overdrive's Tales of Zestiria review

The Axe of the Blood God podcast did a ranking of Tales games back in Sept. They called it "the Spectre of Tales games" (referring to the Bond movie). I haven't played a single Tales game yet (though I have Vesperia for Switch), but I did watch Spectre, which I remember being inoffensive and entirely forgettable. I can't tell you a single thing that happened in Spectre.

I was thinking about that when reading your review, and lines like "plot happens" had me shrugging and thinking "I guess it really is like Spectre"

That is a pretty good comparison. With the added impact for me that: 1. I was really looking forward to Spectre because I'm a huge Bond fan, the Craig Bond films had been 2/3 great and I figured the return of Blofeld would be impossible to screw up AND 2. I was really looking forward to Zestiria since it'd been 10 years since I'd played a Tales game and I really liked Vespiria.

And with Spectre, I got a decent movie that got bogged down in its excess towards the end and ended kind of with a whimper, putting it in the upper echelon of the bottom half of Bond films for me. And with Zestiria, I got a decent game that didn't have enough ambition or neat moments for it to be near the top of the list of Tales games I played.