This Vs Arise

[Eternal Return]

Arise was my first Tales Of game, and I am really enjoying this game. My question is, what does Vesperia do better than Arise? In terms of gameplay and story?

[Village Idiot]

The Battle System is more classic old school Tales. Every character has TP which is used for special moves / spells. You're generally move restricted until mid game due to TP restoration being expensive, but it becomes a non-issue later on and you can pull off crazy combos. There's a reason why later games tries to get rid of the TP system as it's now outdated. The boss fights are also vastly better and are not Super Armor damage sponges like in Arise, where the boss fights are the worst part of the game.

Story wise, Vesperia is actually a bit different than the previous Tales games because the story (at first) is much more small scale and personal, with the main character being completely different than the previous Tales MCs in terms of personality. In fact, the characters in this game is one of the reasons why it's so memorable. The story does fall off near the end of the game though. You can kind of tell when the devs ran out of budget / time and had to come up the last arc of the game.

Another difference are the antagonists. In Arise, they barely get any development. You get like one or two scenes with them and that's it. This is actually uncommon in the Tales games. In Vesperia, it can actually get quite personal with them and they are better written than the antagonists in Arise.

Graphics wise, the cell shading actually stands up to this day and still looks absolutely gorgeous.

[Eternal Return]

Originally posted by Village Idiot:

The Battle System is more classic old school Tales. Every character has TP which is used for special moves / spells. You're generally move restricted until mid game due to TP restoration being expensive, but it becomes a non-issue later on and you can pull off crazy combos. There's a reason why later games tries to get rid of the TP system as it's now outdated. The boss fights are also vastly better and are not Super Armor damage sponges like in Arise, where the boss fights are the worst part of the game.

Story wise, Vesperia is actually a bit different than the previous Tales games because the story (at first) is much more small scale and personal, with the main character being completely different than the previous Tales MCs in terms of personality. In fact, the characters in this game is one of the reasons why it's so memorable. The story does fall off near the end of the game though. You can kind of tell when the devs ran out of budget / time and had to come up the last arc of the game.

Another difference are the antagonists. In Arise, they barely get any development. You get like one or two scenes with them and that's it. This is actually uncommon in the Tales games. In Vesperia, it can actually get quite personal with them and they are better written than the antagonists in Arise.

Graphics wise, the cell shading actually stands up to this day and still looks absolutely gorgeous.

Excellent response thank you.

[Village Idiot]

I forgot to mention as well.

Vesperia, like the classic Tales games, have very, very, VERY strict timings and requirements for all the secrets, to the point where it's recommended to follow a Secrets Guide in order to get everything.

For example, to obtain Judith's most powerful weapon, one of the many, many steps is after a cutscene, to go back to examine an object in the previous screen. There's no prompts that you have to do this. If you miss this step, you're forever locked out of her secret weapon.

It's the last Tales game designed like this. All future Tales games are like Arise, where almost no secrets are locked unless its an area that you cannot access later on in the game.

[Eternal Return]

Originally posted by Village Idiot:

I forgot to mention as well.

Vesperia, like the classic Tales games, have very, very, VERY strict timings and requirements for all the secrets, to the point where it's recommended to follow a Secrets Guide in order to get everything.

For example, to obtain Judith's most powerful weapon, one of the many, many steps is after a cutscene, to go back to examine an object in the previous screen. There's no prompts that you have to do this. If you miss this step, you're forever locked out of her secret weapon.

It's the last Tales game designed like this. All future Tales games are like Arise, where almost no secrets are locked unless its an area that you cannot access later on in the game.

Wow I had no idea. Is that why some missions are called secret missions? What other advice can you give me regarding farming? Whats the best route for xp? And synthesis, should I even bother?

[Simon]

Originally posted by SHRED:

Wow I had no idea. Is that why some missions are called secret missions? What other advice can you give me regarding farming? Whats the best route for xp? And synthesis, should I even bother?

Yup. Secret Missions are similar, but luckily for that one, you can rechallenge all the bossess in an optional location, Nam Cobanda Isle at late game so don't need to worry too much. You can use that method to get any Secret Missions that you missed.

Synthesis is important to obtain more skills for your character, so make sure to not sell any old weapons. They can be used for synthesis later on. It is even better if you have a few copies of the weapon because some weapons have different branches of synthesis. Mastering the weapon skills allows the character to own the skills even if you switch weapons. But feel free to sell armours.

For first playthrough, just play on Normal difficulty. Don't need to worry about EXP too much. Only farm if you are having trouble progressing a boss. Actually, some DLC bonuses can be found inside your items inventory, at the last tab. You can activate them, but they give permanent bonus for the current playthrough, which may break gameplay experience. Those bonuses are usually for NG+. You can try making a backup save file if you want to test things out and see what's the difference in enabling them.

If you plan to unlock all the secrets and not miss out on the sidequests and stuff, better follow a sidequest guide for Vesperia. You can try to do everything in 1st playthrough, but I suggest just playing normally for the first time, and then follow a guide in NG+.

[Village Idiot]

For difficulty, I recommend Hard since some secrets regarding kills on bosses require Hard difficulty, and because on Hard mode enemies have more HP and so you can do more combos.

On Normal, enemies die too fast, so your combos are really limited.

[darth.crevette]

Originally posted by Village Idiot:

some secrets regarding kills on bosses require Hard difficulty

Do you have an example? Because from what I remember, nothing requires playing on hard; sure, some secret missions could get pretty hard in normal when you kill the boss too fast, but you could always use a weaker weapon if that's the case.

[TwinShadow]

Some of the weapons in the game has a skill available to it that reduces the character's damage to 1, which would be great for getting anything requiring combos or something, or to exploit a weakness in one of the enemies to basically farm grade. lol I remember doing this on the 360 version many, many moons ago with a friend. Oh, and because I was so good with Rita, I lagged his 360 pretty hard a few times when I start busting out Meteor Storm constantly. Won't occur on any version later because more powerful hardware, but fun little thing I did back then.