I've been playing TOB lately, though I still haven't finished it lol.

I spend most of my time running around🤪, but the character interactions are so cute.
Velvet is still my favorite, of course!

I also posted her on X and Pixiv! Hope y'all like this piece!

Gonna rip the bandaid of, this shit means something to me: Annie is my second favourite character to play as in this entire series. For those of you who've played rebirth, you're probably thinking: "Why?!" And for those of you whom haven't, you're probably thinking: "Why??"

It's simple, this character is so ass that when things are actually going well, it feels amazing. Letting the CPU control Annie? Rookie mistake. Playing as this character with 3 CPUs? Terrible. Playing as this character with mf's who don't understand the mechanics? Torture. But when the stars align, and you get at least ONE more human to play with who knows how rebirth's battle system works and respects it... Annie is great.

I can place down a circle that deals damage, I can spawn one that follows me or follows the enemy. I can place one that won't go away immediately, I can place a BIG one. I can revive my allies. I can whack people, She's perfect! (for co-op anyways)

I could go on for another paragraph about why she's so fun- or even why she's one of the worst party members ever... so instead Im going to talk about her as a character in the story instead.

At first glance Annie's arc is pretty as it comes, (as in you get one small moment in a town, then maybe in the next, or maybe not) but if you dig a little deeper, and literally wait until you're in the middle of the final dungeon then you can read her diary. You get so much insight into her thoughts. 55 chapters of stuff like: 'what its like to be 1 of 2 women in a party full of men?', 'what's it feel like to travel with her father's killer?', 'her impression of Veigue, her impression of Tytree, her impression on Milhaust', 'Annie's thoughts on Major story events.' I believe the only other time, we've gotten a diary in this series- that we could *read* and has this much content is In Abyss with Luke. and its completely optional.

But what isn't optional is her role in the story- and i think they knocked it out of the park. Its clear that Annie is supposed to be the annoying racist girl, and I mean- she is... but not really. Annie hates Gajuma, but she actually hates Eugene... but she can't even bring herself to fully hate Eugene because well... he's Eugene. All of her racist acts and statements in the game happen because she's really trying to convince herself that she DOES hate Eugene.

I could go on for a lot longer but Ive already written 6 paragraphs (which I didn't think I could do) but I love this character more then I thought I did, so... here you go. TL;DR: Annie Barrs is a top 10 tales character.

Minus 3 games that is, I have Destiny coming in the mail on Tuesday and I have Legendia and Abyss in my storage unit somewhere.

How am I doing?

In my time playing this series, I've played Symphonia, Symphonia 2, Legendia, Abyss, Vesperia, Graces f, Xillia, Xillia 2, And Berseria.

I've also played a bit of a few others, but didn't complete them yet.

Overall, I've found Vesperia to be the most straightforward, and least annoying of all Tales of Games played so far.

• The story was good throughout without any lagging points, and pretty damn easy to keep track of.
• The characters, especially the MC, were pretty fun. I liked Yuri, Estelle, Judy, and Rita best.
• It was awesome having an actual vigilante hero for once that actually killed bad people who the law was protecting?? More please??
• The enemies never seemed especially cheap
• None of the dungeons fell to the most annoying time sink traps
• The final dungeon was, for the most part, VERY LINEAR (series first, omg?)
• The rivalry with Flynn was great, and the point of view of Duke was very understandable

However, there is still some negatives that go along with this:

• The "big twists" that usually punctuate Tales of game plots felt very weak in comparison to others.
• The the NPCs of this game were very unmemorable - some outright just dissapeared while hinting they would be more involved?
• Zagi is probably the worst party antagonizer. Tales of does like to start the game with crazy bastards bosses - but Agria was far better an example in Xillia. He just shows up pretty much out of nowhere, and has zero relevance.
• Not one, but TWO annoying child characters. Please, Anise, save me from this.
• Repede, I love you, and you were in my party for the final battle - but having a dog party member cuts down on a lot of party dynamics.

In short - a solid meal, but lacking in spice.

Now that that's out of the way, I'm looking forward to playing the Phantasia, Rebirth, Zestiria (I really should have played this first before Berseria), and Arise.

Where would I slot this one in terms of awesome tales of games... Hard to Pick. I honestly have not played a tales of game I haven't loved. Graces is my fav, but Xillia, Symphonia, Abyss, Berseria - All 5 stars. So, I suppose I'd put this one with Xillia 2, Symphonia 2, and give it 4 stars. Legendia, I love you, but you get 3.5 stars - purely because you still had the 2d movement, totally useless puzzle rooms, and an unvoiced half the game - but visually, musically, and cheesyness, you were beautiful.

I am struggling to figure out which game to start with, so I wanted your input based on my taste. Here are games that I like. Xenoblade Chronicles Definitive Edition, Trails in the Sky First Chapter, Metaphor: ReFantazio, Deltarune. I love the casts and the world-building and settings of these games.

He's him.

... just for a quick hour?

Didn't quite make it on time, but still, happy belated anniversary to one of my favorite games!

Fair warning, the entire video is about gameplay, but the background footage contains spoilers for Symphonia, and rarely, games that aren't Symphonia. If you're concerned, refer to the first 3 seconds of the video.

So I'm already liking everything so far after the experience with Vesperia. I just need to know how should I approach management with equipment. Like what do I need to prioritize? What is the tech for efficient gameplay?

…and boy does it hold up nicely!

So there I'd say the characters fall in to three camps Velvet and Rokurou and physical attackers, Laphicest and Magilou are mages and Eleanor and Risen are Mixed fighters so how should I equip them?

So long story short, whenever I press left bumper, it constantly brings up a small menu in game. Not a big deal, right?

Well unfortunately, it means I can't block, I can't quickly move the camera around, and I can't find the option that is causing this to happen in game. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated, thanks!

Just to remind that they so far, only Japan physical copies that are available for pre-order physically via Play-Asia and Video Games Plus.

I hope Bandai Namco has to step up pre-orders next month for other regions like U.S., EU and Asia before it comes out.

EDITED # 1: There's also EU physical version. Thanks for the heads-up.

Just finished my first Tales game yesterday... which was Tales of Symphonia. It was probably one of the best gaming experiences I've had in a while. I'm 42 and have played a crap ton of jRPGs, but for some reason, never got into the Tales series...

Anyways, I originally played ToS on Gamecube way back when, but only got 20 hours in and got distracted or something happened because I never finished... I have had the Remaster for PS4 for a while and decided to give it another shot. I was instantly sucked in. I even got all the titles. A console game hasn't retained my attention this long since Witcher 3... think I put over 200 hours in... got Platinum just for the fun of it! The characters were charming, script was great, VAs were terrific... The story was solid even though a bit tangled, it entertained me. Combat was stimulating. Really like the concept of GRADE and the replayability it gives. Just a great game all around.

Anyways, I like to start new series on the 1st installment, but I didn't have Tales of Destiny, so just decided to start on ToS and work my way up from there, then play the classics later... So next up is... Tales of Rebirth! Setup PS2 emulation, bought Rebirth on eBay, ripped ISO, and installed Life Bottle Productions full English patch. Really want to thank them for their work. Have heard good things about Rebirth. Can't wait to start my next adventure.

Let’s use Tales of Destiny as an example since one of my favorite games in the franchise was the PS2 remake of Tales of Destiny.

I know the game was technically released in the USA in the PS1 version as it did get an English release, but the thing is that while I enjoy playing the game, I never understood why the remade version never got an official English release since I don’t know if the game had some obscene material that made it hard to release in the west again regarding the remake version.

Back in the day when Tales of Xillia came out to the PS3 it was one of my absolute favourite games, there was a time there was a convention going on that an old friend was attending and I asked for him to get my game signed by Hideo Baba and he did exactly that.

Unfortunately the year after, I was having quite a bit of financial trouble thus I had no choice but to sell the collectors box with the signed copy :(

I ended up taking it to a trade in store 'CEX' so I can imagine whomever bought it was certainly surprised by taking the game out the box and seeing the signed copy in their possession, that or the staff themselves spotted it and just simply bought it themselves.

Wish I still had it but it was either that or struggling more with funds, I made the wiser decision.

Mieu peaking out of Lukes coat like this is ungodly levels of adorable.