For people who are looking at this game and going...i dont know...look at this review and ill see if i can win you over.
Story:
Alright first thing is first, is the story compelling and does it suck you in like past Tales games? the anwser is yes...and no...i've been playing this game non stop like a mad man for the past 3 days now and have put 18 hours into the game and the story is there but its not like Symphonia's story with all the twists and everything, you really get a sense of whats going on and it seems like you know whats going to happen before it does which is what i would suspect from long time fans, for new commers to the series which could be many this being on the 360 and all is refreshing and gives you an idea of what is soon to come.
Alright so the game starts off with ex-knight Yuri and his faithful side kick Repede who is which a dog that can fight using a dagger.....sweettt...alright so the blastia core (Blastia is the substance which allows anything to happe, water, fire, wind and such) Blastia allows these resources to be more easily harnaced, The aqua blastia core which was stolen from the lower quarters of the Imperial City gets Yuri and a handful of characters caught up in a large adventure for a quarter of the game trying to get this blastia core back which is not really inspiring really but other things do come up as you move along in the game.
Gameplay:
Now this is probably a madmans dream the system has never been better and is that you are able to smoothly destroy your opponents, the system also seems to be a bit faster and cleaner as it was when using different types of skills, so you basically fight on a 2-d battle field where you attack your opponents head on or changing different opponents, not to say its a one way lane, you are able to free roam around to get behind slower enemies which is something you do directly later on.
You have seen alot of the skills from the characters before but one thing that really...really bugs me, Estellise is the basic healer for the group using first aid...but thats it all the others dont use any healing powers except for Karol using a first aid slam...later on you do get more healing technqiues for Estellise but she is not like a Raven where you are able to get everyone healed all at once.
Other then things that bug me alot of things is what you expect now, Yuri is a kind of mix between Kratos and Loyld using sword bassed attacks but not as fast, then you have Karol who weilds a large weapon and able to knockdown enemies, and then you have fast character like Judith able to perform reasonable mid to shortrange attacks that are fast and of course a magic user.
Another addition to what is already an addicting thing is the addition of fatal strikes which allows you to cleanly cut down an enemy in one shot which may or may not kill them depedning on their health, later on you are able to chain these togeather which is awsome...another return appearence is the return of the Overlimit Meter which allows you to perform your burst Arte (Arte is the abillity to perform a skill) the burst Arte is kind of like a unison attack or a single attack from the Tales series putting in massive ammounts of damage in a single chain.
Alright so gameplay its brilliant its smooth its clean you just want to fight stuff most of the time.
Sound:
The music is really great...i actually have the opening music from Bonnie Pink on my MP3 and its just a really really good beat and it fits into the opening very nicely, that also means the other scores such as the battle scores and exploring scores are great, their alright but they do get old after a while and they try to change them up during the middle of the game but it dosent exactly matter when you just wanna fight stuff...
Graphics:
It looks ******* amazing DONE!! moving on!!.....Nah im joking and not about the amazing part, the game does look incredibly well and i would imagine getting an award for its art style cause it just looks fanastic, all the visual's are creativly made as well as the facial animations being top notch with blinking and eye wandering which looks great, one thing they could have done better though...was the skits...its just a portrait...with a face....seriously thats it? It could be better...i just dont know how.
Overall:
This games ******* amazing Lol seriously this game is what the 360 needs a great RPG to get people back into the genre again, so if you enjoy RPG's if you like a reasonibly cool story which plays out during the end game session or just like fighting stuff with nifty cool moves as well as using new weapons...this is probably your game.