Tales of Xillia Review

This generation hasn’t exactly been ideal for fans of  Japanese role playing games. In the last eight years we’ve seen a huge shift in the market from the RPG-laden glory days of the PS2,and sadly only a handful of JRPGS have made it to current gen consoles. Luckily for us, the success of Ni No Kuni means Namco have finally decided to bring Tales of Xillia and its sequel to the west – and only a couple of years after its original release.

The Story in Xillia revolves around a naive teenage medical Student named Jude  who accidentally runs into a deity of the Spirit World ( as you do) and uncovers a horrible plot to destroy the land of Rieze Maxia. So nothing ground breaking there. Interestingly this is one of the few jrpgs where at the start you get a choice of two playable characters. if you don’t feel like playing as the naïve, do –gooder Jude you can play as aforementioned deity the mistress of spirits, who is of course reincarnated in the body of a young, busty blonde. This means that the story will be told from a  slightly different perspective depending on who you choose to play as.

Sadly the story is the weakest in the Tales series so far. There are the usual double crosses and plot twists, and a few genuinely unexpected revelations, but overall the characters just aren’t as likable or as interesting as, say, the cast of Vesperia. The story does pick up dramatically in the last 6 or so hours, but sadly, by then, it’s mostly  too little too late.

Fortunately this is a video game, and the gameplay is the main draw here.

For the uninitiated, the Tales series is famous for ditching the turn based combat system you normally associate with the genre, and  instead  opts for  a more fast paced, fighting game inspired, real time battle system.

In Tales of Xillia the series standard combat system has been enhanced yet again. As well as the well worn  artes and over limits, the game  adds an interesting new ‘linking’feature to the mix. This feature – unsurprisingly – allows you to link with a character in your party, letting your character  benefit from your chosen link partner’s unique ability.

These abilities range from the relatively useful to the downright essential – giving you everything from  auto guarding magic attacks, the ability to  steal items, to even allowing you to break certain enemy’s guards. You quickly learn that certain partners work well against particular enemy types, and switching who you’re linked to on the fly becomes essential for dealing decent damage to bosses later on in the game.

The benefits of linking don’t just end there. While linked you and your chosen partner can rack up huge combos, gaining you a wealth of AC points, which, when used with well timed artes, allows you to pull off a powerful combined attack called a link arte. These link artes deal a lot of damage and are nice to watch… the first 50 times. Luckily combining different artes with different characters creates different link artes – so you can mix it up by swapping  characters on the go, and save yourself the tedium of repeating the same attacks over and over.

Technical RPG jargon aside, the combat system  manages to remain relatively fun and interesting through out, which is pretty impressive for a thirty plus hour game.  This is mainly because of Xillia’s unique and surprisingly deep battle system, and the various subtleties and nuances that learning to master it brings to the overall experience are not insubstantial.

Japanese RPG’s aren’t exactly known for  their striking innovation, with many jrpgs still stubbornly clinging on to game design from the Playstation era. Thankfully, the Tales team have seen sense and made a lot of simple changes to the series’ somewhat archaic game  design in Xillia,  which makes a surprising amount of difference to streamlining the overall experience.

Gone are the wide ranging world maps with vague directions, now there are smaller fields that lead to each new city or area. Before you have painful flashbacks to the linear corridors of FF:XIII, Xillia gives the player much bigger areas to explore. While some may mourn the loss of a world map, I’m more than grateful for anything that solves the ancient Tales problem of frustratingly wandering around a huge overworld until you accidentally stumble upon the next town. You can still take multiple paths and find hidden items between towns, but now you have a handy map of each area, telling you where the different exits are located. There is also a fast travel feature, letting you travel to certain places depending on the story and where you – which is a lifesaver for visiting old towns and completing the huge array of side quests found in Xillia.

In Xillia you are also given the option to ‘expand’  the merchants range of goods by donating materials to them that you have collected on your travels. This leads to each individual shop having its own amount of experience, and the more you level up either the item, weapon, armour, food or accessory vendors, the better stock they have. This is an interesting and unique way of having a shop system, and means that no matter where you are, you can always get good access to high level items – assuming you’ve put in the time to level them up that is. Luckily you seem to accumulate a lot of the required materials as you go, so it’s not a long and drawn out sidequest but it gives you the chance to upgrade what is important to you at your convenience.

Speaking of upgrading with convenience, Tales’ character leveling system seems to have taken a leaf out of FFX’s  revolutionary grid system and one up’d it . Using this grid, or ‘lillum orb’ you can chose exactly what stats you want to advance in each character. Want more strength? Do it. Don’t care about agility? Don’t upgrade it. Crossing enough orbs results in new skills and artes being unlocked for your character, and luckily you can see the progression from the get go, allowing you to carefully  plan each upgrade. This upgrade system works remarkably well, and hopefully this is something Tales of Xillia 2 will expand upon and that other JRPGs can learn from.

While a lot of the strides the team have made towards making the JRPG more of a streamlined and enjoyable experience are genuinely innvovative, the weak story and overly repetitive nature of the game means that it is hard to stay invested and interested in the game for the long haul. For all its faults, Vesperia is a much more enjoyable and varied experience, taking you to more interesting locations – and although Xillia is leaps and bounds ahead in terms of player friendly game design and with its battle system, it seems to be lacking the characters and story to keep you motivated enough to see the adventure through to the end. If you’re looking for a great JRPG, Xillia would be hard to recommend as a must play, but it does have some genuinely great design choices,  making it a  decent and enjoyable – if unremarkable – game in its own right.

 

Pros

• Fun and deceptively deep battle system
• Truly innovative  and player friendly game design for a JRPG
• Highly customisable leveling system gives you lots of options
• Brimming with side quests and optional content

Cons

• Story and characters fall into cliche, aren’t as forward thinking as the game design
• Overly long and the least compelling narrative of a Tales game so far

 

                              RATING: 3.5 out of 5

 

 

Expansive Analysis

With Tales Of Vesperia, Namco chose to release exp packs, gold packs and character costumes, hardly the most exciting of DLC. With Xillia they seem right on track to do the same, with costumes hitting PSN store later this month. While this is all well and good, it seems like providing just the bare minimum of content to an epicly long game like this is wasting a massive opportunity. This is a lengthy adventure, one set in a world that has been filled with lore and countless places to explore – it would be great for them to add in some actual story led content. Sadly, with this game being over two years old, all I can see fans getting is what has already been released.

XP packs and gold packs seem unnecessary in this game – I didn’t see the game over screen until I was around 20 hours in, and saw it again another ten hours later. That was it. Normally the last few boss battles are hair tearingly frustrating in a JRPG but this game is the easiest Tales title to date.

Gold packs make slightly more sense, but even so – after 3/4 of the way through – you will have amassed enough gold to buy all the equipment that you’ll need. You could buy these packs early on and make the game even easier, but where would the fun be in that? Those packs feel a bit too ‘ play to win’ for my liking. Given the fact that this game has spawned several manga and anime series, there is a ton of interesting story led DLC that could potentially be released for Xillia, which could expand upon the story and make the characters more layered and relatable.

An arena based battle mode featuring new unlockable artes and weapons would also be a cool addition, and could give something for the maxxed level die hards to strive towards.

Tales of Xillia ran pretty smoothly throughout my 33 hour playthrough, aside from some occasional slowdown  when transitioning into battles. The game seemed glitch free and seemed to run as well as you’d hope for a game released over two years ago.