JRPG: Tales of Zestiria [UPDATED/EDITED]
Entry posted by Clephas
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With Tales of Berseria coming out today, I pulled Zestiria out of my long backlog last week and began playing it.
I've been playing the Tales series since Tales of Destiny came out for the PSX in the nineties, and I've played most of the mainline series, though I regretted it in some cases. To be blunt, Tales of Vesperia is still the last truly great Tales game, even after playing this one. However, my conclusions will probably differ somewhat from the reviews out there on the net, which were mostly hype complaints and comments about other issues that have nothing to do with the actual game in question.
First, I'm going to address the Alisha issue, since it was the one that pissed off the Western fans (the Japanese fans apparently didn't feel 'cheated' like some of us did, lol).
Alisha's relegation to a secondary character after the way she was advertised in the media is often used as an excuse for not liking the game... but to be honest, I couldn't see why people got worked up about it. If it were just her and Sorey as the human parts of the journey, the story would have been horridly unbalanced, and Sorey probably wouldn't have managed to complete his journey. I'm not talking about her abilities... I'm talking about her personality. Two pure-hearted idealists that aren't grounded in solid reality in this particular setting would have been a disaster. Rose was a necessary dark balance to Sorey's pure light, and her viewpoint created a stability to the cast that didn't exist when Alisha was in the party.
The second issue that tended to drive some Western fans nuts was the use of a pure-hearted hero protagonist. To be blunt, I thought this ignored the struggles of the characters in the story, as well as the honest way Sorey faces the dirty realities of the world he lives in. While Sorey's personality is generally straightforward and pure-hearted, that doesn't mean that he lacks complexity... he doesn't. In fact, the struggles with the pitfalls of a pure-heart in a world that seeks to destroy or corrupt such individuals are pretty much the central issue of the story toward the end. I was impressed at the twist the Tales team put on this over-used character type.
Last of all, I'm going to address the setting, which is probably the most impressive part of the story-related issues. Rather, I'm going to talk about how... Japanese this setting is. Most jrpgs, for better or worse, pick a mostly Western underpinning to their settings... and visually, this game seems the same. However, that visual aspect is mostly just a facade, if you know what you are looking for.
As an example, the 'Lords of the Land' system is a fairly straightforward reproduction of the Japanese concept of the 'tochigami', or a kami whose duty is to watch over and provide blessings to a particular area in Shintoism. The Seraphs and Hellions are also obviously based off of Shinto concepts, as well as the idea of 'malevolence' (a more correct translation would be corruption, filth, or taint, but this is Namdai's localization team we are talking about...lol).
Even the way Sorey has the seraph members of the team reside in his body resembles the 'kamioroshi' concept in Shinto.
Overall, the setting was a rather fascinating utilization of Japan's unique embedded culture, from my point of view... which is probably why it didn't translate that well to most Western audiences, lol.
Now, for an obligatory gameplay comment... this is perhaps the easiest system of any Tales game after they went three-dimensional with Abyss to master. The battle mechanics of the Tales series have, since Abyss, been somewhat unfriendly to the less dexterous fans of the series. While they could be played and enjoyed to an extent even by the more fat-fingered fans, the fact was that such fans ended up grinding to much higher levels just to be able to handle things in the last few entries in the series. In that sense, this game was a victory of design.
Now to the downside... the way levels make so little difference. I'm not kidding. Levels in this game make little to no difference due to the micro-level stat increases and their relatively limited effects on the battlefield. If you want a shortcut to victory in this game, equipment fusion is the god at whose feet you should be worshiping, as putting together the right set of equipment skills and enhancing your equipment to a certain level is far more important to victory than simply gaining levels. Unfortunately, since skills on equipment and equipment drops and appearances in shops are a matter of random virtual dice-rolls, this process was needlessly cumbersome and time-consuming, though it does mean that you can theoretically strengthen the first tier of weapons to a ridiculous level of power given enough time and effort.
The gameplay, which was praised far more than the story, is in some ways the game's greatest weakness... at least from my point of view. To a customization geek, it is heaven, but I went into the game wanting a straight jrpg experience, so it was tedious for me.
EDIT/UPDATE: I forgot to add a section on the Alisha's story dlc, mostly because i didn't think about it at the time. My opinions on the way this game ended are at least partly based on the existence of this DLC. My reason is that this story, while it sucks as a sop to people who thought Alisha was supposed to be the main heroine of the game, is great for tying off loose ends, of which there were many because of the 'classic' way they chose to close out the epilogue (lots of pictures, very little dialogue).
A few extra comments on the story: Considering the amount of salt puked out by reviewers and western players, I was thinking this game would be a worse abomination than Abyss, and I was prepared to lose interest and drop it halfway through. However, for a JRPG with a pure-pure protagonist, there were almost no true head-desk moments outside of the comedic skits. That is a huge plus, since the Japanese tendency to have parties full of dreamy idealists (even the ones who seem cynical) is perhaps the worst habit of the industry. Sorey is indeed, by most standards, naive, but he is quite capable of accepting and comprehending other people's viewpoints while creating his own opinions, which is perhaps the one point on which he surpasses most protagonists of his type.
Perhaps the most interesting way they approached the role of the Shepherd was in how they present his proper role as one only involved in purifying Hellions and malevolence, avoiding excessive interference in everyday human affairs. This means, unlike most protagonists of the type, he has to turn his back on people at times simply because it is not his duty to intervene. To the inexperienced, this might seem like a minor touch, but it is one I marked as a welcome departure from the surrealist hero-has-to-save-everyone ideas most JRPGs seem to get infected with.
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