New Life for the X360's RPG Library
Being from Namco, the studio which has been producing the Tales series for two decades now, it's little surprise that everything about this game has been painstakingly rendered, drawn, and animated. The game's exposition is a nice, long one; introduces all the characters, shows off the evironments, and starts to pull you in. Chopin, the legendary pianist, is on his death bed, and is dreaming of a far-away place as he dies. Every now and then, he'll get checked back in on, but the majority of it takes place in his dream world, which looks like an impressionist painting come to life. Bright colors, blossoming flowers, clear skies, lush, verdant forests...that's just a sampling of how the world of ES looks. The characters are just as well-done, their expressions conveyed perfectly, not just through their face but their voice as well; voice-acting is top-notch, with several recognizable actors from recent, main-stream anime, such as Wolf's Rain. Like most RPG, there are still text-only spots, but the vast majority of the scenes are voiced.
Like any RPG, there will be plenty of combat. ES has joined the trend of ditching random encounters for on-screen icons of enemies, so players can pick and choose who to fight; though some enemies may pursue you once they're aware of you. The fighting system is a combination of real-time and turn-based. Each character goes one at a time to attack, and gets a set amount of time in which to make their attacks, fastest to slowlest like most RPGs. ES has streamlined their battle quite a bit; only the four face buttons and the analog stick are used for combat. There's the standard attack button, item button, and magic button. Only 2 spells can be set at any one time, and this one of the unique things to ES; each spell has a 'dark' or 'light' alignment. Not in the sense of good or evil, but literally to shade or light. Depending on where the character is standing on the field will determine which spell is cast. It can feel a little limiting to only having 2 spells on hand, especially when only a couple characters get healing spells, and it's a pain to have to choose between offensive and healing for that one slot.
The system can sometimes feel too over-simplified. There's very little to do as far as character customization goes; all weapons are store bought, so is armor, accessories are limited, and there's no item/weapon creation. A little bit of imagination for those sorts of things would have been a nice touch.
The game, overall, should clock in around 40-60 hours. The delightful characters and beautiful world will make the time fly right by, and you will want to play it again and again.
Summary
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Good:
-Engaging characters and world
-No random encounters
-Barttle system is interesting
Bad:
-Limited magic spell capacity
-No customization/creation options