So hopped on PSN today, and some of my friends playing this Tales of Grace f. Haven't played an RPG in awhile since i stopped playing Skyrim after two dreadfully dull hours, and decided i haven't played a JRPG in awhile.
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Reviews seem great all around, and despite having never played any "Tales of" titles,but willing to give this one a try if I hear good things about it from other people. Any ideas on how long the game takes or if the story is worthwhile/intriguing.

Thanks

SkyBlaze

Canada191 Posts

March 19 2012 22:12 GMT

It really depends on the story. the story is a bit decent but explaining it without saying anything of the story. I would say, you will pretty much know what your supposed to do very fast, way before the characters do. Also the story is very anime-ish that can be a up or down for you depending if you like anime quirks and such.

The combat is what I personally like, I have it on Hard with that said it's very hard where even item management( who use's what items, when.) and defending other members of your party and among more with AI controls come very in-depth in my opinion and where the game truly shines. Also if you have someone watching they can join and play as one of your party members which is quite nice (like in other tales games)

TL;DR
Overall the story is decent but could be better,very anime-ish (kinda what you suspect from Jrpgs)
Combat is very in-depth if set it to hard
Some extra side-quests (from what I see not sure how many )
40 hours of game play if you do everything could be more but that's what I have heard still trying to see if that's ture.

Hopefully this helps

Endymion

United States3701 Posts

March 19 2012 22:17 GMT

it's just like tales of the abyss if you've played that, characters are IDIOTS in the game.. the most frustrating thing ever about it is that characters will see something interesting, comment on how it's interesting, and be like "OH LETS JUST DISCUSS IT LATER..." because the writers are too damn lazy to have good content all the time so it has to instead be super spread out.. It makes me never want to play another JRPG again, it's nothing like how ToV, ToS, and ToP are... the game is artificially inflated by bullshit, not extra "interesting" content like character side quests, i mean like lets discuss how interesting it is but not say anything actually about it.. also there is a retarded amount of back tracking. and the english voice acting blows. and there isn't an overworld. i LOVE the tales series for the games i mentioned, but i'll never buy another one after ToA and ToG:f...

xBillehx

United States1289 Posts

March 19 2012 22:30 GMT

Story is decent but a bit cliche and cheesy as expected from any Tales game. The battle system is where it shines imho, crank it up to Hard, Evil then Chaos and the game will kick your ass if you try to just button mash. Side quests in the form of Inn Requests seem more like a "give the players extra shit to do" afterthought that just helps level titles with little to no story. (titles give 5 sets of skills/stat boosts each and theres a ton of them)

I've heard its anywhere from 40-80 hours of gameplay but that probably depends on how much you want to complete things. I'm 42 hours in on Chaos difficulty and I've still yet to get the last party member.

I'm having a blast with it personally.

Sickkiee

Japan607 Posts

March 19 2012 22:32 GMT

That's why you buy the Japanese versions.

KazeHydra

Japan2788 Posts

March 19 2012 22:46 GMT

On March 20 2012 07:17 Endymion wrote:
it's just like tales of the abyss if you've played that, characters are IDIOTS in the game.. the most frustrating thing ever about it is that characters will see something interesting, comment on how it's interesting, and be like "OH LETS JUST DISCUSS IT LATER..." because the writers are too damn lazy to have good content all the time so it has to instead be super spread out.. It makes me never want to play another JRPG again, it's nothing like how ToV, ToS, and ToP are... the game is artificially inflated by bullshit, not extra "interesting" content like character side quests, i mean like lets discuss how interesting it is but not say anything actually about it.. also there is a retarded amount of back tracking. and the english voice acting blows. and there isn't an overworld. i LOVE the tales series for the games i mentioned, but i'll never buy another one after ToA and ToG:f...

LOL I hated ToA characters for that. I was just like "you are stupid" every single cutscene. Actually, I never even finished it, but for the most part, I have enjoyed the Tales games although Abyss was the last one I played not because it was bad but that's around the time I stopped playing console games in general. ToS was my favorite, replayed it like 4 times lol.

zalz

Netherlands3704 Posts

March 19 2012 22:54 GMT

Tales of Symphonia is easily one of my favorite games of all time.

But I can't understand why all the other Tales of games seem to be so bad. Symphonia has an interesting setup, it plays on themes of morality and unfixable problems. Two forces clashing and only one can truly win.

Now, given, Symphonia goes off the deep end a little towards the end, but overall it is a strong story with strong characters.

Tales of Symphonia 2 for that matter, is just atrocious. It gets a little better, but the start...

One character says "Courage is the magic that makes dreams a reality," yes, he actually says something as cheesy as that.

But they flashback to it like a million times in the first 5 minutes of the game. Hey, remember what was said five minutes ago? FLASHBACK! By the 7th time I heard that "courage is magic" bullshit I wanted to snap the disk.

In the end the whole "Tales of" franchise just seems weird. The quality is all over the place, with only the combat generally being fun in nearly all versions.

See.Blue

United States2673 Posts

March 19 2012 23:04 GMT

Personally, tales games to me are super hit or miss. The bad ones (like graces, sorry :/) are terrrrrrible but the good ones (Aesalian timeline, ie Tales of Phantasia or Tales of Symphonia) are badass beyond knowledge. If you're bored, pick up ToP or Symphonia, both are some of my fav games of all time. (Just for the love of fuck, avoid Symphonia 2)

SheaR619

United States2399 Posts

March 28 2012 22:48 GMT

The story is kinda meh...and cliche but the combat is AMAZING! Everything is there and it made final fantasy turn base style looks like a piece of shit. I just wished the story would of been on par with the combat.....first time in a while where I am more excited about the combat rather than the story.

MysteryMeat1

United States3292 Posts

March 28 2012 23:23 GMT

#10

TOS was the longest game ive ever played. The most frustrating was that you could kill monsters in the dungeon in one hit. You thought you were really cool, then the boss would just smash you.

ZavikZyke

United States382 Posts

March 29 2012 04:16 GMT

#11

am i the only one who actually enjoyed ToA? When it first came out, it had the free-run system, which was a first for the Tales series... I was like, "WHAT IS THIS?" when I saw game play where people were actually able to move beyond a straight line. Seriously, ToS had me thinking that the Tales system was going to stay linear its entire gaming franchise (which wasn't necessary a bad thing). The FoF system was fun as well. Battle system was probably the best.

Character wise, yeah, Luke was an idiot ~~the entire game~~ sometimes. problem is that the theme of the game was "the meaning of birth" and that was the reason why Luke did some very foolish things.... But in the end, I still liked him. I dunno if it's just me, but watching the character development was an interesting process. And the other characters? Guy? Anise? Jade? They were too awesome. Dont deny that Jade was a badass.

I havent really played Graces yet. Is it worth the money? From what I've seen so far, it doesn't sound too promising....

SheaR619

United States2399 Posts

March 29 2012 16:41 GMT

#12

The story is subpar compare to the combat. The combat is by far it strongest attribute. It has the best combat out of all the tales game so far. ToA was damn good. The story was much richer than Grace. Although the free run system was fun, it was pretty imba if you can use it correctly and it actually become too easy imo. Grace is the perfect blend of linear and free run imo and it damn good.

Reason to play Grace is awesome combat design, Pascal is awesome, Hubert is badass, did I mention pascal is fucking awesome? But ya, if you like tale of the abyss, i would say give this game a try.

Delwack

123 Posts

March 29 2012 17:59 GMT

#13

Graces is my second favorite tales after Symphonia.

Symponhia > Graces > Vesperia > Abyss, but I liked all of them. (Symphonia was the first tales game I played, probably a bit of nostalgia bias in there too).

I can tell you that the characters will work for some people, and won't for others. It has it's fair share of cliches, but what story doesn't? It's all a matter of how well you hide them, and for people who are actively on the look-out or annoyed by a particular set of cliches, it won't work for them.

Tales games have almost always tended to focus on characters. If you like the characters, you'll like the game. If you hate them, you'll hate it. (How someone feels about Yuri pretty much makes or breaks if they like Vesperia or not, much of the time).

The story's not a masterpiece, but it's pretty good. In standard tales fashion, character development occurs through the little skits that happen throughout the game more than through the main story itself. While not bad in and off itself, it's possible to miss a lot of the development and fleshing out of the characters if you don't catch the skits (though you are pretty much guarenteed to see at least half of them before game end though, since they are right in your path.)

The battle system is where the game shines. Tales had been doing real-time (or close to real-time), positional based combat systems for longer than just about any other JRPG, and it works out well. If comparing to older tales titles, I think this current system it's a much better system than the SP/TP (essentially mana) based systems of the other tales games I've played used. With an 'Action points' like system that refills fast when not attacking, you focus much more on how and when to chain one ability into another, dodging, and on when and how to take breaks in between combos to recover.

If you liked any of the tales series, I'd say try it.

As to play-through length, depending on how fast you tend to play, reading speed, how good you are, the difficulty level you play on, and how much bonus dungeon, side quest and post-game content you do, a typical first playthrough clocks in between 60 and 80 hours.

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