MikeIsGood wrote:Never played a Tales game before, but this looks pretty great so far.
;t=2s
I think there are some Tales series fans here - any insights on how they play? Is it like Ys? I liked Ys combat but I didn't like the story, characters, or zone structure.
No word on the new Tales, as they have advertised a combat system overhaul, but Tales is the equivalent of action-based RPG comfort food. You have the basics of equipment, leveling, and combat items/inventory. Combat is not turn based; prior to Zestiria in 2015, it used a simple "main attacks/chains supplemented by special abilities that consume mana (called TP)" that got more elegant when chaining special attacks together. Weapons and armor had skills that your character "learned" as they used the items in combat, and could use skills that were learned completely even after removing the armor to shape your combat style. With Zestiria and Berseria, there was a switch from TP to skill gauge, which refills based on basic attacks and blocking, albeit at a much slower rate than TP. TP enabled you to spam abilities over and over; skill gauge leads to more deliberate usage of abilities surrounding more invested basic attack chains.
The new game looks like it's going to involve more combat finesse than before, including viable "juggling", which should help diversify the combat. Overall, you generally have to do some light grinding of enemies, which leads to a lot of repetitive combat. How you do in combat rewards you with a currency called GRADE that you can use to get enhancements for multiple playthroughs (i.e. 2000 GRADE increases the amount of EXP enemies give by 10x, which would let you get through the game much quicker - but only if playing through the game again).
The "Tales of" series is sometimes called comfort food because the games are pretty good, but often not standout. There's generally a lot of anime tropes, the first "act" is usually strong, the second act tends to be a lot of revisiting previously explored areas, and the third act some sort of "we need to save the world" type resolution. Characters are usually pretty endearing, albeit not necessarily as memorable as a Persona party member. The voice acting is usually better than it is worse, with a few knockouts, but you will hear a lot of characters in the game voiced by the same voice actors. The worlds are usually pretty, and the backdrops quite good even if towns feel a bit samey and dungeons aren't too intense in terms of puzzle-solving.
Falcom (who does Ys) is a much better story writing/narrative team than the Tales of studio from Bandai-Namco. If you're looking for the narrative tightness of Ys, you won't find it. The action combat is not exactly the same - it's more reminiscent of a turn-based, where you attack enemies on the overworld before being brought into a battle - but it is not turn-based in the slightest. I'm looking forward to Arise and hope its extended creation time has led to the polish and attention to detail that have been lacking in the previous few games (Berseria, from 2016, was pretty good, but Zestiria was a disaster).
