overdrive's Tales of Vesperia review

I see we have pretty much the same opinions of this game. The story is better paced than Symphonia, and there's a few improvements in the battle system. I wouldn't worry about the PS3 version. 2 years on and it still hasn't been released in the US or Europe... so this is really the only version you can play for now.

Shows the stupidity of me assuming stuff. I knew it had been ported to the PS3 and just assumed it was for all regions. Stupid me...

I edited that part out and added a brief complaint on how there's a lot of grammar/spelling goofs through the game, particularly with non-spoken dialogue. That was a minor pet peeve that didn't really fit in with the review, but a quick mention works after basically cutting a (now) unnecessary paragraph out.

Thanks for pointing that out!

Still the best JRPG of this generation, I think.

Symphonia is actually the only Tales game I've played, so I can't say how well it stacks up against the others, but I was never particularly blown away by it. It was perfectly adequate, but I always felt the heaps of praise it received was due more to GameCube's shortage of first-class RPGs (and, to be fair, Symphonia pretty much steamrolled anything else the console had offered by that point). So yeah, I wouldn't lose much sleep over missing it.

I didn't like Abyss's battle system at all, much too complicated and active for me, whereas Legendia was great fun with the most memorable characters: Grune and Norma were hilarious, although Shirley was a pain in the butt. Symphonia was just ok... Is this more active than turn-based? I got that impression from your review.

I suppose I'm going to be the one to go against the grain here: I loved Symphonia! Then again, the only other Tales games I've played are Phantasia and Eternia, and neither of those two struck me as amazing. Good, sure, but not amazing.