Tales of Vesperia: Definitive Edition (Switch)

Main character pose

So in wait for the (hopefully) coming off the Tales of Symphonia to the Switch I can at least play through Tales of Vesperia since I never played that before. And a good sign is that they actually bothered recording the song for the intro, most other games just use an instrumental version. And they also recorded voice over for the skits as well. And I like the voices here as well. I even heard Liam O'brian from Critical Role, although sometimes the text wasn't what was said. And that took me some time to get since I wondered if I heard correctly. And the gameplay is pretty much improved from Symphonia. Things like automatic use of items by your party members that you can stop by pushing the right stick and a new skill system that feels like Final Fantasy IX. Bad thing with that is that the AI goes through TP like snow in summer, and tend to use up all my TP-gels. It also have an overworld you can fly around on in the end part of the game. I like all that, and the story... kinda falls apart in the end. 

It began great with Yuri Lowell, a former knight that just hangs around the lower quarter of the Imperial capital with his dog Repide until someone cons the people by stealing their new core for the water fountain. Trying to catch the thief Yuri gets taken by the guards since they mistake him for a thief (and he has a history of causing trouble so the knight keep an eye on him). While captured another inmate gives him a clue to escape and during the break he meets up with princess Estelle as she tries to warn Flynn, a knight that is Yuri's friend and he gets dragged into that as they stop an assassination on Flynn. And the story takes of as they try to warn Flynn, meets up with Karol, a mercenary guild-member that never sticks around since he's scared (being a kid and all), Rita, the genius mage that studies blastia cores, Raven, the old guild spy, Judith, the krityan dragoon, and lastly Patty, the amnesiac girl looking for her grandfather, the pirate captain Alfried that committed a massacre. 

During the course of the adventure we explore ideas of corruption in those with power or pretty much mankind over all. They set this up with Ragou the senator and a commander of the knights who conspire to gain power for themselves on opposite sides of the imperial powerstruggle (the knights vs the senate) if Estelle or Ioder should be the next emperor. And that is fine... until Yuri kills them as he sees that as the only way to stop them from abusing power. And I can understand that. I like the idea since it also mirrors him and Flynn who chose to stay as a knight and change the system from within (and they wear black and white). The problem is that happens at the halfway point and there is no main bad guy anymore. So you travel around and try to stop the guild Leviathan's Claw that was giving the others weapons, but they aren't really the bad guys, they just profit on the struggles between others. Behind them is apparently the imperial commandant Alexei that people say had some ideals that made him go over the top to take over the world by using a super weapon from the time of the ancients. Meanwhile the Entelexeia (sentient beasts close to nature) tries to kill Estelle since her ability to destille aer (mana but not really since it appears later in the story) without blastia is a danger for the natural order. Now, the Entelexeia is trying to stop the return of the Adephagos, an eldritch abomination from the stars that feeds on aer, but fail as Alexei in his misguided search for power opens the shield that he thought was a weapon, killing him and leaving Brave Vesperia (the guild they decided to form) the ones to stop it before Duke, a characters that shows up from time to time, uses all human life to destroy it. 

It follows the rythm of the other Tales game pretty much, but where Symphonias twists and turns felt natural and the end goal was pretty clear, here I don't know. Alexei turns evil the last quarter of the game and a bit after that the Adaphagos appears in the story and then Alexei dies and leaving the Adephagos. Which you don't fight. The last battle is with Duke who belives that mankind must be sacrificed to save the planet since it was them that called the Adephagos the first time and again and again almost summoned it until now. And I agree with him, to stop this from happening take away the problem. And Duke was always this mysterious character that showed up helping the main characters, but reluctantly. But I got him. But as the final boss? No, the story fell apart there. Thank god that the gameplay didn't screw over me in the final battle. I accidentally shifted character and they all went into auto-mode and I couldn't switch back as the auto-mode wouldn't disable. Lucky my party pushed through. 

I feel disappointed by this game. Symphonia had the best final boss and Abyss the best main character. I like Yuri and friends, but Yuri doesn't have the arc of Luke and as I said, the end goal changes so you don't have that and the true final boss you don't fight. Thinking through the main cast, only Raven and Patty is interesting. And Raven I guessed pretty quickly that he played both sides. Patty took me by surprise and I don't know if I found everything in her story. Cause can't figure out why she looks like a little girl when she is apparently quite older than the others. I played the game for 60+ hours and I don't feel like playing through everything. It's not a bad game, it works and it distracted me for a while, but I don't feel anything for it. That or the fact that I stopped and played other games inbetween since the backlog is growing and soon I bought all Wii U and PS3 games again just to have them on the Switch.