[PS2] Tales of The Abyss

I just started this last night after a long debate between this or Legendia, and so far I'm liking it. Since I finally beat Symphonia after a 2-year break I was looking for more Tales action. Obviously I'm not too far in yet, but I do have two big issues with it.

- No jumping in battle unless you're doing one of the attacks that makes you jump? Please tell me there's an AD Skill that fixes this later. It's a bit hard to get used to since I always took flying leaps at the enemies in Symphonia.

- Good lord, battle load times are ridiculous. Everything just freezes for 10 seconds or so before a boss, and post-battle loading can take as long as 20 seconds. Considering 45 seconds is a long random battle in a Tales game, that's absurd.

I'm enjoying the game immensely aside from those two things.

Spoiler:

I'm just glad that Jade hinted at the memory loss thing as being something much bigger. That had to be the lamest excuse for amnesia that I've ever heard.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Originally Posted by KNanakase

To jump in semi-manual mode, you have to hold the guard button then press up I believe. In manual, you just press up.

You know, I never even thought to look at that. I just assumed it would start me off in manual mode, but apparently not since that required the Technical Ring. I can jump again, huzzah!

There's nowhere I can't reach.

I don't remember ever having the world map music glitch, but everything else about it was pretty screwy. It was so nice once you have the Tartarus or the Albiore and no longer have to avoid the battles' ridiculous load times and fight the camera at every turn. Fixing those map issues would've made the beginning parts of the game much more enjoyable.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Of course, the biggest mistake was checking the battle details after a fight on the world map. That seemed to add an additional 10-20 seconds to the load time.

Now that I've beaten the game, I'm tempted to go back and try some of these glitches. Permanently replacing Luke with Asch by walking through the world map mountains during the Mushroom Road sidequest sounded interesting.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

Heh, glad I'm not alone in using Guy for awhile. I played as him a lot towards the beginning since I'd just finished up Symphonia a few days before starting Abyss, but eventually I warmed up to Luke's fighting method. Once you had some AD skills to make Luke more mobile he was much easier to manage.

I was speaking idiomatically.