Rating of
2/5
Instant Balls, Meth Mixers, and Pig… Tails?
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 08/03/12
“Tales of Graces F” (“ToGF”) is the latest in the venerable ‘Tales of’ franchise that started way back in 1995 with “Tales of Phantasia” on the SNES (which was never released to audiences outside of Japan). I always wondered why so many SNES games were never released outside of Japan; I used to think it was better for Japanese game makers to release their stuff worldwide and let the audience decide whether they like it or not, rather than keeping games that ‘foreigners wouldn’t understand or relate to’ behind closed borders. The ‘Tales of’ series, however, convinced me of the err of my previous belief. While I still have not played “Tales of Phantasia” (despite a Gameboy Advance port that was released in North America), my experience with “Tales of Destiny” and “Tales of Destiny II (Tales of Eternia)” on the original PlayStation and “Tales of Symphonia” on the GameCube completely eliminated any desire I had to play another ‘Tales of’ game: Three strikes, and the series was placed on my ‘ignore’ list.
“ToGF” is actually an enhanced, high-definition port of the original “Tales of Graces,” which appeared on the Wii and had the decency to stay in Japan. Sadly, since the MeltedJoystick crew has already played every other 3-player co-op game this-gen, we needed something, and Chris insisted that we would love “ToFG,” despite my previous experience with the series and despite Nick’s misgivings about the anime schoolgirls on the game’s cover. Would Chris’ opinions prevail? Would “ToGF” reverse a decade of blandness and knock our socks off? No. And. No.
Presentation
The graphics are about the only good thing “ToGF” has going for it. The main game is fully polygonal, jaggy-free, smooth, sharp, and well animated. Facial expressions are especially well-done and much more dynamic and fluid than those in any other recent RPG. That’s about as far as the good goes. The character designs are HEAVILY anime-influenced. While anime-influenced character designs aren’t necessarily a bad thing, the fact that modern anime is completely infested with moe makes “ToGF’s” cast incredibly annoying to look at. While the moe does do its job by filling the character roster with adorable underage girls that could elicit a ‘squee’ from even the most taciturn player, that is not really the type of game that three grown men want to play together.
Of course, since animating all of those character models with motion-capture and lip-synch would get expensive, Namco cheaped-out on “ToGF” and made most of the cutscenes play-out in the form of optional ‘skits’ using a few mostly-static 2D character portraits. The result is that skits are boring, talky affairs with no (or poorly implemented) action. The most important cutscenes in the game, however, are fully animated anime movies, which both look great and complement the regular game engine’s graphical style.
The game’s audio isn’t particularly great. The soundtrack has a scant handful of pleasant tracks, a whole lot of mediocre tracks, and a couple of really terrible ones (the default seaport music comes to mind) that sound like someone on the composition team turned on a sample loop on a 1990s Casio keyboard and handed it in as a finished recording.
The voiceacting is just as mixed as the music. While some of the characters deliver their lines well, there are notable ones, like King Richard, who are grating to listen to. It seems that most of the work went into choosing an adorably moe actress to portray the adorably moe Sophie, whose lines are delivered with a vacant-minded innocence that seems tailor-made to make moe fanboys soil themselves (“What’s with the pigtails, Sophie?” “Pig… Tails?” *shudder*). In battle, the characters at least have the decency to shut up unless they are yelling out the name of a move they are using (unlike, say, “Xenoblade Chronicles”). But all of the moves have a couple of different incantations (which can lead to confusion) and some of them can be easily misheard to unintentionally-hilarious effect. Malik yelling, “Flames of passion fruit!” can elicit a few giggles. But nothing will beat Hubert’s finishing move, called ‘Broadside Waltz,’ for laughs, since he unmistakably yells, “Dance like the damned! Instant Balls!” The MeltedJoystick crew even made a drinking game out of it, where Chris had to take a shot every time I got Hubert to yell ‘Instant Balls’ (usually twice per battle).
Story
RPGs in general get a lot of flak for being saccharine, sentimental, and melodramatic. This is not the fault of the RPG genre itself, but the fault of games like the ‘Tales of’ series. “ToGF” doesn’t attempt to forge any new paths in RPG storytelling, but instead follows the well-worn ruts that low-end RPGs, anime, and manga have been rehashing for decades. The story’s ‘incredible’ plot includes an amnesiac girl, an angsty teenage king, friendship pacts, lost technology, gynoids, and the end of the world. The result is a plot so predictable and by-the-books that I was able to call all of the major plot ‘twists’ about 30 hours before they actually occurred.
The cast of puppets acting in this clichéd play is just as clichéd as the story itself. There’s the hero, Asbel, a plucky youth obsessed with protecting those he cares about; Hubert, Asbel’s nerdy, anal, bespectacled kid-brother; Sophie, the amnesiac girl with mysterious powers; Cheria, the pining love-interest whose affection for Asbel is obvious to everyone except Asbel; Malik, the ‘I’m 35, so that makes me old and washed-up’ retired knight captain; and Pascal, the geeky tomboy who is more attractive than she realizes.
The game is divided into 8 chapters. While the game world does finally open up to easy exploration in chapter 8, the rest of the chapters are painfully linear. Any attempt to travel down a path that leads somewhere besides the next plot-related set piece results in a thought bubble appearing above Asbel’s head saying something along the lines of, “We can’t be wasting time!” or “Nope, not this way!”
It also doesn’t help that the game’s first chapter takes place 7 years before the rest of the game, forcing players to control the characters as children (approximately 11 years old). This introductory chapter is no less than 3 hours long (probably closer to 5), and would be enough to turn people away from the game before the actual game has even started! It’s exceptionally telling that one of the New Game+ options allows the player to completely skip chapter 1.
The “F” that was added to the title for this enhanced port actually refers to a new post-game epilogue called ‘Lineage and Legacies.’ This story takes place 6 months after the defeat of the main game’s final boss, and covers the varieties of first-world problems encountered by Asbel as the heir to the lordship of the small nation of Lhant.
Gameplay
The one thing that has always stood out about the ‘Tales of’ series is its battle system. While the older games in the series (all of the ones I have previously played) featured sidescrolling combat with a “Street Fighter II”-esque system for special moves, and allowed the player to control one character, leaving the others in the hands of AI. “ToGF” keeps the actiony button-mashing of its predecessors, but changes the action to a top-down view that is very reminiscent of games in the ‘Star Ocean’ franchise, in addition to allowing extra players instead of AI to control supporting character. Also like previous games in the series (and previous ‘Star Ocean’ games), “ToGF” puts in-battle item use on a timer, forcing players to wait a few seconds between healing items in order to avoid item spamming (which wouldn’t be possible anyway, considering the maximum quantity for most items in the game is 15 rather than the traditional 99) and encourage use of healing skills. Unfortunately, only one character is graced with a decent pallet of healing skills (Cheria), essentially requiring her use as a dedicated healer (AI controlled, as actually playing a healer can be really boring) in order to find success against the game’s enemies and bosses. Fortunately, “ToGF” also features the ability to give commands to AI allies, essentially forcing them to use a specific move at the next possible opportunity. Of course, I nearly forgot to mention that controlling the characters in battle at all requires the purchase of an in-game item called the ‘Manual Manual’ at the first item shop. Without the Manual Manual, characters either perform on ‘semi-auto,’ where the player can give them suggestions on what to do, and ‘auto’ where the player gets to sit and watch the AI perform.
One of the most unique things about “ToGF’s” battle system is that it completely eliminates the concept of MP for using special moves. Instead, every character has two types of Artes at their disposal. A Artes are melee attacks, up to four of which can be strung-together. B Artes are more like magic attacks, sometimes with casting times (that can be interrupted by a hit), sometimes without. Every Arte uses part of a character’s Chain Capacity (CCs), which takes the form of a meter sitting under that character’s HP. Dashing also uses CCs, as does dodging. Recovering CCs is a simple matter of guarding for a short time (which has the added benefit of making the next attack by the guarding character more powerful) or simply standing still. It’s possible to set the game’s AI to focus on A Artes or B Artes for each character, and a properly-configured set of AI allies is the only way to victory. Fortunately for the MeltedJoystick crew, there were three of us to control the party’s attackers (as aggressively as possible), leaving AI Cheria to do a reasonably good job of keeping us alive.
Sadly, combat is the only portion of the game that is multi-player. Outside of combat, only player 1 has any say in what happens. Player 1 is in charge of moving Asbel around the map screen, equipping characters, changing strategies, shopping, and dualizing. Dualizing is a not-so-unique feature obviously cribbed from so many other modern RPGs that obsess over item creation. In order to dualize, the player simply needs to go to a shop, pay some in-game money (called Gald), and select two items to combine. The resulting item might be something valuable to sell… but probably will be just another dualizing component that can be combined with some other item… to make another dualizing component to make yet another item. The entire process of dualizing is boring and tedious, and could only be considered ‘fun’ by those who love to keep paper lists of all the items they find in games. Of course, the one redeeming feature of dualizing is the ability to add ‘shards’ to weapons and armor to make them stronger. Every time a shard is added to a piece of gear, that gear gains a D&D-like +1 as well as a stat boost (that depends on the quality of the shard used). There is no limit to the number of upgrades that can be applied to a piece of gear besides the amount of Gald the player is willing to spend. As a result of dualizing gear, it’s possible to keep much older gear (with a lot of pluses) instead of buying new stuff at every item shop in the game.
In addition to dualizing to get new items, it’s also possible to copy any item that has been in the party’s possession at any point in time by using “ToGF’s” take on “Dragon Quest 8’s” alchemy pot: a thing called an ‘Eleth Mixer.’ “ToGF” is the type of game that loves to make its clichés look fresh by changing the names around a bit. ‘Magic’ is typically referred to as ‘cryas,’ while ‘energy’ is typically referred to as ‘eleth.’ The first time I saw the term ‘Eleth Mixer,’ I spoonerized it into ‘Meth Elixir,’ which mostly stuck, and the MeltedJoystick crew continues to refer to it as the ‘Meth Mixer’ (we even came up with a humorous side-story about Malik’s (“This Eleth Mixer is no child’s toy!”) meth addiction to explain why the mixer always seemed to be empty). By placing items (or item concepts) into the Mixer and walking around the game’s environments, it’s possible that the Mixer will duplicate one of the items in it (approximately every 3 minutes or so). Duplicating an item uses some of the eleth in the Mixer (which can be refilled at any item shop). It’s also possible to put food items in the Mixer, which will cook automatically during battle to restore some health (among other effects), but we found this feature to be nearly useless, so we never actually put food in the Mixer after chapter 2. Of course, cooking food in battle is the best way to increase the Mixer’s capacity, so we found ourselves with a tiny mixer by the end of the game that didn’t even contain enough eleth to duplicate some of the items we wanted.
Another interesting part of “ToGF’s” equipment system is the ability for each character to earn and equip a number of different ‘titles.’ While I remember titles in “Tales of Symphonia” as well, in that game they were largely useless bits of novelty fluff. In “ToGF,” titles are how characters learn all of their abilities. By equipping a title and fighting battles, characters earn Skill Points (SP), along with the standard Experience Points (XP) and Gald, that gradually fill-up a meter attached to each title, granting stat boosts, Artes, and other abilities at milestones along the way. I actually really like this concept of titles… what I don’t like is the implementation. Each Arte initially comes from a title that can only be earned by hitting a certain character level. By using an Arte a certain number of times, additional titles related to that Arte become available. As a result, strengthening characters is not just about grinding for XP and Gald, but also about Grinding for SP to master titles.
Grinding used to be a mechanic in RPGs that allowed weaker players to overcome the game’s difficulties by grinding out a few more levels for more power. “ToGF” is a typical modern RPG that no longer merely allows players to grind, but actually expects it. There are numerous sidequests and optional bosses available, but many of them balanced toward players who have already put in obscene amounts of grinding: grinding titles, grinding shards and Gald for dualizing, grinding XP – It’s not particularly fun.
Overall
“Tales of Graces F” doesn’t do anything to redeem the ‘Tales of’ series in my eyes. It’s also a pretty sad state of affairs when this is widely considered to be one of the best RPGs of the generation: It’s not. “Tales of Graces F” is a mediocre game with a linear, predictable, moe-infested story, button-mashy battle system, dumb AI, and lots of grinding. This is my fourth strike against the series, and leaves me baffled why anyone besides the most dedicated moe-loving otaku would want to play it.
Presentation: 4/5
Story: 1.5/5
Gameplay: 2.5/5
Overall (not an average): 2/5
