Ben-DutkaAll you JRPG fans out there should be enjoying Tales of Graces f , which launched earlier this year for the PlayStation 3. Solid title.
But if you've already completed that one and are looking forward to the next installment, you should pay attention to the new Q&A session over at the PlayStation Blog . Namco Bandai producer Hideo Baba was good enough to answer a few fan questions.
One of the more encouraging responses came when asked about the new additions to this fresh PS3 exclusive RPG.
"There are many unique features in Xillia but I’d like to emphasise that the battle system is very unique and much improved over the previous title. Also, the portrayal of the game world and its atmosphere has also changed a lot too. In the previous games the characters were very deformed – they were much shorter – but with Xillia the team has tried to show the characters in realistic proportions so that we can really convey the huge size of the world more effectively. The player can really feel how large the world is now."
He also reminds us that there are two main characters in the game, and if you wish to play through the adventure with both and see things from different perspectives, the length grows to over 100 hours. That's right…100. Man, I still remember the two characters in Star Ocean: The 2nd Story (Claude and Rena); the game was massively long to begin with, and one play-through took me a good 100+ hours. Of course, I did everything…and these days, it's tough to find such lengthy titles.
Some JRPGs can still deliver the goods!
Related Game(s): Tales of Xillia
I dont know when this is coming out but next year is looking like a great year for JRPGs! I'm going to pick this up for certain, it looks really great.
Day 1 if at all possible, I loved Tales F. I don't mind the deformed characters as I'm cool with most anime styles but if they want to play around with it that's cool too because it's not as if they look like real people. Glad to hear the world is huge, JRPGs need to have big worlds unlike the limited areas FF has gone to.
I dug the fighting system in F but it could be unbalanced at times. I'm looking forward to seeing what this one is about. Boy it was stupid to ever put this series on Xbox exclusively.
Agreed. Tales of producers are realizing most jrpg fans still reside with the playstation brand .
@shadowscorpio:
nvm, see below
-Arvis
Last edited by Arvis on 10/5/2012 9:59:16 AM
Well, I'm not going to hope for it to go international.
I KNOW it will, don't see why it wouldn't, I just can't.
It's coming to the US, no idea about other countries.
I have never played a "Tales of…" game before but I'm quite excited over this one. I really need my JRPG fix. Ni no Kuni, Persona 4 Golden, and this game would all make up for that. I hope that this is a solid game and sells well so we can get Tales of Xillia 2.
Day 1 for me. Currently completing everything possible in Tales of Graces F.
I could hardly believe how much more there was to do in the future arc after you "beat the game". I thought the game was over and that added bonus was just a few cut scenes. It was like a whole nother game!
Yeah Tales of games are known for treating the player with surprise story elements . If one franchise has stayed true to its roots, it's the tales games .
Oh… Great. I want to play some SO TSS But I'm missing disc 1… I dunno if I can handle the nostalgia that flies around this site anymore. Lol.
Thumbs up to Namco Bandai!
For those who don't already know.
The Xbox 360 version (the only version released in the states) of Tales of Vesperia sold poorly in the states. The Wii version of Tales of Graces also sold poorly in the states.
As a result Namco-Bandai initially refused to greenlight the PS3 version of Tales of Graces (called Tales of Graces F) for localization. Then fans made a lot of noise and Namco-Bandai eventually gave in and greenlit Tales of Graces F. But they also made it clear that this was it. If they weren't satisfied with the US sales of Tales of Graces F then they were never going to release another Tales game in the US again.
But lo and behold. Now they have greenlit Tales of Xillia for localization in the US. That can only mean one thing. The US sales of Tales of Graces F were satisfactory.
The Xbox 360 and the Wii both almost destroyed the Tales series in the states. And the PS3 saved it. Plain and simple.
Power to Playstation.
That isn't at all what I heard!
*goes to do research*
Hm…
http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/604158-tales-of-graces-f/63379525
And yet vgchartz says it got close to 200k in 10 weeks. I don't know what to believe.
-Arvis
@ Arvis
Yes that is strange isn't it? Conflicting information.
Nevertheless as I understand it the game is still generally considered to have been a success in the US even if it may not have been as much of a success as Namco-Bandai would have preferred. In any case it was still apparently successful enough to renew Namco-Bandai's hope for the US market. Hence the imminent arrival of Tales of Xillia.
And in any case the PS3 version of Tales of Graces (Tales of Graces F) certainly sold way better in the US than the Xbox 360 version of Tales of Vesperia.
And by the way I would like to make a correction to my previous post. Apparently the original Wii version of Tale of Graces was actually never released in the US. That's funny. I thought that it was. Oh well.
So I guess both the Xbox 360 and the Wii did not almost destroy the Tales series in the states. Instead the Xbox 360 almost destroyed the Tales series in the US all by itself. Way to go Microsoft.
You know what's weird and annoying, sales of WKC2 are on par with or better than that in the US and EU, yet look at the horrible support it got from the publisher D3P – D3P is a Namco company BTW.