Tales of Vesperia Review [360]

01 Jul 2009 at 16:35:00 by Tim McDonald
Systems used to review this title: (360)

Tales of Vesperia is a curious beast. For every standard RPG trope it gracefully sidesteps, it embraces another so hard you begin to wonder if the game is gently mocking you. Is it just a joke? Does the game realise that it's just taken one of the most generic parts of the genre and pretty much put it in a big spotlight? I fear we shall never know, but it's something for historians to argue about.

The plot is semi-standard JRPG fare. Lead character Yuri Lowell, so androgynous that everyone who saw the game thought he was a girl until he spoke, sets off on a quest to Do What's Right when things start going wrong in the Empire. It opens with the aque blastia – blastias being magical MacGuffins, and aque blastias generating water - of the capital city's slums going missing. Yuri sets off to find it, and before long he's gone through a prison escape, an obligatory sewer level, and has teamed up with the naïve sweetie-pie magic girl and a boisterous, determined brat (and, uh, a pipe-smoking dog) on the usual quest to save the world.

That sounds generic as all hell, but it's not quite played straight. The obligatory sewer level is two rooms. The quest to save the world, and in fact any form of standard villain, only really appear towards the close of the game, with early villains being absolute monsters in the sense of their actions – monsters who hide behind other people, and aren't fought in boss fights. The naïve sweetie-pie magic girl and boisterous, determined brat are by far the most irritating characters in the game, but every other character is brilliant, including effeminate sword-swinger Yuri, who is probably one of the best lead characters the genre's seen for a long time. No emo-whinging here, no annoying introspection, no gruff manner to everyone around, and no stupid, irritating “We can do it if we work together” speeches.

And yet, this is a standard RPG in many other ways. It's set in a fantasy world with some elements of high technology, complete with a big overworld to wander around on and plenty of weird monsters, like huge hairy turtles and anchor-wielding sharks – but with no random encounters. Oh, enemies on the overworld randomly spawn, but all enemies are visible on the world map or the area map, which gives you the opportunity to avoid as many as you like.

Combat itself will be familiar to anyone who's played a previous Tales game, but for the uninitiated, it plays out almost like a brawler. You and three other party members are dropped into an enclosed arena with the monsters. The left analogue stick lets you move towards or away from the enemies, and holding left-trigger lets you free-run around the arena. The B button hacks away, the A button uses different Artes – the game's term for special attacks – depending on the direction you're pressing, and the X button blocks. Dodging and blocking attacks and setting up positioning so that directional or area-effect Artes hit multiple enemies is as important as just charging in and hammering B, and it works surprisingly well. It's an initially simple system, but quickly picks up pace and depth as you unlock more and more Artes and skills. The latter are learned by equipping weapons and using them in battles, but you're limited by skill points as to how many are active at a time. Do you want an extra 15% strength, or would you rather have the ability to backstep? Maybe you could drop out the ability to use items on other party members for the next few battles, because taking less magic damage would be remarkably helpful for the next boss. Think Final Fantasy IX and you'll get the idea.

Then there are your three party members.

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