Title: Tales of the Abyss
Console: PS2, Nintendo 3DS (port)
Genre: Tales of the Abyss
Language: Japanese
Company: Bandai Namco
Summary: My first 3DS game purchase! I watched the anime when it aired in Japan and enjoyed it. But since I know the story already, I might get sidetracked while I play this .___.; I did spend a hefty dollar to get the game though, so I’ll be sure to enjoy every dollar it’s worth eventually~ Luke \o/

10 years later I end up just emulating it on PS2 to get 60fps and 4k graphics. :V Finished the game for real this time though, instead of stopping somewhere after Yulia City, I believe.
Story:
Characters:
Graphics:
Sound: Almost on the same level as Vesperia for me. A lot of solid tracks and a few duds here and there…
Gameplay: Apparently this is the first Tales with true Free Run function? Aka just use Guy and win. Some day I’ll finally be a master at using Manual mode instead of Semi-Auto.
Replay Value:
Overall: 8. I’m caught in the comment I heard somewhere that Abyss didn’t age very well as a game, and I have to agree. There’s a lot of time-consuming backtracking, and even the location warp that you FINALLY get access to near end-game still takes too much time to get anywhere with.

The fact that there’s so much backtracking in general, while it does add a lot of depth to the game like it did for Vesperia… there had to be a more efficient way to do it! D: Every time I needed to go to Baticul to see Luke’s mother for example, it would literally take a near 5 minutes to crawl through all the lifts in Baticul and go through multiple screens just to reach her room. Things like that are a huge no-no for the game experience these days.

Another bit that shows its age are the skits–A majority of the skits are just rehashing the story scenes, and many of them just end up being that way because the story gets too complicated that they feel a need to reword everything that just happened through the skits. For example, something will happen with the whole Malkuth vs Kimlasca conflict, like “___ defecting the army”, and the skit following it will just be going “I can’t believe ___ defected the army!” “He must’ve been under a lot of pressure in order to do that” and normal blah like that. Compared to many of the later skits where there’s a lot more variety in the dialogue…

This score may be a little high even, but I definitely have a personal bias towards favoring Abyss for its story and ESPECIALLY character developments, convolutions and all. Luke and Tear. TwT~
Guy yooo.

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