Final Fantasy XII and Tales of Vesperia Update

The fun continues with Final Fantasy XII, I am really enjoying this game. I have just defeated the two living walls in The Tomb of Raithwall and I am pausing progression to deal with some hunts and to grind out some licenses. I am right about level 22 with most characters and the game has really come into its own. As you gain access to more Gambit options the system opens up and tuning your Gambits becomes another, non-power-related, chance to advance and customize your character. Working out strategies for your group, especially with six characters to play with, is a blast. The game really feels like a single player version of FFXI, and I mean that in the best possible way, combat has a cool teamwork feel to it. I am just plain enjoying playing the game, especially the combat system.

The Yensa Sandsea area is proving to be a good place to level and get LPs, so I am taking the time to progress my characters in the augmentation area of the license board. I already have all three mist charges with all characters, this dramatically changes the way you play, the extra MP means you can cast spells almost constantly in combat. This is enhanced further by many of the augmentations. The story is kind of just there, but the gameplay is excellent.

Things are not going as well with Tales of Vesperia, I am about 11 hours in and there is not a lot going on in this game. The characters are pretty standard, insipid, anime fair; Karol is especially annoying. The story is like a NES-era Dragon Quest game, you go to a town, grind until you can afford the weapons, solve that towns problem and walk to the next one. The cut scenes are particularly annoying, not only are they poorly written, you also have to hit "A" after every line of dialogue, even when there is voice acting.

The combat system, the Tales series claim to fame, is not really anything to write home about. Commentor Matteo mentioned that I needed to make some AI changes in order to keep the enemies from ganging up on me, and this worked very well. The problem is, there just isn't that much to the combat, I use the same combo over and over, no matter what the situation. I just do three hits and then a Wolf Strike, this seems to work for everything. Recently the game introduced the concepts of Fatal Strikes and Burst Arts, but so far neither has seen much use. Perhaps this game would be better if it had some kind of training mode where I could try out different combos on a dummy and experiment with the system a bit. Many fighting games have this sort of thing now, it can be hard to tell what is causing things to happen during fights. The screen gets crowded and the fights are over fast. Once I got the AI sorted out the game is no longer hard, so maybe I am doing the right thing. I am going to give it a few more hours tonight, but there isn't much holding me to this one. Do not be surprised if I pull the plug on Tales of Vesperia. I bought several Tales games a month or so ago during a PSN sale, I will at least try all of them.