This game sucks

I have hatred for Zestiria. I don't mind bad story and pacing.
What I hate is all the mess on the gameplay.

-The camera is booty

-Skill system is convoluted mess. You are at the mercy of RNG.
Your skill depend on the friggin RNG.
You can alter the RNG but it require intensive grinding.

-Every Seraph play the same. Every single one of them.

-Forced party mechanic. If you have 1 human and 3 Seraph, you can only bring two characters.
You can't make a full Seraph party.

-Boss break out of combo out of nowhere. They gain invincibility in the middle of your combo.
It's like Xillia 1 except worse.

-Skills are tied to your equipment but you can only inherit equipment the character equip in the final boss.

-When enemy's blast gauge reach 3, they can pull off Mystic Arte as long they hit you once.

-If a character died, your grade is halved. I remember retrying a battle because AI keep dying.

While I sit here in my little corner, enjoying the hell out of Zesty, even with the crappy battle camera. <_____<

Venom wrote:

While I sit here in my little corner, enjoying the hell out of Zesty, even with the crappy battle camera. <_____<

You go Venom! The fact that it resonates strongly with you is great! Also shows just how subjective a game experience can be and helps offset the people heavily in the doldrums over it

@swordandshield: I just read your last post, you say you don't understand how we don't see the "decline" but your main reasons have almost completely to do with your tastes in storytelling and characters. If we don't share our interests there that's probably why we don't see a pronounced decline. Gameplay being as it is can also be subjective depending on what people are looking for, but there's certainly nothing wrong with being critical to foster improvement in the direction you personally want it to go in, that just doesn't have to mean everyone else shares the same critiques or the level of bad something is.

Eh, Eternal Sonata, Ar Tonelico, The Legend of Heroes, White knight chronicles 1 & 2, Resonance of Fate, ect are all better PS3 JRPGs than ToZ. For a Tales game it is very mediocre, for a standalone I guess its ok. I'll continue playing it and end it I guess but it just hasn't really impressed me so far.

Oh Hai fateoffate, its Geddoe25 from gamefaqs, didn't know you posted here lol

swordandshield wrote:

Oh Hai fateoffate, its Geddoe25 from gamefaqs, didn't know you posted here lol

Oh hi there. lol I exist in Tales forum since 2010 but then it broke.
Almost everyone from tales forum migrate here so naturally I come here too.

I never was on the original Namco Tales forums because by the time I found out about it it was dead so I decided to come here. I'm a huge Tales fan and I'm just sad the way the series is turning now. Berseria looks promising though. Hopefully it doesn't have that seraphim crap in it like Zestiria.

One thing I hope is that ToB have REAL healers and roles. I loved ToZ but it felt like Armatization was forced upon us (it kind of was), especially near the end of the game. I could defeat monsters easily while armatized, but I would almost get "rekt" by not using it.

You basically have:
"2x" more HP
"2x" more defense
Both combined makes you around 4x more resilient.

You also get to control 2 characters with their combined damage. Controlling 2 characters drastically increase your damage output.

You get "free" revive and Life Bottles were kind of hard to use. If you had to use them, it meant that the battle is probably going to be painful (since you need to run away, revive and watch mobs kill them again...)

You get massive AoE for "free". Armatized spells are on par with Rita's Overlimit spamming.

Armatize's MA are vastly superior to regular MA, for almost the same cost.

It seems that ToB doesn't have something like that. I really do want to customize my party

Well compared to Xillia this wasnt as good

Taiyz wrote:

See, bringing up Final Fantasy is the first thing that shows me how impatient somebody is. Since Final Fantasy 10, there haven't been two back to back Final Fantasy games with the same battle system, even in the Final Fantasy XIII sub-series.

Likewise, I don't see Tales games as a continuous evolution either. Xillia and Xillia 2 were related, I hear that Graces is similar to Zestiria in terms of gameplay, and Berseria will likely be an evolution of that, well who's to say that the next game after Berseria will play just like that?

Now, it's hard to imagine them going back to a battle system before these games, Free Running is here to stay and we're never gonna get another sprite-based game, but you're acting me like one game and its sequel are spelling out the end of the franchise.

Did you like the Xillia games? What about the people who didn't? What would you have thought if Xillia 2 got announced and everybody made fun of you for liking this "DEAD, SHITTY FRANCHISE THAT WILL NEVER GET GOOD AGAIN" when indeed Zestiria was enjoyed by many?

Getting back to the Final Fantasy point briefly, I loved the Final Fantasy XIII games personally, and I don't consider myself a fan of Final Fantasy gameplay (but I dig the world and character designs. White Mage outfits are still max totes adorbsness.) Sure, for whatever reason people can't enjoy the gameplay and would rather complain, and the next two games we've got are these real time things that will likely divide fans further (or again, maybe they won't care about the gameplay if the story/remake is handled well,) but I don't think this necessarily spells the end for the franchise...Square also makes Dragon Quest after all and that series hasn't changed in 30 years.

So I really think you're overreacting. It's not a bad thing to dislike a couple games in a series that's been around since the SNES. Sure, development takes longer these days, but we're still getting a new one every one or two years. Things will change yet again, I'm sure of it.

Taiyz wrote:

Okay, now you're saying things that are just wrong.

First off, looking at the timeline of the Tales series, the longest gap between major releases was 3 years, and that only happened between Destiny and Eternia. Namco's American efforts mean nothing in terms of dev time, they operate on a separate schedule.

This bullshit about not putting the same effort into games is one of the worst things you can say as a fan of anything. It's like those anti-dub people who argue that the stupid gaijin just aren't as emotional as glorious Nippon.

I CAN GUARANTEE YOU THAT THE DEDICATION OF THE *GENERATIONS* OF DEVELOPERS AT NAMCO BANDAI HAS NOT CHANGED and it is disgusting that you would suggest such a thing.

Now, development time versus quality is always tricky business. Sure, you can definitely argue that compared to older games, it now takes many more resources to develop a game, so keeping the same schedule as they did in the past is foolish and likely causes them to cut corners. However, there's a difference between keeping your project scope limited, and ACTUALLY cutting functionality to ship your game. I don't think Namco is guilty of this. You also have to consider the obscene working hours that the Japanese put into...Pretty much anything. Keeping the battle system largely the same and not really diverting from the cel-shaded visual style they've set for themselves since Symphonia is maybe a good hint as to why Namco can pump these games out every couple years where-as Square-Enix takes over twice as long. Slow improvements over an extended period of time means more games in less time without releasing a game that took 3+ years to make and upsets your fanbase.

Also, comparing Zestiria to a PS2 game, you seriously need a reminder of what those fucking things looked like. Cel-shading does have the advantage of aging better than other visual styles, so if anything, the older 3D games have the advantage of hanging onto good looks for a longer period, but that doesn't mean that the newer titles aren't significantly improved. That's an advantage of the visual design though, to overlook all the mechanical aspects and the simple things that make things look clearer and actually let characters emote more, is complete ignorance.


Now to be more opinionated:

A lot of what I've already said applies to your complaints about Final Fantasy. We're talking about two sides of the same coin. I say this all the time when Final Fantasy XIII comes up, as someone who isn't a series fan, I love the Final Fantasy XIII games, because they're different. I totally understand why someone who was a big classic Final Fantasy fan might not be of the same train of thought, but to lash out and say that the new games are just worse because they aren't like the old ones is, again, ignorant.

If people articulated their opinions better, I'd be fine with it, but 90% of the arguments I see against Final Fantasy boil down to "it's different and it's dumb" when I think most of Final Fantasy is boring and samey. Sure, narrative complaints can't be quantified (personally I don't see how modern Final Fantasy is any less dorky than old Final Fantasy,) but ignoring the gameplay is a huge problem when those titles provide a very unique experience.

I'm aware this post was made months ago, but Taiyz I just wanted to let you know how brilliant this post is. I love it.

Also, I believe people who say things like Tales of, Final Fantasy, and franchises that may have released a blunder title or even a few, should die or the series is worthless or no good anymore and such are 'entitlist'.