Tales of the Abyss certainly wasn't a bad game, I've played much worse
RPGs. There was just to many things that annoyed me and there just
wasn't anything new about this it. There was nothing improved over
Tales of Symphonia, and many things, including the story was recycled
from Symphonia. I REALLY wanted to like this game, but it was just a
big disappointment.
The story was generic, the characters were frustrating. There was
just to many skits and scenes, sometimes I just want to go through a
dungeon without interuptions, but the dungeons were short and in each
new screen of the dungeon was a skit or scene, sometimes 3 skits in a
row. This slows the game to a halt. I spent more time going through
towns than I did with dungeons.
It just didn't feel like a long game, I visited all the towns but
one by the 20 hour mark with half of the dungeons complete. You
eventually will have to return to all the towns again, and even revisit
some of the dungeons for extended play. This just seems like a false
sense of extending the games length. I never backtracked this much
before in an RPG.
This was the most linear Tales game I've played so far. They block
off every possible path but the ones you need to go, or when you try to
go another path a pop up will tell you to turn back. If you get into
your ship or plane a scene will force you to stop what you wanted to do
and go directly into story. You'll rarely get a chance to actually
explore until the end. The characters will hold your hand after each
dialog scene and tell you directly where to go at the end of each
scene.
There was plenty of sidequests in the game and other little things
to collect if you want to greatly lengthen the game. Most sidequests
are timed or event based, so you can skip over alot of them on
accident. I'm pretty sure its impossible to get all sidequests on a
first run through without down right cheating. I missed so much stuff
in this game, but not enough to start over again.
----------Battle System----------
Tales of the Abyss is an Action / RPG. There's a total of 7
playable characters, but only 4 can be in play at a time. You control 1
character during battle, while the other 3 are controlled by the
computer. The most enemies I've seen on screen was 5. Your characters
can equip 1 weapon, hand armor, body armor or accessory. For some
reason helmets are listed under accessories, so there's no seperate
helmet slot, and you can only equip 1 accessory at a time.
The battle system is roughly the same as Tales of Symphonia, with
a couple of added features. The best is "Free Run", which allows you to
break away from the linear line battle system and dodge attacks or
flank an enemy. Another new feature is the "Field of Fonons" which
places a colored circle on the ground, and if your character performs
the correct Arte over the circle, then the Arte will change into an
upgraded more powerful move.
Like other Tales games your characters will learn Artes, these can
be magic based attacks or melee attacks. You can set shortcuts with
your controlled character, or command them through a menu with the
non-controlled characters. Each character has a meter on their screen
telling them when their "Overlimit" will apear. If you perform a
powerful enough Arte, you can follow that up with a huge powerful move
called a Mystic Arte free of charge.
After each battle you gain experience, bonus expierence, gald,
items, TP and Grade. The Grade is a percentage you get for how good the
battle was. If you take alot of damage, then you'll get a low Grade
score, or even a negative score. There's not much use of Grade in the
game until the very end, unlike Tales of Symphonia that had various
options with it. You can't even check your grade total either.
One big thing that disappointed me was the main character didn't
learn Tempest, this was my favorite move dating back to Tales of
Destiny. Guy eventually learns it, but it was hidden through a
sidequest about 45 hours into the game.
During the game you'll meet Mieu, he has a sorcers ring that can
make him perform tricks. Some of Mieus tricks is to spit fire, float
and an attack. You can use these skills in dungeons and towns to find
secrets or puzzles. The dungeons on this game are rather weak. There's
a serious lack of puzzles in this game, and atleast half of the
dungeons don't even end up with a boss fight.
While this is the longest I've spent on a Tales game, I blame most
of that on extreme backtracking. This game had WAY to much filler,
atleast 25 hours of this game was traveling to one town to the next
just to advance the story, while none of these towns ever end in a boss
fight or anything. I went 10 hours going through the main story without
going through a dungeon or fighting a boss.
I spent 63 hours on this game, and still had about 10 less levels
than I did with Symphonia, and I spent 47 hours on it! While I spent
less time on Symphonia, that game had more meat and less filler to make
a better game. The action never slowed and the story was always in your
face. Tales of the Abyss is slow, long winded and frustrating that it
could of been much better than this.
----------Characters / Story----------
Luke is a whiney, ignorant, spoiled rich teenager that can't leave
his kingdom.. he also hears voices in his head and he can' t remember
his past, highly original stuff here. He gets attacked by an assassian
and is set into a void thrown miles from his home. This event is the
first time he's been away from home in 7 years. There's a war brewing,
so getting home isn't so easy as it sounds. On his jourey home, he
learns more about the world, finds new friends and learns more about
himself so to speak. While on this journey he uncovers a plot of world
destruction and yadda yadda yadda. You've played this before. The game
revolves around the Score, which is a not-so subtle jab at the Bible,
and deals with your team trying to stop a war.
Luke goes through a personality change, but he still ends up being
the same whiney ignorant rich kid he was before, except now he has a
purpose and goal. Guy is his best friend that wears a necklace like
Natalie Portman in the Professional, while his past gets a nice twist
to the storyline, he is always a know-it-all thats afraid of girls...
yes, afraid of girls. Jade the Necromancer is a Coronel in army, oldest
and wisest of the group with no sense of emotion or soul present.
Natalia is Luke's cousin and Princess of Kimlasca, and also Luke has
promised to marry her when they're kids and she holds it against him...
what? Ion is a non-playable character that that looks and talks like a
girl, he is the highest order of the Order that takes care of the
Score. Anise is Ion's Guardian, she's a boy crazy little girl that
rides a giant doll. Mieu is an overly cute little monster that tags
along with the group helping out on dungeons and otherwise being
annoying in cutscenes. Everyone goes through atleast 1 change or big
twist, either something from their past is dug up or they have a slight
personality change. Most of it is pretty predictable.
-POSSIBLE SPOILERS-
For me, the story felt generic, predictable and recycled. There
was many things within the game that felt reused from Tales of
Symphonia (excluding moves and other Tales centric things) and gernally
like other games like Final Fantasy 7. For instance, after each dungeon
in Symphonia, Collete always gets sick and tired, same thing happens to
Tear and Ion. There's two world, the story is largely based around a
religion, and the bad guys are doing human experiments. There's a small
pet in the group, a town gets destoryed, and various other things that
gave me dejavu.
-END-
The story forces you to backtrack more than you need to after the
20 hour mark. Between 10 hours of backtracking you might go through one
original dungeon and fight 1 boss. I've gone many hours at a time
without even running into an encounter. This game is just so slowly
paced, and this is BAD for an action game, especially with one with
such a fun battle system.
----------Graphics----------
The graphics lack the fun cel-shading that Tales of Symphonia had
with the characters, CGI with an anime styled game looks dull. The game
dialog scenes are more action packed than Symphonia, there's more close
ups of the characters expressions and other wacky camera angles, but
the characters just don't look nearly as detailed or as crisp. There's
more anime sequences, but they're short and cheaply mixed with CGI,
some scenes are good while some are just down right terrible. The world
map is bland, plus it features bad framerate issues and controlling the
camera is almost impossible on it. It might take 30 seconds to get a
full 360 turn with the camera, its ridiciolous.
There's some really cool Mystic Artes attacks in this game, but
other than those the magic and attack artes are bare minimum, but this
game doesn't require high end graphics for the battles since the
battles end so quickly and they're so chaotic at times. The skits are
more interactive than before, shaking, moving, expanding, but still no
voice overs to make them exciting. The towns are big, but lack
personality. There's more detail to the houses and towns than Symphonia
though.
----------Sound----------
The music is repetitive but overall good. The voice overs are good
for the most part, but alot of the characters lack emotion like Tear
and Jade. My biggest annoyance other than Luke's whiney voice is the
lack of voices in the skits, they're obviously meant for voices, but
yet there is none. While the skits often give more insight into the
characters and advance the story in great ways, without voices and
watching the animations and the lack of scrolling the dialog yourself
really hurts the game alot. This didn't bug me to much on Symphonia,
since the games story didn't rely on the skits, but there's almost 500
of them on Abyss!
----------World Map----------
The map is a standard overview world map you've seen a billion
times, classic stuff that I love. The problem I have is the world is
just so plain UGLY. Plus there's framerate problems and a slow turn in
the camera that slows the game down. You'll find search points on the
world that gives you items you can use for sidequests. The only
improvement I can see between Symphonia is the monsters that attack you
look like the monsters you'll end up fighting in battle, unlike the
faceless things from Symphonia.
----------Time to Complete Game (last save after credits)----------
63:36:46
After the credits roll you can save the game and then replay it for a New Game+ opening more options and possible sidequests.
