The tenth anniversary of the Tales series is marked by Tales of the Abyss and it sure does live up to the series name!
One of the biggest components of the Tales series and mostly any RPG is the story. The Tales series has always had a history of writing out beautiful and imaginative stories with epic battles and conclusions. Of course considering Tales of the Abyss is celebrating the tenth anniversary of the series the developers really had to put there head together to make there best story yet and of course they succeeded. Tales of the Abyss has the best story of any Tales game out there which is a lot to say for the series.
The story starts off with Luke fon Fabre a son of a powerful duke of the kingdom of Kimlasca-Lanvaldear. Luke has always led a sheltered life in his huge estate within the kingdom never to venture outside of it because when he was young he was kidnapped by an unknown assailant. The kingdom searched for Luke only to find him scared and suffering from amnesia. Now years have passed and Luke is seventeen and bored out of his mind from being stuck at the manor for so many years. While practicing with the sword with the famous Master Van they are attacked by Tear Grants the sister of Van. While the attack is occurring Tear and Luke get transported to another part of the world. Now Tear takes Luke back to his home along the way they might save the world a bit.
The characters of Tales of the Abyss are some of the series best characters. Each character has his or her own unique personality that you will grow to like. Also each character will go through there own battles mentally and physically which provides for a great experience and really gives you an insight on their true character. For example the main character Luke starts off a spoiled brat but as you journey through the story he will grow in to a great young man and another example is Jade who has a dark past he wishes to hide and always is worrying or thinking about something but hides all of it through his great smile and his sarcastic remarks to everyone around him. Story and Characters go hand and hand and Tales of the Abyss is one game that succeeds to the highest degree in this department.
Gameplay is always the most important factor in any game and Tales of the Abyss ups the ante with new ideas and systems for the series. The battle system plays out like an Action RPG which means you get full control over your character and the other characters in your party are controlled by AI or you give them orders yourself. You engage yourself in battles by simply running into a enemy on the map that means no random battles. The battles basically give you a few enemies on screen while you move your character and defeat them with the basics of attacking, defending, and jumping, Tales of the Abyss lets you use artes a.k.a. special moves/magic to help you defeat them. You can customize what artes you use through the superb menus which give you a sense of customization in your character. There are also many other customizable options such as the Capacity Cores which let you control the way you level up your character and effects what AD skills you learn which can make you do special things in battle. Another way to customize is the Fon Slot chambers which let you add special effects to your artes. You may think the developers gave you a vast amount of customizations you can use to make your character what you want them too be, but really its just a illusion these customization options aren't really ground breaking and even if you don't use them you can still scrape by the game easily.
The battle system is great fun and I doubt you will get bored at it when you get towards the end of the game. Although its well thought out and made the developers forgot one thing the battle system is way too easy. When you are fighting weak enemies you can just win by button mashing and late in the game you will be so strong that only bosses will be a challenge for you and the rest of the battles will just be button mashing central. That said even when you are just button mashing it still seems like you are having a blast and trust me when you get too one of the many boss battles you will have a challenge ahead of you. You can also play with up to four friends cooperatively but this was just thrown in there and really isn't a full working system, thanks to the camera really only focusing on the player one. There is also a cooking mechanic where you can cook things by collecting ingredients in dungeons and shops which the food you cook can be used in battle to provide a variety of effects. This cooking mechanic is in every Tales game but once again it seems like it was just thrown in and you will realize its not worth the hassle and regular items are a lot easier to get and much better to use.
The dungeons in Tales of the Abyss are quite linear nothing really special about them its just get to Point A to Point B while a bunch of monsters are in your way but the dungeons do look awesome. Also the towns are quite small and to be honest the only thing really worthwhile in the towns is the Inn and some parts of the story. This is a big letdown for any RPG to have boring towns I know some towns in the game have some worthwhile things to check out but most of the towns are quite useless. The story progression is one of my biggest complaints in the whole game. For some parts of the story you just go town to town to get further in the story sometimes it will be quite awhile before you get into even a little battle. The story is quite awesome but for this type of game you do need battles and dungeons to space the story out and still make it great fun. I mean one time it took me about two hours till I got into a new dungeon which is just crazy for any game.
Like every RPG out there it at least has to have several mini games even through Tales of the Abyss only has a few but these few are way more worthwhile then several horrible mini games that other RPG's have. One I would like to point out is Tales of Dragon Buster which is basically a short castlevania-like 2-D platformer where you defeat enemies while traversing the level. This mini game could be a game itself and is great fun to play. Another one I would like to point out is a puzzle mini game where you move boxes in a warehouse to get to treasures. These mini-games are real brain teasers and very hard to figure but it is very fun to play. There are many great ideas in Tales of the Abyss especially the customizable options but they aren't really worked out enough to truly be remarkable
Tales of the Abyss graphics are nothing special but they get the job done. The graphics are greatly inspired by anime which is a trend in all Tales games. They look amazing if you are a fan of anime but if you aren't they may seem to be a big turnoff for you. Even through they look great some of it looks quite blocky which you don't see much of in games that were released around this time. Another negative is that while you are in the world map sometimes the game tends to slow down and start to lag which is quite annoying at time because you will be spending a lot of time on the world map. Sometimes during the story you will get anime cut scenes which are great to watch and they really worked hard on them to make them great as they give you a break from all the 3D graphics of the game. Even though the graphics aren't anything special this game doesn't rely on graphics much so they shouldn't bother you much.
Just like in any RPG you always need a good soundtrack and Tales of the Abyss does that wonderfully. If you are a fan of the Tales series you will notice some of the series tunes returning once again and many new ones that you will surely enjoy as you play through the game. The voice work for the game is usually disastrous in any Japanese RPG but the developers played there cards right and picked some great voice actors for the characters in the game. Sure some seem questionable but all and all they did a great job selecting them. The developers really did great wonders for the sound in Tales of the Abyss
Value is what every RPG provides and Tales of the Abyss doesn't do anything different. The main story in Tales of the Abyss will take you anywhere between 40 to 50 hours and with a plethora of side quests to do this game can very well take over a 100 hours to fully complete to 100%. Let's just say Tales of the Abyss isn't a game that you can beat in a rent.
Tales of the Abyss truly made the tenth anniversary of the Tales series a great one. With the core elements staying alive and even upgraded and new mechanics which some didn't meet to their true potential but still provided an awesome experience. Tales of the Abyss isn't something you should rent and if you are a fan of Japanese RPG's and don't mind this game having the story drag a little and the game being a bit easy time to time, then you should defiantly pick Tales of the Abyss up. I give Tales of the Abyss a 8 out of 10.