ethelred said:
The dungeons aren't just "pretty bland," they're absolutely 100% boring, unoriginal, atrocious -- Namco created one room for each dungeon and then just hit CTRL+V a bunch of times. Combat isn't just vanilla -- they took a huge step back from all the innovations they had made to the series' combat system. Characters were slow, clunky, possesed few basic moves, etc.
Dungeons are bland but are short and not very complex (with one or two execptions). I can't really knock them on it as much because I don't have to suffer through them much at all. I've gone through several of the dungeons with only 2 encounters while using Holy bottles.
Few basic moves? Did you finish the game? I can understand not liking the fact there aren't some of the nifty subsystems but all of the crazy looking regular moves are in the game. I do miss the super pretty and over the top hi-ougis though.
I think Legendia does a better job of providing a wide array of abilities for each of its (melee) characters than any of the other Tales games I've played. There's some attacks in the game that I've never seen in other Tales games even on similar style characters. Hell, even the mages have a pretty wide variety of magic that makes them different (well, not so much Shirley but I don't know what the hell is up with her).
I'll agree on the sluggish part for stopping your character to run in the other direction. That's the only time it seems kind of sluggish. Otherwise, the game moves pretty damn well in combat.
The story is... well, it's good as far as the Tales games go, but I wouldn't even consider that the best in the series, and it's certainly not enough to push the game up over the poor gameplay and dungeon design.
Its story is definitely not the best but I do think it's better than Eternia, Symphonia, and to a minor extent, Destiny. Destiny II still has the best story thus far IMO.
kiryogi said:
And uh.. what chapter are you on?
Chloe's Character Quest.
kiryogi said:
also and destiny 2j's story was a giant horrible time paradox. What are you on? That was the only thing wrong with it though. Tod2j's characters were just outright charming tho. Kyle/Reala is probably my 2nd or 3rd most favorite couple in the series. With Luke/Tear being first and Senel/Chloe in the fight with Kyle/Reala. While story wise, it's probably between Legendia and Abyss. But... your commentary makes you seem that you're still early Shouta.
The Time Paradox argument came up about Silmeria's story too on the GFaqs boards. :lol
Destiny II's story is quite good unless you're trying to wrap your brain around thinking of the details in a specific manner. I liked the cast but not as much as I like Legendia's cast. Kyle is a bit too much like Stahn and Reala is too much like the porcelain doll/quiet girl character type. Harold was pretty amusing if only because they made her this whacko scientist. Nanaly had about as much personality as a brick. Judas and Loni were the two best characters in the game by far.
SailorDaravon said:
I know, that's the problem! Disagreeing on games is one thing, but between the 3 of you there's usually at least 2 polar opposites which makes it harder for the rest of us
Sorry, I'm not going to make it easy on you by agreeing with duckroll and Bebpo!
kiryogi said:
Sadly though, having to tolerate the gameplay for the story ended up giving me a huge stigma of hatred in the end :/
I have no major issues with the gameplay myself. In fact, it's kind of nice to play a very straightforward Tales game. Destiny II had the zoning system which was a pain in the ass to fight most of the time even if it was the biggest reason the gameplay is top-notch.
I'm actually having fun sailing through the character quests because I don't need to fight very much at all now. I've gone through several of the dungeons with under a handful of random fights because of Holy Bottles. So it's basically been almost a solid 8 hours of story. :lol
SailorDaravon said:
I was set on starting Otogi 2 tommorrow, but maybe I should crack open my copy of this and see how it is.
The game has a really odd start since it doesn't spend a lot of time explaining lore or what's going on. The pacing seems kind of weird for the first few hours until you start hitting some of the bigger events. After that point, the pacing becomes really good and is pretty much smooth sailing until the end of the main scenario.
Honestly though, the American version IS missing the voice acting for the second half of the game. The VAing in the JP version of the game really helps the second half since it's so character driven.
