the first 2/3 of the story were really good and i loved the juxtaposition between yuri and flynn's views on justice and how it was incorporated to the plot and i loved how the party members were able to incorporate their own stories that really fit into the overall narrative but then they talked abt like the child of the moon and phaeroh and enteliquai and spirits or what not and i was like what? mumbo jumbo? i think they might have felt like those early themes were resolved when they killed alexei off but i think they could've really gotten somewhere and they could've even incorporated duke destroying the world if they wanted to (tho i think alexei should have been the final boss or smth) but o well... i'll probably be thinking abt yuri/flynn forever... 8/10 for the first 2/3.... 7/10 overall?

i'm gonna come out swinging and say that i hate patty and her addition makes the game worse but the rest of the changes in the definitive edition are pretty good i think. It's still a shame that the game's narrative threads aren't more focused and that it just kind of drops the most interesting plot without resolving it two thirds through in favor of a much more generic one, but there's a reason this is one of the most fondly remembered Tales games and it's because everything else surrounding those issues is so strong that they don't seem so bad taken in aggregate. I love all these knuckleheads dude

Great game, loved almost everything, the story had some issues, but i really liked Act 3
Never expected to love the gameplay, felt so satisfying, every character felt distinct playstyle-wise, and the fatal strikes and OLs made it more fun, really liked breaking the game with Rita lol
The cast oh man, so good, still love Berseria more but Vespy's is great, cuz there was a lot of interactions between them and it showed off how fleshed out the characters were, the skits were quite hilarious too. Even the antagonists were cool, Yeager especially.
The music is my favorite in the series, Sakuraba went full power with this one, has a lot of tracks that differed from his usual stuff which was a change of pace, and didn't expect them on a Tales game.
Despite the world's visuals having more of a natural aesthetic contrast to Graces' crystalline , it still managed to look beautiful, some of the dungeons and towns have really good designs which made them memorable, Zaude and Dahngrest to name a few
it's a good game, a jack-of-all-trades Tales game so to speak. prolly my 5th or 4th favorite game in the series, just overhyped a bit too much

A quick anecdote; my first playthrough of the game Catherine was the Full Body edition of the game, with the addition of a third 'atherine, and it all seemed so natural that it seemed hard to believe that it had been any different prior to how it was when I played it. My first play through of Tales of Vesperia was the original 360 release, so no Patty. When I played the Switch release, the scenes with Patty felt jarring and weird. My duder was playing the game and I kept being like, "Patty's inclusion is intrusive and weird!" and he was all, "It's fine, she's fine, you're being weird about it." Hopefully you uh. Get my connection to the Catherine Full Body thing. I'm stoned, it makes sense, don't worry about it. Beyond my weird reaction to Patty, it's still 10/10 one of my all time faves, made even better by being on the Switch and played portably on my commutes to work, its a great time. Play it, you cowards!

Man, I need to play more Tales games. Anyway, this game was a fun ride! I've been wanting to play it for a long time, but it was never on a system I actually owned. I'm glad the Switch keeps getting a million ports of old games.

Anyway, playable cast is great, with only one I don't particularly like, and the gameplay's really fun. It's kind of like playing Super Smash Bros. as a JRPG. Yuri is a pretty unique main character for a JRPG, and it's really fun to see him do his thing. Even the plucky kid Karol is a really great character with a great arc!

I can't really compare it to the original release since I didn't play it, but while I did like Patty, she did feel kind of shoehorned in... on the other hand, it's kind of baffling that Flynn wasn't originally playable. Also as much as I enjoyed the start of the story, it really goes off the rails in the third act. I will just say that you would actually die if you make a drinking game out of every time someone says "Blastia." This is a spoiler-free review so I won't go into it, but man! Also it feels like a lot of setting and character stuff is hidden away in really easy to miss sidequests, which I'm told is a pretty common thing in Tales games, but as someone who's been more interested in trying to complete games without guides these days it's a real bummer to miss so much.

With that said, it's a good enough experience that I would be open to doing a more detailed playthrough with a guide at some point... when I have time. Oh God, there are so many games. Holy crap.

Great cast of characters and I really enjoyed the first half of this game, but the story kinda loses itself in the end. The best story parts of this game are Yuri and Flynn's ideologies crashing, especially as you play as the character who will take the far more extreme measures, but that whole plotline never really get resolves and the big bad at the end is standard jrpg fare. The combat can be fun but like Symphonia eventually I found myself finding a good combo and doing it on repeat until the fight ends, occasionally adding or replace moves in said combo as I level up, and I was def burnt out by the end of the game.

The game is just OK, but really this was all about the characters for me, I truly wish all of them a happy life. In particular I love Yuri and his collected and supportive nature.

The story itself is whatever, it has some interesting themes (playing as the vigilante, climate change) but it predictably throws them out for the big jrpg ending. There were a lot of places and names to remember and I got a little confused near the middle. The party dynamic is really what kept me going.

I like jRPGs for the turn based pace, and this combat wasn't exciting enough to be a fun action game, so overall I wasn't crazy about the combat. It does get better as the game goes on, specifically when your agility gets high. It can be deep if you want it to, but you can also rely on the same combo for the whole game, and use guard/free run in between.

The game has a simple style that aged well, and the remaster is nice. The music is largely nondescript, the only ones that stood out are the intro theme and the Dahngrest music.

Most of the side quests are triggered by sleeping in some particular town or talking to some unmarked person, I wish there was some marking.

Final thoughts - why does everyone clown on Raven as an old man? He looks like he's 25. The credits sequence made me tear up a little even though I was not at all invested in the story. The Yuri/Flynn dynamic was really nice but the resolution felt a little weak.

Thanks for reading ^___^

Gran sorpresa. Un juego de notable para arriba en todos sus apartados. Historia shonen perfectamente hilada que ya querrían muchos mangas. Un diseño artístico y de pjs cargado de variedad y belleza. Bso brillante.

Y donde más destaca es en su elenco de pjs, uno de los más completos que he visto nunca en un jrpg, todos son geniales, en especial el protagonista, Yuri Lowell, que asciende como uno de mis pjs favoritos de la historia. Pero sin olvidar a Patty, Judith, Raven...

Como puntilla, le sacaría la falta de un villano a la altura de otras entregas. El final boss no está mal y tiene sus motivaciones, pero hay varios desaprovechados o faltos de profundidad. Aún así se sitúa como mi Tales of favorito, por delante de Symphonia y Abyss.