Will this Zestiria port include all controversial DLC?

[Ktynn]

I remember Zestiria being controversial for having expensive DLC and not making one of the promoted characters playable only until certain DLC was released.

It pissed off fans and didn't bode well for sales and reviews.

Does anyone know if this PC port will be different from the console release in that regard?
Or will we have to deal with an unfinished/unpolished game that has a portion cutout for DLC?

[16 TIMES THE MIN REQUIREMENTS!!!]

If it does, you'd better wait for the steam -90% sale LOL

[Fallensoul]

https://twitter.com/TalesofU/status/616569266570174464 The Mystic Artes Dlc will be free forever and the Alisha Dlc will be free until 18th of November for all versions(Steam too^^).

As for the other Skin Dlc the Japanese version had we will prolly not see most of them come to the west in the first place.

And honestly Tales of Zestiria did well both sales wise(400k units in japan alone in the first week of release) and Review wise. The bad stuff we hear from Japan about the game and it's "controversy" is just bs for the most part. People were salty because their Waifu Alisha which they thought was the Main Heroine didn't turn out to be what they thought she would be.

[Krelian]

Originally posted by Fallensoul:

People were salty because their Waifu Alisha which they thought was the Main Heroine didn't turn out to be what they thought she would be.

To be fair, she was frequently displayed in promos alongside Sorey and got the spotlight more often than the other girls. Even here on Steam she was in more pics, before the update.
Also, her weapons are apparently updated in every town's equipment shop, despite her not being in your party anymore. This strengthens people's arguments that she was not planned to leave the party at first, but got cut to be sold as DLC later.

[Ryan Fenton]

Yeah - makes me more than a bit annoyed that since I'll likely pick this game up later, I will in theory have to pay extra money for the actual full game, compared to most other companies that port a game 6+months later to PC that usually make it standard to make base-game DLC part of the full game on re-release.

I wonder what the pricing on the party-member DLC will be.

There's a certain comedic poetry to the circumstance:

Why does it always feel like someone is missing?
Because God didn't pay for some companion DLC.

The other annoying aspect to such a thing is the "filler episode" syndrome from anime made from a manga. Whenever a character is introduced in a filler episode - that character by virtue of their creation cannot be allowed to do ANYTHING that will interfere with the progress of events that occur in the manga, or else you end up with a "first version of Fullmetal Alchemist" deviation from the world. That gets... messy. So, instead, you end up with these "optional content" characters being trite - even the jokes they tell can't be allowed to be so memorable that the other characters can remember it outside of DLC-added conversations. The character ends up being a kind of a ghost - not really alive, just sort of hanging in space somewhere around the action, serving a shallow role to fill space/time

More open-ended RPGs like Fallout 3 can make this more natural, by making everything cookie-cutter in a way that makes it all consistent, but auteur-crafted stories tend to not handle DLC characters well at all. At least that's my experience.

Ryan Fenton

[Drude]

Originally posted by Ryan Fenton:

Yeah - makes me more than a bit annoyed that since I'll likely pick this game up later, I will in theory have to pay extra money for the actual full game, compared to most other companies that port a game 6+months later to PC that usually make it standard to make base-game DLC part of the full game on re-release.

I wonder what the pricing on the party-member DLC will be.

There's a certain comedic poetry to the circumstance:

Why does it always feel like someone is missing?
Because God didn't pay for some companion DLC.

The other annoying aspect to such a thing is the "filler episode" syndrome from anime made from a manga. Whenever a character is introduced in a filler episode - that character by virtue of their creation cannot be allowed to do ANYTHING that will interfere with the progress of events that occur in the manga, or else you end up with a "first version of Fullmetal Alchemist" deviation from the world. That gets... messy. So, instead, you end up with these "optional content" characters being trite - even the jokes they tell can't be allowed to be so memorable that the other characters can remember it outside of DLC-added conversations. The character ends up being a kind of a ghost - not really alive, just sort of hanging in space somewhere around the action, serving a shallow role to fill space/time

More open-ended RPGs like Fallout 3 can make this more natural, by making everything cookie-cutter in a way that makes it all consistent, but auteur-crafted stories tend to not handle DLC characters well at all. At least that's my experience.

Ryan Fenton

From my understanding it is not a party member DLC but a side story with the female characters. You do not get her during the main story after she leaves even with the dlc.

[Krelian]

Originally posted by Aria:

the most defining evidence Rose has the same powers as sorey, and that obvisously makes her a main character

Well, Jude doesn't have the same powers as Milla, yet he is a main character in Xillia...

[Ryan Fenton]

Cool - I just watched the first 3 or so episodes of some let's plays on the game a few weeks ago, plus some youtube reviews - not too much to spoil the story too far, but enough to see combat and themes the game was setting up and decide how much I wanted the game itself, compared to other Tales Games.

What I saw from the PS3 version told me that the enemy spawning system was a bit janky, and did lead me to believe that character would be more important to the story, but also that combat has a nice quick pace even compared to other Tales games, which is something I always liked from the Suikoden series - waiting for load times for hundreds of combats just always wore on me, and this one seems to have a nicer flow than others.

So, odd to know that the character doesn't feature prominently in either case, but also strange to see it hocked off into DLC content after initial release, when it's a full-price re-release like this.

Also - main girl? I never saw the tales games as real relationship engines - even where they contain a pseudo-romance (Xillia), it's usually abstract enough to avoid those various tropes. Just having another character's arc to follow is always interesting in any case - gotta be an odd constraint for a writer to know a character is going to be pushed to DLC.

Ryan Fenton

[LemonCakes]

Alisha's placement as a main-main character was progressively pushed off as more and more characters were revealed, especially when Rose was.
I've already stated this in another thread, but figure companies hopped on-board and greenlit figures for the two supposed main characters in this game. Alter did Alisha. Of course, this hyped the game up for more people, and brought about the false image.

There are 4 trailers for this game. Alisha was at least, a little prominent in them up until number 4. In the third trailer, which came out sometime in May last year, it even showed Alisha seeing Mikleo and Lailah for the first time. However, in the fourth trailer, which came out sometime in September of last year, Alisha took a back seat for Rose.
I might be wrong, but in no trailer was Alisha improperly placed in a scene in which she was not in the full game.

Honestly, it's just that Bamco sucked at marketing this situation correctly. It's like they were asking for this backlash.

[FloatingToadThing]

Even if she isn't the main character, Tales games are known for exceptionally compelling character development, backstory and interactions. I just hope this doesn't become a trend in future Tales games.

[FloatingToadThing]

Originally posted by Aria:

its already a trend... Flynn, Richard, Fon Master Ion.. to name a few

Technically speaking, all of Ion's character interactions were included in both releases, it's just that the mystic arte extension was exclusive to NA copies.