Tales of Xillia 2 (PS3): Too much, too soon.

In my previous Tales of review, I made an open challenge to people who miss the "good Final Fantasies" and went as far to say that I think the Tales series has started to get better than the iconic JRPG franchise from Square Enix. I made this claim based on the track record that pretty much every Tales of game that played dating back to Tales of Symphonia back on the gamecube has been an example of excellence in the active battle JRPG genre. 

Although, I did have a little bit of trepidation going into this one because the turn around from Tales of Xillia to its direct sequel was only about a year. That seemed awfully fast for a series of games that boast 60+ hour play times. I began to wonder if Tales was starting to go the Assassin's Creed route on me. I certainly hope not. Let's find out...

TALES OF XILLIA 2 (PS3)

Xillia 2 is much like its predecessor in the regard that it weaves the story of 2 majors characters. But instead of giving their own perspectives, the two of them make more or less make up one whole character. Elle Mel Marta is a young girl, running from suited thugs with her father. As they are cornered, he gives Elle a watch and tells her to go to the Land of Canaan, where she can receive a wish.

Elle manages to board a hijacked train by distracting a guard after scapegoating Ludger Kresnik, a not so simple chef at the train station on Elympios. Ludger is actually a highly capable fighter due to his training to become an agent of the Spirius Corporation, but after failing his examination (monitored and sabotaged by his brother, Julius), he was forced to pursue a simpler way of living. The day of the hijacking, Ludger crosses paths with Jude Mathis who is on Elympios from Reiza Maxia for a medical conference.

After giving pursuit to Elle, the group of three find that they are able to enter a fractured alternate dimension, which allows Ludger to transform with power and allows him to destroy the catalysts that make them different. The resulting crash of the train finds Ludger in massive debt, and he takes Elle with him to pay off his loans with Jude offering his assistance.  With his brother considered a terrorist for the crash and light of Ludger's new ability, Spirius hires Ludger as an agent and is tasked with finding his brother and destroying shattered dimensions, all the while trying to get Elle to the land of Canaan.

It looks like 3 characters, but Elle and Ludger really should just count as one.

So, this game pulled a pretty devious switcheroo on me right from the beginning, and I gotta be honest I didn't like it. At the start of the opening cutscene, the game leads you to think that Ludger is the main protagonist here and ultimately the character we will be following during the course of the adventure. This is true for the most part, but it starts with him exclaiming "CRAP" because he's late to start his agent exam.

The problem comes in after when you make your first couple of decisions. It seemed a little bit odd to me that when you play though the game, lots of people are addressing him and having lots dialog with him. He never really responds though. At most you will get like a grunt, a sigh, a nod, or head shake, or if you are lucky a generic one or two would response to the situation. Alright, seems a bit weird considering how weighty the dialog in Tales games tends to be. But its got a choice system that plays a factor, so surely he has some lines of dialog to exchange right?

The fact that they gave him a voice, but virtually no lines of dialog continues to bug me.

Nope. When faced with a decision you are given your two options and a moment to pick them. Sometimes there is a timer to pressure you into making a decision, but most of the time the options are pretty night and day. The problem I have with it is that after you make your selection, I expect the hero to say something (like say how it happens in Mass Effect). But no, the other person just continues as if you already responded, and it always just feels off when it.

Someone has mentioned to me that this is exactly how things worked in Dragon Age and that I loved that game. I suppose this is true, but Tales has always been been pretty competently voice acted so it was kind of surprising for them to focus so strongly on interacting with a silent protagonist. They do the same thing in the skits as you walk along the world map too. People talk to him and all he does is sigh or grunt, or give something like "I agree". If you are gonna give him a voice, give him some lines to read.

Now I mentioned that I had some concerns about how quickly this installment of Tales of Xillia came out. The main reasons for this is either a: the game would have been too rushed or been of shoddy quality, or b: the game recycled a lot of old assets. Well the latter is the case here. The characters have gone through a few makeovers in the year that has passed, but to the point I have played now, this is nearly an identical retreading of the maps from the previous game. It makes sense because its the same world and same universe, but I was hoping they'd mix in a few new dungeons a little more frequently. Perhaps that will change in later stages.

The combat is also greatly recycled as well. For the most part, it is functionally unchanged from most Tales games and specifically so from the last one, but there are some subtle differences. For example, the link system is still the same from Xillia 1 but you can't switch into your reserve party members anymore in 2. Instead, Ludger can now flip through various weapon types on the fly to make up for resistances and weaknesses. A lot of the returning cast members move sets appear unchanged, so I wasted no time getting back to stomping faces with Jude's high speed hand to hand.

The other big addition is Ludger's ability to transform into some kinda half demony thing. In this moment the party vanishes and basically you get unlimited HP and BP. As you wail on enemies with a high speed combo you can hit your special move button for different effects within the combo. Once you unlock Mystic Artes they really turn the tide of a fight and can save your ass. Honestly to the point I've played its already been a game changer as the only restriction is the cooldown time to load it. They have also added team Mystic Artes so now the fights can get really over the top as you pile on damage.

Surprise! The music is your regular old Tales bland entourage of uninspired and unmemorable tunes. This to me is one of the most baffling things about the series because it is consistently fun to play and has reasonably good stories, and yet in each installment not one of them managed to produce any kind of really notable soundtrack. You might recognize a song or two from the previous game but not much more than that. Somebody at Bandai Namco really should take the time to interview someone with a real knack for music.  Nobuo Uematsu and Akira Yamaoka have shown time an time again that a brilliantly composed score can carry a game a long way. This is an area where I feel the Tales Of series has most often hurt, and they really don't seem to be making any effort to improve here.

There is no penalty to using the overdrive, and it refills pretty quickly,
so don't be afraid to use it, because it can turn the tide of fights,

I will say that the game tugs at me the way the Atelier series tends to do, because its fun to see how the characters have changed and grown up in a years time. Some have been better, such as Elize: Who basically grew up locked in a cellar with her only friend being a stuffed toy, to a older looking more confident and sociable school kid. Some have been worse, like Leia: who switches from being a nurse and martial artist to becoming a journalist in impromptu of really nothing it appears. She's got a dopey outfit and the jump really hasn't made much sense to me yet.

Special mention goes to Milla because to where I have played, she's so radically different from the previous title. She isn't poised, graceful, or wise. She's almost bratty and stubborn, the way she picks fights with a little kid the whole time, but it goes to remember that in this one, its not the same Milla, as she's from a different reality. It actually opens up for some interesting and fun dialogs and I have to admit, I've laughed more than once at some of the exchanges.

Milla really has been my favorite in both games. Even though she's so
 different in this one, its just impossible not to love her banter. 

Some of the characters don't feel like they have changed all that much. Rowan is pretty much the same grandfather figure he was in the last game, and Jude while being much more advanced in his field, is still kinda the wishy washy ho hum dounk he was in the previous game, (which is strange considering the amount of ass he kicks in battle). There is a liberal sprinkling of new characters but some of the other familiar faces do make an appearance. Those who weren't playable before seem to be playable now (or at least two of them are).

While I am on the topic of characters, this one suffers from what I call "Anime Villain Syndrome". Like a good deal of animes, you can pretty much pick out who a villain is from the moment you see them. But in case the narrow, evil looking eyes weren't enough hint, you will usually hear some kind of ominous music when you are conversing with them. It is something I have always hated with anime because when someone turns out to be evil, it is never, ever a surprise.

Yep, Bet this guy totally isn't going to turn out to be evil.

This specific title has taken a bit longer to grab me than the previous installment did, but I finally hit a point where I was hitting my stride with the game, but I wish it followed more of a logical progression as I played through it. Having to stop between story segments to arbitrarily raise money to spend to unlock the next section doesn't nothing but impede my progress for no real reason. The way the story is unfolding I can't imagine this is how it is going to lay out the entire time but for the most part its kind of an annoyance.

It gets even worse because some of the side quests you have to do require "Cat Dispatch". Basically you have to find cats on the world map. When you do, you can dispatch cats to that area and they will come back with items. Sometimes rare that you can only get through this process. The problem is, some of the side missions require you to get them, so they are literally missions that just make you wait on the chance you might get what you need. I don't like them, but at least the timer moves when you are paused or turn the game off. 

I have to give Xillia 2 some credit with their choice system though. While they sort of dropped the ball with the voice actor thing, they certainly picked up the slack by giving me some pretty tough choices to make. Very early on they basically lock you in debt to a very, very shady character. And as you go through the progress of the game, you have to make some decisions to work with equally shady people, or make choices that have some pretty shitty outcomes. There have been a pretty significant number of times where I couldn't just easily pick a decision because they were varied shades of grey rather than black and white. The only hangup to it is that I am not sure my decisions are really playing that big of a factor to the story at all. 

Some of the victory commentary is cringe-worthy, and the selfie one is one of the worst.

And its taking fucking forever for me to plod through, which is always one of the inherent problems of the mission system. But forcing me to do a multitude of side quests, I start to get easily distracted. The ability to fast travel my way through the maps help expediate the process, but on more than one occasion I have been putting off doing the main quests to bang out the side quests. It grinds the overarching story to an absolute halt. And for games as story centric as the tales universe tends to be, this is a pretty big issue. 

I don't really know what else I can really add to it here. I suppose if I had to rate this I'd say its not as good as the others because its taking me so long to get though. Perhaps its because there wasn't enough gap between the last one, perhaps I didn't like the changes they made, perhaps because it feels like more of the same.

Rollo is Fat.

But the combat is still fun, the characters are well voice acted, and if you played the last Xillia you will recognize the locations and music somewhat. The thing with Tales games is the adventure they weave you on, and if I was able to streamline this one more without having to constantly stop to raise money, I might have been farther along in it. I have about 30-40 hours into my save file and I barely feel like I've scratched the surface of this one, and honestly, I already feel like I'm ready to move on to my next game.

I don't know, I still intend to finish this but can't help but feel a little cheated and disappointed in this one because I come to expect so much better from this franchise. I don't have a Vita so I might not get to play Tales of Hearts but I am hoping that Tales of Zestria next year comes out better and learns from its mistakes.