Tales of Graces f: Review

Gameplay

The battle system is a bit difficult to adjust to (especially if you have never played any Tales games before), but once you get the hang of it, battles become really fun. Basically, you have skills which you can chain into combos. Each skill has a cost of Chain Capacity (CC) which must be charged through moving, guarding and a variety of different ways. these skills are acquired through the course of the game via titles. Each title has 5 bonuses (either new skills, skill upgrades, stat boosts, CC boosts, special character-specific attributes) that are earned by gaining Skill Points (SP) by winning battles. Titles are gained via minigames, cutscenes (called 'skits' in Tales games), sidequests and as the story progresses. And later as the game progresses, more and more complex aspects of combat are introduced such as Mystic Artes (equivalent of Limit Breaks in FF games), Accel Mode etc. The battle AI for your party members is competent, but sometimes they are slow to respond to healing and reviving fallen party members. This isn't a big problem because later in the game there are a lot of damage reduction titles, skills and equipment that compensate for the increased damage from monsters. By that time, you also would have learnt how to evade attacks efficiently (the AI is very good in blocking and evading by the way).

Tales of Graces f is filled with puzzles and minigames. Every dungeon right from the start has puzzles specific to that dungeon. Some of these puzzles are quite difficult, but not entirely unsolvable even if you don't use walkthroughs. I pride myself as a decent puzzle solver and even I had to check online for help on how to pass one or two puzzles.

Minigames are abundant here to. There's even one which longtime Tales fans will enjoy (it involves recognizing characters from past Tales games and matching them based on voice-to-picture). I can't really comment on this as this is my first Tales game so it is practically impossible for me to finish that minigame based on blind guesswork. But the other minigames were all well though out and equally enjoyable. 

There is a restricted linear path in the early stages of the game but as you reach midgame, you get to explore the world on your own. If you get lost and forget what you were supposed to do to proceed with the story, holding the L1 button makes your current objective appear to remind you. Trust me, you will get distracted from the story. There's simply too much to do once you get full freedom of exploration.

Graphics

Tales games are known for their anime-style 3D ingame graphics. But I don't particularly like this kind of mix (anime and 3D) because it's a bit conflicting. However, that is just me (I'm used to CG ingame graphics from FF games). The FMVs are in full 2D anime graphics and are quite artistically drawn. The normal skits are all full 2D anime (colourful and cell-shaded-like).

Longevity

I clocked in my first completed run through the main story for normal ending at roughly 102 hours, and none of that was grinding EXP or SP or even item farming. When you finish the main story, a bonus chapter will be unlocked. Finishing the bonus chapter will give you the true ending (which is definitely worth the extra hours of gameplay). My total playtime taken to finish the main story and the bonus chapter: a whopping 145 hours. To put it in perspective, that is equal to 7 individual playthroughs from start to finish for FFXIII-2 (my initial playthrough for FFXIII-2 without any DLC chapters is 20 hours). The 145 hours of Tales of Graces f doesn't end there. After finishing the bonus chapter once, you unlock a bonus 10 floor high level dungeon with yet another optional final boss. I'm stuck on floor 2 of that dungeon, and my party is LV 74. That should give you an idea of how hardcore that dungeon is. The maximum LV in this game is 200.    

Music

The music score is one of the best I have heard in a long time. Every town, dungeon and battle soundtrack is a masterpiece and sets the mood nicely. Special mention: the normal battle theme is now one of my all-time favourite battle themes. The theme song 'White Wishes' ('Mamoritai' in the Japanese version) sung by BoA is one of the most beautiful theme songs I have ever heard (the last being 'Melodies of Life' from FFIX).

Replayability

If you completed the game 100% (which does require you to play New Game +, unlocked by finishing the main story once), there really isn't anything left to replay. But that 100% completion goal will most likely take you more than 200 hours. And after that, you might even wanna replay the entire game from the start. Yes, it is that awesome. 

Story

It's NOT only about love. Tales of Graces f's story focuses more on a story of friendship and how true friendship will persist through times of betrayal and hardship. That's something you don't see everyday. The plot is unique, for the lack of a better word. 

Trophies

PS3 trophy hunters will expect to get more than 10 bronze trophies by simply finishing the main story once. There is a silver trophy for just finishing the bonus chapter. For the gold trophies though, expect to put at least 175 hours as they are linked to 100% completion of some parts of the game such as gained every item, defeated every monster and boss, etc. The platinum trophy is for 100% completion of the ENTIRE game.

Conclusion

An excellent RPG by Namco-Bandai that ranks among the top 3 Tales games of all time (according to what I read on the forums). I dare say I enjoyed Tales of Graces f even more than the post-FFXII games by Square Enix. I am now a Tales fan.