Tales of Xillia (PS3): Familiar, yet Fantastic.

It's been a little over a year since I reviewed Tales of Graces f.  While it wasn't the glowing JRPG review I tend to give these games, in retrospect it was definitely one that I enjoyed. I recommended it to friends often and if I managed to get one person to convert, then I consider that a job well done. 

It was a slow year for JRPGs. Since that review, I played one old and one new Atelier game, two PS2 Persona games.. and.. ugh.... Mugen Souls. So after reading how this game was receive perfect scores in Japan, needless to say I was pretty eager to get my hands on it. Now after a little over a year, we sit down with....

TALES OF XILLIA:(PS3)

Our tale opens up with young Jude Mathis, a med student in the medical college of Fenmont, pursuing his medical degree. An accomplished doctor, he learns from his professor that he is already in line for a job. After covering for his professor's patients, he realizes the professor has gone missing after visiting a nearby military base. Jude is turned away at the base entrance, being told at the professor has already left. Jude is suspicious and starts to leave but as he does so, he spots a mysterious woman walking across the water trying to break into the facility.

The woman identifies herself as Milla Maxwell, and that she is here on mission. Jude follows her into the base and they discover that the military is running tortured experiments to drain the mana from people, including Jude's professor. After watching the professor die in a tube, Jude and Milla battle with a mysterious and psychopathic girl who seemingly is the cause of this. After dispatching her, Milla discovers a giant spyrix weapon called the Lance of Kresnik and tries to complete her mission to destroy it. She summons the 4 greater spirits which causes Jude to realize that she is none other than THE Maxwell, Lord of the Spirits.

However, things go sour as the psychopath returns and activates the weapon, which then beings to drain the mana from the room, and captures the 4 great spirits. Jude and Milla escape but then are pursued by the royal military. With the seemingly random help from a mercenary named Alivn, the three of them escape. With Milla now severely depowered without the four, she decided to return to her shrine to re-summon them so she can destroy the lance, and with Jude as a wanted fugitive he has no better course than to accompany her.

So, it might be a little difficult to give this game a lengthy review because many of the things I said about Tales of Graces f can easily be applied to Tales of Xillia. This franchise of games doesn't deviate much from the main formula but they do make a number of little tweaks to make it feel a bit different. So I will try to hit on changes more than the standards of the game which anyone who has played a Tales game should know by now.

For the first time that I can remember, Tales of Xillia features a dual hero system. Much like Star Ocean 2 back on the PS1, after the initial introduction sections you get to choose which of the two protagonists you wish to follow in Jude and Millia. My first thought was "Hey awesome, I get to see both perspectives." which was quickly followed by "Aww fuck. I'm gonna have to play this game twice in row now?!" RPGs never have short play times.

Although it was a bit of a premature assumption, since this rendition of Tales took me about 45+ hours to get through. Still a pretty meaty game length if you do the extra side quests or post game, but for JRPG and a Tales game specifically that is significantly shorter than I was expecting. perhaps to accommodate for the fact that it wants you to play it twice so you can do the missions with the opposing character's story path. Thanks to the return of the Tales of grade system, you get to customize your new game plus features in your second playthrough which drastically will cut down the playtime. Increased XP, damage, and level retention will make you fly through the game. 

There are two things I'd like to hit on with the story before we move on to the actual game. One? Its nice for once to have a Tales story that doesn't make me feel like a fucking idiot. Tales of games usually tend to have some pretty involving universes which force you to learn their lore and technology. With Vesperia's blastia cores and aer's, or Abyss's seventh phozons, or Legendia's merines, its enough to make you feel like you need an advanced degree in unintelligible rhetoric to follow along. 

Wouldn't be a Tales game without those weird animeish moments.

Thankfully, Xillia's tale is pretty cut and dry: Humans need spirits to cast artes to make life easier and spirits need mana from humans to survive, so they balance in harmony to suit mutual needs. But humans start making spyrix weapons that kill spirits for artes instead of giving them mana, so Millia is out to stop them before the balance is ruined and this influx of powerful weapons causes the nations to go to war. See that? Two sentences and I basically summarized the whole motivations. It is much easier to get immersed when I actually understand what the fuck is going on.

What I don't like however, is something I just noticed in this game. Almost every single Tales game I have played to this point, has had virtually the same story. Always a "Chosen one" and an "unlikely hero", Always two warring nations, always two worlds, always a younger character using a toy as weapon, always some horrible "power of friendship" moment, always some form of the world having its power drained. I might be glossing over these examples somewhat and they may not appear in all of them, but these are fairly common themes seen in nearly every Tales game to some degree. The locations and players change, but the story for the most part doesn't. This really sounds like a negative to be honest it never bothered me all that much. Same dressing on a different salad.

The Tales Of combat system is still one of the most engaging systems in JRPGS.

Now that I'm thinking about it, there are handful of very big jumps in the story that feel like it could have extended game play some. Without spoiling too much there is a part where your heroes split up again, and then in a cutscene it basically goes "hey all this shit happened and now you are here". It happens like 3 times in the game and I feel like it can be pretty jarring. Not enough to make me lost in the story, but enough to make me think "Wait what? When did that happen? Why didn't I play that?". Seems like you could have added a few more hours to the game to make that a bit more seamless. Playing both characters helps a bit, but not as much as I'd like. 

So, getting that out of the way lets get to the meat of the game. I am just gonna say it, the Tales of series has the hands down best core combat mechanic in a JRPG. It's a fast paced, multiplayer, action oriented, active battle system where your direct actions can sway the tide of battle. You can free run and linear move on locked on targets, where you swing your base attacks and use your artes to link up combos for big damage. At first glance it will feel like any of the 3d combat Tales of titles to come before it.

But how it's been altered I feel comes in the layout a bit. The huds are now laid out much like the D-pad instead of just along the bottom. This is intentional for its linking system where you can link up with another character, and they will run support and fight the same enemy with you, each character with their own unique ability such as punching through an enemy block, or recovering you as you deal damage to an enemy. While linked your dealt hits and artes fill a gauge which will allow you to perform a linked attack. Much like say in Chrono Trigger the right arte with the right character will cause them both to team into a big combination attack. Once this gauge maxes out, you can chain together all the linked artes you can execute for big damage.

Always a good idea to figure out who you like to link with, and pick your attacks accordingly
Or, find a partner who best matches up with the attacks you most often use. 

This layout also allows you to to easily switch from one character to another with a single button press. This is something some of the previous Tales games have had, but in this system it feels much simpler and more intuitive. Depending on enemy type or number of them, it was very easy to switch between Jude and Milla to unload the right combo moves to smash my enemies.

It also now includes what I call the "FFX factor." Much like in Final Fantasy X, your whole party moves as a group, so in the heat of battle your reserves are easily available. A quick click of R3 slows down time and allows you to pick who you want to swap out with your d-pad and then pick which of your reserves you want in. Seconds later the two trade places, this is handy if you need to bring in that extra healer, or switch up what magic user you have in the party. Tales games have had fairly similar combat systems in comparison to each other, but this is probably the one I liked the best. 

It's always marveled me how each of these games can have remarkably different sound tracks, yet all manage to sound exactly the same. This has always been a glaring weakness in this franchise in my opinion. Say what you will about some Final Fantasy games, they know how to produce an iconic and memorable soundtrack. I spend all day thinking about it and I probably couldn't hum more than one song from any of the Tales games. Two come to mind, one is a town theme from Tales of Legendia and the other was the theme to Tales of Abyss which isn't even really their song. It was a song called "Karma" by Bump of Chicken.

Graphically, and probably because it focuses a bit on the war between countries, this version of Tales seems to have that more realistic grainy style of graphic to it (as realistic as anime can look anyway), and I'm not entirely sure I care for it. I mean, its not the whole modern shooter pallet of grays and browns, as the game has plenty of colorful scenes and characters. But it feels like a bit of a departure from the cleaner looking and super saturated look that Tales of Graces f  had. Something about Milla's hair seemed off to me too. I don't wanna say the graphics seem dated.... but I don't know.. something just seems off about it.

Some of the characters Mystic Artes get a little out of hand. But so satisfying to land. 

This is also one of the first Tales of games that I can remember that had free camera angle on the world map. Like so many other games you can use the right analog to move the camera around the character, but most often it will be behind you. I didn't notice it at first, but now that I think about it, this is fairly unusual because most of the Tales series uses fixed camera angles that follow the player, usually to show off backgrounds of the locations you visit. Perhaps they went with this style of the costume collectibles you can find along the world map so they can hide them in various places, but I can't think of another Tales that's used it.

In my last Tales review, I made some complaints about the cast being one of the weaker ones in recent memory. This is not the case in Xillia. While there are a few anime sterotypes in this game, there aren't nearly as many as previous. Jude plays reluctant hero, but he's completely lacking in angst for the most part, so he's pretty likable from the word go. Milla plays the fish out of water character, so watching her try to learn how to be human is pretty funny in a lot of scenes. Really I think they only character I didn't like was one of the first villains you meet, Agria.  It's hard to play off the lunatic psychopath without having the voice acting sound hokey, but its usually in short bursts and are not often so its easy to forget.

In addition to the characters being likable, the majority of them are fun to play as well. All of the 4 melee types have lets of different moves that make it easy to pick up and start comboing away at enemies, and even the two magic users (there is technically 4, but two primary) have the right kind moves that make it fun to just hang back and start slinging spells around. This is good for if you are lucky enough to have a friend over, since technically the game can be broken up into 4 player multiplayer. So to have a friend running support with attack magic while you combo away can make fights a lot easier.

But more than anything, there really isn't a lot of angst to go around in this one. Unlike most Final Fantasy titles, the cast is enjoyable and easy to get along with. Aside from one major plot point where one of the leads starts beating people with the angsty stick (something that ends about as quick as it starts{and works in story context}) the majority of the cast is genuinely cheerful and upbeat about their involvement. They have fun little dialog skits like you've seen in previous tales games which flesh out the characters, and none of them come off as particularly grating (sans Teepo, the high pitched voice of the toy).

The traveling skits are back in full force, many of them entertaining.
Some of them, not so much... ugh. Elize's song...

Despite all the changes and additions to the game, it does somehow manage to feel like every other Tales of game that I've played. I suppose that can be seen as a negative, but from where I stand it's really not. I can't think of a Tales game I've played where I had any real negative feelings for. I might not have gotten into poorly translated rom hacks of the older ones, but any localized release I've pretty much fallen in love with.

I actually came up with a realization not to long ago. I grew up with the Final Fantasy franchise from #1 on. and while I found 6, 10, and then 4 to be the best of them, there were a lot more that were good to just ok. I keep faithfully waiting for Squenix to get it right and dish me out a new awesome Final Fantasy game. You know what series I'm not doing that with? Tales. Every one of these games has provided me a solid 60-80+ hours of play with minimal to no disappointment, a fairly frequent release schedule, and are consistently exceptional.

Which is why I've started to realize that I think the Tales of franchise has surpassed Final Fantasy. It feels weird to say because I've been such an avid follower of that series (and will continue to be), yet I see this series kind of get the brushoff because of is heavy anime influence, yet I can't think of another series that has provided me with such consistent satisfaction. If you are one of those people who feel that the Final Fantasy series has been letting you down for the past 12 years, then I invite you to give Tales of Xillia a try. It has been doing a fantastic job of scratching my JRPG itch and I think it will for you too.  Give it a shot, you'll be glad you did.

They still fucking rinse you on DLC costumes though...
5 bucks a head? Fuck you.

Saints Row 4 (XB360): Grand Theft Clone No More.

There are few games that surprised me as much as the Saints Row franchise did. I started with 2, and what I originally though to be just some cheap Grand Theft Auto knockoff, it actually provided me with a much more entertaining gun combat system, and had some really incredible moments. I felt kinda lukewarm towards 3 until the end when I realized how much fun I was actually having. Since then, I've been all in with this series, and the newest installment seems be even more ridiculous than the last..

SAINTS ROW IV: (XB360)

The legacy of the 3rd Street Saints picks up where we left off shortly after the events of Saints Row: The Third. After saving Shaundi and stopping S.T.A.G from wiping out the Saints, the military antagonist Cyrus has defected and acquired a nuke to attack the United States in the hope of wiping out the Saints so America could be rebuilt. After a very Call of Duty: Black Ops style infiltration, you thwart Cyrus and stop the missile. This wins you the favor of the American people which results in the leader of the Saints getting elected president. 

Although there is trouble in paradise as the administration isn't exactly doing well with staying in good favor with the American people. They are slipping in approval, and there is murmuring amongst the saints there might be an attack. As the President approaches a press conference, aliens called the Zin Empire led by their leader Zinyak attack earth, and kidnap the brightest minds the world has to offer. Naturally, the Saint leader responds as they always do, by unloading massive amounts of bullets on them.

The attack however, is a futile attempt as they are easily grounded. Now captured by Zinyak, the player is now trapped and tortured in a Zin simulation of the city of Steelport, and the leader has to fight his way out, save his crew, defeat Zinyak, and save the earth.

Well then. Nice of Saints Row 4 to give us a whole mission before going completely batshit crazy on us. For a minute there I thought it was going to try to pace itself. Silly me. Really though, this actually in a bizarre way kind of comes off as the next logical step for the franchise as a whole.

When Saints Row started, it was basically a clear cut Grand Theft Auto clone, through and through. Saints Row 2 mixed things up by still being clone, but started branch with crazy side missions that seemed bizarre but still within the realm of reality. Saints Row: The Third basically becomes completely unglued, as now your influence and assets allows you to create wanton destruction at whim, but still produced a fun experience.

So now we get to Saints Row 4. Pretty much every aspect of any realistic angle has been tapped, so how does the series push it self further into ludicrousness? You place them into a scenario where you are able to bend realism. By placing the player into a "simulation" this allows the characters basically it removes any limits the game might construct for you. We basically dive into the deep end of the comic spectrum.

This is done incredibly quickly too. Inside of 3 or 4 missions, you earn super speed. This basically does away with any need to ride in a vehicle, ever, at all. Not much long after that, you get a super jump which basically unlocks the entirety of the map for you. As you play through, you start to get extra powers such as Power stomp, freeze blast and others that makes taking down fodder enemies a snap. Game that has always kinda hinged on driving now no longer needs it.

Super Dash, Super Jump, Glide = Sandbox transportation perfection.

If I could best describe it, it plays similar to a Saints Row version of the matrix as far as story is concerned for the most part. And honestly? I am totally OK with that. I can see some people becoming detached with now the hard break with realism, but this is exactly what this game needed to break out of the rut of becoming just another sandbox clone. I've heard the comparison to Prototype or Infamous, and its a fair comparison.

But it actually is a bit more than that. Saint's Row has now come to completely embrace the notion that they are a parody of another game. More so than that now, as they go out of the way to parody a number of other games. As you play along the story, the game will break into missions where it changes the genre of game. Most of the time, its the same Saint's Row you know.

But out of the blue you will be making selections in a Text Adventure, or the aforementioned beginning which gives a very big call of duty vibe. Later in the game you have to go through mission that directly apes the Metal Gear Solid. One of the last ones is a side scrolling street brawler. As if it wasn't goofy enough, the characters actually address that these play out as video game parodies, kinda breaking the 4th wall a bit. I found it to be pretty entertaining.

Fun side note if you didn't catch it. If it wasn't exactly the same, this scene plays
a very similar rendition of the Metroid theme from back on the original nintendo.

There are a handful of shortcomings though. First off, fuck you Volition Games for getting rid of the metal music. Yeah you aren't in the car for very long in this game, but the fact that ALL the metal basically got dropped for dubstep and electronica bothers me. It used to cater to a wide palette of musical tastes. Now its just trying to cram dubstep down my throat. Fuck you. The music in this game I thought was not as good as previous installments, but I guess its a moot point since you will barely be in a vehicle.

It also somehow manages to feel like a copy paste job from Saints Row: The Third despite all the new mechanics. The graphics are pretty much unchanged, the location is basically the same sans a few sci-fi additions, and the most of the missions are retreads of the same missions we've done in the previous games, just with new ways to do them. Its not bad, its just kinda samey. You would figure if the idea in this one was to give you superpowers, you'd be motivated to rely more solely on them then to use them sparingly with the guns you've been using for 3 games.

Mayhem: The vehicle is different, yet at the same time nothing has changed. 

How the story is implemented is kinda bleh for me too. In the Grand Theft Auto style you go to a checkpoint on the screen and it triggers the story event for that moment. In previous Saints Row titles, you would make a call to start the story segment, move to the unlocked checkpoint and get your story cutscene. In Saints Row 4 now you just seem to do missions from a checklist with a minimal montage about it. It feels kinda cut down and I don't as much care for it.

The whole romancing aspect of the game is kinda pointlessly thrown in too. They give the idea like it gives you the option of dating characters, but it basically boils down to "Do you want to fuck: Yes or no." There is no story or build up, you can do it to pretty much any party member without repercussion, and really there is no point to doing it. the whole thing just feels thrown in.

Always liked Kinzie, but she hates vintage... That's a disappointment. 

But that's not to say the cutscenes you get are bad. Surprisingly, this game does a pretty good job of splicing together all the previous games stories into one lose end tying mash-up. It might be polarizing for some people, but personally I liked it a lot because it finally addressed some things with certain characters.

To spoil one bit (because fuck you) when you are doing your mission to rescue Shaundi from the simulation, at on point you replay a previous Shaundi rescue from Saints Row 2. In it, the simulation allows Shaundi to split into two halves and confront each other for how they turned out. While of course not at all in the realm of reality, I really liked getting a little bit of exposition for why she changed so much and watching the confrontation between the two personalities. Used different voice actors for each, which I thought was weird. You can find part of this mission in the video below.

A Shaundi of two worlds.

In addition to things like this, there are also a number of audio logs that can be found throughout the world map as collectibles that flesh out some of the other characters internal monologues that characterize all their motivations as they play 2nd fiddle to the player character. I like them, but honestly these could have been used to really flesh out the games story more, perhaps used in offshoot titles. This entire game really serves as a means to tie up the stories for the entire series, bringing in characters from each version of the game.

One other fun side story note, as per usual the Saints Row series offers a ridiculous amount of customization to your character, so it was naturally easy to reproduce the digital version of myself in game. They added a whole bunch of new costume and clothing selections in addition to a number of the Saints Row: The Third mainstays, but one change I noticed more than any was in the voice acting section.

Most of the voices from 3 return in 4 as just generic Male/Female 1, 2, and 3. But one is actually billed with their name: Nolan North. Yep, that Nolan North, Nathan Drake himself. Funny that he's in the same game as Troy Baker because I felt those two sound the same. But unlike the rest of the stock voice, Nolan has a large number of ad-libs that make him a different experience. Nolan actually plays the character as if he is playing as himself. This to me opened a reason for an alternate playthough because his dialogs are often different, and very entertaining.

So the real question here is, does the detachment form reality make Saints Row better? I think it does. All I could think while I was playing is that this game is so not a GTA clone anymore. After minutes of super jumping and gliding around, and running up the sides of buildings to skim from collectible to collectible, I quickly lost track of the hours as I continued to uber my character.

The Dubstep Gun. IE: The gun I won't use on principal.

The game wasn't exactly a pushover either, even with all these ridiculous new powers the waves and waves of fodder enemies took a bit of finesse to take down. I really think that Saints Row 3 and 4 have one of the best gun combat systems in a game, and the addition of the super powers adds a different level of fun to how they are used. It allowed me to come up with new strategies for taking down a big group of baddies.

There is gonna be a hard shift from the the people who liked the game for being grounded in realism. Well, as grounded in realism as Saint's Row can be. But in completely bulldozing that idea to shift completely over to a comic book style of game I feel is exactly what this game needed to continue to be relevant. While it does feel like a tad of an expansion of Saint's Row: The Third it does more than enough to give me another 30+ hours of entertainment.

And in addition to the new mechanics it brings, it also does a pretty good job of tying up some loose ends, explaining some back stories, and really kind of brings together all three games into one tightly packed adventure. I was very pleased with Saint's Row 4. I might actually venture to say that its the best in the series. Highly recommended, totally worth the 60 bucks.

Was a little disappointed the 50's outfits weren't unlockable, though.