Has Anyone Played Tales of Vesperia?

[Ranis]

And more importantly, can four people play it in simultaneous fights at the same time out of the box or does one need to go through the steps to get four characters to play with first? My buddies and I are going to be playing it on Monday night/Tuesday and I'd like to know if I should play through it to the point of four-player goodness first.

Thanks for any help!

[Forderz]

It took me about 2-3 hours to get four people. Depends on how fast you zoom through the dialog. Of course, I was playing on Hard mode from teh get-go.

[Rogue 7]

Play through the opening bit in the capital on your own and you'll get Estelle and Repede right off the bat. Karol will join you in a little bit afterwards.

And, seeing as how I have a burning need to communicate how much I enjoy this game and I have a dislike for starting new threads, I'll use this one to gush.

I'm about 8 hours in and really enjoying this game so far, largely because I haven't been spoiled for it. But more than that, so far all the character interaction is fantastic. I love Yuri's gentle mockery of Karol, particularly with his "captain" moniker. And maybe I'm just bad at the game, but it's a real challenge. That one wolf thing that randomly showed up on the hill took me like five times to defeat, and I had real trouble with the three assassins you met in the harbor right before you meet Flynn before I figured out how to do it- all three together attacking wouldn't give me a chance to attack or get away, even though they only had 2000 HP a pop. (Azure edge the middle one a few times to drive him back, over limit to knock the other two down, finish the one and then isolate and exterminate the other two) Also an (apparently bonus, there didn't seem to be anything stopping me from leaving Caer Bocram) boss took me a few tries. Generally I've just been having a challenge with the bosses, which is a lot of fun.

I would normally hate a character like Estelle, but she pulls off the "naive noble" without coming across as incredibly stupid, so I quite like her. Yuri's freakin' awesome- he's the epitome of Chaotic Good- case in point when he has to get the horn from a beast to see a magistrate who has been abusing the bejeezus out of his town (seriously, you stopped all trading and forced merchants out of business with your cripplingly high taxes. How in the hell is your economy still functioning?) and then, coming back, randomly hands it to a couple whose son (who looked like a mini-Sokka I might add) was kidnapped by that same ***hole of a noble, who gives me vibes of Kubota when he gets out of his trial. Graphics are gorgeous, fighting is fun, and plot just seems to be kicking into high gear. I'm having a ton of fun.


And am I the only one who enjoys the intro song a lot? Stupid catchy j-pop, making me watch the intro every single time...