Yeah I'm kinda quoting old posts but was pretty sure I had gotten far enough today to open them (and I was right) and I wanna say things so.....
So 2 spoiler tags down, like.....10 or something to go
btw, since that basically tells you what part of the game I'm at now, roughly how far am I now?
And since I've now spent a fair bit of time with the game I guess I'll post some of my thoughts about it.....
Guess the first thing I'll say is that I do like the new artes and battle system for the most part. It's a little weird looking at first, especially if you've played other Tales games, but once you get used to it it's actually pretty good, with the little arte triangle and the whole directionalty thing with martial artes. Also thank Arceus that they made it simple again to charge up energy for and unleash mystic artes, the way it was in Xillia 1 was ********. I also like how SC replaces the TP of past games, and so you don't need Orange Gels to be able to keep using your artes since you can just guard and other stuff to get SC back. Being able to switch around your seraphs in the middle of battle is pretty nice too, as is armatization, though it's annoying how your party is sorta restricted based on the number of humans you have (which hasn't been a problem for the majority of the game so far but it's annoying as hell when it does happen). There's also no one where I'm like "I don't ever wanna play you really" (like Regal in Symphonia or Karol in Vesperia) which is good since you have to shift your party around a bit sometimes. Though I wish one of the cast was a dedicated healer archetype, but oh well. Battle camera is complete ass but everyone knows that and I almost can't believe that they released the game with it like that. I suppose you could call the majority of the battles "mindless", but that's kinda true of the other Tales games too.
The skill and equipment systems though.....really not diggin' it. It's actually not the worst skill and equipment systems I've ever had to deal with (Xenosaga 2 gets that honor), but I'm ~30 hours in and I still don't understand how the **** it works, even after the games tries to explain it to you via monoliths and skits. It seems needlessly convoluted to me. Though really that's not the truly bad part about it, it's more how it seems that the game seems to think that everyone
should get it (drop rates don't help either) and that occasionally causes battle issues. The new artes system is an example of changing something up for the better, the skill+equipment system is not imo. You want to make something easy to learn but difficult to master, not the other way around Namco.
Music is pretty good overall, but basically standard Tales fare so there's nothing completely outstanding either, except for the crucible battle music and the music for the 4 trail temples (
this one is sexy as ****).
And then the story and characters. They certainly aren't bad; no really cringe worthy lines so far and it does make you laugh and stuff sometimes (but goddamn why does Lailah have to be into (bad) puns, I have to deal with bad puns enough already with Kieran and Ben), but it's not really anything to write home about either. If it's your first JRPG or even your first Tales game I don't think you'd be awfully disappointed at all. It's just that, if you're like me or most of the people in this thread, if it's not your first JRPG or Tales game.....it kinda leaves something to be desired too. After playing a bunch of JRPGs and 4 other Tales games I kinda want them to come up with a story and cast that'll blow me away really, and I doubt I'm the only one who feels that way. I have the same issue with Pokemon really; after 6 generations and 15+ years of the series, I sort of have this high expectation/want that is never really met despite the games always being very solid anyway. The story also suffers a bit from the sequence of events not always flowing together nicely and it often (so far anyway) likes to not give any story relevant info for long periods of time and when it does drop hints they're either extremely obvious (there's been several times when the cast understands something and I'm like "no ****ing **** guys") if not just outright say it
or just leaves you being like "c'mon I can't figure it out just tell me already =( " (though it may just be that I'm not terribly good at figuring out stuff sometimes). And while I do still have a decent chunk of the game to go I really doubt that what's left of the story is really going to be amazeballs or anything. Also Sorey is such a typical shonen protagonist it hurts.
Lailah is my favorite character to play as (and my sister has a penchant for to playing as
Meebo Mikleo), but honestly my favorite character as a character is Edna; she's such a snarky little **** and I love it.
so yeah
tl;dr: Zesteria isn't a bad game and does some good things/things that are an improvement over past games, but also has some significant flaws that make me not love it either. Though I daresay that I think I may like it more than Xillia 1.
