I'm sure most of you don't know this because mostly on here I talk about all my xbox 360 gaming, but I'm a big fan of the Tales of Series. I've beat Tales of Sympohnia, Tales of the Abyss, Tales of Destiny 2, and I've played parts of Tales of Phantasia, and Tales of Legendia, and Tales of the World: Radiant Mythologies. With exception of Radiant Mythologies, all of those games are good for the time they were released and some of them are the most enjoyable RPGs I've ever played through. That being the case, I am EXTREMELY excited to hear that a new Tales of game is comming to the 360 and despite it being a Japanese only download, I'm just a big enough fan that I have to try it. Well, I did, I downloaded the Japanese Demo and played through all 6 minutes or so of it, and I hated it. I was so dissapointed by it I had to find someone who would understand the totally sorrow I'm going through so I posted in this forum hoping to find some sympathy. Well, I didn't find any.

Regardless of whether you're a fan of the Tales of Series or not, it should be appearent to anyone playing that Demo, that at the very least it is a crappy demo. There are basically 2 different groups of enemies you can fight and a boss. There is no leveling and you can't even check your equipment. For fans there are some things you can do such as cooking, but that really doesn't make any difference. My personal opinion of the demo was that there were more problems beyond that. The graphics looked like the were ported from a PS2 version, the voice acting sounded like all the characters were talking into tin cans, the music was horrible, and everything (battles, dialog, movement speed) felt slowed down from previous games in the series. Now being a fan, I'm still open to giving the full version of the game a try, but I'm not so much of a fan that I'm blinded to the faults in that short demo.

Of the people in the forum, most of them are in total disbelief that I can say anything bad about the graphics. It makes me wonder if these people actually play any other games. I mean sure these might look a little better than Tales of Sympohnia, but that game was on the gamecube and released about 4 years ago. I'm looking for more than a marginal improvement. The game doesn't look nearly as good as Eternal Sonata which is also Cell Shaded and on the same system. It could be the bland art sty1e or just a lack of proficency developing for the system, but it is still ugly. Argue that this is just one stage of a demo and that it doesn't reflect the finished quality of the game, but don't pretend like my eyes don't work or that I have no perception as to what current day game graphics should look like. That really makes me mad. :evil:

Anway, I seemed to have stumbled upon yeat another group of fanboys and fangirls. I'm sure that some of them legitimatly thought the demo was better than I did, and thats fine. Obviosly these people are all fans, because they're willing to create a japanese live account (silver) just to download this game demo. I would think that not all of them were so diluted to think that the game would be unquestionably without fault, but now I'm not so sure. As for myself, I'm not so optimistic about the game anymore, but being the fan of the series that I am, I know I will at least give the full game its fair shake when it comes out in August. Hopefully the game plays better as a whole.