Roma
1 review liked by Roma
Tales of the Abyss
2011
Let me set the stage: you’re me, it’s, like, mid-2012. The only 3DS games you have are Kid Icarus Uprising and Fire Emblem: Awakening because you got the 3DS early because you thought the next Pokémon game after ‘HeartGold and SoulSilver Versions’ was gonna be on the new console. It wasn’t, and you should’ve learned back then there would never be any use trying to predict what the next Pokémon game would be. You’re also into anime, and your interest in JRPGs is skyrocketing, especially after said ‘Fire Emblem’ game and you’re looking for your next fix. Enter Tales of the Abyss. It’s a port of a PS2 game but you don’t know that. It’s part of a hugely successful series but it’s only hugely successful in Japan and only one game comes out in the west about twice a decade. You also don’t know that. You buy it pre-owned from GameStop because that’s how you buy every fucking game ever. But you knew that. This game would activate something in your brain that would never turn off, but it’s also something that wouldn’t click for a while, too.
I have a bit of a soft spot for this one because it was what got me into the ‘Tales’ series in the first place. This series would soon become monumental for me, both as an enjoyer of games and a writer of stories, as some of my biggest original fiction projects are very plainly inspired by some of the stories that make up the titular tales. However, I did get this game in a time where I was very bad at games. Especially JRPGs, I was undisciplined in properly leveling and growing characters, and really impatient about discovering where to even go. It wouldn’t be until years later, while struggling with Tales of Vesperia: Definitive Edition, that I would finally rewire my brain in a way that would allow me to conquer any RPG I set my mind to. Back in the day, after getting stuck on one of the fairly early bosses in this game, I discovered that this game has a full anime adaptation. “Oh, well, I’m playing this game only for its story, so…” I’ve watched that anime a few times, and still regard its opening and ending songs as top brass. I have a real soft spot for this one.
Though, I haven’t experienced Tales of the Abyss in either game or anime form for quite a while. After beating Tales of Berseria earlier this year, I was really into the groove, and wanted to not only try new installments in this series that intrigued me, but also finally roll the credits on a couple of a others that sat on the shelf for a long time. After getting back into ‘Abyss’ and meeting all of the characters once again, I absolutely fell back in love.
Before I get into anything else, let’s talk about how weird it is that this is on the 3DS. It wouldn’t be the last PS2 game to get a 3DS port but in a time where Nintendo was putting only their flagship N64 games onto this little engine that could, it’s kind of wild that Namco Bandai would spring ahead a generation and put this game on this console in 2011. I’ve often regarded the 3DS as a bad piece of hardware in my reviews, because it is! Some of its best titles run like dog-shit-ass and this game is no different. It utilizes the touch screen extremely well (every JRPG should have a second screen with the world map on it, lol), and being able to set abilities to the touch screen in battles is also a very good idea! It’s a good port because it utilizes its new home well, but there were more than a couple moments of slow-down, textures acting oddly, etc. Battles run smoothly, and only when intense artes are constantly being cast during late game bosses does it ever get rickety. During cutscenes and story moments, there are only some moments of text boxes appearing in the wrong areas every now and then.
At the end of the day, they are just minor technical flaws that most don’t account for in their rating of a video game, and I only do because I like to think about all of the factors that make a version of a game perfect. In this medium where games are constantly updated, ported, remade, and remastered, I often find that the technical aspects of every version of a game are pretty important to consider. If a new version of this game comes out (extremely possible after ‘Vesperia’ and ‘Symphonia’ recently got the treatment), I’d buy it in an instant (and even a new console if I needed to).
However, while this 3DS port is touchy, technically, this game’s design is hit after hit. Combat is really fun in this game. After Tales of Berseria’s absolutely lightning-smooth combat blew me away, I was still excited to go back to something simpler, and I did end up appreciating it a lot. Having simple neutral moves streamlines the combat without making it feel any less intense, and while I can really appreciate the fully-customizable move strings in ‘Berseria’, this game’s combat had a real easy rhythm that made it always feel satisfying within its own bounds. Leveling felt really well-plotted and balanced, and I never encountered an area with oddly-high monsters or a boss that felt unfair or impossible. Some great scenario-plotting by the designers here, really.
A big improvement from other titles is the dungeon design, which was a huge weak point in ‘Berseria’ in particular. While some dungeons had very middlinh puzzles that just were not tantalizing, ‘Tales’ dungeons never really felt like they were about the puzzles, and a lot of the times they feel almost like a formality. Because then you have dungeons in this game like the Absorption Gate, which at one point during it splits your party into three groups, having you switch between them to let each group progress through the dungeon, testing to see if you’ve been splitting your play-time between different characters up until this point (I did! For the first time in this series). It really felt well in-tune of other aspects of the series’ overall design ideas and it was a real high point for me, gameplay-wise.
Something I will say was, coming fresh off a different ‘Tales’ playthrough, I attempted this game’s Hard Mode, thinking myself up to the challenge. Unfortunately it was absolutely miserable. It not only makes battles difficult but it also affects how much gold and experience you collect with each fight, so you’ll be grinding more just to buy more items to get through the tougher battles. Absolutely struggled with it, and once I switched to Normal I was having a fun time, finally. Less of a Hard Mode or more of a ‘Not Fun’ Mode, in my opinion and I cannot imagine a fan of this game finding it an enjoyable challenge in the slightest.
One of the best thing this game does, though, is respect the player’s time. You know those moments in RPG games where they’re like “ah, shit we gotta go back to this location we’ve been before!” and they make you walk back through all that square footage of game to where the characters want to go? Well, this game just puts you where it wants you to be sometimes. I know. There were multiple times where a string of story events would take you back and forth between familiar towns and the game’s scenario just has a really good sense what to breeze over. Sometimes it worried me, especially when it gives you those “do you want to just go back now?” prompts. I usually decline those in games in order to grind along the way, but I would just let the game streamline things for me and still I never fell behind, level-wise. Just gives you the juicy morsels, so this isn’t anywhere near becoming those walking simulators that 3D RPGs risk becoming during similar moments. Tales of the Abyss’ world is small, with about only a dozen cities and towns that make up the entire planet, and you’ll go to each town about a dozen times or more, and before (and even after) they introduce fast travel, the game will very often transport you themselves and it was such a breath of fresh air, let me tell you.
The story picks up fast and thanks to what I’ve mentioned so far, it very rarely slows down. I found myself giving long play sessions to this title because I was just constantly engaged in the story and never bored of the gameplay. A story that really stands out, starring Luke fon Fabre, the son of a duke with only twelve years worth of memories, devoted to his sword teacher, Vandesdelca Grants (cool ass fucking name). Luke fawns over Van so much and it’s the crux of the entite protagonist/antagonist relationship, and while the game picks up fast, I wish we did get a little more prologue where we really see how Van grooms Luke to eventually obey him when the time would come. Luke, still, is an insanely good protagonist. A unique one, too, because while most anime protagonists are scruffy, talented, chosen ones, Luke is literally a huge brat, insufferable and unsympathetic for hours of game time, and is quite literally the opposite of a chosen one.
I just find it really ballsy and worthwhile to make your main character a gullible, pathetic moron, and then also make him have a panic attack when he kills someone for the first time. A moment that the game does not breeze over, because something this game handles very well is the weight of death and violence. Besides all the guilt that we watch Luke bear, I’ve never seen a fantasy game (outside of the actual war sims like Fire Emblem (though, even then, only the best Fire Emblem titles do this correctly)) handle and translate the violence of war like this one. There’s a certain fully-animated cutscene that depicts just a battle between two countries that involves zero characters that we know, but it feels so real, and the game makes you witness all the violence that the humans of this world inflict on each other in a gutteral fight for survival and for country. Eventually, every character has a heavy weight they have to carry, usually revolving around a death (or countless deaths, plural) that they were somewhat responsible for.
The growth that Luke goes through, and the bonds that he forms with people who didn’t believe in him at all upon interacting with him for the first time, is worth it enough for me. Couple that with an amazing story and a battle system that is in depth, but not overbearing in the slightest, and you have one of the best JRPGs I’ve ever played. One that conquers a hardware that holds it back slightly. This is easily one of the best games on this system and I will definitely be trying the PS2 version to see how it differs, and if there ends up being enough quality-of-life changes in this port to make up for its slight technical stutters. Though, despite it all, this is one of my greatests.
I have a bit of a soft spot for this one because it was what got me into the ‘Tales’ series in the first place. This series would soon become monumental for me, both as an enjoyer of games and a writer of stories, as some of my biggest original fiction projects are very plainly inspired by some of the stories that make up the titular tales. However, I did get this game in a time where I was very bad at games. Especially JRPGs, I was undisciplined in properly leveling and growing characters, and really impatient about discovering where to even go. It wouldn’t be until years later, while struggling with Tales of Vesperia: Definitive Edition, that I would finally rewire my brain in a way that would allow me to conquer any RPG I set my mind to. Back in the day, after getting stuck on one of the fairly early bosses in this game, I discovered that this game has a full anime adaptation. “Oh, well, I’m playing this game only for its story, so…” I’ve watched that anime a few times, and still regard its opening and ending songs as top brass. I have a real soft spot for this one.
Though, I haven’t experienced Tales of the Abyss in either game or anime form for quite a while. After beating Tales of Berseria earlier this year, I was really into the groove, and wanted to not only try new installments in this series that intrigued me, but also finally roll the credits on a couple of a others that sat on the shelf for a long time. After getting back into ‘Abyss’ and meeting all of the characters once again, I absolutely fell back in love.
Before I get into anything else, let’s talk about how weird it is that this is on the 3DS. It wouldn’t be the last PS2 game to get a 3DS port but in a time where Nintendo was putting only their flagship N64 games onto this little engine that could, it’s kind of wild that Namco Bandai would spring ahead a generation and put this game on this console in 2011. I’ve often regarded the 3DS as a bad piece of hardware in my reviews, because it is! Some of its best titles run like dog-shit-ass and this game is no different. It utilizes the touch screen extremely well (every JRPG should have a second screen with the world map on it, lol), and being able to set abilities to the touch screen in battles is also a very good idea! It’s a good port because it utilizes its new home well, but there were more than a couple moments of slow-down, textures acting oddly, etc. Battles run smoothly, and only when intense artes are constantly being cast during late game bosses does it ever get rickety. During cutscenes and story moments, there are only some moments of text boxes appearing in the wrong areas every now and then.
At the end of the day, they are just minor technical flaws that most don’t account for in their rating of a video game, and I only do because I like to think about all of the factors that make a version of a game perfect. In this medium where games are constantly updated, ported, remade, and remastered, I often find that the technical aspects of every version of a game are pretty important to consider. If a new version of this game comes out (extremely possible after ‘Vesperia’ and ‘Symphonia’ recently got the treatment), I’d buy it in an instant (and even a new console if I needed to).
However, while this 3DS port is touchy, technically, this game’s design is hit after hit. Combat is really fun in this game. After Tales of Berseria’s absolutely lightning-smooth combat blew me away, I was still excited to go back to something simpler, and I did end up appreciating it a lot. Having simple neutral moves streamlines the combat without making it feel any less intense, and while I can really appreciate the fully-customizable move strings in ‘Berseria’, this game’s combat had a real easy rhythm that made it always feel satisfying within its own bounds. Leveling felt really well-plotted and balanced, and I never encountered an area with oddly-high monsters or a boss that felt unfair or impossible. Some great scenario-plotting by the designers here, really.
A big improvement from other titles is the dungeon design, which was a huge weak point in ‘Berseria’ in particular. While some dungeons had very middlinh puzzles that just were not tantalizing, ‘Tales’ dungeons never really felt like they were about the puzzles, and a lot of the times they feel almost like a formality. Because then you have dungeons in this game like the Absorption Gate, which at one point during it splits your party into three groups, having you switch between them to let each group progress through the dungeon, testing to see if you’ve been splitting your play-time between different characters up until this point (I did! For the first time in this series). It really felt well in-tune of other aspects of the series’ overall design ideas and it was a real high point for me, gameplay-wise.
Something I will say was, coming fresh off a different ‘Tales’ playthrough, I attempted this game’s Hard Mode, thinking myself up to the challenge. Unfortunately it was absolutely miserable. It not only makes battles difficult but it also affects how much gold and experience you collect with each fight, so you’ll be grinding more just to buy more items to get through the tougher battles. Absolutely struggled with it, and once I switched to Normal I was having a fun time, finally. Less of a Hard Mode or more of a ‘Not Fun’ Mode, in my opinion and I cannot imagine a fan of this game finding it an enjoyable challenge in the slightest.
One of the best thing this game does, though, is respect the player’s time. You know those moments in RPG games where they’re like “ah, shit we gotta go back to this location we’ve been before!” and they make you walk back through all that square footage of game to where the characters want to go? Well, this game just puts you where it wants you to be sometimes. I know. There were multiple times where a string of story events would take you back and forth between familiar towns and the game’s scenario just has a really good sense what to breeze over. Sometimes it worried me, especially when it gives you those “do you want to just go back now?” prompts. I usually decline those in games in order to grind along the way, but I would just let the game streamline things for me and still I never fell behind, level-wise. Just gives you the juicy morsels, so this isn’t anywhere near becoming those walking simulators that 3D RPGs risk becoming during similar moments. Tales of the Abyss’ world is small, with about only a dozen cities and towns that make up the entire planet, and you’ll go to each town about a dozen times or more, and before (and even after) they introduce fast travel, the game will very often transport you themselves and it was such a breath of fresh air, let me tell you.
The story picks up fast and thanks to what I’ve mentioned so far, it very rarely slows down. I found myself giving long play sessions to this title because I was just constantly engaged in the story and never bored of the gameplay. A story that really stands out, starring Luke fon Fabre, the son of a duke with only twelve years worth of memories, devoted to his sword teacher, Vandesdelca Grants (cool ass fucking name). Luke fawns over Van so much and it’s the crux of the entite protagonist/antagonist relationship, and while the game picks up fast, I wish we did get a little more prologue where we really see how Van grooms Luke to eventually obey him when the time would come. Luke, still, is an insanely good protagonist. A unique one, too, because while most anime protagonists are scruffy, talented, chosen ones, Luke is literally a huge brat, insufferable and unsympathetic for hours of game time, and is quite literally the opposite of a chosen one.
I just find it really ballsy and worthwhile to make your main character a gullible, pathetic moron, and then also make him have a panic attack when he kills someone for the first time. A moment that the game does not breeze over, because something this game handles very well is the weight of death and violence. Besides all the guilt that we watch Luke bear, I’ve never seen a fantasy game (outside of the actual war sims like Fire Emblem (though, even then, only the best Fire Emblem titles do this correctly)) handle and translate the violence of war like this one. There’s a certain fully-animated cutscene that depicts just a battle between two countries that involves zero characters that we know, but it feels so real, and the game makes you witness all the violence that the humans of this world inflict on each other in a gutteral fight for survival and for country. Eventually, every character has a heavy weight they have to carry, usually revolving around a death (or countless deaths, plural) that they were somewhat responsible for.
The growth that Luke goes through, and the bonds that he forms with people who didn’t believe in him at all upon interacting with him for the first time, is worth it enough for me. Couple that with an amazing story and a battle system that is in depth, but not overbearing in the slightest, and you have one of the best JRPGs I’ve ever played. One that conquers a hardware that holds it back slightly. This is easily one of the best games on this system and I will definitely be trying the PS2 version to see how it differs, and if there ends up being enough quality-of-life changes in this port to make up for its slight technical stutters. Though, despite it all, this is one of my greatests.