Super-long-ass post that people aren’t going to read, but…
tl;dr Vesperia gud, most handheld rpgs are gud, b-tier rpgs are dead, too bad the actual good shit ain’t getting localized.
Well, if I have to add my two cents in, the only version of Vesperia I’ve played is Vesperia PS3, and since I didn’t have a 360 last gen and am still thinking of getting a refurb, I don’t think I’ve played every console RPG this gen to completely warrant a decent “what was the best console RPG this gen?” opinion. A lot of people have been telling me that Blue Dragon is up my alley and when I get a 360 that’ll be the first thing I play.
Vesperia should fit into the category Tales games that I don’t like. I don’t like a lot of the stuff from those Team Hearts/Team Symphonia folks (which doesn’t exist since Tales Studio is now consolidated and a lot of the staff I did like don’t seem to be on every game or don’t seem to be there anymore). To put it in even more of a perspective, my favourite Tales games are actually: Tales of Rebirth (despite having one of the worst narratives in RPGs), Tales of Destiny R (probably the best Tales game I’ve played), Narikiri Dungeon X (a useful job system and great spritework), and Tales of Graces (the best 3D combat in the Tales series, period, since it isn’t designed to button-spam given enemies’ weaknesses, and you can modify each character’s strings based on different types of artes depending where you are in the combo tree—this works even more exceptionally well if you played the whole thing on Chaos mode like I did). A lot of these games have several things in common: they’re designed by similar staff (including Tatsuro Udo who tends to fit in a lot of things that I love re: combat/variety/ability gain), their stories tend to not be so good (Destiny R’s story is alright, though), and the dungeons aren’t as aptly designed as Team Symphonia games. With that said, the strongest aspect about the games I like is the combat system. Graces was my favourite Tales game of last generation, and that’s because I loved how all of the auxiliary systems tied themselves together cohesively while making combat flow more easily. It was super-good design.
With respect to Vesperia’s battle system, I’m mostly a fan of the “Team Destiny” engines so the Team Symphonia engines don’t generally do it for me. So instead of looking at it as whether or not it’s the best Tales battle system, I’ll look at it primarily as a Team Symphonia branch of combat. Vesperia’s combat evolves Abyss’s combat and it makes it more balanced. I like Vesperia’s much more than Xillia’s combat system because you can completely break Xillia’s combat system with the main character almost at the beginning of the game and mostly no-hit the game if you really wanted to even without that damn Free-Run option (and that’s mostly because the speed in Xillia is completely bonkers and in your favour, even on the hardest mode… and thankfully Xillia 2 makes it a little more balanced). Vesperia has aerial attacks and places a lot of emphasis on them, which is good in my book. Having played Destiny R after it, I thought Vesperia’s implementation of aerial attacks worked pretty well (ie: using artes in midair if you master them in Vesperia’s case with Judith being the exception). I also liked that you could have one free attack while Free Running but if you do that, it cancels your Free Run so you can’t take advantage of it and run around the enemy. Fatal Strikes are cool moves and they work as timesavers in some cases. I missed them in the Xillia games. I played the PS3 version of Vesperia, where one optional boss can use Fatal Strikes on -you-, which was neato. There are Fatal Strikes in Tales of VS, but they’re for the Vesperia characters only in that game.
I like Vesperia. It still suffers from what Tales generally suffers from, but to a slightly lesser extent. There are still some characters I dislike, but there are characters who stand head and shoulders above other Tales characters in the entire series due to not being as annoying or playing an entirely different role in Tales altogether. Estelle, for example, was a complete breath of fresh air because she isn’t automatically deemed as Yuri’s love interest. Estelle still has that “sheltered noble” trope associated with her, but that isn’t necessarily an anime trope and more of a general media/literature trope which isn’t much of a strike against her to me. I actually hated her at first, but I came to like her more and more as I progressed through the game when I realized she wasn’t constantly throwing herself towards Yuri. They’re more like a brother and sister and the lines don’t cross much from there. I should hate Karol too, but I don’t mind him much (outside of his Japanese voice and I like his English voice much better based on what I heard from the dub). If this were any other game, Karol would be the protagonist because he ends up learning what leadership truly means and tries to mature and get over his general cowardice. It’s not so much subverting that Tales of Vesperia does, but in some cases it subverts, and in other cases it tones some of the tropes down since they’re amplified by a ton in other Tales games or RPGs in general.
So in my case, Vesperia is one of the better Tales games narratively-speaking, and it probably has the best Team Symphonia-esque battle system to boot. I mean, it’s still a Tales game and is still prone to the stuff that people don’t like about Tales narratives and characterization, but it’s mostly less-offensive than most of the Tales games around. To be clear, I’m not exactly deeming Tales narratives to be head-and-shoulders above the rest because I don’t think they are. But on a personal level, I have to wonder if that’s due to my Tales fatigue than anything else. Vesperia still suffers from the thing that all Tales games do: a last third of the game that clearly didn’t need to be there.
Vesperia is one of the prettiest, if not the prettiest Japanese console-style RPGs on a console I’d played last gen. It works well with Tales’s general anime look and makes scenes and running through towns look like you’re playing an anime in motion.
And I hate Abyss, myself. It’s one of my least-favourite Tales games along with Tempest, VS, and some of that browser poop they released. No idea how people say it’s their favourite even if they played Vesperia which improved on its combat engine in almost every single aspect to make it feel less “lazy”.
If you look at Vesperia as a Tales game, it certainly stands among the best games in the series, period. It achieves a lot of what Tales does, but also tones down some of the tropes that tend to be amplified in other games in the same series. I don’t think it has the best battle system in the series, but that has more to do with the fact that I prefer the Destiny-style engines. That said, it’s the best Symphonia/Abyss-style If you look at Vesperia compared to a lot of the other console-style RPGs on consoles out there, then it becomes more subjective.
There weren’t a lot of super-good console-style RPGs that I played last gen, though. A lot of them were games I’d deem as either mediocre to decent to good. But not games that I’d consider excellent or games that I’d say are really outstanding. I’m fond of stuff like Arc Rise Fantasia (it had Tales staff on it, and that was before Imageepoch turned into crap; it had a great ability system and a decent battle system with Koshiro/Harada music), Resonance of Fate, and Tales of Graces f, and Xenoblade (despite issues with the battle system and not thinking it’s as untouchable as a lot of others do).
…and I guess that selection goes to show where the genre seems to be now. It’s surprising when you actually step back and take a long look at it. Because devs seemed to move more towards mobile and handhelds, a lot of the bigger console efforts weren’t as great as their handhelds counterparts. And I guess that’s why some people are more inclined to accept something, anything in terms of a Japanese console-style or Japanese strategy RPG on consoles even if it’s not that great or very balanced at all. Not everyone moved to handhelds in the west, which is unfortunate because there were plenty of B-tier RPGs that were really good or stood out quite well just like Suikoden, BoF, Grandia, etc. did all those years ago.
I think it was when I finished Neptunia mk2 that I realized what I was doing and wondered why I even bothered with the B-or-lower-tier RPGs anymore if this is what I’m likely to get served. I love the genre, but I don’t think I’m going to try to eat up everything anymore because there’s just one plate that I no longer want to touch. And some of the people who are trying to take stuff from that plate are kinda weird sometimes.
As for my favourite handheld games, I dunno. I played a lot. Uhhh…
-Sora no Kiseki the 3rd (though that’s a PC port but it was my first time playing it)
-Radiant Historia
-Fire Emblem 12 (the FE3 remake for DSi, and I’d argue there’s a good amount of new content/rebalancing)
-Bowser’s Inside Story
-Etrian Odyssey games / 7th Dragon
-Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep (read: the only KH game I like)
-Strange Journey
-The World Ends With You
-NariDan X
-Growlanser IV OverReloaded
-Nayuta no Kiseki
And I’m still finding new PSP and DS RPGs to go through, so I don’t think I’m completely finished with them yet.
Sorta sucks that it seems like the era of the B-tier RPG is dead now, though. And whatever -is- considered to be B-tier to some people has… less-desirable aspects to other people. I’m pretty sure that my tolerance level for anime tropes and sexualization has fallen as the years have gone by to the point of mostly being done with it, so I get where those people are coming from.
