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Tales of the Abyss Review (continued)
More User Submitted Tales of the Abyss Reviews
Date: 2008-07-07
What's the story on the story?
After quitting this game in disgust, I later picked up it to become entirely engrossed. What happened?
I started this game off with high hopes, as my first foray into the Tales of series, and found myself dumping the game about a third of the way into it. I'm very sensitive to poor acting, and the voice actors are utterly intolerable in this game. There really is no reason for Saturday morning cartoon-level acting like this. It cheapens the emotion impact of the dialogue and is offensive to players with matured taste in drama and narrative.
As the story progressed, I had no issue with the system or combat engine, it's nothing shockingly new, but I found it solid and enjoyable. The auto feature is fairly nice for money and EXP farming purposes. However, I was extremely disappointed with the main character--he seems intolerable. I also found the written dialogue slightly more than "kiddy fare" and was extremely tempted to buy the import to see if it was any less inane in Japanese than English. I frequently will give a game a break if I find it suffers from shabby translation, but in this case I didn't feel like spending the cash, and set the game aside where it sat on my shelf. I was extremely disappointed after having been so fascinated by the character designs and the game play.
However, I picked it up an honest year later and simply just fell in love. After a while, the character developement speeds along and you end up with a drastically different person on your hands than you started with. The rest of the cast fleshes out equally well and eventually become amusing and endearing. The world may not be as deep or complex as some more infamous RPG titles, but it's a fun ride most of the way through. The dialouge gets a mite less 4th-grade-reading-level, but I would qualify my recommendation by saying it never fully approaches an adult or mature level of sophistication. But for the range it aims at, it's awfully fun. You just have to tough it out for a good half of the way before you realize you've got a little gem on your hands.
Most folks, even RPG nuts, aren't going to want to do that, though.
And for the record, the Japanese spoken dialogue is a little corny, too. I'm playing through in Japanese and enjoying myself immensely. Luke sounds a little too fruity for his own good... go have a listen on YouTube.
Date: 2008-06-16
Poor
This game has poor graphics. The storyline, dialog, and voice acting are all very lame. The music is unremarkable. The gameplay, while fast paced, I found mundane.
This game is a hybrid of sorts between an adventure game with JRPG cliches and a fighting game such as Street Fighter or King of Fighters. The fighting game aspect is really like a poorly made fighting game, though. It features gameplay from both adventure games and fighting games, but excels at neither. Tales of Legendia has this same problem.
Date: 2008-03-16
Amazing!
Honestly I was surprised by this game. I've played Tales of... games in the past, namely the original Phantasia and semi-recent Symphonia, and while I enjoyed them, I wouldn't say they were brilliant.
However Tales of the Abyss amazed me with a good story that wasn't completely obvious from the beginning, brilliant characterization (all the characters were really memorable, even a good majority of the npcs that only have a few speaking roles).
Speaking of, the voice acting is amazing par the course for the Tales of series, and only those who for some reason consider Japanese voice acting to be inherently superior will prefer it to the English localization.
The game is fairly long and gives you reason to play through it many times. Sometimes you must trigger a certain quest to trigger later quests, which by itself might warrant a second playthrough, but there is a bunch of content only available in subsequent playthroughs.
The battle system is very interactive, it's action-based rather than turn based, and with the Free Run ability it feels like you truly have control of the characters in the fight. (Free Run allows you to run anywhere on the screen, not restricted to certain planes of movement).
I'd highly recommend this game to anyone who enjoys RPGs, though to the incredibly conservative RPG player it may not be their cup of tea.
Date: 2008-02-27
Kiddy but fun.
A cutesy little game that was surprisingly well written. Some of the retreading is a bit annoying, as the sidequests will consume enormous amounts of "go this place, watch cutscene, go that place" but the additional information and pathos is its own reward. Where this game also shines, for an action RPG is that is has a really fun battle mechanism.
Date: 2007-12-24
One of finest RPGs I have ever played
I have played many RPGs, from the original Dragon Warrior to FFXII and there are only a handful of games that left their mark. This is the best RPG I have played since Star Ocean: Till the End of Time.
> The graphics are little rugged but the overall bright anime presentation helps you emerge yourself in the world. The personality of each character along with their interactions will keep you entertained and will make you laugh once in while.
> This plays a little faster than SOTET so you can find yourself button mashing. You can assign basic button combos to perform special moves and string them to make powerful attacks. You can use anyone out of your party, so you are not limited to the main character which is primarily a melee fighter.
> The story is fairly rich; having a good vs. evil plot but having enough twists to keep you guessing. The also does a good job in giving each character a solid history and how they intertwine with the others.
> Unlike other games that require you to take several hours building your characters, the majority of the gameplay will be along with the story and almost feels like you are playing a movie. Your whole party gains experience so it is easy to switch party combinations on the fly. The games have multiple sidequests including an ultimate battle and "collect them all" recipes, costumes, etc. You also earn points when you play and get to spend them for a new game (includes keeping your old items & x2 Exp). Promotes replay and may be required for some sidequests.
I have beaten the game once (~80 hours: Spent extra time to reach the extra towns & dungeons); I'm closing it out a second time and plan to run through it again with the guide. The lively story with the interactive gameplay is what really makes this thing a hit.
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