Quote Originally Posted by Anteros View Post
I'm somewhere in act 2 after deciding to take a break from Pathfinder and picking the game back up. Right about the part where
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The bad guys stand around and let their prisoner televise a rousing speech towards the rebellion for no reason.
Followed by the shocking betrayal of the guy I have spent approximately 12 seconds with, and who was clearly evil from the start. All part of his Machiavellian scheme to lead me into a trap...after helping me escape from his last trap...after passing up the opportunity to just stab me in my sleep while I rested in his headquarters. Honestly, who writes this crap and then says "yeah, that's a good story. Let's release that to millions of people." Why aren't they more ashamed of themselves?



Yeah, plot isn't the game's strong point for sure. It's no worse than usual for a Tales game so far though. The plots are always terrible nonsense propped up more by anime tropes than actual writing. Combat is decent though, and I don't hate the characters. Plus, there's just something relaxing about grinding on a Tales game. Solid 7/10 so far for me with plot being the weak point.
Yeah,
Spoiler: Area 2
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the second Lord's whole thing of being the resistance leader in disguise is very much a "don't think about it too much" plot twist, because it doesn't make much sense in a lot of ways. Which is honestly the main reason I didn't expect it, despite the resistance leader's appearance giving me "I'm a bad guy" vibes. Not the dumbest thing the game, it didn't bother me as much as the moments I mentioned in my prior post (which are from areas 3 and 4), but definitely a fair criticism.


I'm now pretty close to the end, I'm sure... and oh gods, the combat is dragging things down hard now. The endgame starts relying heavily on giant monsters, and those are the biggest problem I have with the game's combat. Health bloat is so absurd that I'm contemplating dropping the difficulty down to easy. And the side-quests that I still have remaining are throwing me against giant monsters that are also like 10+ levels above me, which means I'm going to need to grind to deal with them, and good gods does that suck.

Story-wise, well,
Spoiler: Endgame spoilers
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The most irritating thing to me lately has been Volhran surviving. Because seriously, I saw him get stabbed through the chest by the Blazing Sword and fall to the ground not moving, with the wound still on fire. And unless I missed it, nobody mentioned anything about his body vanishing afterward until just before he reappears on Leneghis. Still, important NPCs surviving when you thought they wouldn't is hardly unheard of in video game RPGs, and they're not trying to turn him into the main villain or anything, so it's not bothering me too much.

Overall, I'd say that as the late-game plot twists come in, things feel better. The Renans being originally Dahnans who were experimented on by the actual inhabitants of Rena is a cool twist that fits with the themes they're going for, Rena turning out to be a hollowed-out husk of a dead world is a striking visual, and even the "Great Spirit" that has become the true final villain they've given something of an understandable motivation to, so they are ultimately trying not to have everything come down to one person/monster/thing that's just evil because it is. Though I can't help but feel like the twist of "the two worlds were originally supposed to be one!" is bringing this dangerously close to rehashing Tales of Symphonia. Granted it seems to be a less central part of what's going on in the plot than it was in Symphonia, but still.

All in all, I feel like I can see what they were going for, with the central themes of hatred both justified and unjustified between groups and how that must be overcome, but there's a lot of parts that are handled badly, or at least clumsily, and it just doesn't come together as well as I'm sure they wanted as a result.

Character-wise, I do really end up liking everyone, especially Shion. Her character arc feels really well done, with the revelation about her being essentially suicidal due to her plans and beliefs related to her thorns thoroughly explaining why she was so aggressively unwilling to let people even be too friendly towards her early in the game in a compelling way that I never imagined. And her romance with Alphen one of the rare instances where I've felt that a romance in a Tales game has really worked. (Honestly, strangely enough it feels like they did a good job with that all around in this game, as they're clearly also hinting at similar relationships forming between Law & Rinwell and Kisara & Dohalim, and those actually work for me as well.) Though granted, the skits of them pontificating on certain things do start feeling too repetitive at times - I've gotten quite enough of Law's daddy issues and Kisara idolizing her brother at this point, thanks.

I don't know, I'm going back and forth between finding things in the story that I like more about it as I get towards the end (even if they don't fix the problems from earlier), and damned combat dragging my opinion back down.