Well, It Certainly Does Have a Lot of Heart
Released during a time when Namco Bandai was hesitant to push their flagship RPG in the west, the original Tales of Hearts never made it overseas. Hailed by the game’s producer, Hideo Baba, as being the one Tales title he wished had been localized, Tales of Hearts R for the Vita brings the game to the west in a 3D format with a little bit of new material, such as two new playable characters.
Tales of Hearts R follows the journey of Kor Meteor, a young man from the small town of Seaville, and Kohaku Hearts, a mysterious girl Kor finds washed up on the shore. Kohaku and her brother, Hisui, are being chased by the witch, Incarose, who is after Kohaku’s Spiria, or soul. Incarose catches up with them and infects Kohaku’s Spiria with despair, a mysterious illness that can only be cured by wielders of items called Somas. Kor, having just inherited a Soma from his grandfather, makes the decision to try and perform a Spiria Link with Kohaku to try and heal her, but it instead ends up shattering her Spiria and sending shards of her emotions across the world. Kohaku is left without a personality and a guilt stricken Kor makes it his mission to reunite the girl with her various emotions.
The story for Tales of Hearts R starts out in a rather simple fashion: Go to an area, find one of Kohaku’s Spiria shards, fight a boss to claim the shard, rinse and repeat. Along the way there are a few hints dropped about a much larger story going on outside of Kor’s quest, but the first half of the game remains focused on building a relationship between Kor and Kohaku. The narrative itself remains rather lighthearted and cheesy with things like Kor having to deal with Hisui’s overprotective nature for his sister, but that’s probably to be expected from a game with “Hearts” in its title.
Upon restoring Kohaku’s Spiria, Kor’s group finds out about a much larger conspiracy going on in the world that they get pulled into. It’s around this time that many of the side characters begin to get some expansion on their motivations; however, the plot feels like it takes a turn for the worse. Despite the formulaic approach, the first half of the game flows rather well and at a nice pace, which unfortunately the second half doesn’t stick with it. A lot of different subplots converge all at same time and it makes for plenty of hectic and poorly explained moments of exposition. The game’s tone takes a huge shift from quirky to serious, as the focus goes from Kor's self-directed journey to a more generic “young adults save the world” plot.
The characters of Hearts R are quite a mixed bag of archetypes. I found myself enjoying a lot of their dialogue with the light hearted nature of the game, but rarely did it ever feel like more than half of the cast was needed narratively. The game could honestly have operated with maybe only the main three. This is due in part to the previously stated pacing issues the game faces later on. It's difficult to write compelling back stories for five separate characters and tell them all in a short amount of time. Despite this though, the side characters do a lot to keep the story in the territory of cheesy but enjoyable and away from melodramatic and unbearable.
One of the main draws for me in the Tales series is the combat. Tales titles tend to feature real-time battles with an emphasis on stringing moves together in combos. Tales of Hearts R does wonderfully with one of the better combat systems for the series that rewards quick reflexes by giving the player a bunch of options to stay on the offensive and keep them engaged. You can assign up to 8 special Arte moves to shortcut inputs with the circle button or right analog stick that can all be canceled out of characters’ normal attacks. Pulling off long interrupted chains of moves nets you GRADE, a currency used at the end of the game to buy special bonuses for subsequent playthroughs.
I think my favorite aspect about Tales of Hearts R is the large amount of boss fights. While the combat is really fun, random encounters are full of enemies that can gang up on you and break your combo chain by hitting either you or zeroing in on another party member, but with boss battles it’s typically one enemy that you have to focus down instead of four or five. It’s these fights where combat really shines since bosses have a large amount of hit points giving you the chance to really chain everything together.
In order to get new Artes and stats your characters have to level up and gain Soma Build Points (or SBP). SBP can be spent from the start menu in the Soma category. SBP are used to enhance a character’s weapon, or Soma, and by putting points into various categories they can gain new moves or passive skills. New weapons can also only be obtained through the use of SBP, so it’s important to keep your characters well invested and not let their points stockpile.
The aesthetics for the game are pretty good for what they are worth. All of the character models are cleanly rendered with a mix of pastel and vibrant colors, making most of the main cast stand out on their own. Despite the amount of chaos that can go on in a match, the frame rate for game stays consistent and smooth. The soundtrack for the game fits well with the environments, and while it doesn’t stand out on its own, I found that it complements the game well.
My only real complaint about Hearts is in its translation. Japanese audio with English text is the approach Namco Bandai took with the game, a first for the series overseas. It feels like the game was set up for an English dub though, as there are plenty of odd hangups in the translation of what you hear to what you read. Normally things like this wouldn’t be a problem, plenty of companies take a few liberties in their localizations, but for Tales of Hearts R it’s weird reading one things while hearing another. The best example of this is how in the original Japanese game the main protagonist’s name is Shing, but was localized as Kor. Even though you read Kor in the text, you hear Shing in the audio. While in the review I referred to him as Kor, I ended up processing his name as Shing when I was playing. It’s a small complaint, but it starts to stand out when characters say one or two words but the translation makes it out to be a long sentence.
Overall, Tales of Hearts R is one of the most enjoyable JRPGs to come out on the Vita this year. Despite a story that begins to hang during the latter part of the game, Hearts R is carried by its enjoyable cast, colorful aesthetics, and fun battle system.
