Things are going pretty smoothly this week on the Revenant Braves Ranch, so how about a blog post? About the media I've been digesting. Preposterous, I know, but bear with me.
Tales of Vesperia (RPG, xbox 360) : I'm a huge tales fanboy at heart, so take what I say about this one with a grain of salt. It's absolutely terrific. It's been so long since I really didn't want to finish a videogame and consciously dawdled, explored side quests without much reward and limited my play times just to savour the experience as long as I could. So yeah, I really liked it.
Why I liked it might be a bit harder to nail down. The battle system was quite similar to the system from Tales of the Abyss. Perhaps a bit refined, but it's been a few years since I played Abyss, so that might not be accurate. One thing I noticed missing from it were the effect rings (or whatever jargon they were called) that used to appear after casting a spell of a certain element. I felt that these added a nice dynamic to battles in abyss and made for some interesting comboing. I dunno why they'd takem' out, perhaps the developer thought they broke the game (they probably kind of did), but they at least made combat a bit more interesting.
Mystic Artes (super powerful and flashy attacks for each character) are a bit tougher to use than they were in Abyss, but not as ridiculous as in Symphonia. I think they struck a good balance. In Abyss I felt like I was using 1-2 Mystic Artes per battle by the end of it, so they were just kind of a nuisance and a time-waster. In Symphonia I never used one once. In Vesperia I used them maybe once or two per dungeon before saving up for the boss, so they were still pretty satisfying. Plus everyone shares the same overlimit meter, so there's no using several mystic artes in quick succession with different characters cause they all happened to fill their meter around the same time. Okay, I'll be honest, that was kind of fun in Abyss, but yeah, it's more satisfying in Vesperia. On top of all that, I just think they
looked cooler in Vesperia.
Overall, I think the system was a bit more challenging than in Abyss. A welcome challenge, I'd say, since Abyss was a bit of a cakewalk at times.
No Indignation spell? ARE YOU EFFING KIDDING ME? The less said about that, the better, I think.
Graphics and music were top-notch. I thought Abyss was gorgeous but Vesperia is absolutely stunning. The colours are just vibrant enough without being garish and the detail and variety in the character models are great. I never felt like I was talking to NPC #3 who looks just like NPC #2 with a palette swap. In fact, the graphics were so good that I kinda wish they hadn't bothered with the anime cutscenes. They felt out of place and straight-up didn't look as good as the in-game graphics. It's kind of amazing to think that we're at that point in graphics where the cutscenes don't look as good as the regular game.
The voicework was exceptional. This is another aspect of games that's come a long way. I'm a huge purist when it comes to my Japanese media, so when I couldn't find an option for Japanese dialogue in the menu, I was pretty disappointed. But not 20 minutes into the game, I was already glad that they hadn't given me the option. They were all pretty good! I'd say the weakest was Judith's actress and of course some of the unnamed NPCs sounded pretty rough, but the main character, Yuri's voice actor plays the role probably beyond perfectly. His performance goes above and beyond what's in the script and gives the character a coolness and substance generally unheard of in these affairs.
Overall, it's probably my favourite of all the tales games. Perhaps not as epic as something like Symphonia and I've already mentioned my discontent with the lack of Indignation, but where it succeeds, it succeeds so brilliantly that any complaints I have just wash away.
Eden of the East (anime, just finished airing last week): People tend to be hard on amnesia stories, but this one actually takes advantage of the plot device for something more than some easy exposition. The plot is complex and gripping and the characters are unique and quite likeable. Particularly notable is the amnesiac protagonist, Takizawa Akira, who's extremely good-willed and charismatic. Probably the best thing about him is that through all the plot's turbulence and his complete lack of memories, he never slips into any kind of moping. Which is what you'd generally expect from an amnesiac in fiction. A lot of complaining about not having any memories. So it's nice and refreshing that Takizawa never stops to dwell on it for too long.
It's a good show and it just finished so there ought to be lots of available torrents out there, ripe with seeds. Go get it!
NEW HARUHI OMG (look it up, if you don't know. I'm sure half the internet is buzzing about it): I've only watched the first two episodes so far (the third aired today as I understand it but as I'm typing this, it hasn't been released with subs yet) and wow, I forgot how awesome a series it is. There really isn't much I could say here that hasn't already been cried from the rooftops by its droves of fans, but when it's this good, it's hard for me to keep it inside. Kyon rules and is basically the only reason I need to watch Haruhi, but even so the goodness doesn't stop there. So well-blended are the mundane and the fantastic in Haruhi and I think that's its real charm. It's easy to feel like the crazy things
could happen because of how normal everything seems when they aren't. And even when they are, really.
Anyway, these are merely the excited ramblings of a colossal nerd who'd just been given a fresh helping of some of his favourite flavours of modern media. So forgive me if you take a step back from this post and realize that I haven't actually said much of anything. More CRB and AE incoming tomorrow! And you there! The dudes and dudettes who haven't yet! Yeah,
you! Join the forum!
