Tales of Graces F-Nla

It's been a rough few years for JRPGs. As the genre is left behind by the technical and storytelling advancements made in western RPGs, the once proud JRPG has gotten a bit stuck in it's ways, with only the occasional flash of innovation (eg Xenoblade Chronicles, Demons Souls) brightening up what is mostly a genre that has stayed fairly static for the past two generations of consoles. However, saying that... it does happen that we occasionally get a title that is unashamedly JRPG in nature and does everything juuuust right to remind us why we enjoyed such games in the first place. Tales of Graces f is one such game.

The plot here doesn't even try to bring anything new to the table as events kick off with you in control of a group of kids: Brothers Asbel and Hubert and their sickly female pal Cheria, as they stumble across amnesiac girl Sophie and begin to help her investigate her missing memories, a task which inadvertently draws in a young prince called Richard, who becomes friends with the group. So you lead the gang into various scrapes and adventures as you might expect... For the first few hours at least... because tragedy strikes and the kids are all seperated from each other, with Asbel consumed with guilt over his inability to save the life of a friend, leading to him leaving his hometown to join Knight school. So, events jump ahead seven years to put you in control of an adult Asbel, who is now a lot more responsible and skilled (And also the spitting image of the character Suzaku from anime series Code Geass), but has had no contact with his family or friends since leaving home. Imagine then how awkward it is for him when right as he finishes his training to become a knight, old friend Cheria turns up with some bad news for him that will see him forced to return home to confront his past, prevent a war, and also unravel the mystery behind the emergence of savage monsters across the land and how it connects to the tragic events of the start of the game. There's little here that's new ground for the genre, but at the same time it's never anything less than entertaining thanks to some well judged pacing, mostly unintrusive and not overlong cutscenes and (Most importantly) a cast of characters who possess genuine charm and likeability(Mostly). It does have some of the usual juvenile humour and sugary sentimentality you get all the time in Japanese RPGs of course, but at the same time I found the plot could be surprisingly dark and downbeat for a Tales game in places, and the character development is of an extremely high quality throughout, with the sense of relationship between all of the main controllable characters always being clearly defined so you always know what one character in the group thinks of another, thanks in large part to the well written 'skits', which for the first time I've seen are now fully voiced and are actually funny. This may not sound like such a big deal, but when I was playing this attention to detail on the characters' personalities helped tremendously with my emotional investment in the story, which is something I've never really felt all that strongly in Tales games past. The plot is by-the-numbers, sure, but it's still entertaining enough despite that and the game itself also appears to be a lot longer than past Tales games, taking me around a dozen or so hours more to get through than previous current gen Tales title, Tales of Vesperia... and that's before you even factor in the additional 15-odd hour add on epilogue story you can unlock by completing the game. A fun story with a hell of a lot of it? It certainly hit the JRPG sweet spot for me... even if the unbearable "niceness" of Asbel occasionally made me want to punch the TV at times. Word of advice? If you're going to play a drinking game while playing Tales of Graces f, don't make the rule 'Take a drink every time Asbel says 'protect'. You'll be dead from alcohol poisoning in no time if you do.

Gameplay is much like other Tales games have been in recent years, with a fixed camera, set pathway structure that gives the game's field exploration more than a passing resemblence to Final Fantasy X, especially in how it makes you actually travel between areas the 'proper' way (On foot, by boat/aircraft or handiest of all: by giant turtle) with no shortcuts for most of the game (A more traditional 'world map' is opened up to you much later in the game to make things a bit more instant). This can be slow going, yes, but it works well enough and no random battles is always a plus. The game offers a pretty enormous amount of stuff to do, with a multitude of side quests, hidden challenges and bonuses to uncover. Obviously most of these are of the fetch quest variety as you'd expect, but there are a LOT of them to do, with every town/city in the game offering it's own unique job board which is constantly updated with new quests and jobs throughout the game, all of which usually provide rewards that are actually useful. In addition there are a lot of unique sidequests with their own sub stories, including a very nice 'tournament arena' that sees you having to tackle survival rounds against waves of enemies with one character. Which brings me to the battles themselves, which are nothing short of spectacularly well put together. On the surface it may appear like the usual Tales "hack and slash" battle system, but several tweaks and updates have been made that add a whole new level of strategy to the proceedings, with the most notable change being the introduction of the "CC gauge", which essentially functions like an 'action points' system, where during combat everything is controlled completely in real time, no turn based nonsense or any of that, but every attack you use costs 'CC' (Which stands for Chain Combo if you care), with basic physical attacks costing 1 CC a hit, with tons of combos available and unlockable as the game goes, and special attacks (Artes), cost anything from 2 to 10 CC depending on the move. The CC gauge immediately begins recharging once you stop attacking, so as you can expect, this means you often need to plan attacks carefully, especially considering there are often elemental factors in play that force you to adapt your strategies, such as monsters with protective 'Nova' barriers that can only be destroyed with anti-Nova Artes, which are rarely learned attacks. There is also a rather neat feature that sees a two stage gauge on the left of the screen during battle fill up as a result of actions taken by you or your enemies, with one part of it filling with the player's meter and the other part with the enemy's meter. When your gauge fills your characters enter a kind of 'super mode' state, where they temporarily have infinite CC, can't be staggered by enemy attacks and gain access to 'Super Artes' techniques... all of which obviously gives a significant advantage in battle, however... the enemy gauges fills up? The enemies get the same advantages over you, and the best part? The gauges full levels carry over between fights, meaning choosing how full a super gauge you enter a tough battle with(For either you OR the enemy) can determine the outcome very early on. It's a great combat system and makes what could easily have felt like tedious grindfest dungeons quite engrossing to dominate. Additionally, I personally appreciated the quick pace of the battles and how fast they initiate and end. It becomes common place in later stages of the game to touch an enemy to fight them on the field and have the battle begin and end with you back to roaming the field all in the space of less than ten seconds. It's nice and quick, just how I like it.

On a graphical level, Tales of Graces f is a fairly sub-par release. For those unaware, this game started life as a Wii title, but there were apparently "issues" with the Wii version when it was released in Japan(Not least of which was apparently lower than expected sales), so the developers fixed any problems, added a bunch of content and upscaled the game for release on PS3 instead. As a result the visuals, while still well designed, well animated and smooth running, have the unmistakeable look of an upscaled title (ala Dead Space Extraction for example) and look rather dull and lifeless compared to the colourful sharpness of Tales of Vesperia. After a while you'll probably not be bothered by the last gen appearance of much of the game, but it took me a while to get past I can tell you. Soundwise things are thankfully a much brighter story. While there is no Japanese language option, the english voice acting is actually of a fairly high quality so this isn't as much of an issue as it could have been. The voices all fit each character perfectly, even if some of them play things a bit overdramatically. The soundtrack is equally quite nice to listen to... even if I could probably do without hearing that sickening pop song during the intro animated sequence again... ever!

All in all this is a superb JRPG that will do little to turn you onto the genre, but if you like these types of games then this is about as good as it gets. It's fun, it's fast paced, the characters are charming, the story is enjoyable (If a bit 'familiar'), the fast paced combat system is engrossing and the game has an epic amount of on-disc gameplay content, with a longer than usual main story, a 15-20 hour follow up story, and all the bonuses, hidden stuff and new game plus features you've come to expect from Tales games. Honestly, if you enjoy JRPGs at all, you really have no reason to NOT get this game... unless you're offended by low-res, upscaled to HD visuals or something anyway. Buy it.

I have been waiting desperately for this game for a very long time, so I had high hopes. Tales of Vesperia was, all told, the best JRPG I'd played on a current gen console, which made me eager enough for Graces to import it for the US on the release date. I enjoyed it enough to re-purchase the Day-1 special edition now available for pre-order on Amazon UK.

PLOT -- not a lot you can say spoiler-free, but plotwise, Graces is sound for a JRPG but weaker than some of the other Tales games. You play as Asbel, a pretty typical JRPG hero: emotional klutz with a good heart and a drive to protect those he loves. The game launches into the childhood arc -- maybe 10% of the whole game, plot elements of which lay the groundwork for the main story arc. Congrats to Namco; the childhood arc is nowhere near as irritating as comparable 'childhood' sections in other games. The kids are believable as kids without being bratty. It's fully playable, too; no overly long cut scenes, and there are a few genre-trope-flipping twists. There are also a lot of genere tropes to *provide* those twists, but if you cared about that you wouldn't be playing a Tales game in the first place ;)
After the end of the childhood arc the real story begins. Without a walkthrough of any kind, and completing all the easily-found side-quests, there's a solid 40-50 hours of gameplay here. The pace is fast enough that you won't get bored. There are knights, rebels, cross-nation war and politics, kings, demons, etc.. There are actual motives for the baddies. Everyone has back-story, and more of it hidden in the sidequests you'll access later on. Of course you save the world, but in a rounadabout sort of a way, and more importatntly, first and foremost you'll fight to save your friends. And, despite the variable voice-acting and comedy mid-line pauses where the dub has gone horribly wrong, you will genuinely care about those friends.
Lastly, the 'future' arc (the origin of the 'f' in the title) is an extra 20-hour quest that picks up after the main game ends. It's a nice surprise if you forget about it, or aren't sure when one arc ends and another starts. It's just more of the same, really, and rather weaker in the plot stakes, but it takes the gameplay time up to easily 70 hours for a first playthrough, and a lot more if you play to a higher level of completion and challenge the bonus dungeon. There's a whole romantic dimension to the skits here (more on those later) which is, frankly, hilarious at times. It's like they bunged a whole game's worth of love-interest-related skits into the last few hours of the game, and it centres around mercilessly tearing shreds off the two (three) oblivious characters in its midst. It was a surprise, considering the platonic nature of almost all the other realtionships in the main game, and it makes the characters involved more sympathetic and believable, even if it's all a bit sudden.
The plot's sound, all in all. Even once the story degenerates into save-the-world calamities, there are elements of friendship and betrayal that go deeper than most games touch. The angst and dillemma of Sophie, particularly, comes through as more than just plot device (Final Fantasy XIII, I'm looking at you). Some bits could've been better. Others feel rushed, or skimmed over. But it's not bad.

CHARACTERS -- characterisation is both stronger and weaker than Vesperia here. V's Yuki was crowd-pleasing for containing a strong component of the kind of amorality usually reserved for Tales villans. There's none of that here. Asbel's good. Sometimes irritatingly good. But that's fair enough. Sophie's interesting as a mystery early on, interesting later on as she develops, and hilarious in some of the skits when her innocence in all things leads to amusing misunderstandings. She gains yet more depth in the future arc -- and while being, in many ways, the very epitome of a cliched character type, the writing handles these things gently and sympathetically, makes her in many ways the most likeable character of them all.
Hubert's not terribly original, nor Malik, but they have enough backstory to make them interesting. You understand why they act how they do. Pascal is the same, but obviously intended to be the comic relief. A lot of the time this felt weak to me, in many ways because her 'kooky' way of speaking just seemed awkward and contrived. You know how sometimes insecure teenagers act deliberately weird *just to be called weird*? It's that kind of cringe-worthy, her made-up words, and on such a confident character it doesn't really ring true. But otherwise she's sound enough. Hubert's voice acting is stuck-up and stilted, but it fits the character, and Malik's post-battle and skit scenes with Sophie are honestly funny, sometimes. They're all okay. BUT. Cheria.
I have nothing good to say about Cheria. What is she FOR? Nobody will ever know. You could remove her from the plot entirely and there would be very few resulting plotholes. And those plotholes would be cuter, wittier and move diverting than she ever is. I'll stop, now, before I can't.
Richard, though, is great. He's the kind of damaged that you'd honestly expect a prince to be. He's a very plausible character, at least until halfway through the main arc wen the save-the-world storyline takes over. At that point his character development sort of stops, and that's a real shame. But he's honest, and plausible, and on a par with Sophie for likeable believability.

SKITS -- this shouldn't be a category to itself, but the skits have really improved in this game. The Tales series is famous for its skits -- short, optional conversations between party members, ranging from game-hints to pure humorous fluff. There are hundreds in Graces, plus many more in the future arc. Seeking them out adds hours to the game and the character-interactions immerse you deeper in the plot and flesh the characters out in ways that other RPGs cannot compete with. Small face-only anime images in Vesperia have been replaced by whole-body portraits, which allow for changes of pose as well as expression. The characters jostle, push and chase each other as they talk. It's like a lot of semi-animated tiny cutscenes that a player can watch or ignore depending on their mood, and in Graces, they're better than ever.

GRAPHICS/CUTSCENES -- there are surprisingly few anime cutscenes in the game, and the in-game graphics aren't stunning. Vesperia didn't really utilise the Xbox's capabilities, and Graces is the same with the PS3, at least as far as character models are concerned. I don't know if this is a result of the original Wii game being upscaled or a stylistic decision, but the 3D character models look kind of dated. The environments, however, are pretty stunning. It's a nice-looking game overall, because of this. There are several costume-changes for each character available towards the end of the game (some available out-the-box if you pre-order now and get the extremely good value Day 1 Special Edition). So far i've found nothing to stop me having to look at Cheria face, but there are Vesperia costumes and a nice one for Pascal, swimsuits for the perverts among you and a side-quest related special one for each character. You wouldn't think this optional extra would add much to the game overall, but it freshens it up after 70 hours of looking at the same character models.

SIDEQUESTS -- hours and hours and hours. There are a lot of optional basic fetch-quests accessible from inns, and you can use these to gain levels, skills and titles very quickly simply by turning in the drop-items you'll pick up in the course of the game. This pretty much eliminates the need for grinding, at least on the easier difficulties. The synthesis system is (mostly) improved from Vesperia, and greatly expanded. Weapons can be customised to a much greater level through the use of enemy drops, and a player can make use of this as much or as little as they like. There are a few other, deeper sidequests, and most of these are rewarded by extra plot details and titles that let you learn rarer skills or titles.

BATTLE SYSTEM -- the battle system in Graces is the best so far. For the first time in a Tales game there is true 3D freedom of movement, while the parry/guard system has been improved greatly. Moves consume CC (both physical and magical attacks) which recovers quickly when you guard, parry, dodge, carry out combos or otherwise battle like a winner :) As you move around the field, the game will also offer up random little challenges (defeat an enemy with a three-hit combo! Finish the battle in under 30 seconds! etc.). Completing these nets you extra experience and gald, and keeps the combat exciting even on long slogs through dungeons. Battling in Graces is truly a joy, and the option to change the game's difficulty *at any point* means that you can just turn up the enemy's power when back-tracking through earlier areas. The fighting never gets old, even past the 90-hour mark. You can play the whole game without figuring out how to run away, because you just won't get sick of the battles.

OVERALL -- Graces is a great game. It can't really stand up to Vesperia in some respects, but it's very polished in its battles and menu systems, the story's core message is sweet and well-intentioned, and the characters all have high points and well-thought-out stories. The sheer amount of effort that has gone into the game wows you at every turn, and it is nothing if not engrossing. This game is the best value-for-money you'll play this year, by several miles. It's a JRPG of the best kind -- it does almost everything right, and when it lets itself down, you'll forgive it for all the nice little extras buoying it up in every other department. And, of course, it'll be a small first run, as Tales games always are. Read more ›

Tales of Graces F is yet another game in the series for Namco Bandai and whilst popular over in Japan, never does particularly well in the UK.

The story follows the young hero, Asbel on his journey through life, focusing on the people he meets including a girl he names Sophie, his friend Cheria, a prince called Richard, his geeky brother called Hubert and others. The game starts off focusing on them as children, it then zaps forward seven years to find Asbel on the verge of becoming a knight but being called back to his home town for... (I won't say anything else to prevent spoiling the plot.) Its an interesting plot which keeps evolving constantly but isn't that different from others in the series.

Graphically, the game is impressive although basic. This is deliberate but the range of colours really makes the game more impressive. There doesn't appear to be a great variety of places and they are all a bit samey but you won't mind. I'm 15 hours in and I've only really been to towns, caves and fields.

Gameplay is always a highlight and this game features real time fighting where you can control one character manually or semi manually. You can set it to automatic but all you will end up doing is watching. The other characters are controlled via artifical intelligence (they will do their own thing basically but you can give them a specific strategy, i.e. heal, fight from a distance, support main character etc.) You can use artes which you learn through titles. These can be set and used at any point within reason. Titles are earned throughout and each title can help improve your character by improving defense etc, basically very Jap RPG orientated.

I've always liked the music in the series but don't see much point in mentioning it although the special edition does come with a soundtrack and making of DVD (haven't seen it yet!) Finally, it is not all fighting and watching scenes (of which there are many.) You can also upgrade items at local Tutlez and combine items to make new ones (very much like synthesis, wonder where you got that idea from i.e. Atelier series.) Personally, if you like RPGs (particularly others in the series) you'll like this. I prefer it to Vesperia, Eternia etc but it still doesn't beat Symphonia. A great game.