Features
Nothing has really changed from my initial opinion on all the game's features. Fast travel is great, all of the series staples return in an easy-to-digest format, linking is spectacular, and overall the game feels very robust to actually play.
I actually now have one additional complaint, though. The Lilium Orb, Xillia's leveling system reminiscent of Final Fantasy X's Sphere Grid, seems largely useless. The way the game makes you expand the orb prevents you from specializing your characters in any significant way, and I think the game would have been better served by a traditional system.
Plot
Unfortunately, Xillia's plot falls apart right about the point where the earth-shattering revelation I mentioned occurs. Character motivations become extremely questionable, there's no particular reason why the proposed solutions to the problems should even be necessary and overall it feels like a mess.
As usual, the game has its socioeconomic allegory, which I won't spoil here. I will grant that the sheer attempt at managing the allegory puts Xillia above Graces in the plot department.
I do very much like that the plot makes the word "Xillia" meaningful. Especially in that it makes the pronunciation, officialy "eks-IL-i-a", actually important. This I will spoil: the word "Xillia" comes from "exile".
Cast
The only change to my initial opinion here is that my opinion of Milla's English voice got worse the more I played. I like all of the characters, and they have a very strong dynamic and personal motivations (particularly Alvin and Rowen), but the voice acting was weaker than I've come to expect from Tales.
Battle
Now that I've beaten the game and gotten access to the full range of artes and skills, I can make a more informed opinion on the battle system.
The return of TP in conjunction with AC makes the game flow nicely. One of the problems with Vesperia was that the arte-canceling rules were fairly restrictive, until you got the skills that basically removed every single rule and gave you free reign to do pretty much anything you ever wanted. Having AC solves that problem, in that you can simply cancel whatever you want into whatever you want until you run out of it.
Combos are not nearly as fun to do as in Vesperia, but still are plenty entertaining. Jude basically becomes Ryu, and I had a lot of fun Shoryukening people into the air, kicking them a few times, knocking them down, divekicking their face, and OTGing with a self-buff. Milla is very air combo-oriented, and she has one particular arte that hits a few seconds after it applies, and creating a combo utilizing it feels extraordinarily powerful. I didn't play around with the other characters too much, but Rowen's Arte Tuning solves a lot of the problems I had with casters, so good job.
Speaking of which, each character's unique gimmicks were great fun to use. Snap Pivot allows Jude to teleport behind the opponent when he dodges an attack, and Spirit Shift lets Milla turn a spell into a physical arte; using both was great.
One complaint, however, is that linked normal chains can be frustrating to land. When linked with an ally, your attack chain will change and you and your ally will sort of knock the opponent between you appropriately, but these attacks can be slow and leave both of you vulnerable to other enemies.
Overall
Like I originally thought, Xillia remains a good entry-level Tales game, being representatively good in all aspects. Its plot is its weakest point, but even so it's still stronger than a few other games in the franchise. If someone wants to play a Tales game, point them to Xillia. If someone wants to play a decent JRPG with a fantastic battle system, Graces F is your best bet. If sheer overall game quality is your goal, you want Vesperia.
If you want to utterly crush your rose-tinted glasses, play through Symphonia again.
No comments:
Post a Comment