I think I love this? I was wondering what I would feel at the end of this journey. You have to look back at a couple of nagging issues and ask how much do they deter this?
Lets start with the thing I grew to love but still have to admit has issues… combat. The opening of this game is stiff as hell. You feel limited by all means in terms of execution. Yes this game has you learn things through weapon use, but as opposed to just learning skills like magic etc, you learn things that change how you execute attacks. Think the core combo is too limited, use a weapon that extends your base combo. Want to link your artes to basic attacks, learn the skill for it. Want to learn altered artes? Well learn the skill that you use to pair with your core artes . Want to link artes and altered artes? Theres a skill for that. It’s astonishing how much what you can do in combat evolves and its about tuning execution and links, the game feel drastically evolves, but should you have to deal with the length by which it takes to open up? Does that make up for the enemy jank that shows up in terms of their invincibility and how it can make combat less fluid. Dealing with enemy stagger and your own staggering can make you so frustrated. However when you are able to customize the feel to your style of play, it’s marvelous. It’s crazy that I focused on one character and there are 6 other characters with different touches and focuses to get into. Judith in air options sound so astounding and I still struggled to execute chancels to improve the feel and player expression further. I loved this when it was at its best and think if I had any fighting game skill, I would be in awe further. The feeling of doing a mystic or burste art is really elite gaming.
I also wonder how to feel about the core story here. If you ask me to explain the Adephagos? I couldn’t tell you. If you ask me to explain how aer relates to the adephagos or the Blastia, I might have a few words. Theres a moment in the game where Rita starts setting up the core reason plot and the formula and I just tuned it out. It felt like incredible world building at times, Myorzo is wonderful. Learning the history of the guilds and even why the main villain has beef. But I drifted in and out of it, and I don’t know if I can say plot wise this has anything to chew on.
You know what you can chew on? Characters. This is an elite cast. Yuri Lowell is truly a gaming icon. This is very much a game about how Yuri changes others , rather than how Yuri grows. It’s marvelous to see a JRPG protagonist get their hands dirty in the ways they perceive and engage villains as well as justice. That evolves Karol,Estellise and Flynn. Flynn and Yuri’s dynamic is immaculate. In particular the way that Aurion really starts to wrap the bow on the world, really sets the stage for the emotional beats to be wrapped up with the crew. Seeing Karol and Raven’s arc in the story is just genuinely beautiful. They get sensational emotional beats.
Add on top of this beautiful graphics. Great skits that make you smile and inject the feeling of growth. Some good music (I can’t believe I said that Matoi Sakuraba is very hit or miss for me). Some fun dungeon maneuvering. It leaves me feeling great. Something small is missing to take this adventure over top, but when I think of the ideal JRPG, this is what I will think of. The one thats not trying to be anything outside of the shonen energy and plays the cards straight but smartly straight? This is it.

From the first line of the first verse of Vesperia's incredibly cheesy english-dubbed opening, I felt like I was revisiting a game from my childhood despite knowing for a fact that I wasn't. I think most Tales Of entries of its era share this anemoiac quality to some extent, but Vesperia hits different thanks to its sheer honesty and relative lack of ambition. Above all else, It's a character-driven game. Of course, there's a global conflict in there and a bizarrely sharp (or at least surprisingly so for the genre) bit of commentary including a cop's slow realization that they may, in fact, all be bastards, but playing the game for anything other than the cast is bound to get old fast.

To focus on them, Vesperia resorts to familiarity. Put simply, it's Final Fantasy IX, from its introduction to its structure and the inner workings of its equipment and skills. Squaresoft's is a far more ambitious game, constantly moving between setpieces and elegantly shuffling the party to maintain the tight pacing of a blockbuster, which can make its lower-budget sibling feel awkward in the way it incorporates truncated versions of its core elements, but the tradeoff is usually worth it. Vesperia doesn't need to explain anything to you, so it can focus on what it's good at.

While not pre-rendered, the game relies on fixed camera angles and paths to make the best of each tiny locale. A walk through a town is a nicely designed oner that suggests not just the space but its atmosphere and the characters' place within it. Behind the models, multiplanar matte paintings make for spectacular vistas and small navigational disappointments that are definitely better for the mood than later entries' obviously artificial open spaces. In an exercise in focus and restraint, every slice of Vesperia's world is a memorable little set for the party to exist in.

Also in line with the "less is more" approach, the characters' personalities can be summed up in a sentence each, which is bad news for people who make a hobby of equating "familiar" with "generic", but has the benefit of making them immediately iconic while leaving a lot of space for nuance. They join the party naturally and take little time to fit in. The skits (opt-in sequences that build up character dynamics and are just great fun overall) work their magic in the background and by the time everyone is officially together, you've seen them in enough situations to span a 48-episode SoL anime. It may not make for an instant epic--in fact, the story itself isn't all that important--but it can turn any minor situation involving them into effective drama. I just love the party, really. Watching them grow closer and find excuses to stay together even when they've achieved their individual goals and could legitimately just leave gives me so much joy.

The game's only real problems come from the times its design and structure betray the character focus. There's a lot of side content peppered throughout the world, but most of it is only accessible during the final act, when urgency is at its highest and you're used to not backtracking to find hilarious new dialogue in towns you've already seen. My advice is to periodically check them out if you want that extra bit of texture and character. For the ending, though, I don't have any advice. Once the final battle's over, the game is just kind of done. Most character arcs have gotten some closure by that point, but a lengthy epilogue was so obviously the right choice that I was baffled when the credits just started rolling.

"I enjoyed the characters so much that I wouldn't have minded another 20 hours of skits" is about the most positive complaint I could have, though, and the journey was lovely. Looking back at the game feels like remembering an old trip with friends, and that sort of nostalgic feeling is a reprise of the reason I picked it up in the first place.

Near the end of Act 1, you think: "Aha! Now we're getting into the real story!" This happens three or four times before the end of the game, and none of these plot threads are fully developed. I'd say only two of the party members have full character arcs, and neither of them is Yuri, the alleged protagonist.

Nonetheless, I have hundreds of hours in this game, purely because it's fun to play. Judith is up there for "most joyful player-controlled experience" across the entire Tales series. I had a great time with the secret missions and the many bonus dungeons.

Also, there's a sidequest that involves having your dog pee on every corner of the map. Not sure what to do with that information.

[Ref Played 2023] I'd call this series the McDonalds of JRPGs, a consistent quality and you know what you're getting but it doesn't do anything new
Pros: It's fun, the characters are generally likeable and the underlying plot of a battle to change a corrupt system from inside it or from outside it works well
Cons: The game has an indescribable sterile feeling befitting its series, there's just nothing unique really to set it apart from other JRPGs, it's good at what it is just what it is isn't unusual

The Steam version of the game offers some improvements in graphics and sound. However, the core problems of the game are still there. First and foremost, and in my opinion the most troublesome issue, the game's combat system is very boring and repetitive. Battles don't require much strategy other than simple combos against enemies and the occasional use of special abilities. Also, the battles are very frequent and dodging is almost impossible. This slows down the pace of the game and makes it boring. Secondly, the story and world are interesting. The characters fit the typical JRPG archetype. There's not much to discover. In conclusion, Tales of Vesperia is not a fun game. While the graphics and sounds are nice, the combat system is very weak. It may be a nostalgic experience for those who love the series, but I don't recommend it for newcomers.

Very fun game. The main cast is adorable with yuri, rita and judith standing out the most for me personally. Yuri in particular is a great protagonist to me. The lack of really good villains hurt the story but not by a lot. The world also wasnt one of the best that i experienced but someplaces were truly special like mt temza and the city in the sky. I like all the little side quests and side content packed into the game as well. It helped make the game feel as big as it wanted to. This probably isnt the best tales of game for some(i cant comment on that because this is my first) but this is a really good retro rpg experience. Overall a solid game

How big is your JRPG endurance? For how long can you handle no stakes dialogue? How many weapons can you craft until you lose your mind? How many cooking recipes, how many droplists, how many combos can you fucking endure? You might notice these aren't really negatives, they just might be. But really, how much of it can you endure? Will you get bored?

To say that I didn't have fun would be a lie, i had 78h on steam when I dropped this, and a good portion of those were enjoyable. But there was some point that I realized, what the fuck am I doing? Is this story really worth it? Is the combat good enough to make me play 40 more hours and finish it? Fuck no. I'm really sorry gamers and tales fans (I've been at least one of those), but what a pointless game. And whatever the gaming equivalent for suspension of disbelief is for movies, I had it for this game. I was into it, I opened myself to it, I respected it and tried to engage with every one of its facets, I examined and immersed myself in things, I did my part in trying to make this fun. But there's a limit, that once you cross, you notice that it... wasn't really worth it.

It's not a bad game by any means, it's done reasonably well, and it has it all! But only if, as per my first pharagraph, you got the JRPG endurance for it. If I did, I don't anymore. Maybe if I was a 14 yo kid with a xbox and near infinite free time, this would be great, the jrpg timesink would feel awesome, because it's admittedly done okay, all of the little menus and mechanics you can dive into. But why? So many hours? Forgive me but I must call it pointless again. It's how I felt.

Also, there's a certain breed of older games that are filled with missable quests, some needed for that oh-so-holy character development (read a book anyone?), and this one is so FULL with them, even on a second playthrough, you gotta make gamefaqs play for you. Sincerely, fuck that.

Also, we gotta talk about Yuri. He really is That Bitch, the rumors are true. He's the best part, and almost, ALMOST, makes the story good (you know what I'm talking about) but this mf just gets buried in the JRPG shlock around him, and the story keeps going as a shallow waste. Sorry Yuri.

I know I rambled (what's this site for, right?) but It's a good game. Just check your JRPG endurance™ and good luck with it.

A RPG that feels like its lifted straight from the 5th to 6th gens, faults and all. For a game called “Definitive Edition” the game feels like it's missing just a few QOL fixes to make this game truly great. No autosaves, not autotext, and clunky menus litter this game and it did hamper my experience a bit. The main story and main cast are all great and are the definite highlight. The entire cast feels well-rounded and I was shocked to find myself liking characters like Karol as much as I did. Though one complaint I have with the story is that oftentimes I feel like stuff was happening around me rather than feeling like characters were actively contributing to the plot. Good game but there is just a bit too many gripes I have with it to call it a truly great one.

Also fuck Gattuso