My Review of Tales of the Abyss

I have to say that, even though it's a game, and this could get really sad, Tales of the Abyss has had a huge impact on how I see the world. Mainly this reacurring sentence and story theme "Do what you can." I have adopted this as my personal motto. It's the nerdiest thing somebody can do, but I realize it had also once been my motto before for a brief period, after my basement began to flood. I actually used the sentence "Nothing get's done if you don't do it." I just felt like a country bumpkin using that, so I stopped, and now I use this phrase almost daily as advice. Almost all of the time in highschool with all of the drama, and such, people constantly lose hope, or don't know what to do, so my advice is, and most likely always will be "Do what you can." It's the slap everybody needs to get back on their feet.

Actually that "slap" is precisely one of my favorite features of the game. See, the Tales series to me is like an interactive story book, sorry to steal a word of yours John, but it is. You don't play to make headshots, or fool around for a bit, the entire game is focused around getting the characters where they need to go, and seeing what happens next. Of course, you can go wherever the hell you want once you get a plane. More on the plane later. But you can also run around doing other little missions for people, or maybe just explore, but that's straying from the point. See the interactive story thing is normal in most JRPGs (Japanese role playing games) and most of the time you have a self wallowing hero, or some other people regretting their past. In this game, that ain't an option. All emo moments are removed by either insanity or all too quick slaps to the face, both literally and figuratively. This makes me happy, because A) Insane characters are interesting, or amazingly cool. B) I hate emos, and emo moments. Grief can bleed to death in a ditch, it bores me to hell. Partially why some of Buffy the Vampire slayer is a failure. Nyeh nyeh nyeh! Straying from the point! I guess some of this is because pretty much every one of the characters has military ties, the other ones are slapped, slap, slap, slap! I'm a slap happy guy. Also Guy a main character, is immune to emo, because he's just cool like that.

Another reason to love this game is the characters themselves! There's Luke, protaganist, and for the first part of the game, the biggest ass hole the world will know, but he becomes the hopeful emo later.(Not really) He is also heir to the throne of a one of the three nations in the game. Tear, the female lead, is this mysterious girl who comes in randomly to kill Luke's teacher, and not too far along you find out that his teacher is her brother. She is generally cold, and acts like she cares about nothing but stopping her brother. Jade Curtiss, god among men. He is the most childish annoying and greatest man to ever enter my knoledge of pop culture. He is 30 years old, and a lot of the time acts like he's 7, and the mean big brother to all! He is rarely seen mad at something, otherwise he purposely over acts enthusiasm. For anybody in the +Anima rp, he might sound farmiliar, that's because my own Jade character has his style based off of Jade Curtiss. Guy Cesile, and later known as Gailardia Guardios. He is a pretty cool character, and is best friends with Luke. He's the guy who is pretty much always happy, with the exception of his irrational fear of physical contact of any kind with girls, but charms the ladies so easily it's like snapping his fingers. He is generally mature, and throught the game has view debates with Jade, them both being the wisest of the group. Anise, I won't even get into her career, because I don't want to explain that much plot. Basically, she is the 12 or 13 year old guardian of a world leader of roughly the same age. Probably the most proposterous parts of the plot. Anyways, she is a money chaser, constantly seeking rich men to marry, you can imagine what she see's in heir to the throne Luke. But she's only got the truest of intentions at heart. To cap off our characters is Natallia, the princess of Luke's nation. Also Luke's fiancee. Don't worry, Luke is a Duke, not related... Although Luke's mother is the king's sister, so they are cousins. I bet you thought that Luke would end up with Tear, didn't you? There isn't much to Natallia, because she comes late enough in the game that if I go too much further, we enter spoiler land. Anyways, she seems arrogant at first, but she is caring, and passionate, loyal patriotic, and charitable. Okay, maybe there is stuff to her, but I think I broke spoiler point a bit.

Besides that there is HUUUUUUUUUUUUGE variety of characters, including the six god generals, each of which being the nemisis of one of the main characters. Funny thing is, one of the generals is named Major Legretta, anybody want to cover that? Other than Legretta, who is Tear's nemesis, you have Asch, Luke's, Sync, Guy's, Dist, Jade's, Largo, Natallia's, and Arietta, Anise's. But I won't go much farther there.

I think I'm done for now, I might continue this.
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Alright, since there was some interest in this I've provided the opening cinematics to the game, so you can get visual aids for this.

Red hair in white is Luke. Dark brown clothes, and light brown hair is Tear. Jade is the guy with glasses long brownish hair, and in green, he also pulls out a spear. Guy is the blondie with the yellowish orange vest. Natallia is the blond haired girl in the blue with the bow. Anise is short with black hair and has a giant teddy thing. Other and that, Van is the guy with the same color hair as tear and in the navy blue shirt, he's Luke's teacher. And finally, Asch is the orange haired guy in black.

OH! And the cuddly bunny thing is Mieu, the highly abused pet.

OK, so anyways, I think it's time to move onto game play. There are some things that I think should be considered flaws, but really I don't mind. One of them is the amount of time you need to spend going from place to place. This is really only later in the game though. Early in the game, when you're sent somewhere, you'll need to walk to that place, and something significant happens. But once you get the AlbioreII, a plane, you can go anywhere really quickly, flying the plane, one of the highlights of the game for me. It's so fun to fly over the entire world. :) Sorry, I like flying in games, one of my more favored activities. So yeah the flying is a plus, but the problem is, is that you go to places a lot more often and nothing happens. Like eventless places. In fact there is a chunk of the game where you won't be in any dungeons, or fighting any monsters or anything, just flying from one place to another, and as much as I tried to be annoyed with it, I really didn't mind.

Another thing that slows down game time, is skits. They are annoying, because they normally come in strings after an event. But they are optional, so I can't really complain. And as much as I hate it, I love skits. They are little most of the time, pointless conversations between characters, showing personal views, or just having fun. It really helps you love the characters more. But when you're in a volcano and you get a string of them, you think "Ugh another one!" but you always end up watching the skit because you don't want to miss the funny conversations.

And finally, the battle system. The Tales series has the best battle system ever. Tales of the Abyss keeps this battle systeme, but they add in a bunch of tedious things that I never needed before, that just makes battle complicated. Basically, you are in a circular battle field, with you and three team mates. You battle the enemies you're up against, normally starting with the closest one. Like, say I have a lizard in front of a wolf, I'll attack the lizard, because it the game chose the one closest to me. I can change my opponent, and even set my team mates to all attack the same guy. Other than that, you move on a line from your opponent, but you can always hold down the free run button to run around the battlefield the way you want. A lot of people say "Oh it's all just button mashing, you don't need any skill" but those are also the people who will end up dying. Which is actually a lot harder in this game than most of them. You really need to learn to know when to attack, dodge, block, run away, use items, I even needed to change all of my moves for a boss, because I had a fraction of a second of vunerability while using them. So you also need to know what moves to equip and when! Not only that, but they through in several different features too, like, now you're ememies can sneak up on you, and certain moves leave energy fields, that if used correctly can give you a special move, but only with certain moves, and overlimit, which allows you to not flinch when attacked but only after you beat something up enough, and capacity cores that enhance your abilities, but you need to be able to read a chart to determine how to use them. Plus your AD skills, which I still have no idea what they are, but that they help me somehow. And your special move called a Mystic Arte, and it took me a whole chunk of time to learn how to use it, and it apparently goes into overlimit, but you can only use it while preforming certain moves. And you need to keep track of your twenty or so different kinds of stats. It's frustrating all of the stuff you need to remember for just one section of the game. But the thing is, you don't need to remember it. You can go on through the entire game by being ignorant to it. I boiled down my equipment buying to if it costs more, it's better, and capacity cores all have names, so I just chose the ones that sounded farmiliar to my origional ones, and I just ignored my AD skills. So all in all, you don't need any of that extra stuff.

And then there is Mieu. He becomes a character early on, and his only purpose besides being cute, is that you can use him in dungeons to advance. You get many powers to use outside of battle for them, but I made it through the game with two. The ability to tackle things to destroy them or make them drop treasure, and the ability to shoot fireballs. Those are all you need for the entire game, both of which you are just given. Apparently there is the ability to fly, and shoot gusts, and there are probably three others, but you only need the those two. Mieu fire, and Mieu attack.

Overall, it's flaw is that some of it was overdone. But it makes up for that by just being fun in general, and an amazing cast of characters, plus a brilliant storyline, and great philosophy. It's made it to my list of favorite games. It's a really great story.