I can’t decide whether to drop it or not. I’m 29 hours in so I should be done in 7 hours but rrrghh… I don’t know if I want to put that time into Tales of Hearts any more. It’s been going up and down in quality from the start, but now it’s just, rrrggh…

What made me snap was finishing some long dungeon at some military base, going through a lot of trouble to get an airship so I could chase the Cendrillion only to have the airship smashed out of the sky without achieving a darned thing. Now Shing and Richia and friends have come up with another hair-brained scheme to… uhh, I wasn’t paying attention any more. Something about using Chalcedony’s Soma to fly Richia up to the Cendrillion, then she soma-links with it and forces it to land or something bizarre like that. Dunno.

Only problem is, last I saw Chalcedony he had just turned himself in to the army for attacking the Empress. His head must be on a chopping block by now, which means I’m going to have to clear some stupid dungeon to rescue him and then have Shing lecture him to death so I can pry his Soma out of his cold, dead fingers. To put it in layman’s terms, “I don’t wanna.”

After all, there’s no guarantee this plan will go any better than the last one did, and even if it does I don’t really care. Way too much time was spent in the first half of the game on the Repair Kohaku’s Spiria arc, so when all the drama happened with Creed showing up and the Forest of Thorns/Cendrillion taking off, I was all set to move into the endgame, not pussy-foot around with all these crappy dungeons. Maybe I’m just impatient, but I like games where once the great problem/final boss of the game shows up, the bulk of the remaining time is devoted to finding and executing solutions to the problem.

Not just that, but if at all possible, most character development moments and arguments over direction and crises of confidence should be settled either prior to or very shortly after that point. I didn’t want to spend 8 hours dealing with Shing throwing a long hissy fit, then a long bit of “All our mothers/fathers knew each other” (remember, such plots are only sucky if FF8 does it, otherwise it’s “masterful storytelling”) then more Shing hissy-fitting, then after a long struggle through a tedious mountain stage Beryl throws a hissy fit. WHY NOW, BERYL? I like Beryl, but whyyyyy? Sure I agree with her that it’s annoying seeing everyone virtually worship Kohaku, but no one forced Beryl to tag along, so why? And why now and not 10 hours ago? Anyway her tantrum doesn’t last long, just long enough to irritate the pants off me, then it’s off to the military base I just mentioned, where all my hard work and suffering came to nothing.

Honestly the only thing that has been keeping me playing is a desire to see the ending. Gameplay vids and spoilers of the remake (Tales of Hearts R) are in plentiful supply, but there are bound to be a number of storyline changes because of the addition of characters like Chalcedony and Gall to your party who either don’t join or don’t even exist in the original. I mean, we probably wouldn’t have to bust Chal out of jail to use his Soma if he was already in our party, would we? …wait, we probably would. Well in that case there’s no need for me to hold back on reading R spoilers.

That settles it, then. Tales of Hearts is officially dropped after 29 hours and I will ‘complete’ the game by reading a summary. Actually I don’t even need to go that far, I know the drill. The team will stop Creed through the friendship/bonds/soma links between them. The world will be saved and the bad moon will be defeated.

Shing will find out the ‘strong Spiria’ his grandfather wanted him to have can only be found through trusting and relying on others, blah blah. Somebody will probably sacrifice themselves for an extra boost of tragedy. My money’s on Richia or Kunzaite, or both. Or maybe Hisui, but he doesn’t seem like the type. And then Shing and Kohaku will be together and everyone else will live happily ever after, the end. Am I right or am I right? I am right.

Final thoughts on Tales of Hearts? The story let it down. Everything else was at least passable.
– I liked my party and their interactions outside the story. On his own Shing would have been unbearable, but the others attempt to put him in his place from time to time, so that helps.
– The battle system was on Easy so I didn’t really put it through its paces. No comments there, except I really hated the way my party kept shuffling late game. I’m used to controlling Shing and hate using anyone else. I set them all on Auto, but they’re so dumb and inefficient, rrrgh again.
– I enjoyed going to new areas and fighting new monsters and getting new items to power up my Soma weapons. I’ve always liked games where enemy drops have a use beside selling to vendors, and the drop rate was high enough that I never had to grind for drops. That despite easily-avoided map enemies, another plus.
– The menu screens and options weren’t as hard to read as in Tempest or as complicated as in Innocence. Hearts is easily the best of the three DS Tales games, but that’s like comparing a dry slice of toast to a steaming plate of dung. Human dung.
– Maps were small and easy to navigate, and later on you got field maps so you could just walk from one town to another in 5 seconds.
– I liked the concept behind the world, with the Somas and the Spirias and stuff. It was different without being too over the top. Not too much time was spent on explanations and technobabble either, everything just worked and that was the end of that.
– Even the story wouldn’t have been so bad if it hadn’t dragged on so long after Creed showed up. The pacing was bad all the way through, but it just sank like a stone after that point.

In all respects except the story Hearts was fun, simple and user-friendly. If it had ended within, say, 5 hours after Creed showed up I would have written something a little more positive. As it is I’m just glad to be ‘done’. And I’m done with Tales games as well, at least for the foreseeable future. Next time I come across a game like this, I’m going to listen to the “Just quit already” voice within me.