Tales of Graces f

The Good:

+A very inventive battle system that has a focus on strategy
+A good story with great characters
+Lots of customization to do
+Lots of sidequests to do at some point
+A lengthy quest

The Bad:

-The voice acting could be better
-The story is very slow paced and has a tendency to get bogged down in too much exposition. It's a very enjoyable story but sometimes you really wish it would just move along rather than taking time to explain what we already know

Note: The Following Review is Long

The Tales series has had a shaky history in the states. Many of them haven't even seen release stateside. Case in point, Tales of Graces was first made available on the Wii in Japan in 2009. When Tales games do get a release outside of Japan there are small handful of fans who take note. The last major release in the United States was Tales of Vesperia on the XBOX360. Tales of Graces comes out amidst worry for some fans as it opts to try something new and different for the Tales series. The results are actually great. It may take a bit of time to learn, but Tales of Graces is certainly a welcome addition. It has a few things that keep it from being nearly as good as previous entries in the series however.

Our story centers on Asbel. A rebellious youth who doesn't desire to follow in his fathers footsteps. Instead of becoming ruler of the Lhant he'd rather be a knight and protect his friends. As a boy he has gotten into trouble and gotten into heated arguments with his father. When he and his brother Hubert go to Lhant Hill (against his father's wishes, of course) they stumble across a mysterious girl who doesn't seem to know anything. There is also their friend Cheria who has a mysterious illness no one can cure. Asbel wants adventure and excitement, and upon meeting another young boy named Richard, they all form a friendship that they hope will last a life time. Unfortunately, due to Asbel's reckless nature tragedy strikes... and that eventually leads to him leaving home to become a knight to better himself. Seven years later, amidst tragedy, he returns to Lhant and discovers that his father may not have been as terrible a man as he thought and that as a child things happened that he simply couldn't understand.

Tales of Graces, like so many other games in the series, has a relatively simple premise that eventually unfolds into an epic tales. Nothing you see at the beginning of the game is any indication of what you're in for. But more importantly than that, the characters are what make the story so worthwhile. We begin the game seeing them as annoying children, but once they mature we can take note of their changes. And the story still develops them as they go. It's a likable cast and you'll find a lot about them as the game progresses. The story is also filled with twists and turns. Some you'll see coming and some you'll be amazed at. One could accuse Tales of Graces of using overdone plot points (the mysterious girl with memory problems is a favorite, it seems) but it's the execution that works here and not the idea itself. The only issue with the story is that of all the Tales games to precede it, Tales of Graces certainly takes the slowest the develop. The prologue alone might take four or five hours, and beyond that you'll feel restricted as it builds up to what's really going on. It is definitely a game you have to be patient with. Once it gets going, however, the characters become endearing enough that it can be hard to put down. The themes presented here can be a little heavy handed (particularly the theme of friendship) but Tales of Graces spends less time preaching to the audience and more time trying to illustrate the importance of the themes it's trying to showcase. What you get, in the end, is a dramatic tale that is more about characters than it is the situation they find themselves involved in. This is what makes the story worth playing through.

While the formula for storytelling has remained consistent with the Tales series, the gameplay has not. There are changes. The feeling of a Tales game is certainly still there, but the complexity of the battle system will take even veterans of the series a moment to learn and establish. Every character has a chain capacity (CC) and each attack will drain your CC. Some attacks will use one CC while others might use two, three or even four. You can string them together so long as you have the CC for it, but it's certainly more than just a hack and slash game in this regard. Depending on which directional button you press as your attacking, you'll pull off different moves and combos. These are called Assault Artes. At first this seems limiting, but it gives Tales of Graces a layer of strategy that no Tales game has had before it. And you can easily restore your CC by guarding in battle. Later in the game, however, players will gain a second stance and perform Bursts Artes, which can also be chained together, but they're stronger attacks. They also consume CC. It can take a few moments to really let this sink in, especially because there's a lot to swallow with the battle system. Luckily, after each fight the game will offer you tips to consistently help you out. It's a little strange at first, given the lack of Tech Points found in other tales games. As I said, the strategy here is much more in depth than you may realize.

Enemies also have weak points. Each assault arte and burst arte has its own attributes and some of your enemies are going to be weak to them. This means that you can't always string together the same attacks for the same result on every enemy. If you want to succeed in Tales of Graces, you're going to have to try several different mix-ups when attacking your enemies. At first the whole battle system seems confusing and overwhelming, but after only a couple of hours it becomes second nature. If you're having trouble with the battle system or can't learn it at first, you can always adjust the difficulty level of the game any time you wish.

Sometimes when you get into battles you'll be challenged to certain tasks such as completing a battle in fifteen seconds, chain together four artes, don't get hit or something else along those lines. The reward for doing so is often more lucrative rewards. Complete the challenges consistently and you'll start getting better items. There's a bit more here to entice you to battle. The biggest addition, however, is the Eleth gauge. A gauge that continues to increase as you do battle. Perform well by dodging attacks or striking enemies and you'll gain an Eleth Burst which will temporarily let you perform all of your attacks without consuming CC. In boss battles this is a very useful tool.

Before in Tales games learning new artes usually entailed reaching a certain level, learning them from certain NPCs (or advancements in the story) or using some artes a certain number of times until it lead to learning a new arte. Here it's entirely different. Abilities are now learned through the title bestowed upon a character. As you battle you'll gain skill points, which will go toward learning certain abilities a title has. Once you've learned them all you can switch titles and learn more abilities. It's a bit deeper than other tales games, but it's relatively simple to grasp.

The battle system isn't the only thing that has changed. So have some of the other aspects of the game. You can combine items to make better ones. You can also combine certain items with your weapons and armor and make them stronger and change their attributes. But most important of all is the introduction of the Eleth Mixer. Place an item in it and the mixer will continue to duplicate them as time goes on. Put two ingredients in it and it'll cook food for you (that'll get used automatically in battle). Of all the additions to Tales, the Eleth mixer is certainly the most amusing of the batch.

That's not to say everything about Tales has changed. The game still has lots of skits. All of them are voiced this time, however, and they often add more development to characters. They don't just add to the characters. Some of the time they add to the overall story. Characters will speculate about events that just happened or comment on other characters as well. They're all optional, but if you want the most out of the story and characters, it's a good idea to take a look at all of them.

Tales of Graces isn't without any faults, however. The pacing of the story is incredibly slow, and in real Tales fashion the story can get bogged down in exposition and drama. The game will explain lots of things to you... several times. You'll also find yourself running from Point A to Point B and back to Point A with only hearing exposition and seeing events explained out to you. The Tales series has always done this, but it's particularly noticeable here as the first few hours of the game have you constantly running between the same places over and over again with slow progression across the overworld. It is by far the most restrictive the Tales series has ever been in terms of exploration. Story is the focus here as the game doesn't even want to let you stray from the main path for too long. Other times Asbel simply won't go certain places, instead informing you that there's no need to go there. Most of the characters are interesting enough at least, but you won't find them to nearly as memorable as characters you found in previous outings such as Tales of the Abyss or Tales of Symphonia.

Seeing as how Tales of Graces was originally on the Wii, one might be tempted to think the presentation would look the same as well. It actually doesn't. If there was one game to show off the difference between HD and standard definition this is it. The PS3 version of the game has crisper and smoother looking graphics. Not to mention there are more details added to the game itself. The character models, in particular, look a lot better than they did on the Wii. The cel-shaded graphics give a cartoon like quality to the game. That's not to say the game is gorgeous all around. It's easy on the eyes, but you'll wish there was more detail to the game itself. Towns are strangely underpopulated and environments feel scarce. Character models are nice, but the portraits in their skits look much more detailed than the models themselves. It's a mixed bag. You'll appreciate the upscaling, but Tales of Graces f certainly doesn't have as much life in it as other Tales games before it.

The games actual soundtrack is pretty good, however. Some tunes sound better than others. What won't always bode well is the voice acting. Once again we have a case of a game that has found the right voices for the characters, but isn't very good at expressing them emotionally. In instances where characters should be mad, they don't actually sound mad... just slightly louder. And this is a shame considering Tales of Graces has some pretty dramatic moments that, had the voice acting been better, would've made some of Tales of Graces best moments even better.

For Tales fans, Tales of Graces F is a pretty good game. It is not the best in the Tales series by far. But it continues to do some of the things the Tales series has done so well for so long. A great story with endearing characters and plenty to do along the way. If you're a fan of the Tales series then Tales of Graces F is a game worth trying.

UPDATED REVIEW (4/2/2012)

I've found most of my original comments still stand. If anything, I have been more impressed with the game as time goes on.

Could the graphics be better? Sometimes, yeah, especially with architecture. But the watercolor effect the game uses for textures still looks quite good and the models for characters and enemies are well done and generally are just quite charming. I'd love if this was redone entirely for the PS3, but with very, very rare exceptions I haven't even found myself noticing.

As time goes on, some of the voices do become tiresome. A lot of the random NPC voices just sound goofy and some of the other main characters just seem strangely cast. Some sound overly robotic at times too, although I suspect a lot of the time this is due to a story element I'm not quite clear on yet (I've not finished the game, but I'm a good 18 hours in).

I really love the battle system and have found myself enjoying it significantly more than others in the series (I'm playing Tales of the Abyss on 3DS alongside this, for example). I love that you don't have to worry about a finite TP bar that can be a pain in the ass to regenerate. The CC system this game uses instead, at least to me, is just far more involving and interesting. As I've mentioned before, I feel like it requires more finesse on your part. I found the game to be a bit too easy on Moderate -- I personally recommend setting it to Hard off the bat. But what's nice is that after boss battles, you're given the option to retry the battle and can change the difficulty settings and your character setup. So you rarely have any wasted time there (at least on these difficultly levels, I can't speak of Evil or Chaos yet -- although I've unlocked the former), although if you lose to a standard enemy that's the end!

The crafting system becomes fairly more complex as new options are added in. You're given new options to combine equipment with special items, temper that equipment and then extract gems with stats on them. More importantly, you're eventually given access to something called a Eleth Mixer. This has its own set of rules, but it essentially allows you to create items outside of battle (based on how far you travel) and items in battle (based on fulfilling certain needs like getting >30 a hit combo). It's actually fairly interesting and it allows you to craft items that are otherwise fairly difficult to find in the field and makes you feel a bit more invested in bothering to craft (dualize) in the first place.

As far as the story goes, I think it's really ramped up. The game is admittedly fairly slow at first, but I expect that from any general "intro" in these titles. But I will say I've found some of the story "complaints" to be slightly surprising. Many professional reviews talk about how this game goes on and on about "true friends!. And to some extent that is true. But few, if any, seem to mention that this shifts pretty dramatically several hours in -- it never goes away entirely, but I have to say given what reviews led me to expect I was surprised to see that the story got fairly dark and dramatic. The characters aren't quite as two-dimensional as it might seem initially -- and this is coming from someone who rarely enjoys the typical JRPG/anime tropes we see in these types of games.

Overall I'm very happy with the game. I'd greatly recommend it.

ORIGINAL REVIEW

I'm only several hours in, but I figured a review at this stage could be of use. Overall, the game is great and offers what I imagine most Tales fans want. Still, there were some notable things I would have wanted to know:

1.) Initially I was a bit confused by the battle system, as I expected it to be very similar to the last few Tales games I had played. It's not like Tales of Symphonia or Tales of Vesperia, for example. There's not a dedicated TP/MP/whatever bar for skills; instead you have a new, very small meter (that expands via equipment) that's constantly regenerating depending on what you do in battle (evading attacks, charging abilities, chaining things together). Once you get used to it, you'll realize it's quite well done and does require a level of finesse. I felt like I could get away with a lot of random mashing in games like Vesperia (at least on normal difficulty) and that seems a lot less likely here.

The way Artes are applied is a bit different as well. It uses a skill tree - some skills are gated behind others. I'm not a pro at it yet, but from what I can tell this means you have to do a skill from List A before you can launch into one from List B, etc. It's possible this was in another Tales game, but I've not played one with this concept.

2.) The game only offers Semi-Auto and Auto modes initially. In the first town, you can buy a book for 500 Gald that enables manual mode. No idea why they did this.

The game offers various battle difficulties from the start. You can also unlock Evil difficulty through gameplay (I think after so many battles on Hard), and Chaos after 300 battles on Evil. There are incentives to use higher difficulty settings. You get more bonuses and I'd say the game is a bit more rewarding.

The game has trophies based upon difficulty settings. Just know that you are awarded the trophy only based on killing the last boss. This means you can play the entire game on Easy, change the difficulty for the boss and still get the trophy.

If you do lose a boss battle, you're offered a few options which include the ability to retry the battle and change the difficulty.

3.) There's no Japanese voices in the game. I find this a lot less excusable on Blu-rays. The space is obviously available. I personally don't mind the English voice overs, they're on par with Vesperia.

4.) Graphically this clearly looks better than the Wii original. You can tell what they've redone or improved. Animation overall is excellent and the game looks quite good in HD. That said, there are still places where textures are notably poor or areas where you know this would have looked better if the 360 or PS3 were the lead platform. Overall, I would say Vesperia is a far better looking game... but Graces f still is far from unattractive.

Overall, though, I've found the game entertaining, the systems interesting and everything in general just fun. I'd recommend it to fans of the series.

Asbel Lhant and the mysterious young girl Sofie are the protagonists of a beautiful HD remade story originally on Wii. This game will have lots of hours for both old and new fans to enjoy and lots of quest and kameo battles in the arena. One of the coolest kameo appearances is Tales of Hearts female protagonist Kohaku Hearts, but they're plenty to enjoy and trophies for doing various boss fights. There are leaderboards for the extra battle mode feature and plenty of costumes to choose from so enjoy the options and freedom to mix up your looks. I don't really wish to spoil anything, but I'll just say take your time and enjoy the unravelling of the story's done in an arc fashion this time around. There are a lot of beautiful Anime cutscenes in this game and sidequests some of which have to be completed early like other Tales titles. You'll meet all of the characters very early into the game and by this time most of you will know who you use best as a team or have a personal preference. This game once again has the infamous level 200 which can be hit easily if you are using 10x eperience, but the long trophies will be the level 9999 Arles Pot and a Gentleman's Defeat. The opening theme is Mamoritai White Wishes by BoA, but anyways I hope this review helps you or gives you the desire to try this game out because you won't reget it. There's a new battle system feature called Axel Mode which is how you pull off extreme combos and Lv4 Blast Caliburs. All characters can and will eventually learn this awesome technique via a title and it really can heat up a battle. Last thing I'll note is that there's a cool feature on Efina that can make you're characters all the same character on the battle screen, but it's extremely pricy so save your gald for it. If anyone has questions about Tales of Graces F feel free to ask me and I will help out as best I can. Thanks for reading and I hope this helped! :D

~Metragoon

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