If the Japanese roleplaying game is in the midst of a protracted identity crisis – and Final Fantasy Versus XIII’s recent promotion to next mainline title in the genre-defining series is the latest indication this might be the case – then it’s one that Tales Of Xillia appears unburdened by. Released in Japan in 2011 to mark the series’ 15th anniversary, this breezy adventure rarely strays from safe genre templates and tropes. Instead, development team Namco Tales Studio focused its energy on fine detail invention and fat-trimming.
And while dual protagonists Jude Mathis (a medical student investigating a military research facility after treating employees with suspicious injuries) and Milla Maxwell (the girlish incarnation of a benevolent god with magnificently unruffleable hair) find themselves caught in the uninspiring familiarity of a world-saving adventure, the quick pace and firm focus is nevertheless refreshing. Take, for example, Tales Of Xillia’s skits – dialogue interludes involving the main characters in your party that can be triggered at almost any point with a button press. These fully voiced exchanges are sometimes humorous and sometimes affecting but, whatever their tone, they always add colourful characterisation and backstory to both the world and its principal players. By making each skit an optional extra rather than a forced cutscene, the interested player is able to choose to listen when it suits, while the indifferent player can ignore them in order to focus fully on the business of exploration and combat.
These battles align with the sense of swiftness found in the storytelling, and are perhaps the shortest and sharpest yet seen in a Japanese RPG. The Tales series has favoured direct attack inputs over laborious menu selections since its Super Famicom debut, but in Tales Of Xillia the action is complemented by the capacity for new strategic tinkering. Your character enjoys free movement on the battlefield, allowing you to flank your enemies, with attack options changing seamlessly with your movement. Position is important from the outset, increasing the chances of landing a critical hit when attacking from behind a target.
Straightforward attacks can be interspersed with Artes, powerful magical assaults that, in their more complex guises, can involve multiple characters. In battle, your primary character can also form a link with any other team member with a button press. Linking with different partners yields different bonuses, with the supporting character stepping in when you find yourself flanked by a foe, restoring or resurrecting you when you fall in battle, or breaking an enemy’s guard. These helping hands build camaraderie, which fortifies the narrative development of the onscreen friendships in a manner reminiscent of Fire Emblem: Awakening.
The speed and intensity of battles emphasise quick decision making and fast fingers, moving the game away from the cerebral planning of other JRPGs. After each encounter you earn bonus experience points, awarded for the length of your longest combo, the time taken to complete a battle or finishing without taking damage – and rewarding player expression and skill makes the way in which you play battles as important as the outcome.
This emphasis on action is further bolstered by numerous strategic options that exert a significant influence on the flow of combat. While you control just one party member, a wide variety of strategic AI directions can be applied to individual teammates. You can direct their behaviour in specific situations, dictating what sort of healing or augmentation items they’ll use on one another, adding a layer of optional, yet considerable, strategic customisation.
Off the battlefield there’s further customisation in the form of Lilium Orbs, currency earned whenever a character levels up. These are used to purchase upgrade nodes on an abstract web of abilities – increasing strength, health, agility, dexterity and so on – but also adding entirely new moves and Artes to a character’s repertoire. It’s a system reminiscent of Final Fantasy X’s Sphere Grid or Final Fantasy XIII’s Crystarium but much more accessible and, despite the simplistic presentation, no less engaging and compulsive.
Exploration through this bright, pastoral world is often linear, but Xenoblade-esque twinkles of light punctuate each environment, highlighting resources that can be collected and used to upgrade the game’s various shops. As you invest in stores, the range of items on sale increases while prices fall, offering a powerful incentive to explore every crease and nook of the world in order to improve your team’s armoury. There’s a certain rugged elegance to these interlocking systems, which succeed in drawing you into the game’s ecosystem, even if the anime-styled story fails to.
While Tales Of Xillia is aimed at fans of Japanese manga and anime – the game has already inspired four manga adaptations – its characters evade the medium’s many clichés and are generally likeable. The story, with its eastern spiritual and metaphysical overtones, may fail to capture the imagination as a whole, but the moment-by-moment interactions between its characters are engaging and frequently well written.
There is, however, a certain thinness to the game when set against recent high points in the genre. There’s none of Xenoblade Chronicles’ restless inventiveness, little of Dragon Quest’s or Ni No Kuni’s earthy connection, and the game’s meagre sidequests pale in comparison with those found within the likes of Final Fantasy XIII-2. What’s left is, while smartly streamlined, a thoroughly orthodox game within a well-established type, a niche within a niche that’s getting smaller all the time.
Tales Of Xillia is released on August 9 on PS3.
The post Tales Of Xillia review appeared first on Edge Online.
Source http://www.edge-online.com/review/tales-of-xillia-review/
0 comments:
Post a Comment