Tales of Vesperia Review (PC - Definitive Edition)

[@HighLevelReviews]

A few notes as usual: 1.) I want to add to my bit about skits and make sure that people understand how much I adored them individually - it's a cool stylized bit of small-scale storytelling and really establishes the idea of a group of friends traveling a complicated world with a long history and just talking and joking with each other. I am just primarily disappointed by the placement of many of them (right after long sequenced events and multiple cutscenes and usually 2-3 in a row as you're leaving a town and usually as the player is probably attempting to start some grinding). 2.) Yuri deserves all of the love he gets. He's an excellent protagonist and truly shows the possibilities of a character deeply troubled by systemic injustices but also unafraid of complicating the common jrpg protagonist narrative by acting on these frustrations, further snarling up the often black-and-white morality of many jrpgs. I kind of wish much of the late-game had been shaped around this conflict rather than what I got. 3.) I love Vesperia's fighting system and I hope other Tales of games don't stray too far from it. I'd like to revisit the series and hope they'll be at least similar to the frenetic madness but mercifully controlled action Vesperia held. 4.) On to Lunar: Silver Star Story Complete! 5.) I have a discord! Come join us! Discord: discord.gg/tES65UT

[@thequincy_]

Excellent review. It is always enjoyable to watch reviews of games I have played. You do a great job at capturing the Tales of Vesperia experience. (Everything except the skits, I enjoy the skits in every Tales entry. A few can be misplaced or even out right ridiculously out of place, but nonetheless are enjoyable.)

[@DrStephenStrange]

I'm new to "Tales of" games. So, thank you for this level headed and detailed review without any annoying hype or obnoxious "humor". Well balanced as well. Very helpful. I think I might give Vesperia a try. Thanks!

[@thebradcolbow]

The good news is that many of the other games will totally live up to your expectations. The two that are on the PS4 (Tales of Zestiria and Tales of Berseria) are both excellent!

[@Whoareyoupeople900]

I didn't like like Tales of Zestiria. The story was confusing and a lot of the characters were annoying. I'm excited to play Tales of Berseria though. I'm also upset they won't be bringing Tales of Arise on the switch!

[@AngelX712]

Really good review I agree with most of your points on the game. If you plan on continuing the Tales Series I would recommend Berseria, the two PS3 Xillia Games & Tales of The Abyss.

[@supdude982]

Youre seriously a great reviewer, im very glad I found your channel, it feels so professional yet personal Do you plan to do more reviews of recent games? If im not mistaken this is the first post ps2 era game review youve done, id love to hear your opinions of series like persona, fire emblem etc...

[@HighLevelReviews]

Thank you! And yes, I do plan on hitting up more recent games.

[@jamesa.646]

Great review! Personally I did not like Vesperia as much as I wish I did. In the beginning I loved the strong themes of justice and the interesting dichotomy between Yuri's and Flynn's ideals. But I absolutely hated, how the game threw that theme and interesting dynamic out the window, to start talking about global warming or whatever. It came out of nowhere and I the game started to become a massive drag to play. Honestly that was the biggest reason why I stopped playing vesperia.

[@HighLevelReviews]

Agreed. The last act was completely unearned and unsatisfying.

[@Spike294]

fantastic video, adding you to the mental binge list

[@DigitalStarry]

I started replaying this a third time actually just yesterday. While Vesperia has its flaws, weak third act, jarring dub differences between the 360 and DE content (I elected to play with JP voices for this reason), requiring a guide to not miss all the side content, and its battle system taking a while to truly open up.. I still consider it one of my favorite games period. Yuri’s an amazing protagonist and one of my favorite video game characters period. Everything from his attitude to his character design to his memorable scenes is amazing. The cel shading really fits the art style amazingly well. The battle system is a delight. There’s oodles and oodles of content from dozens and dozens of sidequests to having three post game dungeons. Yuri and Flynns dynamic is a delight to watch. And there’s so so many costumes. I just love playing dress up and Vesperia gives you so many options. It also helps that on NG+, the endgame level of combat is accessible almost immediately, with the only restriction having to wait for Overlimit to unlock. It must be stated that Skill SP 1 is a huge game changer and effectively makes the battle system feel fresh again as you can equip all the skills you want without being restricted past the first few hours. It with Unknown difficulty (which makes it so enemies can easily kill you back) is recommended to try. But also the game has some lovable nostalgic jank to it that kind of feels charming, a reminder of games I played in my youth. The fixed camera angles, having a explorable world map where characters are represented as giants, the cutscene motions feeling just a little off, etc. Its flawed but very good to me.

[@ericlogiudice4228]

JUICY!

[@HerbieChuckNorris]

This was super well written, and the video flowed really well. Was not expecting so, instant subscribe! Would you consider covering Games outside of the JRPG genre?

[@HighLevelReviews]

Thank you! Really appreciate that. There are a ton of games outside of the genre I'd love to review but I kind of want to keep this channel focused on jrpgs.

[@HerbieChuckNorris]

@@HighLevelReviews Cool, I've been meaning to explore JRPG's more, since it's a genre I barely touch. Your channel's gonna come in handy as I navigate my way through these Games - just picked up Tales of Vesperia off the back of this review, looking forward to checking out more of your stuff!

[@Yurimeitzen]

How many years have i waited for this moment, if you loved vesperia i highly recommend you playing tales of the abyss. And sadly after tales of xillia/graces, every game changed entirely from what it was until vesperia.

[@leolightfellow]

I agree with this review 100%. :)

[@BawesomeBurf]

This is a great RPG, but I do agree that it has some issues. The biggest one for me is the mandatory participation of every character in every cutscene. It's like the dev team had a box next to each character's name during every bit of dialogue. Gotta make sure that box gets checked off! This is fine if the party members have something meaningful to say, but it would often just equate to redundant conversations. Then after finishing the cutscene, you walk 3 feet, only to have another mandatory participation cutscene begin. What was the point of giving me control? After finishing off the second scene, then a skit pops up. C'mon already, just let me play the darn game! Outside of my gripes with the sometimes exhausting dialogue and the fact that the game is about 12 hours too long, I really did enjoy my time with Vesperia. Yuri is such a unique protagonist, and I can't think of any other RPGs with a similar main character. Combat was also really fun (I used Yuri most of the time as well). Had a blast stringing together ridiculous combos. I do disagree about the soundtrack however. While not bad, I found it to be one of Sakuraba's more underwhelming OSTs. Off the top of my head, the only track I can remember is the intro song. And I just played this game late last year. Anyways, great review as always!

[@CynicalGamingBlogTerry309]

IMO the most overrated Tales game. The characters were either boring or annoyed me, the story was horribly paced. The dialogue is also pretty obnoxious too since characters never stop talking about pointless stuff. The combat isn't bad, I mean it's the same combat system as Symphonia and Abyss but there are some things that did bother me like the shared overlimit gauge and the bosses using mystic artes that send your entire party to 1 hp. I never felt any sense of urgency in the plot, even when moments that were supposed to be urgent came up because I just didn't care about the characters or the world. I don't think Vesperia is a bad game though, it's definitely playable, I just think that Symphonia and Abyss has a far more interesting story and better characters too.

[@FatalMasamune]

If anyone is curious I created a HLR subreddit: www.reddit.com/r/HighLevelReviews/ Just another way to help spread this channel

[@Sergey__Kazak]

Hmmm, interesting. I've only played Tales of Legendia on PS2, which was excellent, and Tales of Zesteria, which was awful. I remember playing through Legendia multiple times - it's an awesome game. Or at least that's how it felt to me 15 years ago. On the other hand Zesteria was so bad I dropped it and I thought I wouldn't go back to Tales of ... . But maybe I will after all

[@megamike15]

the skits never bothered me in vesperia. now berseria is another story now that when they became to long.