I'm actually really excited for this. I've always liked the Tales series, and Vesperia was easily my favorite one. The game looked great, it featured a slightly older cast with a slightly darker and more mature story, some great voice acting (Troy Baker before he had really become a household name, Michelle Ruff, Sam Riegel, etc.), and a fully realized overworld map (which too many JRPGs have gotten away from).

The game was originally released back in 2008 on 360, and a PS3 port with additional content/playable characters was released in Japan in 2009, and the English voice actors were brought in to do additional voicework for the western release. However, the western release of the definitive edition never happened, with rumors flying that Microsoft had paid to keep the game exclusive to Xbox 360 in western territories. The game was popular enough that this news inspired a multi-year fan project to translate the Japanese PS3 version for western import. However, when said patch was finally released in March 2015, it required that users run an old firmware version and never upgrade, which obviously was something most people weren't all that willing to do.

Now that this new edition has been announced, I'm looking forward to finally being able to play one of my favorite JRPGs ever with new content for the first time. The real question now is the status of the English voicework. Was the additional English VA never used but kept, and all they need to do is plug it back in ten years later? Or will they bring the cast back to record the additional voicework now, again ten years later? Or do they just leave the additional content subtitled but unvoiced? I honestly have no idea. Any of these seems possible.

Although it was announced at the Microsoft E3 press conference, apparently the game will be released on PS4, Switch, and Steam/PC in addition to Xbox One, and thank goodness for that, because I only own a PS4 and am not interested in either of the other two consoles at the moment.

Doesn't seem like there would be much stopping them from bring everyone back for new audio, still feels like most of that cast dominates the industry still anyway.

It will probably be dual audio this time around so it might be the case where its only fully voiced in Japanese, that happens from time to time still but it would be unfortunate.

I found the translation to be a bit iffy, and the English VA contrasted quite badly with the visuals IMO, but don't necessarily care about any of that as long as I can pick Japanese VA with subs. The vibe, art, and gameplay are so strong I'd love to dive in again and finish this one finally. Really excited to give it another shot with my more open-minded self. I was 16 in 2008, and quite brutal with games that didn't hook me within the first few hours with their story. Looks beautiful and fun as ever, though.

Price? $20-30?

There are already Amazon listings for $50. Not ideal for a ten-year-old game, but not unexpected. Dragon's Crown Pro got released a month ago for the same price.

I'm sure the price will go down pretty quick, though. They generally do for remasters, right?

@atheistpreacher: I wonder if this is accurate info or Amazon throwing down temp stuff so that you can hurry up and buy. The announcement didn't have anything but 'Winter'.

@efesell said:

Oh, I'm sure that's a placeholder date. They have the same 12/28 date (but 2019 instead of 2018) for Sekiro. Means nothing.

Oh man, this is good news!

I never got that far into Vesperia despite wanting to, then at some point didn't have the ability to play it anymore since I moved out of the country for work and sold my 360. I bought another PS3 to play where I was now living, but as you mentioned the PS3 version never got an English release. Really happy I'll get a chance to play through this. Just have to decide whether to do so on PS4 or PC.

I am absolutely not a JRPG guy, but back in the heady days of the 360 I played and loved this game - this and Eternal Sonata were the two JRPGs I played in that generation, and I really liked both of them. Not sure if I'd really be up to buying and playing it again, but a PC version is interesting. Will depend on price. I'm more cynical and anti-anime bullshit now than I was when I was (thinks...) geez, 19, I guess. But the combat was fun, it wasn't too grindy, and there was goofy charm to be found.

I'm interested that this is also coming out for PS4 and Switch. I've always been interested in this game, but never been able to play it.

I've been waiting so long for this... I was worried that it'd be an Xbox exclusive like the original release, but I'm glad to here it's coming to PS4 and Switch. Finally I can be at peace.

This is funny but true: I pretty much stopped using my 360 after I bought a PS3 so I could play Demon's Souls back on Black Friday 2009, and for a long time now the only exclusives the 360 had left that I cared about at all were The Dishwasher: Vampire Smile and Tales of Vesperia. The former came out only a year ago on Steam, and now here comes the latter. So now I can truly say that I definitively no longer care about my 360! :-P At this point I should probably just give it away to Goodwill or something.

Thanks to my recent playthrough of Symphonia I've certainly developed an interest in seeing what else the rest of the series has to offer. Having an easily accessible version of Vesperia (which seems like it's one of the more well-loved installments) sounds great from that angle, but from the angle of "Oh no I already have like 5 other Tales games hanging out in my backlog" it's slightly terrifying.

This was always one of the few Xbox 360 exclusives I regretted not being able to play. I was never actually that big of a Tales fan (the only one I remember truly loving was Abyss), but I've heard enough good things about this particular one that I will almost certainly end up picking it up to give it a shot.

FWIW I think for the most part they keep improving on the combat with each new game, but the characters/story/music/world I don't think has ever been better than in Vesperia. Opinions will differ, of course, but that's my take. Vesperia is one of the few games for which I remember starting a NG+ directly after finishing it the first time. It was that good.

I would have maybe agreed with this prior to Berseria, which I think easily takes a new top spot for Tales games.

The problem with Vesperia is that the final act is real bad, but I'll still play it again when this is out.

That's good to hear. For as much as it seems like every Tales game is kinda the same, there definitely seems to be a wide spectrum on how good any individual installment is at anime-ass anime storytelling and characterization. After I finished Symphonia, I put a couple of hours into Dawn of the New World and that game immediately struck me as bizarre and kind of incompetent. I'm tempted to try and finish it because it seems like something that would be "fun" to write about, but I could also see my time spent better elsewhere.

@arbitrarywater: You can probably skip this one; especially if you have that many other Tales games to get around to. While Vesperia really nails it where the combat is concerned, the story kind of gives up halfway through and just falls back on some tried and true save the world bullshit. There's a lot to criticize both in terms of the broader narrative, individual character arcs and the various relationships between said characters, but if you're seriously considering getting into this, reading any of that criticism would just spoil the hell out of it, so I won't continue. Buyer beware?

@relkin: What you just described is basically the Tales franchise in a nutshell. Suggesting someone skip over this game in favor of the other games that do the same thing (and usually to a much worse degree) is...odd, to say the least.

Vesperia is far from perfect, but it is better than the average Tales game.

A Tales game lives and dies by its cast, which is always a cast of random anime archetypes but they can be really good at presenting them and creating really enjoyable interactions. It's why I love Berseria despite being really fed up with the latest incarnations of Tales gameplay.

@wiseman4545: I disagree! I think other Tales games have been better! Opinions!

@relkin: There are a few I would rank close or better, but the series as a whole? That's an argument that I would find hard to fathom, and I feel like the general consensus agrees.

But hey, to each their own.

@relkin: As seen in my above post, I'm vaguely considering playing through the one Tales game everyone seems to hate. Admittedly, that's because it's already done *some things* that I think are fascinatingly bad, but I could easily be convinced that doing so would be a poor (or great) idea. I'm just saying, don't underestimate my ability to power through some dubious nonsense if I have the willpower. It's been about a year since I played through Mass Effect Andromeda, I'm about due for another questionable RPG. If Tales of Vesperia is better than that, I'm not quite willing to write it off.

I guess if you don't think Vesperia is worth my time from a storytelling angle, would you think the same about Xillia, Xillia 2, or Berseria? Those are the other ones I currently own.

If you want the actual weird black sheep of Tales you should hunt down Legendia somehow.

I played the demo of this game a long time ago. Glad to see the better version being released worldwide, but I'll get to it after I finish (read: start) playing Berseria and Xillia.

EDIT: I've only played two Tales games so far but Zestiria's crafting system seemed to actively hate you and made the game worse.

@arbitrarywater: Those happen to be the ones on my own Tales to-do list as well, so I don't know! I'll look forward to a blog from you if you play one of them first.

Here's the thing, though. If you're specifically looking for a bad game, then maybe you should play Vesperia. I'd be interested to hear what you think of the way that story...goes. The combat is quite good, so maybe that will keep you engaged.

FWIW: I'm one of the few, the proud, the guys who had an old firmware version phat PS3 sitting in a box when the PS3 Tales of Vesperia patch hit.

Played it through and man, it was really worth-it. The extra playable characters add a lot more charm to the game, there's extra endgame content, more weapons, etc etc etc. So if you've only played the 360 version and are wondering if this amounts to essentially just a re-play for you... nah. There's enough extra stuff that it's more than that.

I do wonder how they will handle voice work. Crossing my fingers for English, and more of it than there was in the 360 version. Though an optional Japanese voice track would be a nice touch.

But Geometry Wars 2...

It's probably telling that I've not heard much, positive or negative, about Legendia. I haven't heard much about most of the earlier games in the series, to be honest. It really seems like the series only really started getting a dedicated following in the west after Symphonia, and even then there are still plenty of main-series titles that never made their way over here (side note: I volunteer @mento as sacrifice if anyone is going to write about Tales of Legendia on this website.)

See, now you're selling me again. For what it's worth, the things I liked about Tales of Symphonia had very little to do with the actual plot (which is some earnest, melodramatic JRPG nonsense) and a lot more to do with the main cast. The idea of one of these games' story actually starting strong and then driving off a cliff sounds like something I'd be into.

Buuuuuut I'm mostly talking in hypotheticals here. I have enough on my plate right now before I even think about starting another 40+ hour Japanese RPG. Ima get to those other Tales games at some point, but I don't want to burn myself out on a series that traffics in a lot of very similar core ideas from installment to installment.

Never played my 360 copy. Often think about getting back to Berseria. I really like the character interactions in that game, but I find the combat way more mashy and random than I thought it would be. The last tales games I played before Berseria was Tales of Destiny 1.

@arbitrarywater: Legendia is mostly just mediocre but it does one of the most confusing things I've ever seen in a game. Which is to have a main story that more or less fully resolves and rolls credits... and then start a whole new second half of the story that is told through quests focused on specific party members. When localized they seemingly thought that this second half of the game was not part of the story and did not voice any of it.

Just bleeds away all of the personality of the game for the actual finale.

Yeah nice to see this come back on more platforms. Not a big Tales guy, but it'll probably be something I pickup in a sale then bury in my backlog like most of the other Tales games I own.

When I saw this game at Microsoft's conference, I said to myself "I'd totally pick that up if it was on Switch!" And lo and behold!

Never played a Tales before. There was a period when I was just starting to want to get into JRPGs and I was considering which Tales game was a good starting point. Ended up picking up Ni No Kuni back then, but this game (and the series itself) looks rad. Can't wait ^_^

@polkaduke: Some links plus doing refresh/back button is a little busted right now. There are some bug report threads.

One hell of a game...I'm interested what 8-4 has to say about this on the new podcast. Definitely getting this for Switch.

Vesperia was a ton of fun back on the 360. In terms of what the game is, it is Tales of Symphonia, with more refined gameplay and way more beautiful graphics. The story is kinda... loose, is that the right word? My main comparison point is Tales of Symphonia, and in that game, the story is some pretty serious, well-defined conflicts right from the get-go, with world-changing twists and turns in the story. Vesperia just kinda goes for it. ToS, you start out protecting the chosen one on a pilgrimage of sacrifice, FFX style. Vesperia? You gotta fix the local fountain for the community somehow, so I guess me and this princess are gonna go after a thief that stole a component. The draw is definitely character interactions and the gameplay here, 'cause the story just kinda stumbles around till it reaches familiar tropes that it is comfortable with, and those tropes don't fit together coherently. But the characters are likeable, the combat's pretty great, it looks good, sounds good, it's all good.

What I'm saying is, if you wanna play a fun action jrpg, this is a very fun action jrpg. I dunno if I have it in me to go back and beat a big jrpg all over again from the start, but if I was gonna, then this is one I might want to play again. You people that haven't played it, but liked Symphonia back in the day when it was one of like three Gamecube jrpgs? Get. This. Game. You're gonna have a good time, even if it's occasionally stupid.

While the story can be meh in some parts, the MC in Vesperia is still the best one they've had. He does things other Tales MCs would frown upon. I'm definitely getting this for Switch.

I agree. And I have to say, @arbitrarywater, I just read your Symphonia blog, and seeing these lines from it:

Protagonist Lloyd Irving is every bit the exact kind of hot blooded, idealistic dingus these sorts of stories always throw to the forefront, but even he has a coherent, logical character arc where he learns from his mistakes and becomes a better person for it. However, as someone over the age of 14, I found myself gravitating more towards the “adults in the room,” willing to temper Lloyd and Colette’s idiot optimism with a certain level of logic and cynicism.

...makes me think that you'd appreciate Yuri as the main character, at the very least. He's actually in his twenties rather than his teens, is more cynical than idealistic, and has some, let's say... pragmatic ways of dealing with problems that, as roldan said, are not the ways that most Tales protagonists would go about things.

@atheistpreacher: Hey, thanks for reading the blog! I never have a really clear idea of how many people actually look at that stuff.

Yeah, I've always heard good things about Yuri as a protagonist. It's not that I don't appreciate an optimistic young shounen hero who believes in the power of friendship from time-to-time, but sometimes I want a cynical jerk to snark their way through some anime-ass anime. It's probably also why Tales of Berseria's group of scoundrels sounds so potentially appealing.

@arbitrarywater: Yuri is good for the cynical snarking journey, the protagonist of Berseria is a little more of a like.. anime edgelord character but with a very convincing reason why she should be that way.

Troy Baker probably won’t return for this game, I imagine they’ll replace him with Matt Mercer, which would make me sad as he is no Troy Baker. Even if I do like Mercer.

Honestly he's often too much Troy Baker and its sometimes a little disconcerting.

I think there's still every possibility that they kept all that English VO that they recorded nine years ago for the new sections.

http://www.playstationlifestyle.net/2010/06/09/voice-actor-says-tales-of-vesperia-is-being-localized/

Welp, there's breaking news on the English voicework for this game.

Apparently they kept all of the previously recorded dialogue, but at least in the case of Yuri (originally voiced by Troy Baker), the new material is being voiced by a different actor:

https://twitter.com/TroyBakerVA/status/1043084182405173248

You can hear the new Yuri voice actor doing his thing in the recently released footage below (e.g., 3:38 and 4:41... a sample of Baker's original voicework can be heard at ~0:37.):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ncGvWRUH91g

Too bad. Even if you don't happen to be a Troy Baker fan, consistency would have been nice. It's even more frustrating because Baker was apparently never even approached.

It's been so long since I've played this game that I honestly don't remember what a lot of the other characters' voices sounded like, so it's not clear to me if there are other voice actors not returning. The only thing I can tell for sure is that Michelle Ruff returns to voice Rita Mordia. Ruff is kinda in everything, and her voice is pretty unmistakable.

This puts the lie to the idea (which I had been hoping was true) that the original voice actors recorded all the new content in 2010. Or if they did, they didn't keep it when the localization was cancelled.

Still, it's not the end of the world. I can tell the difference in Yuri's voice if I'm paying attention, but whoever the new guy is (several people in the comments to the video have speculated that it's Grant George) does a credible enough impression that I doubt it'll bother me much when I'm actually playing. Oh well. Still looking forward to this re-release, as it's one of my favorite JRPGs ever.

Just 8 days away. Looking forward to playing it on my PC!

Picked this up yesterday on release, about eight hours in now. So far, it seems like it holds up pretty well. Yuri seems even a bit snarkier than I remember him, which is a good thing.

The combat doesn't seem quite as engaging as I remember it. I'm sure that has partly to do with the fact that it's still relatively early and my options are more limited, but I also think the combat in Tales games has been the one aspect that's continued to improve over the years, much as this is my favorite set of characters and favorite entry overall.

I ran into some frustrating hiccups early on, but to be fair, they were mostly my fault. One was where I accidentally set the control style to manual instead of semi-auto, and was confused as to why my Yuri was randomly jumping and also not targeting enemies effectively. The other was when I couldn't find the way out of the palace with Estelle. I straight up missed seeing the right path for like 45 minutes and kept running around in circles. Self-inflicted wounds aside, that one wolf-like boss in the woods about 5-6 hours in is still tuned way too hard. But those are pretty much my only complaints.

I've already run into some of the replacement voicework, where Grant George is doing his best Troy Baker impression. It's more noticeable in some scenes than others. For the most part I find I can ignore the issue if I'm not specifically listening for the difference.

I'm appreciating all over again the skill system that I believe they ripped off of FFIX, in which skills are attached to weapons, and if you use a weapon enough in battle, you learn the skill permanently. The reason it's so smart is that it encourages grinding in bite-sized chunks: grind a bit until you've learned all your skills from your current weapons, then move forward and get new ones. Very smart way to encourage that little bit of grinding here and there and also encourage you to move the story along to access new weapons with new skills.

Very much enjoying all the skits, too. They're another staple of the Tales series that's just so good at delivering fun character moments that may or may not have anything to do with the story. You get so much of the personality from those things.

Pretty sure I'll end up playing it all the way through without a lot of breaks for other games. The question is whether I'll immediately want to go through a NG+ with maxed out stuff from the GRADE store, which is what happened when I first played the game way back in 2008. We shall see!

If anybody gets it for the Switch, let me know how it looks/runs. I've always wanted to play this but I have way too many JRPGs I haven't touched on my other consoles I'd feel gross buying another one. I still have very few Switch games and no JRPGs so I think I can justify a purchase there. haha

@liquiddragon: Been playing it on Switch and haven't had any major issues with it so far. Some fps dips in busier areas but solid overall. Only really noticeable performance issues are on the overworld map where it feels like it dips to below 30, doesn't personally bother me but it's definitely sluggish. I think the portability is worth the tradeoffs.

Still one of my favourite games and definitely the best Tales Of game.

@confusedowl: ok, thanks!

I bought three copies of this game. And spent 400 hours now playing the Definitive Edition.

Worth every penny and every minute. Excellent classic game.