Impossible... This is Bamco we're talking about...

I hope I eat my words though!

On a side note, I knew the CE were going to sold out fast

OMG, are they still fondling with this idea?? Why do they love to play with my emotions?

At this point, instead of vesperia ps3, I would prefer to move on and focusing on getting Xillia 1 and 2 quickly in the U.S.  Seriously, is there any point to release this now?


To me, it's the most fun system I played in the series, and I've played most tales titles.  Maybe it's really pointless to argue what is the best seeing they all have upsides and flaws.  To me the graces one felt most satisfying and had least amount of flaws.  

BTW some people do consider smash as a great fighting game (and guess what it's in EVO this year).  I don't think it's the best fighting game but it apparently is good enough to have people donate enough money to see a >10 years old game to be in the main EVO event.


And Suikoden is mostly dead.  And Valkyrie Profile series, and star ocean series (will they make a new one?) /sadface

In the upside, we have the new IPs like Souls games, and Ni no kuni.  And some old ones are going strong like tales and Atelier.  So it's not all bad really.  

Sounds like a great feature, RPGFAN DO IT!! XD

On this topic, I would nominate for the best battle system mechanics in RPGs
      * Tales of Grace F
      * Resonance of Fate (quirkiness and uniqueness, never played a game quite like that...)
      * Dark souls/Demons souls (if these are considered then these two games should obviously be up there for many reasons)
 
BTW, ToD remake on the ps2 is a great game.  It's very sad that a English version was never made. So glad that we are all getting localized tales games nowadays but anyways no point beating on this dead horse.

Not sure I get what you're saying, I wouldn't say that togf's system boils down to AAAA auto-combos.... It doesn't have the depth and difficulties of a fighting game like p4A, but you can easily spend hundres of hours to master the system.  l would rank the battle system as one of the deepest out there in jrpg in the current gen.


Yeah, very much agreed.  It's nice to see the CC system making a come back since ToD.  It's not really restricting once you get used the upgrade system and starting having insane number of CCs... In the end game I never really run out it

Now thinking about it, Tales of Destiny on the PS2 is one of the best tales game I played and really digged the battle system.  Since togf is made by some of the same people... that's maybe why I liked the system so much xD


I don't' see this as a downside...  The system really encourage you to try all the chars with the fast switch system.  In Vesperia I really played only Yuri, and although I tried to main Judith but I just can't get hang of the air combos.  Rita and Estelle are boring to use...
In graces everyone was fun to play and powerful, and the cast is relatively small so it's easy to know how to play everyone.   This is a plus to me.

I personally think Graces F's battle system is the best in the series.  They have really pretty much perfected it.  I don't see a tales game with much more improvement in the system itself... I really hope they keep most elements of it.

The things I really liked about graces f' system comparing to Vesperia, Abyss, Symphonia, and so on:

1) Give you rewards for actually turning up the difficultly
2) Allow you to unlock all difficulties in one playthrough, which means you can experience almost everything in one play-though
3) Godly number of mystic artes
4) Combo activated MA, which rewards high # of hits
5) Switch characters on the fly without cycling, this is important and open up a lot of single player combo opportunities.  I believe this is the first in the series to do so
6) Multiple way to learn/earn artes
7) If you are good at the battle system, you can master the titles really quickly, very few/almost no grindings needed.
8) Varieties of optional bosses

I can go on and on..

Personally think Graces F is the pinnacle of JRPG battle system/mechanics design.  This is it, there will be no better ones.

I don't know.. goes well with the background?

Anyway $100 for a limited CE seems to be very reasonable, and I probably will reconsider this decision if it's charged at $150.  The figurine looks great and sealed the deal.

First collector Edition I will buy

I used to hate invaders when I just trying to summon people/npcs for boss fights.  But now I like them once I get to know the area better.  For example, in Anor Londo right before Smough/Orstein fight the invader will always come through the narrow stairs.  Equip a great scythe and you can wreak havoc.  It is hard to lose this way.

The unsuspected invaders give some spices to the game IMO.

I don't think FFXIII-2 is an improvement over FFXIII.  In fact, I think it harmed the brand name even more.  Off-line FF games were always focused on strong plot and characters, but XIII was a serious step-back in that direction.  The story is confusing, the characters are uninspired and the dialogs are cliche and boring.  Instead of improving on this, the plot and characters in XIII-2 were even worse.   Nothing in this game clarify the story, the overall mythos or make the characters interesting.  And the ending was absolutely atrocious.   I was disappointed after playing 13 but 13-2 disappionted me even more.  At this point I doubt I will buy 13-3, maybe after the price-drop.  Incidentally, 13-2's price drops like a brick, it's only $20 in amazon now...

True but I felt like the routes in P3 characters add a lot to the story, while the P4 chars... not so much but rather repetitions of same story, which get old pretty quick.  Also to me the story has bigger scope than the TVworld/P4's plot, and is more connected to P3.

I think the "core" story is brilliant, concerning Labrys and how she got there. 

The slight "downfall" is due to the visual novel format and canon ending, so that repetition is a bit inevitable.  It is also interesting that, the story is really more as a continuation of P3 rather than P4, maybe they should have called it Persona 3 Arena:)

Used to be Abyss, now hard to say which one I liked better, Abyss or Graces f, I would say the top 5 would be ToGf, ToA, ToV, ToDR, and ToS

I have very little time for handhelds, only time to play is on flights.

This is why this decision sucks for me, I would much rather play it on the big screen, handheld just doesn't feel as good.

If this come out on the vita then I would buy one just for this (plus I already plan to buy one for P4P), but 3DS... probably not.

3DS... why...

Understandable as reviews takes time.  For tales game there is not much convincing needed, you either like them and buy them or never will. Was just hoping for more coverage that's all.