It's Tales of Xillia 2, Except Now in English

I still need to beat Graces and Xillia...I'm falling behind.

Ferraris are made in factories, and no one complains about that statement! People deriving descent from a perfectly neutral statement are ridiculous.

That part was fine it was too many betrayals towards the end causing belief to buckle. It sucks because it was rather good until that point, and more entirely dark than I've seen out of this series (well, entirely dark and not cheesy as fuck like some entries...)

So many good rpgs, with bad mechanics I need to finish.

I forgot to mention the 3rd problem I had with this game.. the debt system. If I remember correctly, Ludger owes someone a lot of money, and a big part of the gameplay involves you making payments on that debt. If you do not make the minimum payments, you cannot progress the story. Essentially the game is trying to limit the amount of money you have at all times. I did not think it was a very fun system.

@the_vein: Vesperia certainly scratched the symphonia itch a lot more.

Not as much as the Symphonia HD game will but still.

Whoops, sure did. I thought Vesperia was great.

Oh hey... it's another one of those. MilkMilk!

I really hope hat they do not do that with the english version. A non voiced character in a new JRPG is almost a no go for me. Come on we do not live in the 90s anymore...

for some reason i forgot that most RPG trailers do not feature gameplay :P
I dont want story stuff in trailers, im weird like that.

ATTENTION NUMBNUTS:

NAMCO IS OFFICIALLY A JRPG FACTORY PROMISING TO DELIVER ONE NEW TALES GAME EVERY YEAR.

I find the Tales games so bland and boring, and usually way too easy as well. And it's a shame, cause I love the JRPG genre, and if I like this series I would have some more games to play. Oh well.

@cale: ＹＯＵ ＷＩＬＬ ＦＥＥＬ ＡＳＨＡＭＥＤ ＯＦ ＹＯＵＲ ＷＯＲＤＳ & ＤＥＥＤＳ

Tales is amazing. I wish I had purchased the collectors edition.

Yes please excuse Mr. Klepek for being an adult with a life who has grown out of long repetitive JRPG snoozefests

That's actually one weird thing about Xillia 2. Ludger is not actually a silent protagonist at all, they just made him one. In new game+, you can unlock Ludger's voice and I was left to wonder why they even did that when all the lines are already recorded.

@pixel_kaiser: Yeah I really wish Patrick and the others would just say nothing at all about genres they mostly ignore.

I played Xillia 2 in Japanese earlier this year. I have to say I was unimpressed. The combat was fine, but there were 2 big problems with this game. Many maps & monsters are exactly the same as those in Xillia, so I often felt like I was just replaying Xillia with a different lead character. But I found the lead character to be uninteresting because they made him a silent protagonist in order to let you make "choices" during the story. This led to many awkward skits (those talking-head conversations) where the main guy only says things like "huh? hmm. mmmm." while the other characters are chatty as usual. I HATED that.

@elwoodan: I think Xillia's combat system is up there for me because it does a better job of requiring to you use free run than Tales of the Abyss did while being simple in a way that reminded me of Symphonia -- and several of the linked artes helped in that regard -- which was nice to go back to after Graces F's relatively complicated one, which I also really like. But, I wish I could have enjoyed the similarities to Symphonia's plot as much as you did. As I responded to Yummylee, I found that really off putting.

As for the voice acting, I didn't think there were any major problems with it either, aside from Teepo.

You guys may have already made up your mind but I will say this. Xillia was rush out the door for the tales anniversary and one of the reason they made Xillia 2. Xillia 2 corrected all aspect of Xillia one and I dare say have the best combat the series have to offer so far. Also I found the story of Xillia 2 to be pretty good definitely better than Xillia and Vesperia but not quite as good as lets say persona 4 but that's another story.

I would advise both of you to give Xillia 2 a serious look when it come out, maybe rent it at least. I think it is worth at least that much for rpg fans.

@yummylee: I agree with a lot of what you say about Xillia, though I did force myself to finish it. The most disappointing thing about the game for me was how the big twist in the game was basically just a rehash of Tales of Symphonia's twist. Seeing everything from one of my favorite games of all time done again, but poorly, was offensive to me. What made it all the worse was that I did enjoy the game quite a bit up until that reveal, despite several glaring inconsistencies in the writing and rather bland and repetitive world.

Xillia was a whole lotta fun, and I actually thought it had the best combat in the series (Graces had such a limited amount of space to bind artes!) and while the story was basically 1-to-1 with Symphonia it was funny to see all the weird ways in which they mirrored each other. I also apprently have terrible taste in voice acting, because I have no major problems with most of the recently localized JRPGs that everyone else seems to hate.

I wish they would keep the japanese dub plus the english one. English V.O. are terrible...

Couldn't agree more. For some reason, childhood nostalgia keeps forcing me to give Tales games chances. Xilla was genuinely, the worst game I've played this year. Production values, gameplay, story...all of it was mediocre to outright bad. At this point, I honestly can't tell if it's just me or the series. Vesperia was five years ago and maybe if I went back to it now it would be just as bad.

Still, as negative as that was, I'm still stoked for the fanbase; They're getting Tales games left and right.

It's easy to forget how much of an RPG factory Namco's has become in recent years

Grammar Patrick!

I just want to point out that I didn't get any cynicism from that little tagline.

It really is easy to forget. I had forgotten.

Some dislike the changes in the more recent Tales games, but I really enjoyed both Vesperia and Xillia (I just hated most of Graces' cast). Looking forward to this, I'll probably go for the Chinese version again for grorious Japanese VA with English subs.

Edit: I think I'm mixing things up with a different game I played recently. Xillia may have been an undub in stead.

Ooh, more Tales!

Is the battle system the same in this one? The whole link system from the first Xillia made it pretty much unplayable with four people, which was a huge letdown.

@oldenglishc: Vesperia was a step backwards?

Did you mean Xillia?

Instead of typing out almost the exact same feelings about the game, but in a much less coherent manner, I'm just going to piggyback on your post. It's still better than Symphonia II, but Vesperia was a definite step backwards for the series.

Y'all are getting Scoops wrong. Remember the four-year long dearth after Vesperia? It ain't rocket surgery where the tagline came from...

Anywho, ToX2 fixes everything that disappointed from ToX1, while staying stylish as fuck and fun to play (if trusted sources who played the Japanese release are to be trusted, and they are).

I wish they'd just released an HD version of Tales of Destiny...

nah this one reads as snark more than cynicism,

some of you people are weird. except for you here, i agree with the other guy, your pretty great.

After Vesperia and Xillia, I'm fine with them releasing all of the JRPGs that they care to. At least some percentage of them are really damn good.

I couldn't even complete Xillia... it was overall such a boring and utterly mediocre experience for me, and I gave it an awful lot of time to win me over. Despite having similarly mixed opinions about Graces F, I was at least able to complete it thanks to its superb combat. Xillia's, however, just feels flat without much impact.

I think the main problem I had with Xillia is its graphics. I mean its story is dull and the quality of the voice acting is all over the place, but... it's a JRPG so that (more often than not) is just something you have to endure through. The Tales games in particular, however, usually always have beautiful worlds to explore, but Xillia's is so incredibly bland and downright ugly in spots. Its open-world equivalent is nothing but a bunch of plain open spaces, and i just hit a point where I couldn't... look at this game anymore. That and the combat just wasn't drawing me in like it has in the past. The cast at least didn't make me want to rip my eyes out like in Graces, but they were all still--like the rest of the game--really uninteresting.

It sucks because I still to this day really like Symphonia and Vesperia. Vesperia in particular is possibly one of my favourite games of the generation, and despite originally being released in 2008, it still looks a helluva lot better than Xillia does. Xillia was rushed, though, so you could contribute its shoddy appearance and rough technical properties to that. But Xillia 2 looks pretty damn similar, right down to the graphics, so I think this will be the first Tales game that I'm not going to blindly purchase like I have done in the past.

Still looking forward to Tales of Symphonia HD, though!

Tired of snide crap.....less it comes from dave SNIDEr

Will purchase eventually. Also, factory does not have to be a negative word. I do not find the description negative.

@patrickklepek@dudelongcouch I stand corrected. They have annualised the series. This is just from Namco Tales Studio. They really could've skipped Tales of Graces... Oh look, another JRPG set in a school.

While the JPN/ENG releases across years does confuse the mind, it would appear Bamco Nandai is a publicly listed corporation with an objective to make bank.

When all is said and done, I would play most Tales games before most Final Fantasy games. This is one of those series where the localisation is a real highlight (the skits...oh, the skits).

Q:Did 8-4 work on Xillia?

The great video description "controversy" of 2013 rages on!

He didn't state it as a negative. I think any negative connotation you guys are inferring from the tag is just your own projection. And he's not wrong either. At this point, Namco has basically annualized the series.

Damn. @patrickklepek is catching a lot of shit for his taglines today.

I think for a lot people factory is a negative word to attach to something like video games, I really doubt patrick meant it negatively though, although in this the factory is of higher quality so it could even be a compliment. Anyways I loved the first one so I am really looking forward to this.

That is a bad dub, damn.

Xillia was OK, except for Teepo. Burn that abomination back to hell.

My missus is going to get this one. I dropped off the Tales train after the peak of Vesperia, but she really liked Xillia, and is hyped that this is being localized.

@patrickklepek: I guess what gets peoples' goat is that compared to say annualised Assassin's Creed or Mario games, Tales Studio is actually quite infrequent in its release schedule. Would we all prefer they release as infrequently as Elder Scrolls games, and pack a bit more 'wow'? I certainly would.

@meatball: yeah leave the tagline writeing to alex

Oh look, it's a game/series I'm not interested in, better be snide about it!