This review contains spoilers
Combat here is probably some of my favorite from the series. You have a launcher built into your moveset from the get go and it doesnt have unnecessary mechanics. Its simple and straight forward. The exploration is horrible and itll make you do guild quests to grind which are awful. Theres 2 maps but the most useful one is never avaliable and you cant zoom or open the map to look at other areas. You can only look at the area around where you are which makes it worthless. So most areas are huge empty areas that are nauseating to navigate, filled with random encounters. The story is also pretty bad. Imagine if hope from FF13 was the main character but he is 3x as annoying and whiny, simps over ladies and gets upset because he is the nice guy. The rest of the cast exist to propel the main characters development further but don't have much going on besides that. The whole plot point pushing the game from the start is that your guy is the reincarnation of a strong guy and your friends are too but you all dont have all your memories. So you just walk around to random ass areas, stumbling into things that advance the plot. This all being said, damn does this combat feel pretty nice.
a beautiful game with one of the most synergy shared between all the characters, one and another. most likely one of the best character balancing in the entire series. they never, or barely acted cold/awkward to eachother which ties in amazingly with the past life theme of the game. to sum it up they're a big, comfy family.
Ruca and Iria are both endearing to watch the development of, from the beginning to the end. the contrast of Ruca's cowardlyness and Iria's mean girl act improves through the game, as she is supposed to make him man up. Iria is the heroine to give Ruca the courage he needs to face his fears and the events of their past lifes, which then Ruca gives that courage back to her as well. they're both kids, learning life's lessons and their own origins, and it's very emotional.
gameplay-wise, it's a 3D-LMBS game with literally none of the baggage 3D-LMBS games normally have, it's fun, snappy and doesn't get old so you know it's good.
Innocence, while short, has stellar storytelling, symbolism, characters, gameplay and skits, and I'd recommend it as a first entry to the tales series.
Ruca and Iria are both endearing to watch the development of, from the beginning to the end. the contrast of Ruca's cowardlyness and Iria's mean girl act improves through the game, as she is supposed to make him man up. Iria is the heroine to give Ruca the courage he needs to face his fears and the events of their past lifes, which then Ruca gives that courage back to her as well. they're both kids, learning life's lessons and their own origins, and it's very emotional.
gameplay-wise, it's a 3D-LMBS game with literally none of the baggage 3D-LMBS games normally have, it's fun, snappy and doesn't get old so you know it's good.
Innocence, while short, has stellar storytelling, symbolism, characters, gameplay and skits, and I'd recommend it as a first entry to the tales series.
Better than Tempest but tbf the bar was in hell for that game
So it turned out that Tales of the Tempest was such a colossal trainwreck of a game that Namco gave the next DS game to Alfa System for development, a company that made some of the Tales spin-offs. This actually made me pretty giddy to give Innocence a chance. And after booting it up, I was still engaged! The game seemed really ambitious for a DS game, the main duo had kind of a funny dynamic going on, the combat seemed to build off Abyss well with sick air combos, and the story had kind of a unique concept for a Tales game. Playing through the first few hours, I honestly thought I was going to love this game, but overtime it just started to get worse and worse.
As for the story, it's solid but not really anything fantastic. I love the lore and how you get to see it pieced together throughout the game, but a lot of stuff in the present wasn't really anything special. Unlike Abyss or Xillia they dont really get you invested in the warring nations at all, the beginning has a bit too much exposition, and a large chunk of the game is going to different towns hoping to dig up important memories of the past, and I don't know I just thought that was kinda lame. Overall story I think could've been better, it's pretty close to greatness but I think it needed a bit more fine tuning, or who knows maybe I just couldn't get a feel for it because of my other feelings on the game. It kept my attention though, so that's nice.
As for the characters, they're pretty solid this time around. I wouldn't wanna die for any of them, but they have funny interactions and have a lot of strong memorable scenes. I think for Ruca himself I would have liked to see a bit more apparent development, but that's really my only big complaint. Pretty nice cast.
Anyway, this is where things get dirty, the gameplay. I'll start by saying the combat its self, in isolation, is pretty awesome, it might even be better than Abyss and Symphonia which this game was clearly basing its self after. That's pretty impressive for a DS game. The characters are fun to play as, you get good on ground and aerial options, it's fast-paced, there's some alright defensive options, every character has spells which I thought was a nice touch, it's solid stuff all around. The game translates the combat from the console games nearly flawlessly and even does it better in some ways. The highlight for me is the awakening meter, at first I thought this was a really lame overlimit that I would never activate in normal battles, but instead it charges up more than you think it would and you can turn the game into a mini combo contest where you can change characters at will trying to keep your pace up, it's really fun. I think if you took the core combat in isolation, it would easily be the best part of the game.
Okay now for the things that I don't like about the gameplay. As for combat, oh my god these enemies are annoying! First off, a large majority of them as the game goes on get waaaayyy too much super armor. I'd have times where I'd bust out a full three or four attack two arte combo and they would just sit there and then counter me. Enemey health can get comically large too which makes this even better, and they'll make sure to block all your attacks when they can too. Blocking attacks instead of dodging them for some reason also builds up your awakening meter, and with multihit attacks it fills up really quickly, which means that now for some reason tanking enemy attacks while blocking is more effective than just dodging them. You can always run from battles at least, but oh wait one or two hits will reset your escape time completely. Since the game is fair too, enemies get spells as well and for some god forsaken reason spells like lightning can't just be free runned out of most of the time, you'll need a perfect forward step to dodge spells like that so I hope you'll enjoy not escaping. Finally got a good combo going? Well for some reason the enemies have a rage mechanic so that when you finish your combo they'll just never ever lose their super armor and the stupid AI won't stop trying to attack them anyway. You won't have a wide variety of artes either, since they come in three levels instead of two and you can only equip four artes. This makes combos very repetitive a lot of the time, kind of downplays the feature of all your characters having both normal artes and spells, and makes more complex characters like Ange take a lot more menu time to play. Now I know some of these issues make it sound like I was underleveled, and you know what, you're probably right.
This game has a guild mechanic where you can go into these randomized dungeons and do the same two or three missions over and over again to very very slowly level up your guild level to get harder missions and better loot. You can also only do one mission at a time for some reason. This may sound kinda boring, and it is, but thankfully it's "optional". I say "optional" because I'm pretty sure the game just expects you to do it. I think that's the reason enemies were owning me so hard and also why a lot of the time I was way too short on money to buy equipment. Problem is, I didn't use it for a while due to it being silly optional content, so when enemies caught up to me, I had to go grind on mindless enemies in the guild and get two experience and two gald each battle for at least one or two hours. Even after that initial grind though, it was still taking forever to get any progress in the guild to make grinding not take forever. Later on I just gave up on trying to do guild quests and it really bit me in the butt in later dungeons especially. It sucks to stomach something so lame, but if you play this game please make sure to keep up with the guild so encounters are way less annoying. It's kind of like a pick your poison unfortunately, do boring guild quests or get annoyed by enemies, your choice.
Once you finally get out of the guild, enemies are less frustrating sure, but the dungeons are the real threat. The dungeons in this game are the worst in the series by a country mile, very few past the beginning are even okay. They're just giant mazes with the worst field encounters ever. I know random encounters get a lot of crap, but with the constant enemy spawns which half the time are on top of you and the linear hallways basically making it impossible to dodge battles, I think that this somehow proved an idea I never thought possible, that field encounters could be done poorly too. There's also this game's styles mechanic, where you can modify your characters' stats to be a certain type and learn skills for that type of fighter along the way. Defensive warrior in my experience is by far the best since it makes enemies way less likely to kill you due to your high health and defense and pretty good other stats, but this is a good concept at least if you ignore how effective that one is. It is however, hurt by the fact that most skills you learn on styles are kind of useless. You also have to change your stats just to get these skills you might want, so it's pretty annoying to have to turn characters into weak spellcasters for a handful of battles just so you can get a TP boost skill. It's not awful but this is easily one of the weakest skill systems I've seen in a Tales game.
Overall I think this game's just "alright", around the same tier as Phantasia and Destiny for me. While it's way less boring than those games and has a much better story and characters, the frustrating dungeons and enemy encounters really bring this game down for me, even if it has a solid story and great cast. Really though, I only recommend it to Tales fans, this game has been outdone multiple times by its own series. Probably by its remake too, when are we getting that overseas Namco?
As for the story, it's solid but not really anything fantastic. I love the lore and how you get to see it pieced together throughout the game, but a lot of stuff in the present wasn't really anything special. Unlike Abyss or Xillia they dont really get you invested in the warring nations at all, the beginning has a bit too much exposition, and a large chunk of the game is going to different towns hoping to dig up important memories of the past, and I don't know I just thought that was kinda lame. Overall story I think could've been better, it's pretty close to greatness but I think it needed a bit more fine tuning, or who knows maybe I just couldn't get a feel for it because of my other feelings on the game. It kept my attention though, so that's nice.
As for the characters, they're pretty solid this time around. I wouldn't wanna die for any of them, but they have funny interactions and have a lot of strong memorable scenes. I think for Ruca himself I would have liked to see a bit more apparent development, but that's really my only big complaint. Pretty nice cast.
Anyway, this is where things get dirty, the gameplay. I'll start by saying the combat its self, in isolation, is pretty awesome, it might even be better than Abyss and Symphonia which this game was clearly basing its self after. That's pretty impressive for a DS game. The characters are fun to play as, you get good on ground and aerial options, it's fast-paced, there's some alright defensive options, every character has spells which I thought was a nice touch, it's solid stuff all around. The game translates the combat from the console games nearly flawlessly and even does it better in some ways. The highlight for me is the awakening meter, at first I thought this was a really lame overlimit that I would never activate in normal battles, but instead it charges up more than you think it would and you can turn the game into a mini combo contest where you can change characters at will trying to keep your pace up, it's really fun. I think if you took the core combat in isolation, it would easily be the best part of the game.
Okay now for the things that I don't like about the gameplay. As for combat, oh my god these enemies are annoying! First off, a large majority of them as the game goes on get waaaayyy too much super armor. I'd have times where I'd bust out a full three or four attack two arte combo and they would just sit there and then counter me. Enemey health can get comically large too which makes this even better, and they'll make sure to block all your attacks when they can too. Blocking attacks instead of dodging them for some reason also builds up your awakening meter, and with multihit attacks it fills up really quickly, which means that now for some reason tanking enemy attacks while blocking is more effective than just dodging them. You can always run from battles at least, but oh wait one or two hits will reset your escape time completely. Since the game is fair too, enemies get spells as well and for some god forsaken reason spells like lightning can't just be free runned out of most of the time, you'll need a perfect forward step to dodge spells like that so I hope you'll enjoy not escaping. Finally got a good combo going? Well for some reason the enemies have a rage mechanic so that when you finish your combo they'll just never ever lose their super armor and the stupid AI won't stop trying to attack them anyway. You won't have a wide variety of artes either, since they come in three levels instead of two and you can only equip four artes. This makes combos very repetitive a lot of the time, kind of downplays the feature of all your characters having both normal artes and spells, and makes more complex characters like Ange take a lot more menu time to play. Now I know some of these issues make it sound like I was underleveled, and you know what, you're probably right.
This game has a guild mechanic where you can go into these randomized dungeons and do the same two or three missions over and over again to very very slowly level up your guild level to get harder missions and better loot. You can also only do one mission at a time for some reason. This may sound kinda boring, and it is, but thankfully it's "optional". I say "optional" because I'm pretty sure the game just expects you to do it. I think that's the reason enemies were owning me so hard and also why a lot of the time I was way too short on money to buy equipment. Problem is, I didn't use it for a while due to it being silly optional content, so when enemies caught up to me, I had to go grind on mindless enemies in the guild and get two experience and two gald each battle for at least one or two hours. Even after that initial grind though, it was still taking forever to get any progress in the guild to make grinding not take forever. Later on I just gave up on trying to do guild quests and it really bit me in the butt in later dungeons especially. It sucks to stomach something so lame, but if you play this game please make sure to keep up with the guild so encounters are way less annoying. It's kind of like a pick your poison unfortunately, do boring guild quests or get annoyed by enemies, your choice.
Once you finally get out of the guild, enemies are less frustrating sure, but the dungeons are the real threat. The dungeons in this game are the worst in the series by a country mile, very few past the beginning are even okay. They're just giant mazes with the worst field encounters ever. I know random encounters get a lot of crap, but with the constant enemy spawns which half the time are on top of you and the linear hallways basically making it impossible to dodge battles, I think that this somehow proved an idea I never thought possible, that field encounters could be done poorly too. There's also this game's styles mechanic, where you can modify your characters' stats to be a certain type and learn skills for that type of fighter along the way. Defensive warrior in my experience is by far the best since it makes enemies way less likely to kill you due to your high health and defense and pretty good other stats, but this is a good concept at least if you ignore how effective that one is. It is however, hurt by the fact that most skills you learn on styles are kind of useless. You also have to change your stats just to get these skills you might want, so it's pretty annoying to have to turn characters into weak spellcasters for a handful of battles just so you can get a TP boost skill. It's not awful but this is easily one of the weakest skill systems I've seen in a Tales game.
Overall I think this game's just "alright", around the same tier as Phantasia and Destiny for me. While it's way less boring than those games and has a much better story and characters, the frustrating dungeons and enemy encounters really bring this game down for me, even if it has a solid story and great cast. Really though, I only recommend it to Tales fans, this game has been outdone multiple times by its own series. Probably by its remake too, when are we getting that overseas Namco?
This is probably around my 3rd or 4th favorite tales, which probably sounds crazy considering I've played almost all of them, even the untranslated ones.
I wouldn't be able to say Innocence is my favorite in terms of gameplay- not as a finished package at least. However, the one thing Innocence wins over literally any other game in the franchise? It feels fucking good to control. It's fast, it's snappy, no dumb turn speed and no need to rely on semi-manual toggle or doing a goddamn C analog maneouver to pivot.
In terms of the overall plot ts alright. Hits that tales standard, but not much higher than that. What it does win in however, is world building. In totality, this is probably the most fleshed out tales game so far. Every area has a culture, an economy, relationship between countries, faiths, etc. It just feels very lived in for such a small game.
In terms of the overall cast, this is where I'd probably put it above the tales average. The dynamic among the party is unreasonably good, and there are no combination of two characters that can't play off of or interact with each other. For that reason, Innocence includes skits for every combination of 2 and 3 characters, which is absolutely bonkers.
I wouldn't be able to say Innocence is my favorite in terms of gameplay- not as a finished package at least. However, the one thing Innocence wins over literally any other game in the franchise? It feels fucking good to control. It's fast, it's snappy, no dumb turn speed and no need to rely on semi-manual toggle or doing a goddamn C analog maneouver to pivot.
In terms of the overall plot ts alright. Hits that tales standard, but not much higher than that. What it does win in however, is world building. In totality, this is probably the most fleshed out tales game so far. Every area has a culture, an economy, relationship between countries, faiths, etc. It just feels very lived in for such a small game.
In terms of the overall cast, this is where I'd probably put it above the tales average. The dynamic among the party is unreasonably good, and there are no combination of two characters that can't play off of or interact with each other. For that reason, Innocence includes skits for every combination of 2 and 3 characters, which is absolutely bonkers.
Tales of Meh
it's an okey-ish game but the controls suck
Weirdly feels like the team was forced to write a traditional Tales-y plot when all they wanted to do was think about their cool demon OCs hitting each other with swords. It is not half as entertaining as that sounds.