Major League Disappointment
Once you've gotten past the superb graphics of the game you're left with a shell of a game, a weak storyline which runs out of steam long before you've reached the end of the game and finds itself having to conjure up reasons why the adventure should still be continuing, some near emotionless voice acting and a combat system that is as deep and over-whelming as a child's paddling pool.
The game is by no means offensive, but after playing the likes of Lost Odyssey, Eternal Sonata and Star Ocean it feels lightweight, in substantial… like an RPG-Lite if you will.
It ticks all the boxes required of an RPG, the clichéd desert section is in there, as is the deep dark forest area, the seaside towns, the icy wastes and the ruined city… at the same time the generic cliché ridden cast of characters appears as well, the outcast, the buxom magic user, the member of the nobility and the battle hardened rebel fighting for what he believes is a just cause.
After you initially set off to recover a stolen magic blastia the game doesn't so much nudge you in the right direction at every turn as push you… hard… it's almost impossible to go the wrong way as the character will turn around and tell you that you've gone the wrong way and thus won't let you travel in that direction.
I haven't seen a game as forcibly linear as this since I played Final Fantasy 10 on the PS2 years ago, what's the point in having a huge World Map if you're not allowed to explore the damn thing?
Even more galling is that once this item is recovered and arrangements are made for it's safe return to it's rightful place in the world, the game continues with little in the way of any justifiable reason… it's like the writers just ran out of ideas very early on and slapped a few more random reasons in there to pad the game out.
The music gets boring very quickly as there just isn't enough variety, the "comical" tune that plays when you're supposed to find the conversation amusing is just appalling and, as has been mentioned before, the voices rarely change whether the character is surprised, scared, happy or sad.
Now I may well be missing something really huge here but from what I've seen with Vesperia the other games in the Tales series are either a) highly over-rated, or b) much better than this one… there's nothing massively wrong that will spoil anyone's day, but having played the likes of Lost Odyssey I was hoping for something more challenging than what Vesperia offers up… not an RPG-Lite that doesn't seem to offer anything new.