I completed Tales of The Abyss and i must say this is def my Favo RPG of 2006, it should des the title anywayz. Great Story,interesting characters (six god generals,van,...) and i might replay it with my current 'grade' and unlock some extra goodies ^^( 10 X exp a battle :-o!!! ).

It's kinda weird,i wasn't really looking forward playing ToTA, but my attention all year went to FFXII and VP2 but this one proved to be the better one.

Or Tales of Legendia. :) I need to pull myself offa PSU long enough to finish this game...

Just learned how to make an Elven bow. :D

I've run into a few glitches and even typoes, but overall it's still enjoyable. These sidequests are killing me though.

I just started my adventure a few days ago and I'm enjoying myself very much. I could see it being my favorite RPG of 2006, but really, the only competition it has is Baten Kaitos Origins. Still, Baten and Tales of the Abyss are wonderful games to go through before the release of the Wii! Everything's just so exciting!

I'm not so sure of how many of the side-quest I'm going to fulfill. I have a feeling I won't be giving it a second playthrough, either. I've never been one for second playthroughs, not because I didn't appreciate the game enough but because I always seem to have another game lined up and waiting.

What. Are you serious? All the guides I've been reading say that you can only get it after your second run, and I've tried triggering the scene they say supposedly kicks this off.

Oh, this game is fantastic, easily one of the best RPGs I've played in a good bit. IMO, this tops ToS in quite a few places, though not in the technical aspects of the game (glitches as mentioned before).

At the moment I'm trying to get the AD Skills I missed as well as Grade farming so when I finally do decide to finish, I can take the cores, grade, titles and experience into the second pass.

Heck, I may go for the 10x and 2x Grade as well.

Yeah, I beat her. On normal mode I think she only uses Big Bang. I couldn't handle her on Very Hard mode so I switched to just Hard. She managed to use Big Bang twice, Rending Saber, Innocent Shine, Mystic Cage, and Fragmented End.

Trust me, she's not the most fun boss. The Cameo team is, especially on Very Hard mode where they start reviving like crazy and spamming mystic artes. I earned like 60 grade from that battle.

I just had her stunned often enough while my magic folks did their thing. I don't touch normal in the Tales games, since it feels too easy. It seems like if you pump enough levels into your characters along with the right AD Skills, you can keep them (bosses) off their feet.

I heard the same thing from others, so I'll make sure to try that in this game (6000+ Grade, so I have all the important stuff). Sounds like the exhibition match in ToS. Loads of fun with the auto-revive all over.

They revived like, 12 times total and all used their Mystic Artes. I was only level 7x so I couldn't finish them off instantly, which actually made things more enjoyable. Having a ton of AD-skills and overleveling can easily take the fun out of a lot of boss battles.

It's much different from the cameo team in Symphonia. They didn't heal themselves. Mint can cast first aid and heal, replenishing a pretty big chunk of HP, and I remember one of them using revitalize, which means 60% healing for all of their party members. Also, they use life bottles, ressurecting spells, and hourglasses/time stops a lot. Very long battle.

Unknown says hi. I flicked it on and tried Sword Dancer 1 for fun, and it was something else. Definitely a thrill, and that was with my AD Skills/Artes/Etc transferred over from the previous game. I can't wait till I go up against the cameo team and Ms. Black and White later on. From what I've heard, even at maxed levels she's wild.

Some of the AD-Skills border on cheap, though with Unknown as a difficulty option they don't seem as bad. Glory, for example, makes you impervious to staggers. High Reqs but nothing a little sharing of Grandioz won't fix, same with Rebirth, Angel's Tear and Auto Aid. The first two I've seen in action so often that some would call them broken.

Moving along my 2nd game at a decent click. Here's a link to the various costumes available for the characters. Beware though there's a spoiler or two in there:

Bah, hello. Everyone says this is a cool game, yet this poor thread is on the 2nd page. You'd think it'd be on the first page.

And no, I love FFXII!! I read many comments (not here, but elsewhere) from people who, after playing this game, concluded that FFXII sucks. I never knew you had to like only one game and not both. Both games are so vastle different that it's stupid to compare them in the first place.

I posted thoughts/opinions on my playthroughs in my journal, but nobody is replying, so I guess I should just post here in this thread that everyone has abandoned. Maybe I'll have better luck.

Reposts from my journal!

Entry #1

My little sister was upset because she couldn't play until a 'certain item' was found, according to the manual.

Now that she can play, she's upset again 'cause she's not learning new techs (she plays Tear) while I got two already. In ToS, most techs were learned after doing earlier techs 50 times, but she hasn't gotten any so far.

I love how the in-game characters are capable of displaying more emotion than in ToS. Some of these expressions are damn priceless. I'm happy the game is just as funny as ToS. Makes me wish the skits were voiced now. Lots of the ones in ToS were hilarious.

Mieu: "But I'm a boy!"
Luke: "You sure don't sound like one."

Their conversations are the best! Can't stand the little bugger myself.

"Luke...called me a...thing...38 times..."

The overworld map isn't -that- hideous as people say (rotating is slow, but still doable, although the environment is crummy), but sometimes it takes around 5-10 seconds just to start a battle. It doesn't happen all the time though, thank goodness.

Entry #2

I saved in the Pass on the way to that city that I can't spell or pronounce. It starts with 'A' though!



Abyss is quite the opposite of FFXII. FFXII hardly had any cutscenes, as opposed to Abyss' constant scenes every few screens, and FFXII hardly had any voice acting, as opposed to Abyss' voice acting in virtually every scene.

I saw my first anime cutscene after the trip down the Abandoned Factory. Damn, it was cool, and it actually had the characters in it!! Although I do love Symphonia's scenes as well, only the ending featured the characters, and even then, it only showed two of them! Bah! Does Abyss have more anime scenes than Symphonia? I wasn't expecting to see one so soon in Abyss. Asch(sp?) looks a lot cooler in the scene than in-game

Speaking of Asch, the Records menu shows a HUGE spoiler : /

P.S. Oh, and Dist, especially when he's angry, sounds like Arkana from Yu-Gi-Oh! somewhat. I wonder if he has the same voice actor.

P.P.S. Is there any way to DL those cutscenes?

Entry #3

Okay, I take it back. Although the world map still isn't that bad, it seems to be taking longer and longer now just to start a battle, and to exit a battle. Expect a longer wait if it's a boss battle. Man, I miss the fast loading times of the ToS.

SPOILERS! At the Springs. Don't read if you're not there yet!



I'm like, probably the only person who thinks so anyway :D

OTHER NEWS

To celebrate my uh, purchase of ToTA, I made an avatar/sig. It's Tales of Symphonia themed, actually, but who cares. ToS is a great game.
I'd make a ToTA chain if I actually had some pics.

Oh, yeah, can someone send me an MP3 the theme song to ToTA opening? The one with and without the lyrics? Thanks.

The music isn't as great as ToS, not that ToS had great music anyway. However, ToS had some really good tracks, like the Summon boss battle and the battle theme in Thetehalla or whatever the hell it's called. I haven't heard any music in ToTA that topped those yet.

There's a new Tales game coming to PSP that features characters from past Tales game. Damn, I saw Symphonia characters in screenshots. Looks awesome, but I don't want a PSP.

Oh!!! Is there any formal costumes in this game like in ToS? I loved those!

I'm about to beat Final Fantasy XII (finally) and consider playing this next. However, I heard that the voice acting in the US version is rather poor so people made an "undub" version of this with the original Japanese voices in the US version of the game.

Can anyone comment on that? Is the voice acting really bad? Should I start playing the Japanese dub version or stick to the regular copy?

If you liked the voice acting in Tales of Symphonia, the voice acting in Tales of the Abyss won't bother you at all. I love the voice acting in both games. Same goes for FFXII. I'm impressed that more people are putting forth a greater emphasis in voice acting these days.

Good god. Whoever told you this deserves a slap to the face. Seriously, I hate people who whine about Namco not including a English and Japanese track on each Tales game. When a game is released in the US most players prefer to hear the characters speak in their own native language. Not everyone is a super wap anime fag.

Anyway, I thought the voice acting in Tales of the Abyss was terrific. Tear's voice sounds a tad bit too old for her character and luke may come off as annoying at first but later on their voices grow on you and they get better at it as you get further in the game. Everyone else sounds pretty good. I'd say Jade had the best voice acting in the game. The way his character is played suits him perfectly. Sure, there are a few bad voice actors in the game, but these are usually NPCs with a few lines of text.

Namco Hometek is really getting the hang of doing these localizations since Abyss' writing and voice acting is a huge step up from the last few Tales games.

Thanks for clearing that up. I would have preferred English voice acting anyways, so I'll go with that.

Yup, there's tons of costumes, actually. IIRC, there's more of them here than in ToS and they're much better too. This game just seems better in nearly every aspect except for maybe the silent skits (and that can't be helped due to the low popularity of the series on this side of the pond the costs it'd incur). Some of the costumes can only be had on your second playthrough along with several areas.

There's not really any formal costumes. Many alternate ones, but not all of them are particularly fancy, except maybe Luke's Viscount costume and Natalia's princess costume. Still, there's tons of costumes.

http://n.ethz.ch/student/wmartin/pic...20Costumes.jpg
All of those costumes are available too. Namco's localization has been much more giving. In fact, TOA had a lot of features added on, as well as glitches, so I'm really pleased with it compared to Tales of Symphonia.

The voice acting hasn't been completely satisfactory. There's a lot of typoes, some sentences that don't make sense, and lack of emphasis. Though the voices can grow on you, I wouldn't go so far as to call it better than ToS. There's still a ton of cliche RPG character dialogue.

The cutscenes are on YouTube and you can also view them in Namcobanda Isle. There's a ton of them, although only 8 of them are actually anime.

I had no issues with the voice acting. I was actually pretty impressed because there's gobs of it. Only Xenosaga III can compare with the amount of voice acting TotA has.

What I'm surprised at is how "large" the world was, or at least seemed, in Tales of the Abyss. ToS had T'ethealla and Sylvarant but neither felt as populated as Auldrant.

I would, mainly because ToS was terrible in that regard. The voice actors and characters fall well short of what we see and hear in ToA. While there were definitely awkward moments and dry deliveries (Tear's VA is the biggest offender here), again, it trumps ToS's best. Cliche dialogue? Yeah, this game isn't perfect.

Let's put it this way: By the end of Abyss, I wound up liking most of the main characters. Symphonia? Raine was the only one I didn't want killed, and it's not surprising that she has a similar (though milder) version of Jade's personality.

That's because there was obviously more than 4 houses in each city.
There wasn't a lot of voiced dialogue in ToS, but the voices were very easy on the ears. Besides Colette, you didn't have to worry about going deaf during the dialogue. You could always recognize the emotion in ToS too, where as characters, Tear especially, often had bland or almost sarcastic deliveries to their lines.
I won't argue about Raine though. She had a great VA and character.
Oh, yeah, the other animated cutscenes were great too, they just didn't have any characters or dialogue.

There's also more people in the towns as well, though I'm sure some of it has to do with the art and overall look of the game.

Except that Tear and Jade are supposed cold/sarcastic/detached given their backgrounds (especially the latter, as they go further into his character later on in the game). What I was pointing out was that during some of the supposed "heartfelt" moments or emotional scenes, the VA's didn't so much as budge from the standard "Tear" voice. That and she had some awkward lines too.

For all the strengths of Symphonia's conversations, the weaknesses were far too many to ignore. The characters often didn't seem to relate to one another well and the banter wasn't any near as fluid and natural as in the latest game. We'll just have to agree to disagree, then.

Not like it would've been appropriate, hearing the Albiore talk or something. Plus, yammering on during said events would detract from it. They talk enough as it is.

Of course, I'd prefer if the cutscenes weren't at Youtube, what with the crappy quality and all. I'm sure there must be high quality versions floating around somewhere, the opening in particular.

...I happen to like both ToS' and ToTA's voice acting...but apparently it appears I am the only one.

Really, I'd rather have a character who has issues (and has a reason for it) than someone who acts too nice all the time. I loved it when Luke was kicking Mieu around, due to my dislike for cute fuzzy woodland creatures.

P.S. I am now heading to the Capital of Malkuth. The waitress mini-game is fun!

All the games had rather strong voice casts. Especially Legendia, which had more charm than any of the games, though tends to become the lesser focused of the three due to design.

They're all really fun games.

I didn't mind ToS's voice acting (or cast). Lloyd was a little too perfect for my tastes but Luke more than made up for that. ;)

Exactly. The cities are big and you could see many houses throughout. In St. Binah you could see a ton of houses if you climbed the ladder in the back, and you could see a lot around Grand Chokmah just by walking around. It made it much more realistic to the plot.
It's not actual sarcasm, just a weird, innapropriate tone in their voices.

True, although I still think it would be nice to see some character interaction in those animations. The quality of the cutscenes would have made it nicer than in-game.

New Year's resolution: Find more hot pre-Luke art.

It could be just me, but I'm not overly fond of most of the cities/towns/villages/hovels I've encountered so far. They don't impress me as much as ToS's cities, such as Flanoir, Meltokio, Sybak and Palmacosta. The only ones I like so far are Ketersberg(sp?) and Grand Chokma(sp?).

Right now I'm in the Zao Ruins for the second time.

There's a scene in the game that's bugging me, and it's probably just an oversight, but when I went to Ketersberg...



My sister went to the FAQs and stuff and found out that we missed a ton of sidequests/items. Dammit. We even missed the Sword Dancer. Bah!