Well I didn’t manage my goal of doing this on a weekly basis, so you’ll have to forgive me. I had the flu, then I had the charity. A lot of stuff has happened. As recompense, here are more unnecessary words about role-playing video games made in Japan with an action component to their combat. I think I’m about done streaming these, so please look forward to more Dubious RPG write ups in the potential near future assuming I want to expand upon and write even more lists of weird, fucked up, and probably old CRPGs that people should or should not look at regardless of quality.

Tales of Legendia

Developer: Namco

Release Date: August 25, 2005

Price I Paid For It: $43 for a sun-worn but otherwise CIB copy on eBay like four years ago. If it makes you feel any better, I think I used a coupon and got it for $10 off.

Budget: Feels like significantly less than the other Tales of Game which came out for the PS2 in 2005 although I imagine they’re actually pretty comparable

Time Played: A little under two hours

Heaven or Heck: I can see why this is the one that no one talks about

It’s taken two installments of dancing around but it’s time to talk about what might be the standard bearer for the mid-budget action-JRPG genre: Namco’s Tales series. I’ve written about these games before, played some of them to completion, several more to about half-completion, and probably own all of the ones to have come out in the west post-symphonia because they’re always sold for dirt cheap. Well, not Hearts R because I don’t own a vita, but you get my point. If you’ve ever Humbobundo’d, Fanatical’d, Playstation Plus’d, or Game Pass’d, chances are you’ve had access to a Tales game at some point in your life. It’s a readily available, moderately successful video game series that has persevered mostly because they’re all kind of the same even if some of them are good and some of them are less good. If you want to have a pretty okay time for 30-60 hours, like tweakable systems with a lot of investment, and have a high tolerance or enjoyment of anime slop there’s no other series as consistent in the JRPG space except maybe Atelier??? (I’ve never played an Atelier)

Not to be glib, but when you’re basically making comfort food JRPGs (at an almost yearly pace for much of the 2000s) it’s the details which distinguish them. What specific flavor of mechanics is the game going for with its combat, character progression, and ancillary systems? How is the ensemble cast? How much effort was put into environmental and dungeon design? I’m not expecting high art from any Tales game – especially in the storytelling department – so it’s far more important to me that the combat is responsive and the group of anime doofuses are likeable. It’s why I’m still partial to something like Tales of Xillia even though that game’s environments look like placeholders and it’s abundantly clear that thing was shoved out the door months before it should’ve been. But of course, we’re not talking about the ones I like. We’re talking about the weird black sheep of the series that I wanted to play because I’m a contrarian bastard and have perverse incentives to make content in the form of streams and also a podcast.

Of the seventeen “flagship” Tales games (i.e. not spinoffs, mobile trash, Symphonia 2 or that DS one everyone hates), Legendia tends to hover near the bottom of any given list in both the English-speaking and Japanese fandoms. I can see why. It’s the first game in the series that wasn’t directly made by Namco Tales Studio, instead incorporating members from the Tekken and Soul Calibur teams alongside series veterans. Perhaps most crucially, after Symphonia moved the series to 3D, it reverted back to a 2D combat plane. I dunno if this was a logistical thing, a corporate culture thing, or a lack of confidence in the one they were shoving out the door for Gamecube, but it gives off the energy of being an afterthought.

The game doesn’t dispel the “B-team side project” allegations, with one of the more languid openings I’ve seen from this series. I will be clear that two hours isn’t always enough to get a full grasp of a video game, especially when that video game is an RPG with a slow opening, but Legendia does not open well. Senel is a hot-blooded, anti-social siscon type, which is one of my less favorite flavors of JRPG protag-kuns, and the rest of the cast doesn’t immediately give much of an impression. The combat similarly isn’t doing a whole lot to justify reverting back to 2D, though maybe that changes over time. Given the game’s reputation though, maybe not???? I dunno, this one doesn’t seem like a hidden gem to me. This isn’t going to be my critical reevaluation of a misunderstood classic. Hearing that the game’s main plot is resolved in the first half of the game and the second half are a bunch of side stories doesn’t breed confidence either.

Yeah so maybe the game that nobody really talks about actually is just as mid as its reputation would suggest. There wasn’t anything offensively bad about it, to be clear, but maybe Tales of Legendia isn’t worth my time in an environment where I’m literally doing a streaming feature to whittle down my backlog. It really doesn’t help Legendia that Tales of the Abyss, one of the more beloved games in the series, came out the same year. That one I own on 3DS, so should I ever need my anime shit boys to be spoiled and annoying, I have the option for that on the go.

Granblue Fantasy: Relink

Developer: Cygames Inc.

Release Date: February 1, 2024

Price I Paid For It: Around $45 on steam like right before it dropped to $30

Budget: Okay so this one has gacha money behind it and was in development for something like six years, so it’s probably not a shoestring endeavor. If you’re going to get weird at me about these games being or not being “mid-budget” enough for the sake of this silly title I’m going to have to ask you to reconsider your life choices. Video game budgets are in a weird place right now and I’m not discerning enough to tell you how AAA this thing is or is not supposed to be.

Time Played: Over 5 hours

Heaven or Heck: Yo dawg this game seems rad.

Thankfully for all involved, we’ve finally reached the first game I ran into that made me actually stop and go “I should just keep playing this.” Granblue Relink dares to ask “what if a set piece driven single player campaign followed by Monster Hunter-esque multiplayer missions with like 30 characters who all play distinctly from one another?” In other words, it’s a video game that feels designed to check like half of my boxes from the get go. My tolerance for endless service grinds vacillates depending on the day of the week, but hot damn this is something that I would like to reserve a block of time for sometime in the near future, especially in light of Monster Hunter Rise not having quite as much endless service grind at launch as I would’ve liked.

I’d forgotten this was the game Platinum was originally working on, before development was restarted in house at Cygames. Whatever development hell this thing encountered on its long journey to shipping isn’t really apparent in the final product. I don’t know what a “Grand Blue” is, outside of knowing that gachapon games are the devil, some of those PNGs of anime waifus are pretty good, and people seem into the fighting game now that it has functional netcode. I’m to understand the setup for Granblue Fantasy is thus: as generic male or female protag-kun, you lead a colorful cast of anime weirdos on your sky boat like you were Monkey D. Luffy in search of the “One Piece.” Also you have a precocious young ward whom you must take care of because she has half your soul or something, and she’s an endearing child whom everyone wants to protect because no one in Japan has children. Along the way a bajillion different colorful anime characters join you, many of whom no doubt have five star rarities and exclusive holiday and swimsuit variants you could draw in a random, chance-based fashion perhaps bolstered if you were to spend real money. There’s also an irritating dragon mascot character.

Given I only have that vague understanding of the source material, the story of this video game smacks of non-canon anime movie, but in a fun way. As an excuse to throw the player through a bunch of action set pieces, it’s a good one, and for the most part I find the characters superficially likable rather than annoying. Within these first five hours, I’ve done my fair share of jumping from airship to airship, avoiding tornadoes and fighting MMO-esque raid bosses in some pretty great moments. That last bit is likely where the long-term end of the game comes from, and depending on the bosses involved I could see myself putting a lot of hours in to get materials to upgrade gear to upgrade other gear to improve passives etc etc. I’ve seen the late-game compared to Monster Hunter, especially when multiplayer is involved, and I’m very down for all of it.

But really, the potential of a post-campaign grind wouldn’t appeal on its own. The real danger for me is how each of the 20(!) characters in Granblue tend to have *a thing* that distinguishes them from the rest of the cast. You’re not going to confuse them for the separate movesets in a Devil May Cry, but there’s enough variety and enough execution requirements that the feel is different. Generic boy/girl protagonist Gran/Djeeta is fairly straightforward, with some quick combos, launchers and support abilities, but others are more focused on ranged attacks, big AOE magic, or support, each with their own little mechanic or gimmick to keep up on. There are even parries and witch time-esque dodges so you know I’m into that. My only real gripe is that you can’t switch characters mid-mission in single player. I understand why that limitation exists in the context of multiplayer (although unsurprisingly there’s not a ton of multiplayer going on right now) but pretty much every game like this that I’ve played for this feature has let me do that.

But yeah, if not for the part where I played through the entirety of a different game for these streams, I probably would’ve played through the entirety of Granblue Relink’s campaign already. It’s honestly the sleeper hit of last year for me, and I think it’s probably the most normal one of these I’d recommend to actual humans. Give it a shot! I swear, the gacha stank isn't that bad!