ToV- FInished. The final few dungeons restored my somewhat negative opinion of the game going into the final arc, they had decent design, most of the boss fights were at least sort of challenging and they were pretty. Final boss was a curbstomped joke, I don't think he would have killed Yuri even once if I had bothered at all to heal instead of just spamming Azure Edge.
It's a pretty, largely polished game. Combat flows smoothly, the world map isn't glitchy like TotA's and the translation/VA is spot on. It's what you expect for a flagship RPG for the 360. The dungeons are varied- I don't think you get any real repeats like TotA, and they're for the most part enjoyable. The most part.
PC cast was generally outstanding. No complaints here. Flynn had good characteriazation in spite of not having nearly as much screentime as a PC. The whole 'we'll fix things in our own way, in our own paths' that Yuri and Flynn did isn't new to RPGs, but they A: succeeded on pretty much every front. B: Worked together and fed off each other. C: Cleaned up after each other's messes so it wasn't one sided. D: Didn't kill each other or hate each other in the process. The question about the good or evil of the empire was resolved in a fashion I liked- there was corruption and good mixed in. It worked as a major early theme, and the resolution of it late was neat. Granted, that resolution required a bloody purge.
Yuri is excellent and likable as a main from beginning to end (mostly), but Luke is probably the better character? They are such polar opposites in both style and substance. Entire cast is good. The plot... it varies. The basic beginning is generic enough, but it works. Just exploring the world and chasing after people's an RPG staple for a reason; because it works well, as does the questions posed about the empire. Then the plot gets serious, loser A shows up and has his evil moment in spite of zero camera time and acts like an incredible wanker. Loser B is around far more screentime wise, but fails beyond belief, not that you need a hint. Hearing a line of his VA and his 'interaction's with people is insufferable. "I have turned my back on humans." It gets worse every time he speaks. Almost no one besides your PC crew and to a lesser extent Flynn get any real camera time, and they all suffer tremendously from it. Ioder is a Ion remix, but you can't tell since he is gone for the vast majority of the game. Same goes for the non Don guild leaders.
The boss of the Baction ruins and the stuff surrounding that. Blah. Raven's betrayal wasn't surprising, but it was botched very badly.It was literally night and day. He probably should've died in the ruins.
Spoiler stuff again, this time for Yuri. His killing Ragou? That was a good scene. He and Flynn pretty much went over their options beforehand, what they could legally do and what they couldn't do. He made a rational, cold blooded choice to kill Ragou. I can live with this. The scene where he killed Cumore bothered the living hell out of me. It cheapened Ragou's death and was just horrible. He kills Cumore for being scummy, yes. He just decides to do it in the middle of the night instead of making him face justice, which Ragou did. He also fucked up in the sense that Cumore would've ratted on Alexai and would have blown up that entire scheme before he could've summoned that giant whatever the fuck it was. What makes it worse is that by and large the party just shrugs off Yuri executing someone and moves on as if nothing happened. What the hell? The game does eventually beat Yuri with the stupid of his choice and the way he did it later on. Phaeros repeats his line and his defense of his actions at Yuri word for word when he talks about killing Estelle, which Yuri of course rejects. The game does eventually redeem Yuri in that regard, but the scene annoyed the hell out of me when it happened. Oh well.
Combat is Tales; I liked it for what it was. If you don't like TotA's stuff, you won't like ToV. Mostly controlled Yuri.
Some bad: Puzzles. For the most part the game is fine here. You get one fairly annoying puzzle early on in Rita's first dungeon, then nothing for ages, then you get three or four areas in row with *nasty* puzzles that require a lot of time or sitting in front of it with an FAQ. Some of those have monsters intertwined that regenerate, so if you take too long in solving it you have to dodge fights or blow all your holy bottles on it. Also, taking away your healer for as long as they did? Fuck you, ToV. That's a dick move of the highest order. Mercifully the puzzles stop when you get said person back.
The villian cast could honestly rival your average XS game for terrible. I don't think I have a positive word to say about any of them. The obnoxious loli minions aren't even close to the biggest failures there, and that's a bad sign.
The game was a ton of fun overall. It's a shame it lags so much around the two thirds mark. Probably an 8/10 game. Could go up to 9/10 depending on my final thoughts on it.
Oh yeah, Repede also owns.
