Tales of Zestiria is Out Now!!!! Impressions and thoughts?

Man that CE was too expensive i would have loved to get it too!

did you get a movie disk with the CE? how is it? any chance you know if the movie will be sold separately on PSN store?

@finalstar2007: have you played tales of xillia, free roaming is meant to be a way to escape attacks, reach your target faster NOT to adjust camera. In some hectic situations, you can even see yourself and when when yoy try to free roam our way out and just cannot as you get surrounded. The idea of having a fight where exactly you encounter enemies is so stupid and probably this is why camera is shit. I played both versions, I cannot see a difference. Combat is not as fun as I was expecting, seems unrefined imo. Pretty sad for that, my 2nd disappointment in a month, I cannot get a break.

The movie is just the story up to where Sorey and Mikleo leave their village.

Hi guys, I am 20hr into the game, my doubts are confirmed, game is not good. Camera, battle system and just the lack of any resemblance to Xillia makes me not wanna continue it.

I think it's too slow paced, control gets ripped away from me more than I'd like. It seems that I play for a minute before there's more dialog, makes the game extremely slow going, I'm now skipping through the games dialog as I cant be bothered anymore.

Most PS4 games are these days ...

nice try

Only one thing is really pissing me off about this game right now, and that's how equipment fusion and stat checking is handled. The GUI is awful, it's so bad! You need to be able to monitor on your person what skills are being effected by your equipment and it's such a chore to have to try on some gear, then hop back into your own equipment menu just to check what slots are being effected.

The best way I've found to handle it is to keep a separate window open of the skills and their descriptions.

That and I think it's a really strange design choice that leveling increases your stats directly based on what bonus's and equipment you are currently wearing. If you're not careful on the higher difficulties you can really **** yourself and it's not explained well to the player at all, I only just found out through some random monolith.

Yeah this. Playing the game on 'moderate' myself, and manual input and the menus are clusterfuck city. The armor and weapon buffs and stats, along with that symbol system is confusing to understand, at least early on. And once again the difficulty spikes are terrible and imbalanced as all hell, but then it wouldn't be a Tales game otherwise.

Other than that I'm enjoying this game much more than both Xillia's. I like the characters enough, and the graphics don't bother me since it's still the best looking Tales game to date. The story is kinda dumb but that's just par for the course.

I will get it when it goes down in price

This so much.

Been hyped for this for a while, looking forwards to playing it at some point - its great to read some of the people on here enjoying it though (its promising!)

Really surprised you are enjoying this more than xillia .... care to state what was wrong with xillia?

I loved Tales of Vesperia and Tales of Destiny II (ps1). I thought Xillia was okay and faded for me a bit down the road but overall still enjoyable. Tales of Symphony was pretty good. I hated Abyss. Never played Tales of Xillia 2.

Think I'll like this? The reviews are really all over the place, moreso than most Tales games.

Free Alisha Side Story

So it's just unions? damn I have everyone with +20 besides my fire, earth and wind seraph.

I guess I'm far from screwing myself then, sorey is my highest at 28, but I started to get wrecked after I went through the cavern system and ran into ogre's. I kind of just spammed all my herbs onto the shepherd out of convenience since he's my stronger character it feels.

Playing on Moderate. I wish I would of been more caring with placing those free normins, I didn't know it was really just a one time thing and put them on all kinds of gear in my inventory just so I could collect.

@shewganja: why you mad tho?

Nothing... I enjoyed them as well, but not as much as this one, at least early on. That might change, but right now I'd put Zestiria at number 4, Abyss at 3, Symphonia at 2 and Vesperia at 1.

Off topic but:

there are like 50 Tales of games and only like 3 are genuinely good.

• Phantasia [the PS1 version in particular]
• Symphonia [GC]
• Vesperia [X360]

The remake of Destiny on PS2 and Rebirth are pretty decent too but for some reason they never came to the west but all the other trash like Legendia, Xillia, Graces and so on did.

Thoughts as of now: Not in the mood to get it. I'll wait for a sale.

I like Tales games, but I don't want to buy too many games. Been doing that a lot lately, and I'm a frugal guy usually.

Not that expensive for 80hrs+ you will get out of it compared to many other 7-8hrs games for $60

Alright, so I started this, played about 40 minutes of it (would have played more, but apparently I can't exit the first dungeon because it hasn't been installed yet). Some quickies:

• Game looks gorgeous. I had forgotten how pretty Tales games can get.
• The music is very annoying
• Jesus Christ, there are like 5000 different systems that the game threw all at me, all at once, and it spent an excruciating amount of time trying to explain how all of them work, and still did it badly
• The battle system is... okay? I mean, it's a bit button mashey right now, I imagine it gets better once the nuances the game just spent so much time drilling into my head come into play
• The voice acting is terrible
• The in engine cutscenes are awkwardly animated
• The storytelling is shit

All in all, right now, yeah, it's a Tales game, all right. I imagine I will feel a little better about it with time, at the very least, I seem to like it more than I did Graces, Hearts, or Xillia.

Apparently it is an exceptionally well done port.

@charizard1605:

• The music is very annoying

Agreed, the music is extremely repetitive and generic. There are one or two good tracks in it though.. Just wait until you get to the fire trial dungeon, it's like you're playing a completely different game all of a sudden.

• Jesus Christ, there are like 5000 different systems that the game threw all at me, all at once, and it spent an excruciating amount of time trying to explain how all of them work, and still did it badly

If you're only 40 minutes into the game then be prepared for the game to throw even more shit at you.. The game expects you to remember an insane amount of gameplay mechanics that is taught to you only through these monolith stones. I'm 50 hours in and I've honestly forgotten most of it. I'm armatizing and button mashing my way through most of this game on intense difficulty. For a game that has such a simple battle system, it's actually pretty indepth. I'm glad I'm not the only one that bought this up because the game was making me feel stupid for not grasping all this information that it's trying to feed me.

• The voice acting is terrible

It's not so much the voice acting for me, It's the script writing. The characters just constantly spewing these unfunny jokes at you and just general awkwardness. It's just pure cringe all the way.

Really surprised by how few of you enjoyed Xillia. It was amazing compared to that pile of shit that is called Zestiria... I have seen it the first time I saw a battle footage and because I liked Xillia so much, I thought I should give this one a chance. I shouldn't have done it.

Especially Lailah. Goddamn Lailah and her weirdness.

You guys forgot the super zoomed in camera if you're fighting a Hellion near a wall.

I'm gonna repost this gain:
Free Alisha Side Story DLC

I've played around 2 hours so far, and "exceptional" seems way too strong a descriptor. It does still have a 30fps lock, as well as ugly pop-in even on far draw distance and limited AA selection (only 3 grades of the Vaseline simulator that is FXAA to choose from, really?).

That said, it does certainly seem to be a solid port at least; Bamco actually spent some time and money on this version. Really happy to have borderless windowed mode, a surprising amount of PC-only games don't even have that.

If i remember correctly, the Developer said that the 30fps lock couldn't be helped because it's somehow tied to the gameplay.

My fav Tales since Vesperia.

@lostrib:

I'm aware, and it's actually believable considering this game's origins (designed as a PS3 exclusive). Still doesn't make it a good thing and part of an "exceptionally well done" port.

Just started playing a little bit ago.

I can say the port is much better than shoddy ports like how FFXIII was at release.

But I wish they added more graphical features on PC.

I had to force HBAO in the game which made it much more demanding compared to if it was properly implemented into the game.

Getting rid of jagged edges while not bluring the image heavily was hard to do as well.

Here is an early screenshot I took.

@lostrib: Game logic is tied to the framerate.

I bought the ps4 collectors edition. I have a buddy who is huge into RPGs that lives a few hours north and he's moving back on november 1st. I told him i'm waiting until he gets back to open it up and play it. So I'm looking forward to it, and reserving this post for my impressions.

I might have to try this when it goes on sale

So I like Zestiria- at its worst it is inoffensive, at its best, it has flashes of the brilliance that made me fall in love with Symphonia and Vesperia.

@charizard1605:

Gotta agree so far on the inoffensiveness none of the cast so far (11 hrs in) seem to be particularly annoying. I thought I'd hate Sorey judging by his appearance and looking like a generic sword wielding JRPG protagonist, but he really is just a loveable dork.

The game is a disappointment and worst than Xillia.Still not overall world map and they kept the annoying FF inspired linear map layout with connecting sections.I hate that level design and it takes away the feel of exploration.They have no quest tracker either and their are basically no side quests or I just can't track them.I am not pleased with this game at all and it feels so outdated even for a last generation game.

Since this thread is still up I just wanted to say... Zestiria looks so ass I don't even want it for free.

They need to bring back some of those interesting elements from Phantasia like time travel and Symphonia's parallel worlds and make them great again.

I haven't played a Tales game since Tales of Phantasia, which was a cool game back then.

I just can't get interested in the others though.

It is easily the worst in the franchise and I am including the mediocre Tales of Legendia.You are not missing nothing.

I agree with the bold and they need to bring back the world design of Abyss as well as airplane travel and using sea ships which I enjoyed.I just remembered Namco blocked the share button which is stupid,but this horribly looking and poorly designed clunky game is not worth taking screenshots of of.

Can not agree more guys, The combat however is where the game fails the most.

I am lv 31-32 now and i must say the fuse system/cat nomads is very boring and seems to be very timeconsuming if you want do that. Finding new gear doesnt feel that fun because it means you need spend time puzzle gear with right skills you want use. I liked Tales of graces much more.

Damn, I bought this like two weeks ago and haven't even downloaded it. Still need to finish Shadow of Mordor and DLC chapters of REvelations 2(I always end up playing raid mode :P).

I don't know, the cast of characters and storyline just don't do it for me from what I watched from the youtube videos. I'll pass, but I am looking foward to Tales of Berseria though.