Tales of Vesperia E3 2008 Impressions
July 14,2008 -


Tales is Vesperia is the latest installment of Namco’s long running and console spanning Tales series. This is the first installment to make its way onto the next generation of consoles, and by the looks of things, they’re not taking too many risks with it.

The art style is very similar to what you’ve seen in past Tales games; embracing the beloved cell-shaded look. It certainly does look a bit better with a higher resolution and a few choice filters applied, but for the most part, you’ve seen this style before. The same is true for the game’s audio. It’s your typical whimsical fantasy style soundtrack, but there are a few oddities here and there, like a musical track that sounds eerily similar to a Circus Big Top Theme. Voice acting was sparse, but what was there was a tad on the campy side.

The gameplay formula hasn’t changed that much either. You’ll be exploring various landscapes, looking for items and trying to make your way to the next goal. You’ll fight battles as you go along, but unlike a lot of other RPGs, you can see the enemies on the landscape, so it is possible to avoid them if you try.

The game’s semi-real-time battle system makes its return in Vesperia. You have direct control over your character’s actions rather than picking through menu items to decide what to do. This makes battles feel more frantic, and as a result, boss battles get that little extra edge of intensity that RPG boss fights sometimes lack. You’ll be fighting alongside different characters, and each of them has their own unique traits.

It’s possible to switch between characters on the fly if there’s something specific that you want that character to be doing, you can switch to them and make them take that action. For the most part though, the AI seems to do a decent job of taking care of itself, and where healers are involved, taking care of you as well. While your allies are doing this they’re also spouting out various chants and battle cries. The battle feels a little livelier because of this, but this will probably start to grate on your nerves fairly quickly since they tend to say the same things over and over again.

Tales of Vesperia is looking like a game that isn’t going to break away from its roots. That’s not really a bad thing since the series has always been solid. It’ll be interesting to see how everything comes together for the final version. The game is scheduled for an August 26th release, so Tales fans don’t have that long to wait to get their hands on the latest installment. The game will be launching exclusively on the Xbox 360, adding itself to the steadily growing queue of Japanese RPG’s for the system.

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