It’s been twenty years now since the first Tales game but the series continues to impress. Characters in Tales of Zestiria were designed by four of the previous games’ designers, including Inomata, Fujishima, Okumura, and Iwamoto. I have played several Tales games over the years, starting only about eight years ago, and I’ve always found them to be solid experiences. I think it’s fair to say that the Tales games never set out to turn the genre on its head, which is completely fine. Instead, they provide compelling JRPG experiences that I would, as a compliment, call ‘comfort food’ of the genre, and that’s not meant to be a knock at all.
In Zestiria, familiar themes take the stage. From the colorful open outdoors areas to the darker, less visually appealing dungeons, to the timeless idea of a mysterious dark force taking over the lands, it’s a pretty typical foundation here. Legendary stories of The Shepard, a mystical warrior/savior that only appears when the people really need his help to drive out evil, are spoken of in the Celestial Record. This is a book that the main character, Sorey, is quite fond of, and not surprisingly, he may very well be the Shepard that Greenwood needs to repel the increasing spread of darkness and corruption.
That is, with help of course. Despite Sorey being a special human who can interact with Seraphims (he was raised by them afterall), he still has a lot to learn when it comes to the Artes, or the martial arts used in the game (meant to describe both weapon and magic based attacks and defenses). His good friend and water-based Seraphim, Mikleo is with Sorey from the start, and together they encounter Alisha, a royal family member to one of two warring families in Greenwood. A skilled knight, Alisha can hold her own in your battle party. Several other characters await including Lailah, who has pyro-based magic, Edna uses earth spells, Dezel, and Rose whose swift daggers are a literal pain in the side of enemies.
Tales games have a way of blending story and combat nicely. That’s actually one gameplay design that drew me to the Tales games before, I liked that they weren’t strictly hexagonal or square-based strategy RPGs or even turn-based. Zestiria takes this even further in that battles happen almost as seamlessly as an action game in that there is no screen-shattering effect or even any change in scenery — enemies appear, if you encounter them the battle is on, no delays. I believe that’s a first for the series and it’s a plus in my book. Zestiria has changed up the combat system some from the last Tales game I played in that it uses a Spirit Chain meter now. It’s configured such that you cannot just spam attacks constantly, but it also recharges pretty fast when you’re not on the offense. You gain extra SC when you block in battle as well, and I think even if you sidestep in a certain manner, too.
New to the combat system is the Kamui, which allows two characters of certain types to join forces for a massive attack. While combat is a big part of the game, there is plenty of dialog and exploration and inventory management, bartering, and so forth to engage in. These flesh out the experience in a familiar — there’s that word again — but quality manner.
As far as presentation, one of the biggest knocks is that the game is locked at 30fps, which is too bad given that it’s on not only the PS3, but the PS4 and PC which surely be able to run this game at 60fps. Regardless, it’s a nice looking game, nothing overly amazing, but very good nonetheless. The audio package is similarly quality, and I keep going back to the the song in the opening dungeon — it’s really impressive.
In short, Tales of Zestiria is about what you would expect, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing unless you’re burned out on the series already or are looking for a revolutionary JRPG. You won’t get that with Tales of Zestiria, but you will get a solid, familiar, lengthy and rewarding JRPG.
To the summary…
