I think this is my favorite so far, the art looks brilliant.

Cookie monster pose is just priceless.

I feel like I should give you some kind of award for having the best commenter’s name ever. If I had anything beyond lint and candy wrappers, I’d be sure to hook you up.

Thank you for the nice little Tales write-up. It’s hard to find decent reviews of games online sometimes. I have this horrible habit of hitting up Gamefaqs and reading the user-reviews there. I think we both know how that usually goes for me (Hint: It’s a lot like asking an illiterate, Halo-obsessed 10-year old how much he likes Halo.)

Turns out I love face-paced combat AND convoluted crafting. Thanks for the warning about the secret missions too. I can get a little OCD with that stuff as well, so it’s good to know it’s not really worth it. I’ll keep Tales near the top of my next-game list.

A coworker and I were just lamenting the lack of good RPGs on the 360. You wouldn’t happen to have any other recommendations, would you?

Reddit has been preposterously kind to us. Thanks for taking the time to read our archive and the kind words at well. It is like 1,000 experience points for the hearts of Dana and I every time someone does this.
-Mike

Combat’s wicked-fast and combo heavy, with tons of skills to learn and use. The more you use your activated skills (which are broken into different categories and classes that can then be linked into pattern-based combos), the more new ones you learn, etc. Dodges, blocks, group attacks, etc. make it pretty frenetic, but it’s not as bad as it was in Tales of the Abyss, where you *also* had to worry about colored “zones” appearing on the battlefield that would interact with some abilities in special ways. . . but you had to memorize which abilities. Ugh.

Anyways, the plot is standard J-RPG silliness, but the Tales games have this annoying habit of sucking me into the characters’ lives by the end. Deaths/betrayals always hit me really hard in this series, for some reason–I mean, it’s no Shakespeare, but you take what you can get, and with Tales, you get pretty good.

Oh, and take my advice: don’t try to do that ridiculous Secret Mission crap on your first playthrough. I’ve fought the 5th boss a dozen times trying to finish him off in the specific way specified by the SM, and have failed everytime. . . but since you have to get them all to win some paltry award at game’s end, I keep on trying. . . and trying. . . and trying.

Also, item-crafting is somewhat convoluted and not terribly well explained at first, but at least it’s not utterly broken like it was in Abyss–you were able to find the ingredients to one of the most powerful swords in the game in the first quarter or so, making the next couple dozen hours of combat laughably easy as long as you knew when to block or swing. Vesperia’s not so easily broken, but smart item-hoarding and looking out for rare items will net you a slight weapon/armor edge that feels very, very rewarding.

Oh, and I’ve been linked to two of your comics from reddit, so I spent this afternoon reading your whole archive and all the commentary associated with that. Really good stuff!

Thanks for the kind words as always. I too am very excited for DQ IX’s release. I’m re-playing through IV right now, after the fury Blue Dragon stirred in my heart. I’ve also been thinking about picking up VIII again and running through it again as well, but then I remember that any free time I have is almost entirely pretend and an all-fists game isn’t going to be happening anytime soon.

I have heard good things about tales of Vesperia as well. Let me know if you end up picking it up, as I’d love to hear how it is. I’ve never played any of the Tales games myself, but Vesperia seems like it could be rad, what with skill, crafting and live combat systems.

-Mike

For a bit less of a classic experience, I’ve heard good things about Tales of Vesperia, and intend to grab it for myself once I have time to sink into yet another famously long Tales game.

Furthermore, somewhere between 1000 Tom Pettys and the cookie monster I found myself having trouble breathing, because laughter is bad for my lungs. O_o