One of the weaker tales

Posted by Jacob H. on 9th Nov 2010

What makes this 15 chapters game interesting is the way the game is split into two halves: Main Storyline (Chapter 01-07) & Character Quests (Chapters 08-15). The Main Storyline is the first half of the game, about Senel and Shirley on an ancient ship known as Legacy. After beating the main storyline, you'll be playing the second half of the game "Character Quests"; storylines about the other 6 characters in your party.

Don't be fooled though, the "Character Quests" is NOT a side-quest or anything. It gives the whole spotlight to that specific character, thus the game can learn more about him/her (hence a greater development). Saying so, you should consider the Main Storyline as "Senel + Shirley's Character Quest" since the Main Storyline is focused on those two character specifically.

The main storyline's plot itself is average and similar for a Tales game, but the main catch is the Character Quests. This allows to deeply give detailed persona about the characters which rpgs lacked these days. Even the npc, Mimmy Bread, the latest Wonder Bread/Cook has a great personality and short "plot" if you view all her cutscenes. This is definitely something you don't see in the other Tales game (and other rpgs).

Here's where things get weird the difficulty in this game is extremely odd. For the main storyline (1st half of the game), the enemies are just plain too EASY.BUT bosses do prove to be a challenge though, so don't let your guard down.

For the 2nd half of the game, the normal enemies suddenly gain a huge difficulty boost. Enemies can hurt you if you play too carelessly, bosses actually are a threat if you don't block or play carelessly. Near the end of the game, normal enemies gets EXTREMELY TEDIOUS and ANNOYING. Unless you have Extreme Symbol (attack up greatly, defense down greatly), you'll be dealing 3000-5000 damage in combos on normal enemies who may have around 30,000 to 60,000+ HPs (plus gives low experiences). This is NOT fun which may result in running away from battle or using Light Bottles to avoid less encounters.

It's interesting the difficulty is set like this. I assume that the 1st half is aimed toward new players to get used to the game, while the challenges is for the 2nd half of the game. It's about 20-40 hours average per half (main and characters story), so expect around 40 to 80 hours of average gameplay for the full game (even longer for completing Collector's Book).

All in all TOL is a solid game with A GREAT STORY but compared to the other tales battle systems it may prove to be too much for some but still it's worth sticking out the characters have more personality in legendia than the other tales cast, although cliches are to be expected still seeing the characters plots get resolved will be the main driving force behind beating the game while you "kinda" dread the battles.