The Silent Protagonist – Tales of Vesperia

Hello and welcome back to The Silent Protagonist, the JRPG corner of Ready Up. Due to the looming release of Tales of Xillia, I’ve dedicated blogs to the Tales series. From the time of writing this blog, there is only 44 days until it’s release. Excited is not the word.

Tales of Vesperia is my second favourite game of all time, losing only to Tales of Symphonia. Why is it so awesome? It’s taken everything that I love about the series and made it so much better. Also Rita Mordio, the mage from Aspio is in it. She happens to be my favourite character. Mostly because she learns a huge variety of spells which evolve the more you use them. She can learn to fly in battle, and hurls fireballs or clonks Karol on the head pretty much every time they’re on screen together. What more could you ask for? A powerful mystic arte? Well, it just so happens she’s got that too.

The story is set in Terca Lumireis, a world inhabited by monsters, with cities protected by devices known as ‘barrier blastia’. They produce a barrier that encompasses the city or area and prevents… most… monsters from entering. Should a blastia fail, then the city is vulnerable to attack, such an example is seen early on in the story when the team visits Halure, the city of blossoms.

The story begins when the Aque Blastia is stolen from the fountain in the lower quarter. This blue orb functions as a device to produce clean water for the residents who reside there. Yuri Lowell, a resident of the quarter thus begins his journey to find the mage responsible for the theft. During his pursuit, Yuri gets arrested and thrown in jail. After a brief encounter with a mysterious man in purple (it’s less homoerotic than it sounds) Yuri manages to escape. During his jail break, he meets Estelle Heurassein, who is a highly intelligent princess and a candidate to ascend to the throne. In all her life she has never left the castle. She reminds of me of Garnet Til Alexandros XVII from Final Fantasy IX in that respect. Especially since they are both exceptionally powerful healers and summoners… if you play the PS3 version of ToV. Yuri is on a quest to find the Lower Quarters’ Aque Blastia. Estelle wants to find Flynn, an Imperial Knight and best friend of Yuri. All very complicated, but the story is full of unexpected twists and general awesomeness.

So what’s the actual gameplay like? It’s pretty much exactly the same as every other Tales game. Move from city to city via the world map, trawling through dungeons and advancing the story as you go. Sounds familiar if you’re a fan, right?

“VS. Yeager. Made his heart explode using Raven’s Rain arte.” It’s a bitch and a half, especially on “Hard” or “Unknown” mode. Although… what a description!

The achievements list, though… holy shit. Some of them are just general ones like complete the monster book, or play for a very long time, but within some boss battles, there are Secret Missions and if you’re a completionist, they can be a right pain in the arse. My personal favourite is Secret Mission 17 which states: “VS. Yeager. Made his heart explode using Raven’s Rain arte.” It’s a bitch and a half, especially on “Hard” or “Unknown” mode. Although… what a description!

Your characters can free run off the bat, instead of attempting to jump over your opponents or blocking until they lose interest, which makes a pleasant change.

Adding depth to the battle gameplay, your characters learn powerful “Altered Artes” by using their existing artes with certain skills equipped. For instance, Yuri has a base arte called “Wailing Havoc,” however, if you use it when you have the “Hell Fire” skill equipped, it changes to “Pyre Havoc.” The best thing about altered artes? If you use them in battle enough times, they become a permanent arte in your arsenal. Using altered spells 50 times and altered physical artes 100 times makes them powerful additions to your characters.

“Burst Artes” are also introduced, these occur when your characters are in overlimit and are non-elemental, unless certain circumstances are met. There are three tiers to each burst arte, each more powerful than the previous, and each initiated by a being in a state of higher leveled overlimit. The max overlimit level a character can reach at any one time is four. If your character is in overlimit level three or above, they are able to unleash their powerful “Mystic Arte,” if they have learnt the “Special” skill.

To cut a long story short, if you haven’t already, play it. Especially if JRPG’s are your thing.

Next time on The Silent Protagonist, I take a look at Tales of the Abyss.

…To be Continued…