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I know everyone says this, but I really like how it plays with the dynamic that's usually expected of Tales leads, with Milla being the swordsman that drives most of the story while Jude is the quieter, calmer, healer type that gets unexpectedly dragged along for the ride. Obviously the other Tales games aren't formulaic (Colette was always going to leave home anyway, Luke was the one who got unwillingly dragged into things, Estelle was getting ready to leave with or without Yuri, and I'll get back to you on Cheria) but I feel like the exact way they did it let Jude and Milla both have a lot of agency, and that it reduced the moments in the plot where it was hard to grasp their motivations.

I like the battle system. It's really easy after Graces (and compared to pretty much every other game in the series tbh), but I enjoy how it blended the traditional HP/SP setup with having to manage your action points (or whatever they're called). I think a little more balancing to make the combat more difficult in future installments could make it a lot of fun.

The party balance is also nice! A lot of the other Tales games (but especially Abyss) tended to have two party members that were essentially useless compared to the other four. Graces got away from this a little but I feel like Xillia really was the first game where any give party combination was as valid as all the others (likely because no matter what you always had two healers in the party).

THAT SAID, man, if there's any one character to like despite not being fond of the others, Elize is the one. She's absolutely wonderful.

The fact that you could swap the characters in and out during combat at no penalty made it a lot easier to experiment and appreciate each character for what they brought to the table. Blurring the class lines helped a lot as well: every character (except for Milla, who could do everything else) had at least one HP recovery move. And most importantly, the battles were fun.

It did a lot of things that made the RPG experience just nicer to deal with, even if most of it was catch-up like marking quest NPCs.

I really loved the art style as well. Some of the areas were just gorgeous to look at.

agreeing with all of this. i used all the characters every so often, though milla was usually benched in subsequent playthroughs because she could do nearly everything. xillia was easy and i liked that. if someone wanted a challenge, unknown mode is there and of course so is the golden mage knight.

i've heard people saying the environments were boring. sure, the recycled seahaven layout was disappointing but hey, xillia is no eternal sonata but it isn't dragon age 2 either. and just try to tell me hamil and fennmont and xian du aren't downright gorgeous.

Fennmont and Xian Du are totally gorgeous but Hamil's purple filter is so ugly it made me want to sue the developers.

wow anon it wasn't that bad

Wait, especially abyss? Natalia was jsut as useful a healer as Tear, and unlike Tear she had actual offensive power. Anise was the only one without any real use, and she still wasn't bad or anything.

Anise's actually a pretty decent tank. She just doesn't fit my playstyle.

honestly tear was more of a useless healer to me than natalia because at least natalia could long range heal and i never had tear in my party long enough to expand her circles.

Actually, I meant that Jade-Natalia-Tear plus whatever of the other three you liked best was really the only viable party combination. Swapping Tear or Natalia is a death sentence unless you're already over-leveled and cutting out Jade absolutely guts your firepower.

So I guess it's just not one absolute party combination, but it's still really limited. Much more so than the other games, ime.

my main party was luke/guy/tear/jade and i handled the game just fine without a second healer. i used anise more often than natalia. i suppose it's all a matter of preference.

but i agree that jade is pretty much a necessity unless you're overleveled, and even then having him is a big boost.

never had a problem with that team and i always play on hard.

natalia was downright useless for me idk and i ran most of the game with a full offense party; my only source of heals and revives were from green chambered self buffs, center being op, guardian field, and later on anise with the resurrection doll

i played through the game on hard from the get go without any level grinding, and i never saw why nixing tear or natalia is allegedly a death sentence. they still regain tp post-battle despite not being part of the active party and by the time you start getting worn down past what steel/center/lucky/guardian field can spot heal there's plenty tp for tear to toss out a healing circle from the menu and bring everyone to full again. and if you need a bit more touching up, first aid does the trick.

natalia brought nothing to the table as far as offense went because her patk was downright awful; lower than jade's by endgame and, well, when your attack is lower than the mage's then you know something's wrong... she doesn't have much to do between heals and setting up revive, because buffs? tear's fortune's arc's extension gives you permanent ones until you die. and if you're doing well enough to not need healing then tear adjusts very easily to an offensive strat by way of holy lance spam. natalia's contributions on the other hand, can be more disruptive to a melee combo for less damage output. i felt like they tossed as many supportive role things into her as they could but really didn't make her shine in it and gutted her with high tp cost spells and a low tp pool to boot, so while she can theoretically fit into any party composition she's just... unnecessary.

but even with how superfluous/lacking i found natalia, i don't feel that abyss's party composition was limited. considering that the game was very doable without a single dedicated healer in the active party... or how it was doable even if you had a full party of caster-hybrids (natalia/tear/jade/anise), it seemed plenty flexible to me, with the exception being that yeah, if you don't have jade (or at least a lategame anise) in your party your dps was pretty well gutted. blame the devs for making all the major enemies high on physical defense, i guess.

symphonia on the other hand, ugh. raine definitely felt like the only viable party healer there, and if you didn't have her in the party you felt absolutely gutted in battle. regal's gimmick of distance healing was ridiculous because you heal a whopping 1 hp if he's far away enough to get the spell off in the first place, kratos isn't ever going to heal anyone other than lloyd unless you manually force him to, and zelos... abyss's attack animations are somewhat repetitive, but i do like the fact that none of the characters was as awkward/clunky in controls as the ones in symphonia.

of course vesperia is my forevergame but i'm not even going to start on that.

vesperia best tales

I can say I honestly never used Raine in my party outside of major boss fights. The rest of the time I used Lloyd/Colette/Zelos (or Kratos)/Regal and they always did just fine.

symphonia was practically boss fight after boss fight though. :( i agree raine wasn't necessary at all for the day to day random mobs, but fights where damage isn't concentrated on the 'main tank/distraction' and everyone's taking heavy damage seemed a lot more common in symphonia than the other western releases.

i love how op said not to talk about abyss yet here we are

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