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Game Title: Tales of Zestiria
Platform: PlayStation 3/PlayStation 4/PC (Steam)
Developer: Bandai Namco Entertainment
Publisher: Bandai Namco Entertainment
Genre: Role Playing
Age Rating: PEGI: 16+ (Europe)
Release Date: PlayStation 3: 22nd January 2015 (Japan), October 16 2015 (Europe), 20th October 2015 (North America)
PlayStation 4, Microsoft Windows: 20th October 2015 (North America), 16th October 2015 (Europe)
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Game Score: 8.0/10
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Summery:
Tales of Zestiria's new openworld approach and battle system additions does help make the game worthy of celebrating the franchise's 20th anniversary.
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It's amazing that the very first instalment in the Tales franchise Tales of Phantasia got released 20 years ago on the Super Famicom console in Japan. Since then the Tales of Series has had their fair share of great titles, somewhat good games and then bad games that thankfully for company reasons didn't want those games to be released in the West. Whatever the case these games are known for their entertaining skit sequences, great storylines and characters and enjoyable battle systems which are well loved in the hearts of RPG fans alike. Here we are now with the next new instalment with Tales of Zestiria which was announced and eventually released to celebrate 20 years of the long running franchise. It now aims for an open world landscape design, fusions Dragon Ball Z style as well as brining the best ideas from old tales instalments. Sure it's earned a bit of controversy in Japan for the game's handing of the main characters and has earned some rather unfair reviews over in the West. So what does this new Tales instalment fell in the eyes of a long running Tales player like myself? well I am so glad that I get to answer that question.
The setting of Tales of Zestiria takes place in a medieval fantasy world where the land is corrupted by a dark source called malevolence which are caused by the negative emotions caused between the people. Humanity's only chance of purifying the land is the power of the Shepherd and the main character Sorey being your every day standard J-RPG protagonist takes on that sacred duty of becoming a Shepherd and gains the power to fight the hellions. The characters of Tales of Zestiria are very likeable and their character development during the course of the game are great to watch. Sorey is the usual kind of J-RPG protagonist who wants to know about the world as well as exploring the various ruins, he also wants to believe that humans should be able to coexist with spiritual beings known as Seraphim which cannot be seen by the human eyes. Mikleo voiced by Scott Manville who also did Lloyd from Tales of Symphonia also tends to enjoy exploring ruins as much as Sorey but also ends up being the cautious type but their brotherly relationship is a cool sight to behold. Lailah is a pun artist who will use them as a way out of telling out her oath but acts a real support for Sorey. Edna tends to make fun of the party and other people's situations and also loves to insult Mikleo by calling him Meebo which is very funny. Later on in the game there is Dezel who vows revenge for the death of his friend and lastly there are Alisha and Rose. Alisha is a princess of Hyland who takes her role as a knight who will do what she can to help out her kingdom but she holds conflictions between understanding what it takes to keep the peace as a princess as well as upholding her status as a knight. Rose a character who fills Alisha's role for Sorey offers support for him but also acts as a boss for the Sparrowfeathers and a merchant who believes what she thinks is right for Sorey and his friends and her members. The writing is really good and the english dub acting is very strong showing the emotions of each of the characters very well, plus there is also the option for the Japanese audio tracks if the players so desire.
Tales of Zestiria's new gameplay change is that it goes for an openworld exploration which allows you to explore the vast reaches of the world as you see fit, it uses the same field controls like in the Tales of Xillia games so that you'll feel more familiar. The openworld design allows you to explore the environments freely both without the penalty of having tough enemies that can destroy the player instantly (aside from optional boss encounters) and also unlocking new areas at a reasonable pace as you go through the storyline. Compared to Final Fantasy XII which did use the openworld design before this game Tales of Zestiria has a well executed openworld design that makes you feel like an explorer without the game having to punish you for going of the main path which is a great thing. You'll explore grassy field areas, mountains and plenty of cavern and ruin areas which each have treasure and herbs to pick up and returning from Tales of Graces there are hidden discovery points that can be unearthed.
Some areas will have a puzzle to solve which will involve either lighting up pedestal with fire, making your way through areas without being seen using the water, breaking blocks with earth and jumping past gaps using the wind. The earth and wind puzzles are quite good and can be done without any stress but the fire and water puzzles are the worst the game throws at you. The fire puzzles require you to light up a pedestal in order but the twist is that you need to light one of those from a direction that it wants you to light it up from which can be confusing unless you look underneath the pedestal indicating the direction and in what order you need to light them in. The worst puzzles come from the water trial where you need to use the water power to get past the eyes without being noticed, if you happen to get spotted by the eyes you get warped back to the start of the entire dungeon. It doesn't help that sometimes you'll walk into a room and then BAM! the eyes instantly see you without any warning. This actually forces the player to take it slow and examine where the eyes are and then use the water power to make it past it, however even when you do manage to unlock warp points you still end up back at the dungeon entrance if you get spotted which will force you redo some areas which afterwards it just becomes annoying. There was a sequence where I got stuck after defeating a boss fight in Marlind and I had no idea what to do next and it wasn't until I looked online that I found out that you had to burn those dark cloud hellion things using a fire spell that were placed all over the town. I had no idea that I was meant to do so because I didn't think there was possibly any indication at all during any dialogue at all at that point unless I skipped something.
You can take a stop in exploration to visit a town in order to rest up and heal up, purchase equipment and items and also get information from NPC's to your next objective or side quests you know like in other J-RPGs of the last decade or so. Sidequests and shopping have undergone a change, for sidequests they are much easier to track down thanks to a new conversation that you have with the character following you, you can talk to the character following you to have him/her remind you of your current objective or for a side quest's destination. Sidequests will range from fighting optional encounters that are hidden all through each of the maps, collecting gems or just for cutscenes and skits to unlock hidden items. Each of the ingame shops returning the levelling up system from Tales of Xillia only that each store has their own set of items and gears and buying each item increases that shops experience, if at maximum they start doing discount sales and also sell out their best item for sale if you have the gald for it. This kind of levelling up also applies to Inn where staying at a particular Inn increases it's level as well, also if it's level increases it adds a new meal to try out. Eating meals adds bonuses for a number of battles like restoring health when it reaches a certain percentage or giving you a Gald or Exp bonus when you pull of a damage or hit requirements. Thankfully the shopping system does not break the game in way fundamental way because they all serve a reasonable purpose alongside other things which I'll get back to.
Later on in the game you'll unlock Lords of the Land which help keep the blessings in each of the game's various towns. Each lord has the power to make the save points use a travel to feature which cuts down on the back tracking but you have to touch a save point in each area to use it. Also in the game there are 50 different creatures called Normin that are hidden around the game, while they do help to make finding equipment easier but however raise enemy levels based on the type of Normin you use which can make later fights harder. You can also set boons which can increase chances for drops to having treasure chests refill and detecting where hellions are on the map which are quite cool. Lords of the Land can be levelled up by earning grade in battles or by donating items you don't want any more which will give it easier level ups. The more they level up the more boons you can equip on to them.
Characters has their own individual talents that they could use which can improve your chances in the field. For example Sorey can keep an eye out for treasure, Lailah can help restore party health whilst walking on the fields, Alisha can make healing items and herbs if you ever found those before. Also there are other skills like Windstepping which increases movement speed for a set time and making snacks which restore health and stamina which I will also come back to.
Battles in the game can be trigged by touching an enemy on the map but using the sword, or spell on an enemy that is in the field will start the battle with an advantage where as allowing the enemy to touch you will start the fight with only a small health decrease. A cool thing is that the battles have no battle screen transition much like Chorno Trigger and Akiba's Trip, making the entire field your battle arena. Like all other Tales of games this game's battle system takes place in real time combat but it uses elements from Tales of Graces but with changes and additions. Characters have their own set of attacks known as Artes and these are separated between Hidden, Martial and Seraphic Artes in which the third set of Artes can only be used by the Seraphim characters. You can combine each of these Artes together to produce damage dealing combos and each of the Martial/Seraphic Artes can be assigned to the directions of the left analog stick as you so desire. There is also a fifth slot as well which you can use to assign an Arte to but you can just leave it as automatic which will use an Arte at random. Sliding makes a glorious return allowing you to dodge enemy attacks as well as free running so that you can run across the battlefield at any axis. The controls work the same as Tales of Graces but they can be altered as the player chooses.
You can earn and equip different battle actions that can alter the way you play through the game like various guard skills, aerial recoveries with my favourite being the Free & Free which allows the player to freely roam around the battle arena without the need to hold down the free run button which is very cool. Each of the actions can be unlocked by fulfilling conditions in battle and they also require a number of AP to equip which can be increased by levelling up and examining monoliths hidden throughout the game.
The battles also has a change of it's rules, gaining experience allows your characters to level up and increase stats to become stronger that remains the same but HP does not increase through levelling in this game instead you increase it with either herbs or by winning against boss battles. I suppose it's a similar thing to the Kingdom Hearts titles when it comes to gaining HP so that means you will have to spend plenty of time grinding up if you want any hope of standing a chance. Another good reason to grind is that you need to gain plenty of gald not just for shopping for items but for another system that is equipment fusion. Fusion allows you to fuse two of the same weapons or armour types together so that it becomes a stronger piece of equipment, it increases it's stats as well as passing over some of the various skills which gives your equipment resistances to certain attacks, stat boost percentage or being able do easier stuns on an enemy for example. Each of these skills can be stacked which like if you wearing 2 pieces of equipment which had a skill with skills that provide healing after defeating an enemy it doubles the amount which is actually useful. Also useful is that some skills will give you elemental resistances and if you can equip items that can fill up a row of skills together it will give a great stat boost which becomes becomes very helpful specially against tough enemies.
Battles introduce a new mechanic which allows two characters to fuse together into a single entity very influenced from the fusion seen on Dragon Ball Z called Armatization. You can fuse with a Seraph character to gain the powers of either Earth, Fire, Wind and Water attacks which have their own Seraphic and Hidden Artes to use which for the most part can deal most damage then having characters fight separately. This can become very useful later on and towards the end of the game because each enemy in the game has weaknesses to certain attacks and also some of those attacks have the ability to heal users HP or decrease an enemy's attack or defence which can help turn the tide of battle. Each of the characters and the armatized forms also have powerful mystic artes which can be performed under certain conditions and pressing two desalinated buttons, unleashing mega damage on an enemy.
There is stamina bar to take note of since actions require stamina to be performed, once the bar is empty you need to pull back and wait till the bar recharges. In Tales of Zestiria stamina can also be drained by 1 point if you win battles so the more battles you get into the more tired your characters get and then you'll start entering battles at very low stamina and will need to recharge it before taking action. Using food snacks will be able to replenish the stamina bar as well as adding various effects depending on what you use like increasing a stat by one point plus upon levelling up, giving protection against poison or burn or temporally increased stats. This can make battle preparations very necessary if you want to make it through the game's encounters specially the bosses.
Ah yes the bosses in the this game. You will end up having to come into battle with some tough bosses later on, they start out as push overs in a few parts but do bring out tougher bosses as you progress. The main threat are the optional encounters like the return of the giganto monsters which can easily defeat you if your not careful but the highlight of the bosses are the dragon fights. The dragons are massive creatures which take up the entire battle screen and pull off a lot of deadly making them tough to beat, combine that with Go Shiina's Dragon Fight music track you just know you are in for a real epic battle. The AI tends to show off some intelligence at times, the party members are responsive to your orders and can hold their own against enemies and each strategy that you use works well in their favour and the enemies are smart to attack in large groups and pull back from your attacks before taking a stab at your characters.
Now here are where the complaints come in, first I want to get people seem to dislike out of the way first, and that would be the camera. Now to be honest I didn't really have much issues with the camera during battles because it can be adjusted in the battle menu which allows you to zoom the camera out and set the it higher so that you can see where everyone is on the map. In large landscapes it is easier to see where everyone is but if you are fighting in ruin and cavern areas the camera can be held back to the wall which can be a bit difficult to see the action. The camera isn't really bad but again it can be adjusted so that it makes seeing the action better if you are playing by yourself or if you want friends to join in locally which I think makes the camera work a bit better. Yes the game can be played in multiplayer but I usually play these games alone so I wouldn't know how it will affect Armatization.
Now for the real things I do not like in Tales of Zestiria alongside some of the puzzles. For one thing the game features too much tutorials and by that I mean that the game feels the right in needing to explain every single thing about how the game works. There are monolith's scattered throughout the game which do give you hints on what to do but that also applies to during some battles or victory screens or if you are accessing the menus for the first time. It can be little too unnecessary when one of those have already explains everything in detail only then they decide to put a skit about some mechanics which isn't particularly fourth wall breaking. It can be annoying to read all those again if you are playing in a New Game + and I mean come on, the game doesn't need to remind the player about of the mechanics when anyone has already finished the game, it's not as bad as Final Fantasy XIII in the way the tutorials are layout but the game does not need to treat gamers who want to replay the game like morons.
Another nitpick of mine is the way the status effects work in this title. Now I don't have a problem with Attack downs, defense downs those sort of ones but however the serious status effects like poison, petrify or curse lets the battles down for one reason. Whenever you do get a status effect like those you can't use a gel or healing spell to heal yourself which can lead to serious situations where you are low on health and get affected by a status effect only that you can't heal until you care yourself with a Panacea Bottle or with a aliment spell which if not quickly enough ensures a character's inevitable death. Now do you think the same can be done with petrifying or curse? Well guess what Panacea Bottles and any curing spell in the game cannot cure petrifaction or curse at all. There is a boss encounter with the medusa who can cause petrifaction on the party and as I far as I know there are no items in the game that can cure it or any snacks or accessories that can protect against it. I did hear in the cutscene that you can block to defend against it or armatize with a wind seraph but unless you do that well you are kind of screwed because it can result in a death of a character and even when your character is petrified but not the wind seraph you can't armatize out of it unless I'm doing something wrong. The same problem can be said for curse so if you do get that affect you're more or less screwed and there's little you can do about. Why can't we have items that can cure petrify and curse whenever it happens to any character? I had deaths where my party would get petrified or cursed which is just unfair because there wasn't any method I could do to prevent or protect against them. I did find accessories and armor that can reduce the chances the of poison, burn and slow but not from petrifaction and curse so if you don't those to happen to your party you have to try to utilize skill and exploits to overcome the challenges. Forgivenly if your character does die but the seraph remains alive and has BG left over you can armatize to revive yourself instead but using a Life Bottle still helps otherwise. If a seraph does die you can switch to another seraph available while the knocked out one takes time to recharge. If you do die at a boss encounter you can retry at that boss battle but that only applies to story encounters so make sure you save your game often before you take on any boss challenges.
Now this status effect system doesn't really ruin the game in anyway but it's just irritations that can be a little annoying to put up with. Dispute the setbacks I still enjoy the combat system of Tales of Zestiria for the most part. It's still rewarding to pull off a high combo and then when the enemy's health bar reaches low you can pull of a powerful mystic arte to end off the battle and the many of the battle tweaks free running without needing to hold down a button and sidestepping make it one of the more refined combat mechanics in the Tales series.
Just from looking at the graphics it's easy to tell that the game was made for the PS3 and it shows because it's designed using the Tales of Xillia graphics engine but what designers did with the engine is pull off some gorgeous visuals. The landscapes areas look beautiful and well detailed, the various spells and artes and other graphical effects look nice, plus the characters models do show off that anime feel but you still have to put up with model clipping especially with equipping your characters with fashion attachments, shadow flickering in an area or two and also frame rate drops on the character models at a distance on the PS3 version. However I do see improvements with the engine, I do like that in the towns you get to hear various gossip from citizens that you get to read as you walk around as they talk about the events that have happened and also when loading up the town the character models load instantly which is a vast improvement over model loading times seen in the Xillia games. I also do like that they programmed sword sheaths for Sorey and Rose to put weapons back into instead of having them disappear after a fight which is a nice touch.
The game itself however runs only at 30 fps throughout the entire experience but I didn't particularly notice any serious frame rate drops besides the already mentioned model frame rate drop if a character is at a far distance which again only happens on the PS3 version. On the PS4 the character model frame rate is better but it's still on a 30 fps lock. The PC version also suffers with that problem as well however fans have worked together to create a mod that allows you to run the game at 60 fps which actually looks great and plays smooth from what I have looked at it, it requires a little fiddling around but it's not hard to set up if you can make the mod work. Otherwise Tales of Zestiria does look really good but still not as gorgeous looking as Tales of Vesperia.
The cutscenes in the game have solid animation with each characters and as always the character artstyle from both Kōsuke Fujishima and Mutsumi Inomata are very cool to look at. The anime cutscenes do look awesome like the one where Sorey pulls out the Sacred Blade and gains the power of the Shepherd. Tales of Zestiria also returns to the Tales of Graces skit system which shows off the full body portraits of the characters and they're all animated well and many of the skits are entertainingly hilarious as well as emotionalised situations between them. These skits look so much better then in other Tales game which make them better looking then having them in boxed faces. Many of these can be found in save points for fulfilling certain conditions.
The music in the game is composed by Motoi Sakuraba and Go Shiina are really superb but the tracks by Go Shiina alone are the best in the game with the aforementioned dragon fight theme as well as the trial dungeon music and one of the best is rising up which plays in Glaivend Basin when you return to it a second time towards near the end of the game. It's a song that acts as a way of motivation as it's powerful beats and orchestral tune make it one of the best musical tracks in the game that will make the effect of getting to it all the more rewarding. Trust me you will end up humming the tune in your heading or singing it aloud.
I did get the game from the second day it come out in English and I also downloaded the free content from Bandai Namco's VIP Corner website which includes mystic artes for Mikleo, Lailah and Alisha as well as a cool theme for PS3 and PS4. There is also the Alisha's Conviction DLC which was free for the game's first month of release afterwards you have to pay to download it. The DLC follows 3 months after the events of the main game and focuses on Alisha and her conviction of what she believes in her path. It's a short storyline that only lasts 3 hours from start to finish and all you are given is a full dungeon that has 11 floors and a funny/emotional catfight between her and rose. Without spoiling anything it sadly ends on a cliffhanger and it left wishing for more to the plot and hoping for special events that involved Alisha. Still it just adds a little bit more to the game on top of the optional stuff in the main game. Speaking of DLC the game has outfits for the main characters which still can only be unlocked with real world cash. These outfits include cameo outfits from other Tales games alongside Idol Master and an anime series called Evangelion. There are also school uniforms as well as swimwear which on the female characters they are still revealing to look at. It's a shame that they still make you have to pay in order to unlock those outfits, the game does have a few outfits to unlock but mostly it's alternate coloured variants of the standard wear.
Tales of Zestiria does make changes and additions to the battle system and it succeeds very well in it's openworld design which is better then Final Fantasy XII's effort. It has great characters and a good storyline with a strong english dub. It does look great but it looks better somewhat on PS4 and it's most fun on PC with the 60 fps mod because with that the PC version will be the most smooth version when you get the mod to work effectively. It does have a some small annoyances but at the moment all the positives I have with Tales of Zestiria outweigh the negatives. I do recommend this game to those who are already big fans but you mustn't delude yourself that Tales of Zestiria is the same as other Tales of titles because for the most part it isn't. Tales of Zestiria's new gameplay changes help make the game worthy of celebrating the franchise's 20th anniversary, thanks to all the support of all the fans that have been playing these games for the entire time it's been on the gaming scene. Happy 20th Anniversary Tales Of, you've been a great series since the beginning. Hopefully with this we gamers in the west can hopefully look forward to having more Tales of games in the future, especially the newly announced Tales of Beseria which is a title that is going to involve pirating or the upcoming anime based on the events on Tales of Zestiria. Final words give some regard to Mayu Matsuki who did the Japanese voice of Lailah sadly passed away from illness.
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The Good Points:
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1. Strong English dub, including the option of the Japanese audio as well
2. Excellent open world design
3. Great characters with entertaining, funny and awesome skit and story sequences
4. Nice new additions to the combat system
5. Looks surprisingly gorgeous for the most part on PS3
6. Best overall soundtrack in a Tales game beating Tales of Xillia's
The Bad Points:
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1. Overly relayed on tutorials
2. Fire and water puzzles can be annoying and confusing
3. Minor annoyance with the status effect stuff
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Reviewed by: Anthony Hayball (AQWBlaZer91)
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