Game – Tales of the Abyss

April 17, 2009 at 6:34 pm | Posted in Tales of the Abyss (Anime + Game) | 4 Comments

So, uh, my friend wants this back, and wanted it finished by Monday. Sooo… I took on the challenge and have won! Yay~.

That’s all I’ve really gotta say before I go under a cut because I’ve got a decent amount to say on this game… and a lot of it includes spoilers, so yeah. Though I doubt a lot of people who would care about spoilers for this game wouldn’t already know all the spoilers.

Okay, so basically Luke’s this brat who ends up out in the middle of nowhere with this girl Tear and they have to get back to Baticul. They fail to do so and end up in enemy (Malkuth) territory and stuff happens. I really don’t remember a lot of this becuase I finished the early parts of the game monthes ago. Stuff happens, you get six total party members, and now you have to SAAAAVE THE WOOOORLD (God, how many games are like this?).

Anyways, what I really wanted to talk about was why it took so long to finish this game. Cause me taking a couple of monthes to beat a first run-through is not normal. I borrowed this game because of the Anime and I had always wanted to try a Tales game since a good deal of friends like Tales game. I had previously tried Tales of Symphonia, but due to my Map Fail I got annoyed, couldn’t find anything, and stopped playing for a couple of weeks and returned the game to my friend. Of course directions are always my problem, but usually interest will keep me going. But in both ToA and ToS for a while, it just plain didn’t interest me.

While ToA I can say possibly was less interesting because I was watching the Anime, but ToS was similar and I wasn’t watching the Anime/OVA/Whatever it was that they made for ToS. Around 20 hours in, for ToA that is, I finally got interested. I don’t know what happened exactly, but I suddely wanted to finish the game.

Thinking back on it, I sort of realized why. I didn’t really instantly like any of the characters from the moment they appeared. I liked them, but they didn’t really interest me, or had something about them that I really disliked. And I also think it was partially because my mind set of “Oh I’ll try a Tales game because my friends like them”. But, characters.

Luke begins as a major brat and is one of the few Main Characters I dislike from the beginning and start to sort-of like in the end (Another one is Haseo from .hack//GU). Pretty much took him until he chopped his hair off to be even reasonably likable for me, and even then he had moments of being a brat.

Tear was introduced as wanting to kill the dude who gave you a fighting tutorial. Becuase I settled into Luke’s role (be he a brat or not, he’s still the person we see this game through), I didn’t really like her a lot because she just, you know, took Luke out of his home after atttempting to kill Van. After finding out everything, she was cool and Tear x Luke is so freaking OTP, that I don’t really have a reason to dislike her. But as a I said, didn’t nessesarily like her at first.

Uh, after them came Guy? I don’t remember, but I’ll move onto Guy cause I feel like it. My sister liked him a lot, and that possibly made me just ‘like’ him. He was okay, and Anise needed to stop using him for comic relief, but I didn’t really like him until after he had that flashback and found out why he was afraid of women.

Anise I liked her appearance from the start. I didn’t like her fight-style (and I disliked playing Brat), but iunno, I didn’t really like her enough to keep my interest in the game. After she was found to be a spy, I was completely trusting of her though, I felt that she wasn’t the person to just spy for no reason, especially since the party members are her friends, spy or not. Oh and after Ion died I also felt bad for her because she didn’t have much of a choice.

Maybe fantards will skip over this (I kind of hope they will), but Jade. I really dislike Jade. It is possible to dislike him, fantards. He’s just generally an ass, and made snide remakes I’d love to have punched him for. I dealt with him in the party for the fonic artes, but that’s all I ever cared about. Disliked him from start to finish.

As for Natalia, while I see a decent amount of people didn’t use her much, I loved using her in battle. I love range and handle her really well. Pretty much after I got Natalia every battle that’s who I played as unless there was a reason not to. As for her character, she was a useful character since she sort-of is Kimlasca’s Princess. After she found out she wasn’t princess by blood, she did change for the better (like everyone did after their respective major events).

As for the enemies, while there were those rather interesting connections, the fact was I didn’t care either way and just wanted them dead. They had been introduced as people against us, and will remain in my mind that way. While Van was the major enemy, the game lead us up to that fact and so I thought of them as just enemies. It’s sort of like I just knew I had to kill them to beat the game, and I didn’t really care why I was killing them.

In the end, I’ve come to decide that Tales games probably aren’t my thing and while they sound interesting at first, if most of the game’s characters change durastically after a certain event far off into the game, I don’t think these games can keep me interested long enough to get there.

I did, despite all my comments said above, thoroughly enjoy Tales of the Abyss. I’m not sure if I really should play more Tales games, but I did enjoy the storyline, so I’m up for any Tales animes/OVAs/whatever that may come. Thanks to my friend who let me borrow this game, sorry it took so long to finish the darned thing.

Oh and some side notes: Luke looks better with short hair, Tear looked cute in those flashback things, Noelle’s my fave minor character ever, and Ion is such a cute trap~.

And now that I’ve finished the game, I’ll take a little break and then work on finishing the anime as well.