Dark Enforcer

There was a reasonably lengthy period of time where I was dividing my time between playing Tales of Innocence and Tales of Vesperia depending on whether I was at home or at my co-op partner's house. I don't intend to repeat this mistake in the future and in fact I'm playing through Tales of Graces now and absolutely do not intend to play Xillia with my co-op partner. (We've found something else to play, but I'll go over that some other time.) Innocence and Vesperia have similar but subtly different control schemes, which was enough to cause a lot of frustration and incorrect button presses. Even so, I spent a significantly longer period of time playing Tales of Vesperia--and it's undoubtedly the superior game of the two.

I like Tales of Vesperia for the same reason that I enjoy most Tales titles. It's all about the combat system. I played Judith for the majority of the game's running time and I never felt like I fully grasped how to do her complex aerial combos correctly. The fact that the combat had that kind of depth is really refreshing, although I think I would have preferred if it had been a bit faster paced. The contrast between it and Tales of Innocence is like night and day. Whenever I played Vesperia after playing Innocence it felt like my character was weighted down by some unseen force. Characters take their time swinging their weapons and performing their combos, giving enemies ample time to interrupt these rather deliberate movements. This does sometimes add to the difficulty, but not in a particularly satisfying way. Even so, the variety of moves and combos that the characters can perform is quite impressive and satisfying to experiment with.

I also enjoyed the characters for the most part, although I'm not certain including a dog as a playable character was the best choice. I think I might have liked him better if he was more of a normal dog that was infused with magic somehow--but was fiercely loyal to his master. This particular dog holds a pipe and a knife in his teeth simultaneously and makes barking noises a real dog would most likely never make. Yuri himself (the protagonist) is interesting, but it's debatable that the game ever really deals with some of the actions he takes throughout. Suffice to say he make some questionable moral calls and just kind of shrugs it off. He's saving the world, so I guess it doesn't really matter.

Estelle is the archetypical female JRPG healer, cheerful and naive. She does have a few paladin tropes going on as well, what with her sword and shield, but she's generally relegated to hurling healing spells in the back line. Karol is the boisterous young boy with a desire for adventure. Interestingly, he serves as the group's tank, wielding giant hammers and swords in combat. Rita is the young mage, whose fiery temper often gets the better of her. Karol is the dirty old man who makes inappropriate comments about 15-year-old Rita and Judith, the scantily clad dragon knight with very little personality of her own except for her distinctive nasally voice--which may just as well have more to do with the personality of the voice actress delivering her lines.

Although the characters of Tales of Vesperia adhere to some pretty clear tropes, I couldn't bring myself to dislike them--except perhaps for Judith, whose personality never really resonated with me. The plot itself is nothing special, however, and in many cases is quite disjointed. It's never really explained well along the way what such things as "aer krene," "blastia cores," and "bodhi blastias" are, but I was able to infer through context over a long period of time. Of course, they're still not very well explained or all that interesting in the end, so I smiled and nodded and continued to defeat all of the foes in my way. That's really the reason I was playing. Of course, the banter between the characters was often a nice bonus.