Tales of Mediocrity

Once my co-op partner and I finished Tales of Eternia, I found I wanted to pick up on another Tales game right away. I ordered Tales of Vesperia but it wasn't going to arrive for a few days--so I decided I was going to try Tales of Legendia. I'd heard from a few sources that it wasn't the greatest entry in the series, but I was confident I would enjoy it for the combat system at the very least. Unfortunately, my PS2 is broken and my PS2 emulator had issues running the game. I was disappointed, but still wanted a Tales game to play while Vesperia was on its way. After doing a little research, I discovered that Tales of Innocence, an entry for DS released only in Japan, had been fan translated! I wasn't sure what to expect from a DS Tales title, but I thought it might be worth a try.

My first reaction to Tales of Innocence was mixed. I was uncomfortable with just how squished and small all of the details were. Of course, everything was constrained for the DS screen, but I feel I've played many many titles for the system that did not fill me with that sense of claustrophobia. I was also pretty ambivalent about only being able to field a party of three characters, but Tales of Innocence makes it work in its own way. Switching between characters seems more important than in other Tales titles, primarily because of the Infinite Jam mechanic.

The game's battle system is not unlike other 3D Tales games, but it's decidedly more fast paced than Vesperia. It's very easy to knock opponents into the air and combo them endlessly. Once the Tension Gauge is built up (ostensibly by dealing consistent damage), Infinite Jam can be initiated with a button press. This allows you to start your combo over regardless of what stage you were in your chain. If you perform your combo well, the Tension Gauge will drain slowly. The optimal move is to quickly switch to another character after completing your combo and then go through that character's combo string as well. If performed correctly, it's possible to chain together combos from all three characters and even get in a few hits with the character that initiated Infinite Jam once more. It's a very effective tactic against bosses, but I found myself using it in random encounters quite often.

And let me tell you, Tales of Innocence has a lot of random encounters. Enemies appear on screen as is typical in latter day Tales titles, but they're frequently impossible to avoid considering the fact that the lionshare of dungeons in Innocence are comprised of a series of narrow corridors. The dungeon design seems to alternate between ridiculously linear ala Final Fantasy XIII and positively impenetrable mazes not unlike Etrian Odyssey--except without the assistance of a minimap. Dungeon design is far from Tales of Innocence's strong point and in fact it very nearly forced me to stop playing the game entirely.

Compounding the annoyance of these poorly designed dungeons is the omnipresence of profoundly annoying and difficult to defeat enemies. Many enemies use highly evasive tactics in which they toss out a magic spell and then run away, only to once again hurl a lightning bolt--and for whatever reason, they seem more or less immune to being caught in a combo, so they take far longer than seems necessary to defeat. In many cases, when luck is against you, you'll find yourself in an encounter with multiples of these kind of enemies and find yourself positively outmatched. I found myself dying to random encounters quite often, which is not something that's common in a Tales game. I wouldn't mind it so much if the difficulty seemed balanced in a healthier or more fun way.

Despite all of these flaws, there are things to like about Tales of Innocence. The cast of characters is honestly not too bad. Despite Luca (the protagonist's) meekness, I can't say he ever annoyed me too much. The requisite mascot character Coda (who appears to be a hyper intelligent monkey) is actually pretty funny. The banter between the various party members in skits is also sometimes interesting. Each character has motivations and at least a skeletal backstory--and all are relevant to the plot in some way. I think I'd be more invested in the plot if so many other aspects of the game weren't so frustrating. The fact that each character is a descendant of a godlike race of mythological beings is quite interesting as well. I think this idea had a lot of potential that was wasted on a game with such poor level design and balance. The battle system is quite fun too, but it wears out its welcome after hundreds of random encounters with absurdly annoying enemies. The graphics and spell effects are certainly not too nice to look at either.