I'm a big fan of the early Tales of games like Phantasia and Destiny,
so I was expecting something on par with those. I kinda got that I
guess, the battle system was atleast close to par (where's my Tempest
attacks?), but the story didn't "grab" me like the other Tales of games
I've played. The biggest flaw in the game is the weak weak weak weak
dungeons, luckily they're short, otherwise my mind would of dried up
from the boredom. Another thing that annoyed me was the overly cutesy
stuff, I like that stuff in small doses, like in Symphonia and Abyss,
but it was pounded fairly hard in this game. There was sing and dance
numbers for petes sake. I like the lack of skits though, and I'm glad
they're voiced out, it actually made me WANT to see a skit, unlike
Abyss where I dreaded when one came up every 2 minutes.
I
liked the characters, but I had the same problem with Abyss, is they're
just to same-y with other games, to the point of dejavu. Outside of all
of that, I guess I liked the game, atleast the battle system made up
for the rest.
----------Battle System----------
Tales of
Legendia is an action / rpg. You control one character at a time, with
a total of four characters in your group can fight a battle at a time
aswell. You may give orders, or change strategys with the non-playable
characters in your team though.
If you're familiar with Tales
of Phantasia, Destiny or Destiny II (Eternia in Japan), then you'll
have a good idea what to expect with this battle system. If you're
familiar with Symphonia or Abyss, then expect something similar but
also, alot different. The battle system is like a side scroller, but
with 3D modeled characters. When you initiate battle, your team will
start on one end, and your enemies will start on another end of a
platform. You then charge after then and attack will all your might
button mashing away. It's not all button mashing, but it s starts to
feel that way after a while, but then again, what Tales of game
doesn't?
In Legendia, your characters learn "Eres", this is
your magic and tech attacks. You use these attacks by using the O
button, or commanding them from your NPC members in or outside of
battle. Each time you use an Eres 50 times, it will max out it's full
potential and you can these fuse those maxed out Eres together to form
a new Eres, although I found most of them to be useless. The big
finisher move in the game is a "Climax", there's a meter on the bottom
of your screen, and after so much damage you give the enemy, you will
charge it up. Once it's fully charged, you can unleash this Climax move
with the L button, this slows down time for the enemy, where you'll
have free range to attack him, or you can hit the L button again to
form a combo attack to create massive damage.
All enemy
encounters are completely random, other than boss fights of course.
This might throw modern Tales of fans off, but I dig it. The loading is
quick and the battles are short, so I never got bogged down to much.
The biggest problem I have with this game is the lack of puzzles in the
dungeons. I didn't encounter a single puzzle (outside of the Puzzle
booth, more on that later) until the 5th or 6th chapter in the game,
and they're mind numbingly simple. Just about all dungeons are exactly
the same, from the first dungeon to the last. All you do is run from
point A to point B. While running and fighting you'll find treasure
chests, and a weird round shaped black force field looking thing. When
you run into this black field and get attacked by a monster, you'll
fight harder than normal monsters this way. If you beat the monsters,
the field will go away, and after that you will either find a short cut
through the dungeon, or more than likely a treasure chest.
The puzzle booths are the only real puzzles found in the game, and
they're fairly simple pushing blocks and shooting triggers. You find
these booths at the end of most dungeons and there's only about 7 or 8
in total, if even that many.
----------Characters / Story----------
You play as Senel, an Alliance Marine, who is running away from someone
or something with his sister Shirley on a boat. After they hit land,
Shirley is immediately captured by some bandits and Senel takes it upon
himself to go save her. Senel will eventually meet Will, the older,
more subdued character of the group. Will is a sheriff and historian.
The group will also meet up with the valiant knight Chloe, who travels
across the lands doing whats right. You will meet up with Norma, the
comic relief character in the group, who is a treasure hunter by trade.
You'll meet alot of other people along the way that will join your
group, but I would be spoiling storyline if I went any further.
Anyways, the main storyline involves saving Shirley.
The
game flows in chapters, 7 in all. The main quest is quite short, and
I'll be honest, the story wasn't that great either. The first half of
the game was just overly cutesy with the dialog, and it didn't really
start to get "dark" and interesting until about the 5th chapter and by
then I started to lose interest. After you beat the game you get a
whole new quest to start if you want.
----------Graphics----------
Compared to Abyss or Symphonia, the graphics are a complete change,
mostly because this was made by a different company I believe. Anyways,
the game is in 3D and uses all CGI, so no celshade at all. While the
game is in 3d, you have no control over the camera angles or anything
while in towns or dungeons (although you can within the world map), so
it's a little like Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicals.
There's
obviously nothing graphically impressive done within this game, but I
enjoyed the artstyle for the most part. The anime cells during dialog
scenes look great, and the mouths move, eyes blink, and often change
positions depending on the mood. The normal character models though are
poorly put together if you ask me. There's no close up shots during
dialog scenes, like you would see in the other Tales games within this
generation, so all reaction shots are just hands waving or thought
bubbles over the head, so it's not that exciting.
The battle
system looks good though. It looks like they tried to bring back the
PS1 era of Tales games, but in 3d. The character models on these
screens look great however, and so do most of the monsters.
The game features a ton of anime cutscenes, more than Symphonia and Abyss (maybe), but they're very short and quick.
----------Sound----------
I really like some of the music and hate alot of it too. The best music
in the game involves violins or any traditional RPG instruments and
some of the worst is weird techno or jazzy beat songs that just don't
fit the tone of the game.
Theres a ton of voice work and I'm
glad for that. All skits are voiced out, and a large chunk of all
cutscenes are voiced aswell. About the only things that aren't voiced
out are your encounters with Mimi the Wonderbread maker, and random NPC
chats. I'm not a big fan of the voice work though, they sound degraded
in a Baten Kaitos kinda way, but not nearly as bad.
----------World Map----------
The world map is like any Tales of... game or most Japanese RPGs. The
map is an overview styled map where you walk manually to all your new
destinations. However, at the start of the game you are introduced to
the "Duct" system, which is like a warp, each time you get to a new
dungeon or town, you'll find a new Duct, and they all link right back
to the first town of the game, so backtracking is quite easy and fast.
----------Time to Complete Game----------
27:00
After you beat the final boss and watch the credits, you get to save
your file. Then directly after that, you start a whole new quest,
called "Character Quests". I don't quite have the patience to go
through these right now, but from the few minutes I've played, there's
no voice work during the dialog scenes, although that may or may not
change later. I looked up chapter information on these quests, and it
looks to be pretty lengthy, although it also looks like you'll be
revisiting alot of the same places. I don't have the time for that.
