Tales of Xillia Impressions - Part 1

Aviators make everything better

Over the past two days I've been playing (and streaming!) Tales of Xillia, the latest flagship Tales title to be released in the United States, to join the ranks of Symphonia, Abyss, Vesperia, and others.

Those unfamiliar with the series should know that, much like Final Fantasy, Tales is a long-running franchise of JRPGs, but with a more cult following than Square's far more well-known production. There are two things that define a modern Tales game: the aesthetic, and the Linear Motion Battle System. As you can see in the picture above, the games are pretty whimsical, with a colorful anime-like palette and funny cosmetic customization options. Plot and characters to match, though things can get a bit dark at times. Tales games also tend to base their conflicts around some allegory for a real-world socioeconomic issue; racism, cloning ethics, and climate change have all been featured.

The battle system has its own quirks and refinements in each iteration, but the general idea remains the same: battles are fought in real time, and characters have access to normal attacks and special Artes as they move around the battlefield, trying to defeat their opponents. The battle system is titled Linear Motion because in general your controlled character only moves in a straight line either to or away from its current target--but for many games now a Free Run system has been implemented to allow temporary totally free motion to reposition yourself.

So what of Xillia so far? I'm about 15 hours into it, give or take. So far, the game doesn't feel like it excels in anything compared to the other games in its franchise, but it notably doesn't feel like it has any remarkable flaws. In battle, plot, characters, and environment, Xillia feels like a solid, but not outstanding, entry in the franchise.

Features

The game has the player take the role of either Jude Mathis, an extremely intelligent medical student, or Milla Maxwell, avatar of the Lord of Spirits--the closest thing to a god the universe has. The majority of the game has the two of them traveling together, but for short bursts of time they may take separate actions in town or act on different aspects of a plan, and the game follows the one the player picked.

In keeping with the genre's steady adoption of quality-of-life features, Xillia's meta-mechanics are very strong. Fast travel to any town, dungeon, or overworld zone that you have previously visited is unlocked within the first few hours of the game; areas are locked off as the plot demands in order to maintain immersion. Sidequests are all hinted at via skits and progress on them is maintained in a menu accessible at any time. Skits, a series staple, are short conversations between party members that can be triggered by any number of things and which often provide extra insight into characters or plot, or even just silly humor.

Series-standard mechanics such as Grade and Over Limit make their return in yet another iteration that fans will find easy to adapt to. New to Xillia is the linked battle system; at any time, the player character may "link" with one of their CPU-controlled allies. The linked ally will begin to use a special ability unique to them. For example, when linked with Jude, if the player is knocked down, Jude will teleport to them and help them back up. Another character will steal items from enemies the player has knocked down. Various benefits regarding distribution of buffs and paying the costs of skills are also conferred to a linked pair.

Linking also enables the use of Linked Artes--special combination abilities that can be triggered between a pair after the player character uses one from a specific set of his own abilities. For example, if Jude and Milla are linked, and Jude uses his Demon Fist arte, it can be followed up with the Linked Arte Final Gale, in which Jude and Milla fire a Demon Fist and a Wind Blade respectively at the opponent.

Linking is clearly the fundamental gimmick of the game's battle system, but it feels so smoothly-implemented it almost seems like a natural consequence. I would very much like to see it return in a later game.

Plot

The adventure begins when Milla encounters Jude as she breaks into a military laboratory to destroy a weapon it's building; Jude is caught in the crossfire and ends up having to flee with her after he becomes wanted for the intrusion.

As they escape together, Jude learns more of Milla's personality and her mission, and decides to accompany her at great risk to himself. Other party members are encountered in standard JRPG fashion. To avoid the risk of spoilers, I won't elaborate any further; I'm fairly early into the game anyway.

The big twist of the game has not occurred yet, but Tales twists tend to be particularly earth-shattering, in that they often invalidate the party's progress up to that point. Learning about the existence of and destruction of Tethe'alla in Symphonia, learning about the weakening of the Sephiroth in Abyss, etc. all necessitated a complete rejection of the party's goals. I expect something similar to occur here.

Cast

Although not as strong as Vesperia's cast, Xillia's playable characters acquit themselves well and are far more enjoyable than their Symphonia or Graces counterparts. A shining feature is in just how reasonably the two protagonists act. They are perhaps too reasonable for the plot happening to them--perfectly in character for a god and someone who's supposed to be unreasonably intelligent.

Happily, I can now say for a second Tales game that there is no party member I actually dislike--the only other one being Vesperia. I have six party members at the moment, so we'll see if there's another one waiting. Vesperia had seven party members (two more in the PS3 remake), and Symphonia eight (technically nine if you count the choice of one of them).

The English voice acting for the cast is pretty good, and the dialogue and localization are amazing. There are a fair number of lines where the actors clearly emphasize the wrong things, but they generally do a good job of sounding natural and portraying emotion.

Looking back, and forward

I'm not very picky about the remaining aspects of the game that a typical review would cover--I don't feel engaged enough in the art or music or such to make any sort of evaluation of them. So instead I will just continue playing.

I really like what I've seen of Xillia so far. It has no notable weaknesses, except for perhaps that it has no remarkable strengths. Its battle system and character cast are definitely in the high tier of Tales games, and we'll see where the plot goes from here.

The problem with the game is that, having no great strengths, there is nothing to really entice a player into wanting to play it. It is, by all rights, a great entry in the franchise and one that all fans will want to play. It also makes a reasonable entry point; everything about it is representative of a good Tales game. But for those uninterested in the series as a whole, there's no one thing about it that's so excellent that someone would want to try it--unlike Vesperia's stellar cast or Graces' brilliant combat.

My hope for the rest of the game lies in its plot and battle. I don't really know where the plot is going, so it runs the risk of suddenly becoming awful. And as my characters grow stronger I'll have more options in battle to play with. I'll have finished the game within a few days, and I'll revisit these impressions then.