Just finished this game yesterday and it was fucking great
why the fuck everyone hate this game?
this along with SMTIV justified my 3DS purchase
the most complain I keep hearing about is that "Jade could have prevented this"
yes smart ass he could have and he knew this
he even state this in the fucking game later
the only legit complain is the missable sidequests
fuck them. I couldn't have done half of them without a guide
>>321245449
I just never liked how heavy the cloning moral debate was in this game. It was alright initially but somewhere around the 30h mark is when it started getting a bit too heavy and ham-handed. Also Luke trying to hard to be the sacrificial pariah got old rather quickly.
Probably one of my favorite Tales casts though. Beats out Vesperia barely just because I never liked Karol and Estelle in the latter.
>>321245449
the most complaints you hear are about Jades ability to prevent the whole thing?
Most complaints I hear are from people who played the game for little uner and hour and deemed the game trash because of how much of a whiny little bitch Luke is for the entire time they played him.
Luke, A character with more character development than a fucking Auto Biography.
>>321245828
yes maybe the game is too long for some especially when you have to go back and forth between the cities just for a cutscene to progress in the game
but at that time I was having too much fun and was glad the game didnt end in the fake ending
>Probably one of my favorite Tales casts though
this was my first tales I really need to get a PS3 now to try the rest
I liked the everyone and Natalia when she is out of Ashe mode but Guy alone could have saved the cast for me
>>321246107
>deemed the game trash because of how much of a whiny little bitch Luke is for the entire time they played him.
well, luke was kinda unlikable in the beginning so I let this complain get past me even though I really liked long hair luke
he was different than the usual RPG hero
but Jade complain is like they didnt play the game and just want to trash the story
The combat wasn't super exciting to me. You got artes that set up a full FoF rather than half of one way too late. Half FoFs were too inconvenient to make conscious use of in the heat of battle. Such a small pool of equipped artes also felt really restrictive after playing stuff like Xillia 2. It was also a little easy, I didn't even come close to a game over during the main story.
But it had a great cast and world. I remember it fondly despite not being a big fan of actually playing the game. I loved exploring revisiting each town and finding some new quest or tidbit about the world almost without fail. I appreciated that the cast had some friction and didn't get along right away. It made the moments of friendship later in the game all the more heartwarming.
That ending fucked me up.
Some people really hate the characters and/or criticize it for having too many "town hopping" bits, where you spend forever running between different places with little combat or meaningful progression. Which are both pretty fair complaints, I think. The characters can be total dicksI still fucking hate Anise and Mieuand the pacing is a real mess at a lot of points in the game.
It's personally one of my favourite Tales games though, up there with Eternia and Vesperia. It has its problems, but the overall game is just incredibly memorable for me in a way that most Tales games aren't.
Those missable sidequests are a fucking bitch though, yeah.
>>321247375
Complaining about Luke being a little bitch is from people who fucking didn't play the game though.
He grows so much as a character that you would have obviously never played it if your last impression of him is being a prick.
>>321245449
its a love or hate game no in between
the battle system aged badly especially if you played the later games
still great for a first tales game because very few action Jrpg can match tales battle system
>>321247375
> Guy alone could have saved the cast for me
it was tear for me
>>321249857
Personally, I found it was fascinating to have a JRPG protagonist who was a terrible person and enjoyed him from the start.
I'm playing Hearts R right now and this kid is so agreeable and generic and I feel nothing for him.
Abyss is still one of my favorite games and it makes me so sad to have to watch the series shit the bed like it has. Maybe it's because I held the other games to such a high standard after Abyss but I feel like it's the Empire Strikes Back of the series and everything after it, save Vesperia, has been a huge disappointment. I was hanging on with it, but Zesty broke me. I'd never even considered skipping a Tales until i found out Berseria is set in the same world at Zesty.
>>321248607
The combat would seriously benefit from giving the player earlier access to lots of FS Chambers.
They make it really interesting because of the number of different properties you can give to your Artes, and especially the fact that you can set it up so you can use FoF Changes off incomplete FoFs, which allows for a lot of cool combos by creating half FoFs and then chaining into an FoF Change.
Unfortunately you're very limited in the number of FSCs you can get for a lot of the game, which kind of plays into the overall pacing problems it has. I still love the game though.
>>321250435
He's like what? Barely two years old of worldly experience and everyone treats him like shit and refuses to let him know why THEY themselves don't trust the only person who pretends to give a shit about him. Then have the gall to say Luke should have known better and somehow read their minds on how Vaan is the bad guy the whole time.
>>321249857
I liked that he didnt completely lose his attitude when he cut his hair
it shine in the skits, sometimes he is even more asshole then when he was at the beginning
and that SPA scene when kicked guy into the girls bath
>>321250073
playing an old game has it own benefit.....and I just found this gemI thought I would find more but I know its not a popular game. so yeah Im satisfied
>>321250435
Yeah, I was a fan of asshole Luke from both a character development and pure entertainment standpoint. He's easily my favourite Tales protagonist after based Yuri.
Modern Tales protagonists after Yuri have pretty much been terrible though. They've all either been obnoxious (and not in a fun/thematically appropriate way like Luke), just too generic to really care about, or some unholy combination of the two like Asbel. It says something when my favourite post-Vesperia Tales protagonist is fucking Ludger, an underwhelming blank slate silent protagonist whose only appealing points are looking cool and having an absurd number of bad things happen to him.
At least the older, pre-Abyss games had some semblance of charm to their protagonists, even if they really beat the "idiot hero" trope to death.
>>321245828
I've never played an RPG with so many utterly unlikable characters.
It was interesting but a real chore to play with a long time.
Ion deserved better.
Guy is fuckin bro
Without spoilers does it actually get better? I'm a good few hours in an really can't stand Luke. I am I know him being locked up and not knowing the world will do a lot to you but man he's just really unlikable to me.
>>321251626
I enjoyed Ludger a lot and I really dislike the whole concept of a silent protagonist.
I was able to take in his dialogue options and especially his facial expressions/reactions and fill in the gaps to create a personality for him. By the end I saw him as a MC who just didn't talk much rather than a player insert. I just wish the option for his dialogue to be voiced wasn't NG+ exclusive. Seems bizarre that they'd make all that voicework and hide it behind a second playthrough.
>>321252190
Luke is like a total different person by late-game and the cast as a whole grows a lot more close and less abrasive.
>>321252543
How far until that happens. Sorry but as I'm playing the more Luke just rubs me the wrong way.
>>321245449
>>321247375
some of these were really funny I wish they done more
>>321252680
Somewhere around a quarter to a third of the way is the big turning point, and also where the plot in general picks up.
>>321252680
It's not that far in. Whereabouts are you?
Luke kind of goes through various personality issues over the course of the game, but the hyper-abrasive I'M THE AMBASSADOR DAMMIT stuff ends at the end of the first act of the plot.
>>321252965
Alright. I'll most likely need to restart since I haven't touched in month.
>>321253019
I think about 8 hours in. I tend to give some characters lacks but Luke just kept doing so many stupid shit I just couldn't stand it.
>>321250834
I understood Luke not believing that Vaan was evil for a while. As far as Luke knew, he was the only person aside from Guy and maybe Natalia that liked being around him and taught him things.
Tear was the one that busted into his house and attempted to murder his teacher.
Also i'll admit that it was some bullshit how Luke was the worst person ever to the party after Akzeriuth but nobody gave Anise shit for causing Ion to die.
>THE TABLETS ARE BULLSHIT
>actually there was a hidden tablet that was right about all the shit that was going to happen anyway
>the world map sucks
>free running is the most broken thing ever
>backtracking everywhere (on the shittiest world map ever)
>cooking is subpar
>protagonist is literally retarded
>everyone's an asshole
>no one wants to take responsibility when they lose track of a retard that can collapse and ENTIRE CONTINENT
yeah, nah, this game and SO3 are the worst JRPGs I've ever played on the PS2.
>>321245449
Wish I still had the picture from the Fonic Eyes side quest where Jade says that I
"This time, just like Akzeriuth, if I hadn't wanted to avoid the trouble of giving an explanation, things could have been different."
He just thought he was in it temporarily and telling Luke he was a replica would have opened up a can of worms that brought with it tons of baggage, like him breaking down or Jade having to explain himself to his family and also Kimlasca Lanvaldear getting even more pised at Malkuth when at that moment the goal was to get a peace treaty.
I swear all the "hurr this game has had writing" is from people who haven't even paid attention to the game.
Glad you enjoyed it OP, it's my favorite JRPG ever. The character dynamic and world building is unmatched in its genre
