I don't know anything about this franchise. I have skipped every cutscene. But...I am a massive Tales/LMBS junkie so I feel right at home. I bought this solely for the combat and haven't been disappointed.

The combat is a slightly dumbed down LMBS with some unique mechanics like wallbounces, tagging and assists. There's only three move slots but there's still a lot you can do with that limited amount of options. Iron Stance is indicated on the UI, which is really nice! Dodge canceling feels pretty good most of the time but can also not come out when you want it to. Just dodges give you a punish that depletes a ton of Iron Stance. This battle system isn't going to top the best Tales combat like Xillia 2 and the Vita games, but it manages to feel engaging and allow for player expression despite being dumbed down.

The city building is as basic as you can imagine; most of the buildings just provide stat boosts while ones that actually add new progression systems are scarce. The gameplay loop is build town > talk to NPC > complete objective in maps > repeat. There is some obvious padding in the story where it wants you to grind with characters you may not enjoy playing, but if you do it correctly this only takes a few minutes. Performing well at combat yields a lot of rewards that can reduce some of the padding/grind too. If you're skipping cutscenes like I am, the game flows pretty well despite some obvious missions just there to pad out playtime.

The game is honestly overpriced; Elden Ring from this same publisher, despite not catering towards the same audience, is $10 more than this. The DLC is all slated to come out a little over a month after release, which reeks of them already having all of it done and just removing it from the base package to nickel and dime us. The combat is heavily Tales/LMBS-inspired, yet at the base price of this game, you could buy every Tales game currently on Steam and maybe even have some money left over. If you're in it for gameplay or are just a Tales junkie like me, it's worth it, but for anyone else this is a REALLY hard sell. I'm personally having a blast with it but most of that comes from Tales combat drifting away from its legacy so much and this being a decent, but overpriced replacement.

I don't know anything about this franchise. I have skipped every cutscene. But...I am a massive Tales/LMBS junkie so I feel right at home. I bought this solely for the combat and haven't been disappointed. The combat is a slightly dumbed down LMBS with some unique mechanics like wallbounces, tagging and assists. There's only three move slots but there's still a lot you can do with that limited amount of options. Iron Stance is indicated on the UI, which is really nice! Dodge canceling feels pretty good most of the time but can also not come out when you want it to. Just dodges give you a punish that depletes a ton of Iron Stance. This battle system isn't going to top the best Tales combat like Xillia 2 and the Vita games, but it manages to feel engaging and allow for player expression despite being dumbed down. The city building is as basic as you can imagine; most of the buildings just provide stat boosts while ones that actually add new progression systems are scarce. The gameplay loop is build town > talk to NPC > complete objective in maps > repeat. There is some obvious padding in the story where it wants you to grind with characters you may not enjoy playing, but if you do it correctly this only takes a few minutes. Performing well at combat yields a lot of rewards that can reduce some of the padding/grind too. If you're skipping cutscenes like I am, the game flows pretty well despite some obvious missions just there to pad out playtime. The game is honestly overpriced; Elden Ring from this same publisher, despite not catering towards the same audience, is $10 more than this. The DLC is all slated to come out a little over a month after release, which reeks of them already having all of it done and just removing it from the base package to nickel and dime us. The combat is heavily Tales/LMBS-inspired, yet at the base price of this game, you could buy every Tales game currently on Steam and maybe even have some money left over. If you're in it for gameplay or are just a Tales junkie like me, it's worth it, but for anyone else this is a REALLY hard sell. I'm personally having a blast with it but most of that comes from Tales combat drifting away from its legacy so much and this being a decent, but overpriced replacement.