my first ever tales of game aside from watching the anime Tales of Zestiria the X.
before the game I wanna talk about the intro opening, its amazing. It is a really cool opening and I watch it every time I open the game and before I close the game. It does spoil quite a few parts of the story mainly the characters that will join your party which is fine and all for me but I assume it won't be for some players.
Story of the game is pretty straight forward, the main thing I liked was the relationships between the characters because the main cast is like a bunch of misfits, each one has a backstory of their own, how the world has treated them, they have tons of faults. At the start all of them were just using each other for their own benefits but as their journey continues each of them discover new stuff about each other, they talk as if they have been friends for years, they all have their own creeds that they live by, even the enemies have their own creeds that you don't know who to support both sides of this game both make sense that you don't know who to side with at times. Well at least that is what I thought when I played the story for the first time.
Characters each of them like I said have their own creeds and beliefs, opinions and stuff, which I absolutely like each of the characters all feel matured in their own way given how old they all actually are, the dynamic between the entire party is fun to see, I really wished there was some sort of anime for this one because seeing them interact with each other is just really fun, for example (a bit of spoilers here) Rokurou and Eizen is an amazing duo one is a demon, the other is a spirit. Both of them are in contrast of each other but they are still buddies with each other and I like how they are kind of like the mentors for Laphicet which is like the only one who's a child in the party and since he's a boy, he's with the bois and he learns a lot from both of them... both the good and that bad parts. There are also times where you would think Rokurou is like just a sword brained idiot at times but he actually mediates a lot of the conflict within the party which is something I didn't expect, The relationship of the girls side is great to see as well especially with how conflicted the party is for being misfits, you got a demon full of hatred, a spirit child who was once used as a tool, a failed demon swordsman, a cursed spirit reaper, a mysterious witch that probably has the most backstory but is the comedy relief of the entire party, and a very upstanding human exorcist. The human exorcist, Eleanor and the main character Velvet are in conflict almost all the time due to their morals and whatnot but they still become very trustful of each other as time goes on and its beautiful to see, Magilou is my favorite character of the bunch she's really funny and her design :) but well her backstory is probably the best one since she's practically the main character but in the most broken version possible from countless betrayals. Even the opposing sides which is the Abbey all each have their own respectable characters each of them have their own motives, and creeds, I can't get myself to hate them for that reason.
The world itself is rather large but its in sections or area zones rather than a huge open world game which I guess is so that older computers can run the game smoothly, I wish they didn't skim on the texture quality though at times it looks really just muddy. I like the areas although the dungeons are often tedious to go through because its just walking for like 5 zones until you get to the very end where the story is shorter than the time I spent getting there well I guess its probably for filler stuff and like just time to make the journey feel more seamless since there are skits in the game that you can play at certain times to get like extra bits of stories that are sometimes really funny.
Combat is alright I guess. Its fun doing combos and all that, I've played a few sword art online games in the past that kind of have the same combat as this one, my problem though as with every other jrpg, is how hard it is to level up characters. I played on Hard difficulty and it was so tedious to level up the characters one by one and it would take upwards to like ten random enemies before I level up, I do like grinding but sometimes grinding can go to a point of too much, not everyone has time to grind. Sometimes I'd spend an all day long in this game just grinding for levels which isn't just fun, thankfully there is an auto battler although its kind of dumb at times so I still have to step up every now and then which isn't fun for how long the grind is.
Music... it feels as though there is like three soundtracks in the entire game aside from the opening and main menu ost, like I hear almost the same soundtrack anywhere I go, that the areas don't feel memorable anymore except for how they look. I got really tired of hearing the same soundtrack everywhere, I wish they made it more so like each area has its own unique soundtrack to at least make each area feel memorable by music in my opinion.
That is all from your humble critic pretender see you all in another game review.
