Well I finally beat Tales of Xillia for the Playstation 3. It took me over 40 hours and some mindless grinding, but I did it. The worst part is, I missed some quest and did not defeat the weapon monsters during my adventure. I definitely will have to do that on my second playthrough in the future. I also need to finish collecting all the skits and defeating all the monsters too. There really was and still is a lot to do in this game.
I really enjoyed the combat in this game. I can't say the battle system is as complex as former Tales of games, but it was still a lot of fun. I have always enjoyed the real-time fighting in these games, and this installment did not disappoint me at all. You still have the ability to run around and pummel your enemies with the added benefit of linking with other characters to add new strategies like linked artes. That's one thing I did really enjoy, the linked artes. Basically, when you link up with another character and fill up a bar in the overlimit meter, you can both perform a single arte together. It's pretty cool and effective, especially when you exploit an enemies weakness with it. If I had one qualm with the overall battles, it was the enemies weaknesses. The majority of them seemed to be weak to wind. If I wanted a quick victory, all I really had to do was link Jude and Millia and use linked wind artes. Besides that one thing, I thought the battles were fun...even if most of them weren't challenging like past Tales of games.
I am going to make this short on the graphics. I know it's one big flaw this games has, but I did not find them to be terrible. It's apparent the game has aged--it came out in 2011 in Japan--, but the harping on something that's not so bad is stupid. I honestly thought the overall graphics were fine. It didn't hurt the gameplay one bit and that's what really matters. For a game that came out two years, they still work fine. Not the best pictures, but again, doesn't hurt the overall game.
For the most part, I enjoyed the story despite feeling like it was dumbed down like Graces f. It was your typical save the world with the added twist of it not being against evil. That's right, for once, it was not fighting against evil but against beliefs. I felt like the morale of the story is that one person's justice isn't the same as another, but that does not mean you should stop fighting for what you believe is the lesser of evils. The end kind of ticked me off though. I felt like it was rushed. That really killed the game for me. Still, a good stereotypical rpg story.
The music in Tales of game is always stellar and this was no different. I enjoyed all of it. The voice acting for the English translation wasn't terrible either. I actually enjoyed it. I thought Rowen's voice was perfect for him. I think people expect too much out of voice acting or are too stiff on excepting that English voice acting can be done just as fantastic as the Japanese audio.
I think the overall score for this game would be an 8/10. It wasn't my favorite Tales of game, but it still was fun and I still enjoyed it. There were a lot of things that needed to be worked on, but it was still worth the money and a good game to pick up and play.
Score: 8/10
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