"You have until I finish my juice box!"
As fond as I was of Tales of Symphonia, and as violently in love with Vesperia I fell, I'd never played the entry between them, Tales of the Abyss. It was mostly laziness on my part--the game wasn't going anywhere, no one I knew was playing it, and besides, I'd heard the load times were quite tedious, and the protagonist as annoying as twelve thousand annoying things. But when Mike and I stopped in at a neato indie game shop in New Braunfels at the beginning of spring break last week - fuckers have a DDR machine you can play for free :O - we spotted Abyss, so I picked it up. And it was good.
It was really fun starting out and citing The Chart, as Tales games are the tropiest collection of anime cliches ever. ♥ It's always weird to go back and play the predecessor of something you're intimately acquainted with, and I had ample opportunity to compare Abyss to its hunky, Xbox'ed younger brother.
Spoiler alert: Vesperia is still The One. But! I really enjoyed this game. I'm glad I had forewarning of what a whiny bitch Luke is for the first third-ish of the story, though I do have to give his VA credit: for a spoiled, snot-nosed little fuckstick, the character was not intolerable to listen to. (Remember when dubbers thought Western and valley-girl accents were funny? Those people would've made Luke loathsome. Somewhere, right now, a small child is weeping at the very thought.)
(...God, that's a weird word. Weep weep weep all the way home.)
The load times aren't too bad at all, possibly because Mike's PS2 is from a sweet spot in their production cycle when the bugs and kinks had aaaall been worked out, so it runs great. It's certainly not a problem after, say, Chrono Trigger in its PlayStation adaptation. Just opening the goddamn menu - the main menu! Where you keep all your stuff! - took a solid ten seconds out of your day, every time. ;_;
In retrospect, I will also take this opportunity to give Vesperia credit. There's no Church of St. Bastard meddling with world politics - no religion at all, actually - no one has amnesia or is being mind-controlled to betray anyone (Note to plot-makers: betrayal means a hell of a lot more when the traitor knows exactly what he's doing and how badly it will screw you over), and no one turns out to be anyone's father or mother. You have to dig into sidequests and extra scenes to find out that Yuri, Estelle and Rita all lost their moms when they were little, and Rita's dad took off; they don't tell you a damn thing about Raven, not even where he was born.
I'd never argue that the whole thing is original, especially after Abyss (The Commandant of [Big Military Group] turned out to be the Supreme Bad Guy in both games? Really, Namco? I figured Van out early for that very reason, besides the fact that Tear was suspicious of him and Mike and I have a total crush on Tear because she's awesome), but eh, I haven't had a good ramble in a while. 18 hours of school is dumb. *approaching part of semester where I really do have a lot of homework*
...I got nothin' else. Wheeeeee
It was really fun starting out and citing The Chart, as Tales games are the tropiest collection of anime cliches ever. ♥ It's always weird to go back and play the predecessor of something you're intimately acquainted with, and I had ample opportunity to compare Abyss to its hunky, Xbox'ed younger brother.
Spoiler alert: Vesperia is still The One. But! I really enjoyed this game. I'm glad I had forewarning of what a whiny bitch Luke is for the first third-ish of the story, though I do have to give his VA credit: for a spoiled, snot-nosed little fuckstick, the character was not intolerable to listen to. (Remember when dubbers thought Western and valley-girl accents were funny? Those people would've made Luke loathsome. Somewhere, right now, a small child is weeping at the very thought.)
(...God, that's a weird word. Weep weep weep all the way home.)
The load times aren't too bad at all, possibly because Mike's PS2 is from a sweet spot in their production cycle when the bugs and kinks had aaaall been worked out, so it runs great. It's certainly not a problem after, say, Chrono Trigger in its PlayStation adaptation. Just opening the goddamn menu - the main menu! Where you keep all your stuff! - took a solid ten seconds out of your day, every time. ;_;
In retrospect, I will also take this opportunity to give Vesperia credit. There's no Church of St. Bastard meddling with world politics - no religion at all, actually - no one has amnesia or is being mind-controlled to betray anyone (Note to plot-makers: betrayal means a hell of a lot more when the traitor knows exactly what he's doing and how badly it will screw you over), and no one turns out to be anyone's father or mother. You have to dig into sidequests and extra scenes to find out that Yuri, Estelle and Rita all lost their moms when they were little, and Rita's dad took off; they don't tell you a damn thing about Raven, not even where he was born.
I'd never argue that the whole thing is original, especially after Abyss (The Commandant of [Big Military Group] turned out to be the Supreme Bad Guy in both games? Really, Namco? I figured Van out early for that very reason, besides the fact that Tear was suspicious of him and Mike and I have a total crush on Tear because she's awesome), but eh, I haven't had a good ramble in a while. 18 hours of school is dumb. *approaching part of semester where I really do have a lot of homework*
...I got nothin' else. Wheeeeee