Tales of Series

I’ve mentioned before having played at least most of these games (but still haven’t played any Final Fantasy), so in the future I might write a bit about each one I’ve played in more depth as I guess they’ve been at least a little influential on my current and future writing projects.  Here are all the ones that I have played:

Tales of Vesperia (Xbox 360)

Tales of the Abyss (PS2)

Tales of Symphonia + Dawn of the New World (PS3)

Tales of Graces F (PS3)

Tales of Xillia 1+2 (PS3)

Tales of Zestiria (PS4)

I think basically those are all the ones that have been released on consoles in english.  They are of course all epic adventures spanning an entire world, or two.  Although each game is a different story on a different world, not really related at all to one and other.  Although there are some commonalities:

It’s usually a fantasy world, although with some technology.  And yes, the main characters love interest is usually a healer (although there are some exceptions, like in Xillia you can choose between a male or a female protagonist and they’re both fighters, and I believe the next title has a female protagonist).  There’s usually at least one child character who joins your party as well, although obviously posessing some extraordinary ability that makes it possible for them to be adventurers.  And the final boss is usually some monstrosity you have to fight three times, and if that wasn’t tedious enough there’s usually a post game dungeon filled with enemies that hit hard and have even larger amounts of HP to grind through.

Also, the combat isn’t turn based, which was probably a big factor in me choosing to try out this series rather than most other JRPG’s around at the time.  Odd thing about turn based combat in video games is that I obviously never used to have any problem with it, as I played Fallout 1 + 2 lots of times.  But now I find games like that very hard to get into, finding it all just… well, tedious.  I think I’ve just been spoilt by modern games.