Tales of Vesperia
Released: 8/26/08
System: x-box 360 (exclusive)
Story: The story takes place on Terca Lumireis where people rely on an ancient technology called Blastia. Blastia is like there source of power/energy and is used to do many things like control water (some powerful enough to control weather), provide barriers and even used to inhance a person with magic. The Barrier Blastia is a huge reliance in their civilization since there are monsters everywhere. Towns/cities use it to protect themselves from monsters.
You start out as Yuri Lowell, who lives in the cities lower quarters (down town area) and is a ex-knight. At the start of the game a fountain breaks that's controlled by an aqua blastia. With the broken fountain the lower areas start to get flooded so he heads down over to help. After examining the fountain he learns that the people all put there money and precious valuables together to pay a mage to fix it. Seems the mage did a poor job and took a valuable piece of item from the fountain called a 'core'. (Blastia is hard to get by the way)
With that in mind he heads over the nobles area to find the mage and take back the core to fix the fountain. It's there he gets caught sneaking into the mage's house (and the mage ran away on time). Now sent to jail he manages to get out (was planning to only for a short while) to check on the lower quarter but get's caught as 'breaking out of jail' while rescueing a noble girl in the castle. (She was being attacked by the knights and Yuri never turns away from someone in need of help)
Yuri learns that she wants to get out of the castle like him and decides to kindly help her. When they leave the castle they head out of the city with two diffrent goals. Estelles wants to find Flynn (a knight who is Yuri's "friend"?) and Yuri seeks the mage thief to get the core/aqua blastia back.
Gameplay: Too awesome. lol
The graphics aren't bad and they look like normal RPG's. I'll go through a few things but everything so far is amazing and fun.
Towns- Well laid out and easy to navigate through. Typical RPG where you run around and chat with NPC's, stay at inns, buy items/weapons ect...
World Map- Big and easy to travel. Monsters aren't random but are there and when they see you they will go toward you to attack and battle begins that way. There are a good amount of places to go too.
Battle System like typical Tales game. Since I never played a 'tales' game before and this was my first...i'd say its VERY close to star ocean styles of battle.
*Can lock on enemy
*Can block/attack/use combos/magic/skills/fatal strike/Limit break ect
*Can taunt/choose items/change equipment during battle
*Can make members use a specific skill/tech
*Characters sort of interact during battle (ex. Yuri warns them to not use so many items if they do...or asks if someones OK when they hurt a lot.)
*Can change party members (Can fight with 4 during battle)
*Encounter differences (ex. surprise encounter starts with members that weren't in the front row but back. So if you have a b c d e players. And a b c d normally fight. Surprise encounter will jumble characters up and e d c b will fight. )
Regular specials in gameplay
*Can synthesis items/weapons
*Can cook in game and make various recipies
*Can press a button and make some 'taunt'/'motion' while in town
*Can use special items to stun item outside battle at times
Rate: 10/10
I bought this game right away. ^_^ (well a few days after it came out) But anyways, its so worth it! Finally a real RPG is out on the x-box and it's so much fun it keeps be hooked. I would recommend this to any RPG fan and also would especially recommend it to Star Ocean fans/Tales Fans. ^_^
