Man, what a game. The Tales games I've tried lately have had a very hard time disappointing me, and this game is no exception. This is definitely my new favorite of the ones I've played.

The story, is far and away one of my favorite I've ever seen in an RPG. It kept me guessing the whole time, and I never felt it was predictable in any noticeable way. The major themes really spoke to me as well. The relationship of a child and father, the parent's role in raising their child and to what extent their actions may be in the right, the nature of who guards whom in a relationship, the bounds of what trust and friendship can go to. The only problems I ever had with the storytelling was that the voice acting isn't always fantastic. It's actually one of the less well voice acted Namco Bandai RPG's I've played, as they usually do great work. There's just one or two main characters who don't always sound quite right. I'll just conclude my primer on it here by saying I don't think I've ever played a game that's made me cry as much or as often as this game made me.

The Vesperia/Abyss-style battle system of the few titles before this is present here, but heavily modified. In Graces, TP/MP is completely gone, and in its place is essentially time units called CC. You gain CC by guarding, just standing still, or by getting big combos. CC is expended by doing attacks, and bigger attacks cost more of it. Additionally, you're more likely to land critical hits if you let it fill all the way. There are artes that are elemental like in the other games, but your normal attacks now have artes as well, eventually giving each character fairly lengthy combos they can deal out. Combos are very important because they increase damage multiplier, stagger enemies, and gain back CC. Certain enemies are more weak to your normal attack or special attack combos, and which enemies are weak to which can be checked whenever with a quick hold of the R1 button. Finally, the elaborate sidestep, backstep, forward dash, etc. maneuver system that you needed to unlock and equip with skills in Vesperia is far simplified. Now you just have those skills all the time, costing 1 CC for every use. It's a system that's new and certainly confusing at first, as I don't think the game does the best job of explaining it to you. Once I really got the feel for it around the 10 or 15 hour mark though, battles became way more fun, and this is definitely the Tales battle system I've enjoyed the most.

Cooking has been revamped into the Eleth Mixer system. Through this, you can equip specific meals which you've made at least once to the mixer in your menu. All meals have specific activation requirements and times (post-battle, when X-status effect happens, when party member HP < X %, etc.), so if you're going to try to use it, it's worth keeping track of these things. Alternatively, you can also use those slots in your Eleth Mixer to put crafting materials into, which will have a certain chance of duplicating while you're walking around, or spellbooks which you can find on your travels that apply certain passives to walking, combat, etc. at the cost of Eleth (which can be refilled at any shop). I never used the cooking system much, but I always enjoyed having new items or foods to "Dualize" into new stuff at shops, even though it only tended to be for quests.

Speaking of quests, they heavily are geared toward the new title and skill system. Titles are no longer rare, or pointless, as in this game they provide you your skills. These are all skills, from new Artes (both special and normal attack ones), new passives, and even costumes. At the end of battles, you receive both XP to level up, and SP which levels up the specific title your character has equipped. The aforementioned quests always reward some material, be it gold, materials, equipment, etc., and some amount of SP. They're simple fetch quests that are accessible in every Inn in the game. These quests aren't intrusive or anything, and you could completely ignore them if you wanted. I personally liked doing them for completionist reasons. Even doing quests, getting all the titles for all the characters, let alone leveling them sufficiently, is an absolutely madman's dream as there are so many, so you'll always have something to level up with SP. These skills may come off as intimidatingly numerous, but there are 4-preset automatic settings you can pick and choose for each character to manage when the game will pick a new skill to do. Don't want to worry about it early game? Just set everyone to "until level 3" and let them skill-up like crazy!

Verdict: If you like action RPG's , or any other of the post-Symphonia Tales games, this is highly recommended. It's one of my new favorite games ever, and a fantastic piece of story telling.

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Legends & Legacies

This is the expansion content added to the PS3 port of Tales of Graces. Granted, we never got the Wii original, but it's still an expansion. It adds an extra 10 hours to the game, and wraps up some fairly relevant story questions brought up in the post-credits video of the original game.

Gameplay wise, it's 4 or so totally new dungeons, and then 4 old dungeons but with new monsters. A whole new bit of story to see (ten whole hours of it), and a myriad of skits to go with it as well. As far as the intensity of the story compared to the main game, it's not quite the same level, but the writing is still good. It's just not going for those same emotional punches. I did nearly tear up once or twice (which is nothing compared to the bawling I was doing after seeing the ending of the main game (happy tears though)), I found myself laughing far more often in this story just because of how great the character chemistry is with the (sort of) new character they added to the old main party, and their topics of conversation in skits tend to be more lighthearted. I really enjoyed it.

There's also the introduction of the Accel system, which REALLY changes up combat. It's more or less every character getting their own, personal overlimit meter, in addition to the one you already have that's party wide. Granted, the "Eleth Gauge" isn't so much like Vesperia's Overlimit system, but the Accel system is much closer to that. Plus, each character gets their own personalized, unique effects from their Accel gauge, so that's another neat feature. Another curiosity you unlock near the middle/end of the expansion is the ability for characters to turn into other characters by using a certain craftable item at a certain NPC. It more or less gives that character a "costume" of another character. Want a party full of just the main character? You can have that now (but it'll take a while to get enough stuff to craft that).

Verdict: Recommended if you really liked the main game. Granted, it's not a standalone expansion and you need to beat the game first to unlock it, but I'd say it's definitely worth playing if you enjoyed the main game enough to play through to the end.

The base game isn't too bad, the extra F content for the PS3 stands for F-ING TERRIBLE. That and disrespecting the player's time are the main reason the score is so low.

It's an extremely generic by the books anime story you'd find in a forgotten 12 episode TV anime nobody cared about before, during, or after it aired. It's so generic there isn't any point talking about it so I'll skip to the chase:

"The story's not good, but it's got the best Tales of gameplay"
Absolutely not. It's clunky and easily exploitable, and everything outside of the combat (where you can spam one B-Arte to infinitely stun them or spam A-Arte to infinitely juggle them) is hand-crafted to waste as much of the player's time as possible.

Backtracking? The worst out of any Tales I played.
Cutscenes forcing you to walk through an entire dungeon? You bet.
Countless fetch quests? Why the hell not?
No meaningful fast travel so you walk across the whole map? Yessir.
Grindy system for Gald? Absolutely.
EXTRA grindy system for Eleth mixer forcing you to walk back a dungeon 3-10 times? Oh yes baby.
A PS3-only epilogue arc that consists entirely of redoing dungeons and backtracking across the whole map for short cutscenes and weapons worse than base game? Why not? Fuck you for wanting to have fun.

Anything to hit "JRPG hours". Remove that and this game would've been a nice, clean 20h experience. Instead, it frequently wastes the player's time to pile on the gametime.

That's all you need to know. If you want more details in a longer "review", you can keep reading below.


The way to obtain Gald in this is miserable. You won't struggle with it if you're playing casually, but if you want to actually experiment with the systems, you will run out of money almost instantly. To get money, you need to farm items with 12% drop rate, craft an item, then farm 4% drop rate items, to fuse both, and THEN sell it for 1/3 of the upgrade cost needed.
You can simply ignore all of this until the end of the game because the weapons you get there are so much better than everything else that it makes upgrading redundant.

Leveling titles is surprisingly not bad, outside of F arc richard, or if you're going for completion. So that's nice, because I didn't care about either and spent most of the game having everybody near-maxed.

I played the whole thing on Hard, and it wasn't really hard, or frustrating. I did most of the extra content because might as well.

The F arc is something that could've been done as a short collection of dungeons, but I guess they REALLY wanted to convince people to double dip for the PS3 version, so they added loads of backtracking and a needlessly long (yet not hard, just boring) dungeon. That added an extra 20h to my file, despite only really having about 7h worth of content. 13 hours of nothing, with no payoff other than a Pinocchio ending that should've been in the base game.

And the skits suck.
That said, I surprisingly really liked everyone (not Asbel). I don't know why they were out of character in almost all the skits, but it didn't bother me much.

Plot is very generic, but the gameplay actually keeps you engaged enough to keep going until the end.

The battle system is amazing and still seeks its rival to this day in the Tales of series. Action packed, making every battle fun.

I ended up somewhere in the post-game, stuff that is exclusive to the PS3 version, so I marked it as completed.

This game is a MASTERPIECE, I had no clue what to expect when I popped it in for the first time, but as soon as I did, I was glued to my TV for over a week until I beat it, I LOVED all the characters and seeing them grow up and develop right in front of me, the combat is the best in the series I've experienced and the story was top notch. The title system may seem intimidating at first but once you really start diving into it, it's a blast and opens up a TON of options moving forward. The growing relationships between the cast of characters are also a dream to see unfold and the skits do a remarkable job of helping to flesh out every single character and help them grow. Easily the best Tales game I've beaten to date.

Tales Of Graces F is far from my first rodeo in terms of experience with the long and rather prosperous franchise. I've dabbled with Symphonia and Abyss the most before finishing this, along with going through the demos of Vesperia on 360 many years ago, and Arise on Steam around the middle of last year, yet this was the first time I ever managed to finish a game in the series. Really, I could've done any of those games mentioned prior, but I chose Graces since A) not that many people talk about it, and the ones that do generalize it in a way that, while informative, doesn't really do much for me, and B) I wanted to do more checks with RPCS3, and this game was on dock since getting that Playable status in 2020 which, to say now, is well warranted. I upscaled this to 1080p and it looks and ran pretty well overall, with very few visual errors cropping up, and while I experienced slowdown and audio desyncs during skit cutscenes, both weren't exactly common enough to become a bother, and I figure were just a result of again, upscaling. As you can tell from the score, my (rather extensive) time with the game was a comfortable one.

Now I've done more research within the series than actually playing them, and from what I can gather the good games fall under two categories: Exceptional story with adequate-good combat, and decent-good story with great combat, Graces F typically falling under the latter... which is something I find myself agreeing with, but like I said, I feel as though the generalization this game usually gets is rather unfair. Now obviously I ain't gonna act like it's secretly a masterpiece of storytelling, nor am I gonna say it's wholly original with its themes of trauma, bonds and friendships, and the reinvigoration of resolve - Kingdom Hearts is a very easy comparison to make, but truthfully some parts in the story also gave me flashbacks to my playthrough and remembrance of Breath Of Fire III, as well as some bits of Persona 3 and Final Fantasy IX - but the way it does express its themes and unfolds along did get me by surprise every now and then, and more importantly, has little to no dips in quality for a majority of my time playing with it. Yea, it's "predictable", but really I'm more than willing to take something like that yet still find good and worthwhile things within it, than experience something that tries to tell something bold, even if it isn't the first stab at it, but ultimately fails for numerous reasons, leaving me in misery. One way is that, instead of the story immediately starting, you actually have a, depending on how much you do 3-5 hour prologue with half of the crew being children, and then having a seven-year timeskip kick off the main adventure as it takes Asbel, Hubert, Sophie, Cheria, Richard, Captain Malik, and Pascal all over the world and then some. It does a decent job settling in the key players, as well as giving off motivation and backstory as to why and how characters act the way they are in the main arc, with a newly added new epilogue of sorts that runs for an additional 8-12 hours depending on how much you do that also has some cool shit in it.

That being said, one major issue I have with the story, and one that's my biggest problem in the whole game, is the pacing. Again, first time I ever finished a Tales game so I dunno how it usually fairs in this department, but I found that the way Graces F delivers important story details or character building to be rather hit and miss. It's rather common that there's a lay of bread crumbs and hooks of exposition done to entice future story moments, have multiple of those pop off back-to-back... and then immediately go back to the bread crumb approach, leaving all the cool stuff behind until they're relevant again. It's pretty jarring at points, and it makes the early game drag pretty badly since you're pretty much backtracking the same few zones that you already did in that prologue, multiple times, with the combat (more on this in a bit) just barely unfolding and letting you go nuts with what you want to do. I don't want to say it's a "gets good in X hours" case since I've come to realize JRPGs, especially modern ones, have slow starts, but I would be lying if I said it didn't take until a specific dungeon about 10-12 hours in, Wallbridge Ruins, for me to become fully settled in with the game, so YMMV. Another major issue is with the new epilogue in question. Lineage & Legacies. It's not awful, far from it actually! But man, you can tell this was sort of added on with a budget, cause while again the story for it DOES have its cool moments, some of it I also just zoned out on due to disinterest, and it doesn't help this is where the gameplay side takes a bit of a nosedive. I only used DLCs that have minimal impact on what I do within the main game, but in the epilogue, I used up all of it just to have it over with already. To compare it to something again, it's like Persona 3 FES' The Answer: Cool story beats, great additional dynamics with the cast, but mundane gameplay that doesn't change too much and can lead to easy burnout, which means it's better to watch it on Youtube than actually experience it, or even ignored entirely since the main story's already more than conclusive. Other than that though, I don't any other sort of big issue available... well maybe one in particular, but more on that later.

Presentation wise, it still looks pretty good even without the upscale applied. That 'port' moniker on Backloggd isn't an error, this was originally a Wii game and certainly shows itself in texture work at parts being rather scuffed, along with some of the more flashier applications of HD JRPGs not being applied much here, but this is a case where art direction and general look of a game does a good job from making the visuals up to par. Each locale you travel in has their own sense of flair to them, and while dungeon layouts can be underwhelming (more on this later), usually they do tend to stand out from one another in any sort of way possible. I wish some of the highroads can be more distinct in their layout though, as I can barely recall as to what has what or where leads to where, which is especially bad in the starting region.

And now, the cast. I gotta be honest, I actually wasn't expecting to like this cast as much as I do, they did a really good job at giving the feeling they're just a bunch of ragtag misfits that have previous bonding before, that only gets stronger as the story goes along. Cheria, though, easily ended up as my least favorite regardless. You know in RPGs there's always that one, maybe two characters that inexplicably gets the short end of the Character Development Stick? Well, Cheria's pretty much the culprit for this game. Her LACK of arc was my other major issue in the story, cause while everyone else at least gets something on display, Cheria gets little to nothing, to the point that as I'm typing it out, I'm struggling to remember what she even went through other than "she's bitter towards Asbel, her uber-crush, due to the events in the prologue, but they reconciled and made up so it's all good". I also don't like how they made her the One Joke Pony for most of the skits, usually involving either the crush or being the straight-edge caretaker of the group, and while they're not bad, even being hilarious at points, it unfortunately emphasizes my feelings that she's rather boilerplate in terms of depth and personality since again, the others at least get more to jump off of for jokes and banters. Fine character, but could've been handled way better.

Thankfully though, she's the only one I felt any sort of friction towards, cause the rest are good to great. I like how Malik ended up as the Cool Uncle archetype, having his own set of baggage that parallels and bridges in the themes of the game, so that he can set the others in the right path, while also making sure to join in on the fun when the time calls for it. Hubert, essentially being a mix of this Dril tweet and doing the INTJ stares, also has some really good bits in development as well, learning to be not a hardass all the time and relax, as well as opening up his feelings when it's necessary. Pascal... is probably my favorite. I genuinely thought I wasn't gonna like her at all and say she's a comic relief that's used badly and in uncomfortable manners, and while I don't at all like her whole shtick with Sophie, not only does it rarely appear, not only did Namco Tales Studio make sure it doesn't cause constant tonal whiplash within the story or skits, but she also has Other Jokes available! Unironically quirky in both the literal definition of the word, as well as the Internet's newly shaped derogatory meaning, she operates in her own world while still end up being a good contributor and mechanical source to the dynamic. That just leaves Sophie, Richard, and Asbel, who're the focal trio of the game's story. With Sophie being a mystery to unravel, she treads the line of being someone completely new and alien to the prospects of humanity and understanding their place in the world, while also not being infantized to a rather obnoxious degree, being an inverse of Richard who has experienced those things, but usually in a way that demoralized him and caused him to develop distrust with anyone he isn't fully aware of. Typically a lot of the story revelations revolves around these two, and a majority of them feel earned without coming across as too eyebrow-raising or hackish. Asbel's naivety and Just Wanting To Do Right is pretty much the throughline for this ordeal, and while this does cause him to land into hot waters and forcing to learn how to get a better handle of not only himself, but the reality and cruxes that await him, he at least still holds true to what he believes in. Again, didn't really expect to like him as much as I do, and while I don't think he'll be at the top of my favorite Tales protag list when I get more into the series, I am willing to say he's one of the better leads during this generation of RPG games.

Now, FINALLY, is the gameplay side of things, starting off with the combat. While I VERY much wish they didn't have the training wheels on so rigidly, I will say that once they fully let you go, it becomes a great toolbox to go through. How it works is that you have CC, or Chain Capacity, available that determines your actions, be it from regular attacks with the X button, categorized as Attack Artes, or special moves with the Circle button, categorized as Burst Artes. These CCs have a set minimum and maximum amount available, increasing with each new weapon bought or made with dualizing - this game's equivalent to alchemy, which is also a way to create crystals you equip that can buff you up in any sort of way, including increasing the min or max CC. Getting these CCs in combat involves utilizing dodges, combo mixtures, and blocking up to the point of obtaining a red aura. It sounds complicated, but once you get a fair number of battles in, it becomes easier and easier to wrap around. My general tip is to practice out how dodges and guarding works, as well as to swap out Titles - the way in which you not only get stat increases, but also unlock these Artes to begin with - when needed, usually after getting the 3rd-5th rank, it'll be the difference maker in surviving the later battles. I started out on the Normal difficulty, then bumped it up to Moderate, and it really got me to appreciate how the mechanics all work together. This was the first, and so far only, Tales game where I wanted to try out every character possible instead of sticking with just the main character, simply because the way they handled was that good to me. I might suck shit at Cheria due to being a physical fighter while she's a support-oriented spellcaster, but seeing her spells work in action still invigorated me to try out how she works and what I could do to synergize with party comps.

Two other aspects of the gameplay, are the Eleth Mixer and Eleth Burst/Break. The former is general use, allowing you to make things outside of battle when walking around, or activating dishes you made beforehand via cooking when conditions are met (say, a KOed party member or having a status ailment as some examples), the capacity and overall slots being upgradeable the more you use it in various ways. The simplest way I can describe the latter is that it's a "Go ham" mode, giving you unlimited Arte usage and not being susceptible to being stunned while active, as well as the ability to do this game's version of a character's special move, Mystic Artes, which is dependent on the current level it's on. As you can imagine, this is something the enemy also has access to, as well as the fact it doesn't make you wholly invincible while active so managing yourself and party when it activates for them, and making sure to back off when the risk is getting back up, is a high necessity in coming out on top of battles. To reiterate, this is something you start to get a good grasp on once you're playing and getting a hold of what's going on.

As far as problems with gameplay goes... I guess the dungeons could've been a little better. They're very adequate, but since these typically aren't the best parts of an RPG, I guess them being adequate is at least fine enough. Upgrading the Eleth Mixer is weird though, it takes an abnormally long time for both the capacity and especially the slots to ever actually increase, which can feel limiting to a degree. A couple of stinkers in the boss department, a similar (yet in fairness, nowhere near as egregious) problem to KH2 where a majority of it can just button mash your way to victory if you aren't on a higher difficulty mode that actually has you THINK shit, yet can also be thrown into the opposite end where battles end up getting rather repetitive and monotonous by late game due to the abundance of them, even when using the Holy Bottle which decreases the spawns a fair bit. All that said, I must reiterate the combat itself is loads of fun, and if nothing else, I recommend playing the game just for this aspect alone.

I did a majority of side activities in Graces F thanks to a GameFAQs guide I used on the side, and while granted some of it was uhhhh dumb, it was at least a rather relaxing experience to go through. It reminded me that sometimes, it really is good to just play an RPG, or any game in general, that's simply... good. I like going through a masterpiece kino essential 10/10 media as much as others, but sometimes you just want to kick back, relax, have a fun time, maybe get a little annoyed, and cool off from a hectic period, and if you ask me? Graces F does a satisfying job in fulfilling that role. Like I said, this was the first Tales game I ever finished, and all things considered, it was a nice stake to make in regards to getting into the franchise finally.

Tales of Graces F proves that you dont need a necessarily great story to be a great game.
The story is chessy and kinda nonsensical in many areas, however the character chemistry, gameplay and music completely make it up.

It's truly is a game made with fun and passion that many modern JRPGs lack.
Hopefully this get released for modern consoles/PC as more people should experience this wonderful gem of a JRPG.