I finished Tales of Vesperia last night. The last dungeon was crazy long (it was very cool but it was such a chore) and the last boss's second form was excruciating. Every annoying thing he could do? He did it. Horrible status effects. Fast as hell. Hits shaved off massive amounts of HP. I didn't find it particularly fair but I am not good at action RPGs. Beautiful ending cutscene but I wanted to see more aftermath scenes. Spoiler I found out during that last dungeon that I love Zigi as a character. He's a great crazy mofo character and whatever was happening with his voice had some impact. Fun boss fight too. Way more fun than Duke, which was a nightmare.
One thing I thought was cool about the ending of Vesperia was that... Spoiler ...the last boss or the final enemy wasn't actually evil. The game often does adhere to RPG tropes but that seems pretty atypical. There are a few games that have a more complex final villain in that way but it's not common in the genre.
Yakuza 3 was the first one I played and it'll always be one of my favourites, I really liked the Okinawa setting. 4 is really great too though, I love the extended cast and the various cities (and 5 is like that too). It's cool how playing through the series you get to visit so many different realistic cities/regions, I love the virtual tourism aspect of it. I love Tales of Vesperia, but the extremely brief ending was probably my least favourite thing about it. It's not that the ending was bad per se but it felt incredibly underwhelming to cap off such a long journey with a tiny cutscene and some drawings.
I think some JRPGs like to do the type of ending that's a visually poetic moment of whatever instead of something detailed, but I agree that it's not fitting for Tales of Vesperia, which is quite a long-winded game, often for better, sometimes for worse. The type of story it tells begs for closure because it's so heavily built upon the character relationships. Something like Chrono Cross that's more artsy than character-driven can get away with the brief visual poetry thing but Vesperia is certainly not that type of story.
Nn I was already dragging my feet returning to Vesperia (at the desert stretch) but after living vicariously through @Raichu's posts, that final boss + ending sounds like actual hell so I may just shelve it permanently.
You can continue to live vicariously because I will be posting a review at some point in the near future haha. I plan to do that for every game I complete. It's kind of a post-game ritual for me.
Nope, the Asia physical version releases next month! It's a double pack so the same that was in the Killion Dollar limited set. Good if you missed the LR releases too (like me). https://www.play-asia.com/no-more-heroes-1-2-english/13/70evjt
Looking at this review, Arise looks more aesthetically Tales-like than I thought it did. For some reason I thought it looked grittier. That it still looks like a Tales game is a good thing.
Damn you must be in Australia? I still have a day to go. I'm glad the hype and reviews for Tales of Arise is so strong. Can't wait to start playing!!
Actually in Europe. I just got it from a local store that usually delivers pre-orders early. I had a quick look at the game but I think I'll only start it properly tomorrow since none of the pre-order bonuses/DLC are available yet.
Ragnarok looks like more of the same only prettier, so… yeah it’s going to be fucking amazing. Atreus hitting puberty though!
