Game Title: Tales of the Abyss
Platform: Nintendo 3DS
Developer: Namco Tales Studio
Publisher: Namco Bandai
Date of Release: 2011
With the vast majority of Japanese Role Playing Games have been making successful bids with Dragon Quest, Pokemon and a few disappointing attempts from Final Fantasy. One exception to the rule is Namco's Tales franchise which hasn't made much impact on the English fans over the past few years. Now along with the announced Tales of Graces on PS3 Tales of the Abyss originally released on the PlayStation 2 in 2005 with a US release following in 2006 is looking it's trend on Nintendo's new 3DS system using it's new 3D and touch screen capabilities. This will be the first time European gamers will get a chance to experience the enhanced Tales title that was graced back then.
The story in the game follows a inside manor boy named Luke (not to be confused with Luke Skywalker from the Star wars series.) who spends his day inside when an assassin known as Tear tries to kill his master but then interferes causing whats called the 7th Folon to appear and go out of control. Luke himself later becomes involved in many affairs involving the world fallen into war and also the identity of who Luke really is. Tales of the Abyss's story on 3DS will be mostly be the same as the original along with the voice work which might or might not use Japanese voices according to the trailer.
Tales of the Abyss on 3DS will use the same standard format as the PS2 original. You travel from one town to another to stop for story sequences, fighting monsters to earn EXP or Gald to spend on in shops. You'll go to get different items as well as better equipment for your characters and also using a friendly Inn to heal up your characters. Dungeons do their usual in providing you puzzles, monster encounters and a boss encounter for you to face at the end. There's nothing new to see in this version but you'll most likely find side-quests to keep you occupied for a while during the story.
Tales of the Abyss on 3DS uses the battle system that was later used in other Tales games such as Radiant Mythology, Vesperia, Innocence and Dawn of the New World where the new feature added to Tales of the Abyss was the ability to move around freely around the battle arena. You bring 4 characters into battle with character relaying their abilities known as Artes. Artes themselves consist of magical and melee attacks can be chained together to perform huge amount of damage then normal attacks. New to this game at the time was the ability to use Burst Ates which in this game they're called Fonic Artes which are powered up spell attacks which deal lots of damage to enemies with elemental weaknesses. A new feature added is that you can now assign shortcuts to the touch screen so now you perform Artes with a simple press on the touch. The battles may promise to be as impressive as it's future titles and Tales of Symphonia but don't forget this was way before Vesperia when it perfected it.
Looking back at it on PS2 it didn't look impressive on the graphic side in caprason to Tales of Symphonia on Gamecube but on 3DS the graphics are more or less suitable for it. There are some graphic changes to it's logo and maybe a few filters added but there's nothing else much changes made on the production values as of yet.
It had not been released in Europe before and now finally with a confirmed date of 2011 we can perhaps look forward to the one of the few english Tales games that European fans had missed first hand. Could there be any hope for this Abyss to bound through check back soon in months time to find.
Subscribe to my channel on Gamespot, Raptr, DevaintART and Facebook for reviews, images and gameplay videos.
Anthony Hayball (AQWBlaZer91)