It would be an understatement to say that JRPGs are slowly becoming irrelevant in this generation of gaming. Fewer and fewer titles from the genre get translated, and the ones that do hardly garner the attention they deserve. Enter Tales of Graces f; this enhanced PS3 port of the Japan-only Wii title is looking to quell the appetite of fans that are starved for a next-gen JRPG. Is this a game worth your time and money, or is this the final Tale we’ll ever hear?

Tales of Graces f tells the story of Asbel Lhant and his childhood friends. The game begins with them in their childhood years as they form bonds and get into misadventures. You’ll travel with these characters as children for several hours before the game skips ahead seven years into the future. This may seem like a substantial amount of time for story set up, but the game does a fantastic job of molding these characters throughout the game that it absolutely pays off in the 40+ hour adventure.

The main plot revolves around warring kingdoms, a corrupted king, and the fight to retain an essential resource called cryas. Admittedly, the plot falls in line with just about every trope the genre is know for. However, it’s how the characters deal with their surrounding circumstances and grow that make the story worth investing in. With every plot twist and new revelation, I wanted to see what would happen next. I had a difficult time turning my PS3 off every night as I wanted to keep playing more.

Each character has a distinct personality and strong story arc. Of all the characters, I feel like the main protagonist, Asbel, has the biggest and most interesting one of the cast. I won’t reveal story plots to prevent spoilers, but I felt like I could connect to him and his plight the most as I progressed through the game. The rest of cast is great as well as they each having their own unique personalities that make for interesting and sometimes hilarious dialogue. I mainly blame Pascal for the latter.

The game has a large amount of spoken dialogue, which is actually quite good. The standout performances definitely belong to Bryce Papenbrook (Asbel) and Kate Higgins (Pascal), whom you might recognize as Sakura from Naruto. One unique story-telling aspect that’s been a staple of the Tales games is the pop up dialogue sequence. Randomly through the game you’ll be prompted the press the select button to open up an extra bit of dialogue between the characters. These are normally voice acted and shown through character portraits rather than their 3D character models. While totally optional, they provide added depth and humor to all the characters.

I wasn’t a big fan of this in past games, but for some reason I found myself wanting to watch every ones of these in this game. Searching for ways to to trigger these scenes was part of the fun and watching them felt like my reward. Many of them are totally irrelevant to the main plot, but they are relatively short and worth taking the time to watch.

While I feel the game’s story is one of it’s stronger points, the overall presentation was unimpressive. This is, after all, a port of a 2009 Wii game, so textures and models look noticeably dated. The color scheme helps a lot (especially in HD), but it’s hard to not think that this game should look way better than it does. The animations are also rather stiff and remind me of playing a PS2 game. While not necessarily a bad thing, this was something I kept thinking to myself the entire time. I would have to exclude the animated cut scenes from this conversation, as they are beautiful and look excellent in high definition.

You would think something that should transcend generations and consoles like music would be great regardless, but the soundtrack didn’t really standout to me. If you asked me to hum a single tune in the game I’m not sure I could. The majority of the tunes were generic and rather forgettable. This of course does not include the addicting intro song White Wish sung by Korean pop star BoA. I kind of made it a rule that I had to watch the intro movie every time I booted up the game. The Tales games have a tendency to do that to me.

dat battle system! it'll keep you playing for hours on end.

Dated graphics aside, the battle system is far and away the best thing going for Graces f. It combines a number of unique elements for a more action-y feel. This isn’t your basic turn-based affair, but rather one the gives freedom to roam and perform combos. Encounters aren’t random, instead monsters freely roam around the various areas and begin battles when touched. While you’re not completely free to move around the enclosed battle field, you have a good amount of mobility to move where you want at any given time. You can walk or dash around enemies, which gives you a nice feeling of speed and agility. You rarely feel like a sitting duck and can dodge attacks with ease.

The actual fighting should feel relatively familiar to veterans of past Tales games. You have what’s called a CC meter, which depletes whenever you perform an arte or ability. This meter is refilled quickly by either standing still or blocking. Battles are all about many big of a combo chain you can create. You can combo artes and abilities together in real time with ease for dynamic strings of attacks. Because of this, battles are very fast, frantic, and exciting. This battle system lends itself to a lot of experimentation with the large move set and character variety. You’ll want to get into every battle you can try moves and simply have a blast.

What’s neat is that you have the option to play battles with up to four friends in local co-op. This ads a whole other level of strategy and excitement to fights. If you’re getting sick of using one character in single player fights, you can also switch to control any character in your party. I felt this gave the combat more freedom and it was neat to try fighting as different characters. Most JRPGs that have a more action-oriented battle system restrict you to the main character, so having this option is a definite plus.

Namco Bandai has said that unless this game sells well we can pretty much forget about seeing translations of future Tales games outside of Japan. I’m not afraid to say when a game isn’t worth your money, but I’m also not above begging. Yes, the game looks a bit dated, but you honestly won’t even care that much. You’ll have an absolute blast with the battle system and want to keep progressing in the story to see what happens next.

This generation of home consoles has been a barren wasteland for JRPGs, with the exception of a few gems here and there. If you enjoy this genre of games and want to see more come our way in the future, you absolutely have to support this game. It isn’t going to win over anyone not familiar with the genre, but those that are familiar will find an excellent game in Graces f that I’m certain you will enjoy.

A copy of this game was purchased by Blistered Thumbs for review purposes. The game was played for 20 hours on the PlayStation 3 by the reviewer.

Tales of Graces f Review

By Taylor Hoyt

Will Tales of Graces f help turn the JRPG ship in the right direction, or is this the final Tale we'll ever hear?