I mentioned after I finished HanaIchi that I was playing 3 games at the same time. One of them is Fire Emblem Awakening, one of them is Entaku no Seito and one of them, which I hadn’t mentioned so far for fear of jinxing it, is Tales of Hearts. I haven’t had very good luck with Tales games so far, but ToH started out quite positively so I wanted to give it at least 10 hours to develop before making my first comments on it.
8 hours is close enough. Especially since I’m putting the game on hiatus for a while (Yuraio, tournament, not feeling it). It’s not exactly bad, but it’s just pissing me off and I don’t need the aggravation right now.
Good stuff: Both the world map and the dungeon maps are easy to navigate. This was part of the reason why I quit Tales of the… the one that came after Tempest. I thought the Spiria dungeons would suck, but they’re kind of fun. Some of the skits are amusing. Bright happy colors! Avoidable encounters! Frequent level ups! I quite like the item-based Soma Build system. Battles are on Easy so all I have to do is mash A and they’re over in a few seconds.
Why it’s benched: Shing Meteorite (renamed Kor Meteor in the English version, like that’s any less stupid). He’s annoying me. Sometimes I like him, sometimes I don’t. Mostly don’t. I don’t think he has adequately repented of getting his grandfather killed through his disobedience or of causing Kohaku brain damage by trying to cure her when he was completely unqualified for the task. I’d feel the same way about a random passerby who tried to operate on a sick person with a rusty chainsaw.
At first he seemed sorry, but now that Kohaku is getting better and is starting to like him (WHY?!!!), he’s getting all brash and in-your-face about it. And he’s still as rash and as stupid as ever. What do I want him to do, grovel forever? No, no, just for a hundred lifetimes or two, until he finally learns to think for a second and until the writers stop portraying reckless stupidity as a virtue. Either way I’m taking a break because I don’t want to see his dumb face for a long, long while.
Plus the rest of the cast isn’t doing anything for me either. Beryl and Innes are, like, whatever. They’re not really adding anything to the game IMO. Hisui I’m half-sympathetic to (if I were him I would have murdered Shing and stolen his soma on day 1) but he could use an attitude makeover. And the story, an evil church AGAIN?
But I’m guessing the game will be 30-40 hours long like most typical RPGs, so I’m only 20-30% done. I have no intention of quitting just yet, seeing as I like everything about Tales of Hearts except the story and characters, so I’ll pick it up again after two or three weeks and see if I feel better about it then.
Gee, what a coincidence! I’m playing the Vita remake right now! 😀 I’m reaching the 30 hours mark and the end of the game and I could spoil you rotten, but I’ll abstain. (Unless you ask me for it, of course.^^)Anyway, the story evolves in a pretty clichéd and every twist and turn is predictable from afar. I don’t really care since I don’t play RPGs for their stories, but there’s not a shred of originality to expect in this department. However, I find the general atmosphere really lovely and heart-warming, and the revamped fighting system is an absolute blast. I’m glad I managed to discover a Tales games that I unequivocally love! 😛
No spoilers for now. I’m still going to play it.
Oh man, I loved this game. The battles were fun and I ended up liking all the characters. Shing’s a dumbass, but it was entertaining seeing Hisui yelling at him and punching him for his mistakes. Beryl’s mostly comic relief, but gets her moments later. But it was mostly the gameplay that grabbed me.
The Vita remake isn’t as good since they rewrote some of the scenes to have less impact, took out a bunch of stuff in the sidequests, and had bad 3D models. The battles were okay, but I still can’t help but like the 2D version of the Tales battle system since I’ve played so many of the 3D ones.
The battles are fun, I’ll grant that, and there’s still time for the characters to grow on me. It all depends on what happens within the next 10 hours or so.