening story scenes when she explains how nobody is really sure how big the continent they live on is, because they cannot explore their world very much due to the treat of monsters.
The voice acting for Yuri makes him sound too much like a stereotypical American male teenager for my liking.I can't remember how the Va's for the other characters sound like.
Overall,Tales of Vesperia is one of my favorite games from this gen,and if you're a fan of JRPGs you really should try this game.