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This thread has been linked to the game 'Tales of Xillia'.
Tales of Xillia is the latest “Tales of” JRPG to be released in Europe. I haven’t played any of the previous “Tales of” games published by Namco Bandai, but they are separate games so I didn’t need to play any of them to understand what was going on.
The game kicks off with an anime cutscene introducing the two main protagonists: Mila Maxwell, a godlike commander of four great spirits that has chosen to take the form of a female; and Jude, an honour student at a Medical school who practices martial arts. I decided to play as Jude first which I believe turned out to be the best option.
I’m not sure whether they decided to implement the character choice at the last minute, but if you decide to pick Mila instead of Jude you then miss out on content that I feel serves as a better introduction to the story and gives more context to the event that you are thrown into when picking Mila. After this point there is only one other instance that is different, so I don’t think there is enough differentiating content to justify having a choice between the two.
The story is about the world of Rieze Maxia and how people and spirits depend on each other to live. However Jude and Mila discover that the spirits are dying out and their mission becomes finding out the cause and how they can stop it. I liked the theme of the story as it eventually turns to political green topics of sustainability and how well we can adapt when dealing with finite resources. However, the majority of the story is stretched out as Mila’s focus at the start is to destroy a weapon called “The Lance of Kresnik” at a laboratory located where Jude’s med school is. When Mila summons her 4 spirit friends to destroy it, the Lance is activated and sucks in the spirits and keeps them captive. Mila then has to regain her strength, which she does by helping the people that she and Jude meet during the rest of the journey. Only then does she return to destroy the lance, but she also has additional allies to aid her second time round.
The game areas consist of towns, dungeons and explorable areas. In the dungeons and explorable areas there are enemies that roam the area. When you get near them, they chase you for a limited time before getting confused. As you move faster than every enemy this makes it easy for you to circle enemies and make contact from the back, which results in a pre-emptive strike. Approaching enemies this way cuts their health in half and stuns them for a few seconds, so I kept doing it on every encounter.
Making contact with an enemy initiates combat and while it has a frantic button mashing quality and particle effects cover the screen, I didn’t find it that engaging. Normal enemies in this game can be beaten by setting the AI to play the game for you, so I would circle round an enemy for a pre-emptive strike and then close my eyes and put the controller down for the 8 – 30 seconds that normal fights typically take. Even though bouts are short I still managed to get tired of fighting normal enemies quickly.
Luckily Boss fights can’t be beaten by setting the AI to automatic and these are the strongest parts of the game in terms of gameplay. Combat is an improvement here as it becomes more important to block and dodge attacks which are telegraphed by an exclamation mark above the boss’s head. However, the offensive strategies aren’t much different from normal fights where I hold R1 to check which elemental weakness an enemy has and then spam that elemental special move over and over again. There is also a Linking system here where you pair two characters together with each character providing different abilities. When holding down the R1 button you are given a recommended character to pair up with so this is also takes the thought out of picking correct characters for each situation.
Explorable areas have a variety of settings such as mountains, forests, beaches and snows areas but they all feel samey. This is because there are many tunnels in the game where treasure chests are found so if you are a klepto who can’t resist collecting items, like me, you will spend a significant amount of time crawling through tunnels and collecting bags scattered throughout the environment. There are also three sea haven areas which seem copied and pasted.
The highlights of the game are the anime cutscenes, even though I don’t watch anime I do think these are impressive in how they are directed and their cinematography. There are optional discussions you can listen to when the story progresses known as “Skits”. These explain the thoughts and feelings of the characters, which provide the most humorous conversations between the characters. I really like how Mila, being a diety, tries to understand human behaviour and makes socially unusual decisions. I found the story to be engaging and the motivations of the antagonists are well explained, so it doesn't become confusing near the end.
As an overall package I enjoyed Tales of Xillia. The boss fights are fun even though the combat is a tad simplistic. The story is engaging and characters are well fleshed out. The interactions between the characters through “Skits” can be funny. However, I also believe that the game is for RPG fans only as the story moves at the pace of a glacier and the majority of the game time is spent listening to conversations and fighting normal enemies. With a single playthrough of around 40 hours you need to be able to put up with the number of fights and conversations to get to the more enjoyable bosses and to get deeper into the story and see it to its conclusion.
7/10
The game kicks off with an anime cutscene introducing the two main protagonists: Mila Maxwell, a godlike commander of four great spirits that has chosen to take the form of a female; and Jude, an honour student at a Medical school who practices martial arts. I decided to play as Jude first which I believe turned out to be the best option.
I’m not sure whether they decided to implement the character choice at the last minute, but if you decide to pick Mila instead of Jude you then miss out on content that I feel serves as a better introduction to the story and gives more context to the event that you are thrown into when picking Mila. After this point there is only one other instance that is different, so I don’t think there is enough differentiating content to justify having a choice between the two.
The story is about the world of Rieze Maxia and how people and spirits depend on each other to live. However Jude and Mila discover that the spirits are dying out and their mission becomes finding out the cause and how they can stop it. I liked the theme of the story as it eventually turns to political green topics of sustainability and how well we can adapt when dealing with finite resources. However, the majority of the story is stretched out as Mila’s focus at the start is to destroy a weapon called “The Lance of Kresnik” at a laboratory located where Jude’s med school is. When Mila summons her 4 spirit friends to destroy it, the Lance is activated and sucks in the spirits and keeps them captive. Mila then has to regain her strength, which she does by helping the people that she and Jude meet during the rest of the journey. Only then does she return to destroy the lance, but she also has additional allies to aid her second time round.
The game areas consist of towns, dungeons and explorable areas. In the dungeons and explorable areas there are enemies that roam the area. When you get near them, they chase you for a limited time before getting confused. As you move faster than every enemy this makes it easy for you to circle enemies and make contact from the back, which results in a pre-emptive strike. Approaching enemies this way cuts their health in half and stuns them for a few seconds, so I kept doing it on every encounter.
Making contact with an enemy initiates combat and while it has a frantic button mashing quality and particle effects cover the screen, I didn’t find it that engaging. Normal enemies in this game can be beaten by setting the AI to play the game for you, so I would circle round an enemy for a pre-emptive strike and then close my eyes and put the controller down for the 8 – 30 seconds that normal fights typically take. Even though bouts are short I still managed to get tired of fighting normal enemies quickly.
Luckily Boss fights can’t be beaten by setting the AI to automatic and these are the strongest parts of the game in terms of gameplay. Combat is an improvement here as it becomes more important to block and dodge attacks which are telegraphed by an exclamation mark above the boss’s head. However, the offensive strategies aren’t much different from normal fights where I hold R1 to check which elemental weakness an enemy has and then spam that elemental special move over and over again. There is also a Linking system here where you pair two characters together with each character providing different abilities. When holding down the R1 button you are given a recommended character to pair up with so this is also takes the thought out of picking correct characters for each situation.
Explorable areas have a variety of settings such as mountains, forests, beaches and snows areas but they all feel samey. This is because there are many tunnels in the game where treasure chests are found so if you are a klepto who can’t resist collecting items, like me, you will spend a significant amount of time crawling through tunnels and collecting bags scattered throughout the environment. There are also three sea haven areas which seem copied and pasted.
The highlights of the game are the anime cutscenes, even though I don’t watch anime I do think these are impressive in how they are directed and their cinematography. There are optional discussions you can listen to when the story progresses known as “Skits”. These explain the thoughts and feelings of the characters, which provide the most humorous conversations between the characters. I really like how Mila, being a diety, tries to understand human behaviour and makes socially unusual decisions. I found the story to be engaging and the motivations of the antagonists are well explained, so it doesn't become confusing near the end.
As an overall package I enjoyed Tales of Xillia. The boss fights are fun even though the combat is a tad simplistic. The story is engaging and characters are well fleshed out. The interactions between the characters through “Skits” can be funny. However, I also believe that the game is for RPG fans only as the story moves at the pace of a glacier and the majority of the game time is spent listening to conversations and fighting normal enemies. With a single playthrough of around 40 hours you need to be able to put up with the number of fights and conversations to get to the more enjoyable bosses and to get deeper into the story and see it to its conclusion.
7/10
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Tales of Xillia is the latest “Tales of” JRPG to be released in Europe. I haven’t played any of the previous “Tales of” games published by Namco Bandai, but they are separate games so I didn’t need to play any of them to understand what was going on.
The game kicks off with an anime cutscene introducing the two main protagonists: Mila Maxwell, a godlike commander of four great spirits that has chosen to take the form of a female; and Jude, an honour student at a Medical school who practices martial arts. I decided to play as Jude first which I believe turned out to be the best option.
I’m not sure whether they decided to implement the character choice at the last minute, but if you decide to pick Mila instead of Jude you then miss out on content that I feel serves as a better introduction to the story and gives more context to the event that you are thrown into when picking Mila. After this point there is only one other instance that is different, so I don’t think there is enough differentiating content to justify having a choice between the two.
The story is about the world of Rieze Maxia and how people and spirits depend on each other to live. However Jude and Mila discover that the spirits are dying out and their mission becomes finding out the cause and how they can stop it. I liked the theme of the story as it eventually turns to political green topics of sustainability and how well we can adapt when dealing with finite resources. However, the majority of the story is stretched out as Mila’s focus at the start is to destroy a weapon called “The Lance of Kresnik” at a laboratory located where Jude’s med school is. When Mila summons her 4 spirit friends to destroy it, the Lance is activated and sucks in the spirits and keeps them captive. Mila then has to regain her strength, which she does by helping the people that she and Jude meet during the rest of the journey. Only then does she return to destroy the lance, but she also has additional allies to aid her second time round.
The game areas consist of towns, dungeons and explorable areas. In the dungeons and explorable areas there are enemies that roam the area. When you get near them, they chase you for a limited time before getting confused. As you move faster than every enemy this makes it easy for you to circle enemies and make contact from the back, which results in a pre-emptive strike. Approaching enemies this way cuts their health in half and stuns them for a few seconds, so I kept doing it on every encounter.
Making contact with an enemy initiates combat and while it has a frantic button mashing quality and particle effects cover the screen, I didn’t find it that engaging. Normal enemies in this game can be beaten by setting the AI to play the game for you, so I would circle round an enemy for a pre-emptive strike and then close my eyes and put the controller down for the 8 – 30 seconds that normal fights typically take. Even though bouts are short I still managed to get tired of fighting normal enemies quickly.
Luckily Boss fights can’t be beaten by setting the AI to automatic and these are the strongest parts of the game in terms of gameplay. Combat is an improvement here as it becomes more important to block and dodge attacks which are telegraphed by an exclamation mark above the boss’s head. However, the offensive strategies aren’t much different from normal fights where I hold R1 to check which elemental weakness an enemy has and then spam that elemental special move over and over again. There is also a Linking system here where you pair two characters together with each character providing different abilities. When holding down the R1 button you are given a recommended character to pair up with so this is also takes the thought out of picking correct characters for each situation.
Explorable areas have a variety of settings such as mountains, forests, beaches and snows areas but they all feel samey. This is because there are many tunnels in the game where treasure chests are found so if you are a klepto who can’t resist collecting items, like me, you will spend a significant amount of time crawling through tunnels and collecting bags scattered throughout the environment. There are also three sea haven areas which seem copied and pasted.
The highlights of the game are the anime cutscenes, even though I don’t watch anime I do think these are impressive in how they are directed and their cinematography. There are optional discussions you can listen to when the story progresses known as “Skits”. These explain the thoughts and feelings of the characters, which provide the most humorous conversations between the characters. I really like how Mila, being a diety, tries to understand human behaviour and makes socially unusual decisions. I found the story to be engaging and the motivations of the antagonists are well explained, so it doesn't become confusing near the end.
As an overall package I enjoyed Tales of Xillia. The boss fights are fun even though the combat is a tad simplistic. The story is engaging and characters are well fleshed out. The interactions between the characters through “Skits” can be funny. However, I also believe that the game is for RPG fans only as the story moves at the pace of a glacier and the majority of the game time is spent listening to conversations and fighting normal enemies. With a single playthrough of around 40 hours you need to be able to put up with the number of fights and conversations to get to the more enjoyable bosses and to get deeper into the story and see it to its conclusion.
7/10
The game kicks off with an anime cutscene introducing the two main protagonists: Mila Maxwell, a godlike commander of four great spirits that has chosen to take the form of a female; and Jude, an honour student at a Medical school who practices martial arts. I decided to play as Jude first which I believe turned out to be the best option.
I’m not sure whether they decided to implement the character choice at the last minute, but if you decide to pick Mila instead of Jude you then miss out on content that I feel serves as a better introduction to the story and gives more context to the event that you are thrown into when picking Mila. After this point there is only one other instance that is different, so I don’t think there is enough differentiating content to justify having a choice between the two.
The story is about the world of Rieze Maxia and how people and spirits depend on each other to live. However Jude and Mila discover that the spirits are dying out and their mission becomes finding out the cause and how they can stop it. I liked the theme of the story as it eventually turns to political green topics of sustainability and how well we can adapt when dealing with finite resources. However, the majority of the story is stretched out as Mila’s focus at the start is to destroy a weapon called “The Lance of Kresnik” at a laboratory located where Jude’s med school is. When Mila summons her 4 spirit friends to destroy it, the Lance is activated and sucks in the spirits and keeps them captive. Mila then has to regain her strength, which she does by helping the people that she and Jude meet during the rest of the journey. Only then does she return to destroy the lance, but she also has additional allies to aid her second time round.
The game areas consist of towns, dungeons and explorable areas. In the dungeons and explorable areas there are enemies that roam the area. When you get near them, they chase you for a limited time before getting confused. As you move faster than every enemy this makes it easy for you to circle enemies and make contact from the back, which results in a pre-emptive strike. Approaching enemies this way cuts their health in half and stuns them for a few seconds, so I kept doing it on every encounter.
Making contact with an enemy initiates combat and while it has a frantic button mashing quality and particle effects cover the screen, I didn’t find it that engaging. Normal enemies in this game can be beaten by setting the AI to play the game for you, so I would circle round an enemy for a pre-emptive strike and then close my eyes and put the controller down for the 8 – 30 seconds that normal fights typically take. Even though bouts are short I still managed to get tired of fighting normal enemies quickly.
Luckily Boss fights can’t be beaten by setting the AI to automatic and these are the strongest parts of the game in terms of gameplay. Combat is an improvement here as it becomes more important to block and dodge attacks which are telegraphed by an exclamation mark above the boss’s head. However, the offensive strategies aren’t much different from normal fights where I hold R1 to check which elemental weakness an enemy has and then spam that elemental special move over and over again. There is also a Linking system here where you pair two characters together with each character providing different abilities. When holding down the R1 button you are given a recommended character to pair up with so this is also takes the thought out of picking correct characters for each situation.
Explorable areas have a variety of settings such as mountains, forests, beaches and snows areas but they all feel samey. This is because there are many tunnels in the game where treasure chests are found so if you are a klepto who can’t resist collecting items, like me, you will spend a significant amount of time crawling through tunnels and collecting bags scattered throughout the environment. There are also three sea haven areas which seem copied and pasted.
The highlights of the game are the anime cutscenes, even though I don’t watch anime I do think these are impressive in how they are directed and their cinematography. There are optional discussions you can listen to when the story progresses known as “Skits”. These explain the thoughts and feelings of the characters, which provide the most humorous conversations between the characters. I really like how Mila, being a diety, tries to understand human behaviour and makes socially unusual decisions. I found the story to be engaging and the motivations of the antagonists are well explained, so it doesn't become confusing near the end.
As an overall package I enjoyed Tales of Xillia. The boss fights are fun even though the combat is a tad simplistic. The story is engaging and characters are well fleshed out. The interactions between the characters through “Skits” can be funny. However, I also believe that the game is for RPG fans only as the story moves at the pace of a glacier and the majority of the game time is spent listening to conversations and fighting normal enemies. With a single playthrough of around 40 hours you need to be able to put up with the number of fights and conversations to get to the more enjoyable bosses and to get deeper into the story and see it to its conclusion.
7/10