As much as I disagree with the list and certain points, I'm just glad to see more Tales of content and opinions lol. I think this fandom has the most interesting takes and I'm always interested in seeing other point of views
Thank you! That's what it's really all about at the end of the day lol. I kind of prefer a fanbase that has mixed and somewhat divisive opinions on things because there's so much more room for discussion than in a fanbase that acts almost like a hivemind pretty much sharing every major opinion
As a fellow Tales fan seeing some Tales love is really great to see! I really like the list you made here and while I'm still not big on Zestiria, I gotta say you still have some pretty cultured taste. Good work! 👍
If you liked the mechanics of Zestiria, you might really like Xillia. I’m playing through 1 right now and the linking system seems like a precursor to Zestiria’s combat system. (I played Zestiria before Xillia.)
@@JakeGigs : I also wish they'd done a Xillia 1/2 Remaster right after Arise as it feels like the best one to jump into if you were new to Tales through Arise and wanted to try another game, having some similar characters and features. X2 was actually my top spot before Arise came out. :)
Omg!! Yesss!!! Someone who finally put the very first Tales series as top 5. The game is simple, but still so damn good. I feel many are missing out or sleeping on the first Tales series. I love the summoning. Many Tales after that don't really follow the summonings no more. I really miss it.
I’m never gonna just completely write off anyone’s opinions on anything, but yeah, it is crazy to me that this game just seems to be unpopular within the fandom
@@JakeGigs I beat Zesteria a few days ago so I can understand the hate. I would rate it more so as mid than bad because the game has issues in every area. The battle system is either too easy or too hard. On hard modes, Rose will die, armatize, die, repeat until she kills your entire party. This is the worst Ai that I've ever seen. You can tell they nerf'd the ai because when you fight the same characters as enemies, they are much harder to kill. The story is generic and missing. Heldalf is bad cuz he is bad. That's it. The other villians: fox demon, emo chick and snake priestess aren't great either. There is no real plot twist and it feels like you're missing large parts of the story. How did Sorey cure Maotelus? The themes and lore are weird. If Seraphim live for 1000s of years then is Edna still a child? Why would Maotelus be corrupted by humans fighting in his temple? The malevolence seems to be some type of social commentary on human nature but it doesn't go anywhere. Rose makes no sense because she can kill without getting any malevolence. The characters are meh to bad. Laliah and the other Seraphim should know everything but they withhold all the key information from the humans for no reason? Edna is a bitch. Sorey is naive. Dezel is also unlikable and his death was handled poorly. They wanted to kill him off but then they removed the string by giving him an after death cutscene. Sorey is childish. The maps are mid. The cities are too small and the fields are just right or too big but there are so many of them and most of the dungeons use the same patterns. The OST, some songs are good but many are out of place. Coming from Xilla, I can see why people would be upset with Zesteria. I think the pacing is better than Xillia and I think the skits are better too but everything else is either equal or worse than Xilla.
Ask 10 different people, you'll get 10 different answers, case in point, it's nice to see Zestiria show up on a list like this. In fact, people are fairly split over just about every game here with the exception of Vesperia, along with the relative success of Arise, which was pretty significant. What I think Arise did that was majorly helpful was clear up a lot of the clutter in the combat. It doesn't include everything you'd want, but it gets rid of a lot of stuff that was turning into a bit of a tangled mess, all hiding in the background of what looks like it should be a fairly intuitive action system, which led me to find some Tales games extremely breakable, while others felt more nonsensical the more I delved into the combat system trying to understand it. It moved more mechanics to the forefront where you could actually see them on the battlefield, and improved on regular monsters, which have been a bit of a drag in some games. It was also nice to see them revisit some ideas for progression instead of making up new stuff again when they've had some killer ideas in the past. Its story had an incredibly strong theme, examining the multiple facets of 'freedom' well beyond what most people think of when they hear the word today, and in ways that are still relevant. I felt exactly the same way about Zestiria in a general sense. I have no idea why; it just had a pleasant vibe to it. Although, I had no idea how its combat was supposed to work half the time, so I ended up abusing the skill system instead to flatten bosses in seconds with mystic artes, ignore their resistances completely, and get absurd amounts of grade just for the fun of it. XD I feel like that gear system could have been great with a few changes to gear availability, and an additional feature to gain specific skills similar to what you get with the Normin when you find them in the field (and if you're smart, save them for when you need them, even if it's just to fill a necessary slot.) The weird bit is, Lailah's explanation on skill fusion is about as accurate as you can get with words to explain what happens. The grid is confusing because skills only fuse within the outer borders of the grid unless you're fusing two skills right next to each other. That's why you keep seeing the same ones most of the time, because the skills closer to the center can fuse from a lot more skills. Story wise, I liked Rose just as much. I like the way she's uniquely unafraid of people in general (in a social sense not just because she's an assassin too), but I wish they'd done the plot in such a way that you frequently swapped between Alisha and Rose, as the game's theme is centered around Death, and the two of them are polar opposites on the topic, with Sorey in the center of the scale. It felt like they may have scrapped parts of the plan and just kind of stitched parts together to finish things up, with the character dynamics and personalities being the most complete aspect of the story.
Idk why but I completely forgot at the Normin mechanic until your comment. But I appriciate your takes and I’m glad that you like zestiria as much as I do!
I will say the only too that have made me emotional was abyss and bersira. Personally symphonia was my intro and haven’t played any before that but I will say arise has some of the most fun combat system I’ve played so far.
Noted. It’s hard sometimes to gauge sometimes because I’m used to hearing it over and over again during the editing process, but going forward I’ll try and adjust
You definitely prioritize gameplay over all else. No shade or anything, that's totally valid, but as someone who values story more in RPG games, I think we'd probably disagree. That said, I don't actually have much experience with this series. I played Tales of Symphonia and Tales of the Abyss, and liked them both well enough. I also rented Tales of Legendia, and hated it, lol. And I tried Tales of Phantasia and thought it was ok, but far too basic. That's really the extent of my experience with the series. I might try Berseria or Arise at some point, tho
A bit of a shame to hear you don't enjoy Symphonia, but that's only cause Symphonia and its sequel are the only two Tales of games that I own and I've beaten both too many times honestly. If I had to decide between those 2 I honestly would go with Dawn of the New World only cause I felt the first game dragged on way too long and the sequel's story was much quicker, plus I liked the whole monster recruiting system and felt I got to really experiment with it and have a sense of completion with getting every single monster possible, but I probably just have rose tinted goggles on due to it being my only two games I've played of Tales series.
Saying that I don’t like Symphonia is definitely not entirely true. I mentioned I do really like a lot of the progression systems and some of the overall loop is I think the best of the series, so still a pretty good game. I just kind of think that the combat is kind of boring, and that’s what kept it out of the top five. But still I like it
No, you’re all good, I guess in my vesperia section I did sort of imply that Symphonia was one of my least favorites, but I more so meant that era/style
Everyone’s different but for me tales of the abyss is #1 for me the story was different and the characters are too tier and at there peak in the series for me although that could change have not played berseria any of the xillia titles or graces of F
I wasn't personally such a huge fan of the abyss but yeah I agree the story is FANTASTIC. One of my favorite stories of the entire series. It made me cry like 3 times and I just was super into it. I just didn't think the combat or progression was that fun, and it felt like there was too much backtracking
my top 5 would be grace f, vesperia, xillia 1/2, berseria, and abyss, and especial mention tales of destiny my first tales game. and my worst and only tales games i despise is tales of Arise. one of the main reason is the paid dlc. some of the cool artes in previous game is lock by back tracking, quest, and story. tales of arise is first game where some arte is lock by you're wallet. its only a matter of time before namco say " you want to do cool shit? give me more money".
I feel like the dlc artes for the most part are just reskins of the ones already in the game for the most part. Like they might be kind of ok in the early game but for the most part they’re just different tier effects that do the same thing as regular artes, but fit the theme of the dlc. I bought all the dlc but I never even used the artes just because they weren’t worth the sp. I do see your point through about how it’s kind of weird, but what I took from it were that they were just costumes
I think berseria does a lot of things really well. I love the equipment system a lot, and I also love the cast, but I’m not really as huge on the combat system
Oh! you haven't played Xilia? my favorite game is between Grace F and Xilia. But gace F have an awesome history, and my favorite combat style..... or maybe it's Xilia both are different but awesome.
I bought the duology on eBay about a month before the announcement. I decided to just play them on the PS3 since I have it and I might pick up the remaster if there’s enough reason to. It looks fine on the PS3, though. I’m enjoying it so far.
