2012-12-01, 03:51 AM
K. I beat the game about a week or so ago, and I've just tried the bonus dungeon and Arena EX modes today, so I'm going to sum up a few of my thoughts without spoilers, and if anyone has any questions, ask away.
Story:
The overall story was a lot better than Xillia, which felt rushed nearing the ending. The use of quests is significantly better as well, since you get somewhat meaningful rewards instead of attachments. (MONEY, and a few quests give Absorbers, equips, books) Character Episodes actually develop characters, really makes me appreciate the characters from Xillia a lot more. The major twist in Xillia felt a lot more dramatic and surprising though. The post-game content seems a lot better than Xillia's bonus dungeon. I cleared one stage, and it automatically put me in the next stage, where I got OHKOed because the monsters were suddenly 11x instead of 8x, which was weird, but encourages me to get closer to the level cap rather than stopping. The same thing happened in the Arena EX modes. The EX section is level ~120+. Cleared the game at 70s? Maybe 80. I'm 85 right now. I really want to get to the cameo battle, but it seems a long way off at this rate.
Fights:
Fights can be challenging if you're not overleveled. I played through the entire game on Hard, except for one boss that just kept OHKOing me despite me being the same level (18). I had to level up for a very small number, but that didn't make them easy. I'd imagine it's not too difficult if you're playing on Normal though. High level monsters' damage scales ridiculously highly, so they'll end up just OHKOing you if you think you can get by on pure dodging skill alone. If your link partner gets a status effect, you get it too, which is trouble. It makes it a bit dynamic so you can't just tank through everything with a link arte mule. There's also a large number of Gigantos. A lot more than Vesperia. There's even one that spawns randomly in a random map... I walked into one that was 40 levels higher than me thinking it was around my level. It's immune to damage. Splits itself into 3, where the original is still immune. The other two are weak to Fire/Wind/Light, and Water/Earth/Dark or something to that effect. Kill them, original loses HP. They get stronger as the battle progresses. Got it down to 150k/800k HP before it started using some OHKO combos. And on the retry, since my last save point was really really far away, my characters auto-fleed or something after dealing a bit of damage, which was odd. I'm not sure why that happened, but I found out the Giganto will respawn when you reenter the map until it's defeated, so I didn't have to load.
Battle System:
The battle system is significantly improved over Xillia's. They added side-steps, like Graces, without the perfect dodge invulnerability. I rarely use it since the action is L1 + Up/Down + Attack to go left or right, but it would be extremely useful if I were to get used to it. Elemental weakness stacks like in Graces where you get extra % damage for adding more elements. Killing certain monsters a number of times can earn characters skill points. They also added a ton of useful artes and skills to every party member. Xillia had a rather limited set since the Lilliale orb could only have so many abilities on it and everyone had the same number. One of the particularly useful ones is High Chain Spell, which lets you cast spells faster if you use them after a large string of other attacks, like in Graces. Encourages things like playing Elise in combat instead of spamming Negative Gate in the back (which they nerfed so you can't infinite combo with it). Spell effects have to end before you're allowed to move now. Ludger's weapon switch is really neat, but I find his Hammer artes to be lame. Also, their names are retarded. Ludger's Corpse Shell is broken as pomegranate though. I think the game is designed around using it too much. It's perfectly doable without it, but it adds a ridiculous level of easy. Ludger is required for your party until you clear the game, which is interesting. I think of all the characters, Leia was improved the most and she's even more enjoyable to play. Everyone (except Ludger, who has the exact number) has so many artes, you can't fit them all on the shortcuts. Especially Milla, who is still brokenly OP. I wish you could save a "profile" for a set of artes, and then be able to switch between them. You can save a profile for a costume...
Items:
The itemization is good and bad, but mostly good. I found that the Cat Dispatch was interesting for some reason, especially with the number of quests that required items from it. You find cats in every map, like Aifread Treasure in Xillia, and you can go into your menu to tell the cat to go look for items. They'll come back after a few minutes and you'll get some items from a predetermined list you can see. Mostly, it's used for quests, but also equipment crafting. I think the equipment crafting was almost perfect, but there were a few instances where I could just buy better equipment instead of crafting it, despite them both unlocking at the same time. That being said, crafted equipment has special effects like +stats, or reduce TP cost, or reduce cast time, which can make up for the slightly lower attack/defense. The worst thing about items though is treasure chests, in my experience, almost never contained anything worthwhile. They might as well have been the same thing as random treasure, except they don't respawn. They should at least have contained the rare Cat Dispatch items. I wanted to ignore them, but I found a few Absorbers in them, which means I have to open all of them or my characters grow slower...
One of the things that annoyed me was not knowing what city sold what set of items. Instead of progress unlocking items for all vendors, items are unlocked based on how far the city is into the story, and there was no way to tell what they sold unless you went there, unlike Graces.
Growth:
The Arrowcell orb is a lot better than the Lilliale orb. There's a lot more stuff to get out of it. I kind of wish it were bigger. There's like 15k points in each element, you get between 2~10 for regular battles most of the time, and you can pick up maybe 5 at the start of the game, and it gets towards 40 at the end? I maxed it out before the last chapter, since I was on Hard and I guess I abused a few loot spots a bit too much.
Anyways, how it works is you equip a thing called an Absorber. It will convert Elemental Cores into Points (like exp) for whatever element the Absorber is for. Get more points for an element, learn skills, artes, mastery levels for artes (up to 4). Some of these require two elements to be learned. It's pretty interesting. I prefer it over getting Grow Up Points (like skill points in an MMO) on a level up and having to go into the menu to invest so often in Xillia.
Decisions:
Despite the game revolving around decisions, I don't actually think any of them before the final chapter affect the outcome. They only affect the dialogue you see, and the intimacy level of other characters, so while it's a good thing to make good decisions, you won't break your game and require a new game to get everything, which I am very thankful for. It works in a VN since there's no actual input from the player, other than the choice, and you have skip buttons, etc. There's even options like Skip Read Text nowadays. You need level 8 intimacy for the final dungeon, and level 9 for Dual Mystic Artes, and you can also get it from doing Link Artes with that character in battle (oh god this takes forever), so not all is lost. It's just a shortcut I guess. Also, their character episode outcome might be affected, not sure.
Overall, my order of ranking of Tales games for this console generation are
Graces f > Xillia 2 > Xillia > Vesperia
I hope there's an Xillia 3, but I doubt that would work. I think it would be really interesting though. Looking forward to clearing the end game content, new game+ to hear Ludger's voice (HE HAS TWO NON-COMBAT LINEs IN THE ENTIRE FIRST PLAYTHROUGH), and the next Tales game. Hopefully, it'll be one with a battle system as good as Graces.
Story:
The overall story was a lot better than Xillia, which felt rushed nearing the ending. The use of quests is significantly better as well, since you get somewhat meaningful rewards instead of attachments. (MONEY, and a few quests give Absorbers, equips, books) Character Episodes actually develop characters, really makes me appreciate the characters from Xillia a lot more. The major twist in Xillia felt a lot more dramatic and surprising though. The post-game content seems a lot better than Xillia's bonus dungeon. I cleared one stage, and it automatically put me in the next stage, where I got OHKOed because the monsters were suddenly 11x instead of 8x, which was weird, but encourages me to get closer to the level cap rather than stopping. The same thing happened in the Arena EX modes. The EX section is level ~120+. Cleared the game at 70s? Maybe 80. I'm 85 right now. I really want to get to the cameo battle, but it seems a long way off at this rate.
Fights:
Fights can be challenging if you're not overleveled. I played through the entire game on Hard, except for one boss that just kept OHKOing me despite me being the same level (18). I had to level up for a very small number, but that didn't make them easy. I'd imagine it's not too difficult if you're playing on Normal though. High level monsters' damage scales ridiculously highly, so they'll end up just OHKOing you if you think you can get by on pure dodging skill alone. If your link partner gets a status effect, you get it too, which is trouble. It makes it a bit dynamic so you can't just tank through everything with a link arte mule. There's also a large number of Gigantos. A lot more than Vesperia. There's even one that spawns randomly in a random map... I walked into one that was 40 levels higher than me thinking it was around my level. It's immune to damage. Splits itself into 3, where the original is still immune. The other two are weak to Fire/Wind/Light, and Water/Earth/Dark or something to that effect. Kill them, original loses HP. They get stronger as the battle progresses. Got it down to 150k/800k HP before it started using some OHKO combos. And on the retry, since my last save point was really really far away, my characters auto-fleed or something after dealing a bit of damage, which was odd. I'm not sure why that happened, but I found out the Giganto will respawn when you reenter the map until it's defeated, so I didn't have to load.
Battle System:
The battle system is significantly improved over Xillia's. They added side-steps, like Graces, without the perfect dodge invulnerability. I rarely use it since the action is L1 + Up/Down + Attack to go left or right, but it would be extremely useful if I were to get used to it. Elemental weakness stacks like in Graces where you get extra % damage for adding more elements. Killing certain monsters a number of times can earn characters skill points. They also added a ton of useful artes and skills to every party member. Xillia had a rather limited set since the Lilliale orb could only have so many abilities on it and everyone had the same number. One of the particularly useful ones is High Chain Spell, which lets you cast spells faster if you use them after a large string of other attacks, like in Graces. Encourages things like playing Elise in combat instead of spamming Negative Gate in the back (which they nerfed so you can't infinite combo with it). Spell effects have to end before you're allowed to move now. Ludger's weapon switch is really neat, but I find his Hammer artes to be lame. Also, their names are retarded. Ludger's Corpse Shell is broken as pomegranate though. I think the game is designed around using it too much. It's perfectly doable without it, but it adds a ridiculous level of easy. Ludger is required for your party until you clear the game, which is interesting. I think of all the characters, Leia was improved the most and she's even more enjoyable to play. Everyone (except Ludger, who has the exact number) has so many artes, you can't fit them all on the shortcuts. Especially Milla, who is still brokenly OP. I wish you could save a "profile" for a set of artes, and then be able to switch between them. You can save a profile for a costume...
Items:
The itemization is good and bad, but mostly good. I found that the Cat Dispatch was interesting for some reason, especially with the number of quests that required items from it. You find cats in every map, like Aifread Treasure in Xillia, and you can go into your menu to tell the cat to go look for items. They'll come back after a few minutes and you'll get some items from a predetermined list you can see. Mostly, it's used for quests, but also equipment crafting. I think the equipment crafting was almost perfect, but there were a few instances where I could just buy better equipment instead of crafting it, despite them both unlocking at the same time. That being said, crafted equipment has special effects like +stats, or reduce TP cost, or reduce cast time, which can make up for the slightly lower attack/defense. The worst thing about items though is treasure chests, in my experience, almost never contained anything worthwhile. They might as well have been the same thing as random treasure, except they don't respawn. They should at least have contained the rare Cat Dispatch items. I wanted to ignore them, but I found a few Absorbers in them, which means I have to open all of them or my characters grow slower...
One of the things that annoyed me was not knowing what city sold what set of items. Instead of progress unlocking items for all vendors, items are unlocked based on how far the city is into the story, and there was no way to tell what they sold unless you went there, unlike Graces.
Growth:
The Arrowcell orb is a lot better than the Lilliale orb. There's a lot more stuff to get out of it. I kind of wish it were bigger. There's like 15k points in each element, you get between 2~10 for regular battles most of the time, and you can pick up maybe 5 at the start of the game, and it gets towards 40 at the end? I maxed it out before the last chapter, since I was on Hard and I guess I abused a few loot spots a bit too much.
Anyways, how it works is you equip a thing called an Absorber. It will convert Elemental Cores into Points (like exp) for whatever element the Absorber is for. Get more points for an element, learn skills, artes, mastery levels for artes (up to 4). Some of these require two elements to be learned. It's pretty interesting. I prefer it over getting Grow Up Points (like skill points in an MMO) on a level up and having to go into the menu to invest so often in Xillia.
Decisions:
Despite the game revolving around decisions, I don't actually think any of them before the final chapter affect the outcome. They only affect the dialogue you see, and the intimacy level of other characters, so while it's a good thing to make good decisions, you won't break your game and require a new game to get everything, which I am very thankful for. It works in a VN since there's no actual input from the player, other than the choice, and you have skip buttons, etc. There's even options like Skip Read Text nowadays. You need level 8 intimacy for the final dungeon, and level 9 for Dual Mystic Artes, and you can also get it from doing Link Artes with that character in battle (oh god this takes forever), so not all is lost. It's just a shortcut I guess. Also, their character episode outcome might be affected, not sure.
Overall, my order of ranking of Tales games for this console generation are
Graces f > Xillia 2 > Xillia > Vesperia
I hope there's an Xillia 3, but I doubt that would work. I think it would be really interesting though. Looking forward to clearing the end game content, new game+ to hear Ludger's voice (HE HAS TWO NON-COMBAT LINEs IN THE ENTIRE FIRST PLAYTHROUGH), and the next Tales game. Hopefully, it'll be one with a battle system as good as Graces.