Tales of the Abyss

Tales of the Abyss certainly wasn't a bad game, I've played much worse RPGs. There was just to many things that annoyed me and there just wasn't anything new about this it. There was nothing improved over Tales of Symphonia, and many things, including the story was recycled from Symphonia. I REALLY wanted to like this game, but it was just a big disappointment.

The story was generic, the characters were frustrating. There was just to many skits and scenes, sometimes I just want to go through a dungeon without interuptions, but the dungeons were short and in each new screen of the dungeon was a skit or scene, sometimes 3 skits in a row. This slows the game to a halt. I spent more time going through towns than I did with dungeons.

It just didn't feel like a long game, I visited all the towns but one by the 20 hour mark with half of the dungeons complete. You eventually will have to return to all the towns again, and even revisit some of the dungeons for extended play. This just seems like a false sense of extending the games length. I never backtracked this much before in an RPG.

This was the most linear Tales game I've played so far. They block off every possible path but the ones you need to go, or when you try to go another path a pop up will tell you to turn back. If you get into your ship or plane a scene will force you to stop what you wanted to do and go directly into story. You'll rarely get a chance to actually explore until the end. The characters will hold your hand after each dialog scene and tell you directly where to go at the end of each scene.

There was plenty of sidequests in the game and other little things to collect if you want to greatly lengthen the game. Most sidequests are timed or event based, so you can skip over alot of them on accident. I'm pretty sure its impossible to get all sidequests on a first run through without down right cheating. I missed so much stuff in this game, but not enough to start over again.


----------Battle System----------
Tales of the Abyss is an Action / RPG. There's a total of 7 playable characters, but only 4 can be in play at a time. You control 1 character during battle, while the other 3 are controlled by the computer. The most enemies I've seen on screen was 5. Your characters can equip 1 weapon, hand armor, body armor or accessory. For some reason helmets are listed under accessories, so there's no seperate helmet slot, and you can only equip 1 accessory at a time.

The battle system is roughly the same as Tales of Symphonia, with a couple of added features. The best is "Free Run", which allows you to break away from the linear line battle system and dodge attacks or flank an enemy. Another new feature is the "Field of Fonons" which places a colored circle on the ground, and if your character performs the correct Arte over the circle, then the Arte will change into an upgraded more powerful move.

Like other Tales games your characters will learn Artes, these can be magic based attacks or melee attacks. You can set shortcuts with your controlled character, or command them through a menu with the non-controlled characters. Each character has a meter on their screen telling them when their "Overlimit" will apear. If you perform a powerful enough Arte, you can follow that up with a huge powerful move called a Mystic Arte free of charge.

After each battle you gain experience, bonus expierence, gald, items, TP and Grade. The Grade is a percentage you get for how good the battle was. If you take alot of damage, then you'll get a low Grade score, or even a negative score. There's not much use of Grade in the game until the very end, unlike Tales of Symphonia that had various options with it. You can't even check your grade total either.

One big thing that disappointed me was the main character didn't learn Tempest, this was my favorite move dating back to Tales of Destiny. Guy eventually learns it, but it was hidden through a sidequest about 45 hours into the game.

During the game you'll meet Mieu, he has a sorcers ring that can make him perform tricks. Some of Mieus tricks is to spit fire, float and an attack. You can use these skills in dungeons and towns to find secrets or puzzles. The dungeons on this game are rather weak. There's a serious lack of puzzles in this game, and atleast half of the dungeons don't even end up with a boss fight.

While this is the longest I've spent on a Tales game, I blame most of that on extreme backtracking. This game had WAY to much filler, atleast 25 hours of this game was traveling to one town to the next just to advance the story, while none of these towns ever end in a boss fight or anything. I went 10 hours going through the main story without going through a dungeon or fighting a boss.

I spent 63 hours on this game, and still had about 10 less levels than I did with Symphonia, and I spent 47 hours on it! While I spent less time on Symphonia, that game had more meat and less filler to make a better game. The action never slowed and the story was always in your face. Tales of the Abyss is slow, long winded and frustrating that it could of been much better than this.

----------Characters / Story----------
Luke is a whiney, ignorant, spoiled rich teenager that can't leave his kingdom.. he also hears voices in his head and he can' t remember his past, highly original stuff here. He gets attacked by an assassian and is set into a void thrown miles from his home. This event is the first time he's been away from home in 7 years. There's a war brewing, so getting home isn't so easy as it sounds. On his jourey home, he learns more about the world, finds new friends and learns more about himself so to speak. While on this journey he uncovers a plot of world destruction and yadda yadda yadda. You've played this before. The game revolves around the Score, which is a not-so subtle jab at the Bible, and deals with your team trying to stop a war.

Luke goes through a personality change, but he still ends up being the same whiney ignorant rich kid he was before, except now he has a purpose and goal. Guy is his best friend that wears a necklace like Natalie Portman in the Professional, while his past gets a nice twist to the storyline, he is always a know-it-all thats afraid of girls... yes, afraid of girls. Jade the Necromancer is a Coronel in army, oldest and wisest of the group with no sense of emotion or soul present. Natalia is Luke's cousin and Princess of Kimlasca, and also Luke has promised to marry her when they're kids and she holds it against him... what? Ion is a non-playable character that that looks and talks like a girl, he is the highest order of the Order that takes care of the Score. Anise is Ion's Guardian, she's a boy crazy little girl that rides a giant doll. Mieu is an overly cute little monster that tags along with the group helping out on dungeons and otherwise being annoying in cutscenes. Everyone goes through atleast 1 change or big twist, either something from their past is dug up or they have a slight personality change. Most of it is pretty predictable.

-POSSIBLE SPOILERS-
For me, the story felt generic, predictable and recycled. There was many things within the game that felt reused from Tales of Symphonia (excluding moves and other Tales centric things) and gernally like other games like Final Fantasy 7. For instance, after each dungeon in Symphonia, Collete always gets sick and tired, same thing happens to Tear and Ion. There's two world, the story is largely based around a religion, and the bad guys are doing human experiments. There's a small pet in the group, a town gets destoryed, and various other things that gave me dejavu.
-END-

The story forces you to backtrack more than you need to after the 20 hour mark. Between 10 hours of backtracking you might go through one original dungeon and fight 1 boss. I've gone many hours at a time without even running into an encounter. This game is just so slowly paced, and this is BAD for an action game, especially with one with such a fun battle system.


----------Graphics----------
The graphics lack the fun cel-shading that Tales of Symphonia had with the characters, CGI with an anime styled game looks dull. The game dialog scenes are more action packed than Symphonia, there's more close ups of the characters expressions and other wacky camera angles, but the characters just don't look nearly as detailed or as crisp. There's more anime sequences, but they're short and cheaply mixed with CGI, some scenes are good while some are just down right terrible. The world map is bland, plus it features bad framerate issues and controlling the camera is almost impossible on it. It might take 30 seconds to get a full 360 turn with the camera, its ridiciolous.

There's some really cool Mystic Artes attacks in this game, but other than those the magic and attack artes are bare minimum, but this game doesn't require high end graphics for the battles since the battles end so quickly and they're so chaotic at times. The skits are more interactive than before, shaking, moving, expanding, but still no voice overs to make them exciting. The towns are big, but lack personality. There's more detail to the houses and towns than Symphonia though.

----------Sound----------
The music is repetitive but overall good. The voice overs are good for the most part, but alot of the characters lack emotion like Tear and Jade. My biggest annoyance other than Luke's whiney voice is the lack of voices in the skits, they're obviously meant for voices, but yet there is none. While the skits often give more insight into the characters and advance the story in great ways, without voices and watching the animations and the lack of scrolling the dialog yourself really hurts the game alot. This didn't bug me to much on Symphonia, since the games story didn't rely on the skits, but there's almost 500 of them on Abyss!


----------World Map----------
The map is a standard overview world map you've seen a billion times, classic stuff that I love. The problem I have is the world is just so plain UGLY. Plus there's framerate problems and a slow turn in the camera that slows the game down. You'll find search points on the world that gives you items you can use for sidequests. The only improvement I can see between Symphonia is the monsters that attack you look like the monsters you'll end up fighting in battle, unlike the faceless things from Symphonia.


----------Time to Complete Game (last save after credits)----------
63:36:46

After the credits roll you can save the game and then replay it for a New Game+ opening more options and possible sidequests.