Tales of Legendia.

So this has been out for some time now and I for one truly enjoy it. It's been getting a lot of flack from gamers for it's "Toy Story" like visuals, but I find the overall visuals amazing.

So has anyone finished/picked this up yet? At the moment, I'm storming through the Character Quests and having a blast.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Originally Posted by Vkamicht

Finished it in Japanese, loved it, started playing it in English but then my PS2 died.

It sucks that the localization got chopped up AGAIN. In the original game, the Character Quests were voiced just as much as the main section, but now it is complete silence. Mimmy had voiced scenes as well.

I haven't played the Japanese version, but I did hear about the voices getting slashed off the American version for the Character Quests, which was most disappointing. I noticed it right off the bat too, after the main quest. Save every random skit from time to time, they don't say a word. Not a huge complaint, but still pretty hurtful.

I really do not believe the kind of hate Legendia has been recieving. Even though EGM (Ziff Davis) aren't really to be taken seriously over their RPG criticism, they gave Legendia a 5.0. A 5! The injustice. Some fabulous websites like Got-Next gave it an 8 though, which is nice. ;D

Originally Posted by Rei no Otaku

My favorite character is Chloe. She's so cute, and I like how she appears tough but has that softer side to her.

Hah, I love Chloe alongside with Norma for her upbeat behaviour. The softer side in Chloe is really cute to watch unfold and everytime she wants to tell Senel something intimate she shies away. It's awesome. I suppose you started Will's Character Quests?

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Originally Posted by yangxu

It's unfortunate that Namco US decided to remove all the voice acting for the character quests... I can't believe they would be so cheap at trying to save every bit of their money to avoid paying the VAs for the works they suppose to finish.

Well they have been producing a Tales game nearly every year now, so maybe it's a good thing for them to be cost efficient. In the last five years we had the real Tales of Destiny II, Rebirth, Symphonia, Symphonia PS2, Legendia, Abyss and the GBA games. And I'm probably forgetting a few more. Sucks though, I feel ya.

How ya doing, buddy?

Originally Posted by Rei no Otaku

Norma: Yay, go Senel!
Moses: Hey, where's my cheering section?
Jay: Yeah Moses! Go out there and die!

I'm kind of ticked that Senel doesn't go for Chloe. I feel so bad for her. Especially since I don't care for Shirley much at all...

The reviews for this game are a prime example of why I don't listen to reviews at all. This game gets mediocre reviews, when a boring game with an archaic battle system like DQ8 gets high scores.

Not every place graded it badly. Got-Next.com rated Legendia an 8 and the reviewer was spot on with everything about it. I guess you just can't trust the big corporations when it comes to some reviews. A lot of money goes around. Anyway...

That arena scene is awesome! I laughed when Jay wanted Moses to literally die. And I'm also really disappointed that Senel doesn't go for Chloe. Shirley does nothing for me at all, and I find it adorable whenever Chloe shies away from Senel.

Chloe: Oh...n..nothing.

XD

Originally Posted by Vkamicht

Abyss didn't have as great of a cast of characters as Legendia, and no Tales game can beat Legendia's soundtrack. Gameplay alone Abyss holds its own VS all other Tales games. It seems to take the best parts of all the different Tales games and put them together in one nicely polished package. Fans of Symphonia will love the battle system, fans of a system like SO3 might enjoy the free run option (lets you leave your line), it even borrows some ideas from Tales of Destiny 2 (jp), such as setting extra abilities to your skills which can level up as you use them (extra damage, for example.)

But yeah. I think Abyss has a high chance only because of the sheer numbers of rabid Symphonia fans.

Well said, the AD Skill System was pretty interesting, but you could just leave them all on, so there was no real strategy. Of course, turning some off only made things harder, but there's no point to do that. I agree pretty well with everything you said about Abyss. It's nice, but I didn't care at all for the characters as much as I did in Legendia. The localization was amazing. Not to mention Go Shiina did an excellent job and I couldn't be prouder. It's a great little gem that I hope more people pick up. I'm glad this came to America instead of Abyss.

Originally Posted by Zeta26

If Namco does get Abyss in the U.S which there's no doubt that they probably will due to the picture of the end of the Legendia manual. They'll probably go all out. Since there seems to be more stuff going for Abyss than in Legendia. Like the increased Special Attacks (Normal/High Ougis). And plus that Limit Break-esque attack, Overlimit.

Ha, I thought I was the only one who noticed the back cover for the manual. A nice subliminal suggestion if I do say so myself. Abyss is okay, but I wouldn't automatically label it as the best of the series (to many Rebirth and Legendia are far better). It's already obvious through my sig, but I replayed each one recently just get a 2nd impression from them and Abyss to me is still so-so (even though the production values are insanely high).

But if they do bring this stateside, here's hoping they actually keep the hi-ougis for once. ;D

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

Originally Posted by Vkamicht

I know a ton of people want Rebirth over here badly, mostly based on the high quality 2D graphics alone. For some reason I couldn't get into that game as much as the others. I played through it once and tried to start again with grade shop bonuses but just got bored.

On the other hand, my Tales of Destiny 2 (jp) play time is like, 250 hours. Some of this is the auto-level trick, I let the game run overnight 2-3 times.

It took me 105 hours to finish Legendia the first time, but I left my PS2 on a couple of times accidentally, unlike ToD2j.

Oh no? I truly enjoyed it. Especially a certain sequence between Veigue and Tytree on the beach. That was pretty rad. Auto-level trick? You see, aside the Nakiriri Dungeon games on the GBA, Destiny 2 remains the only Tales game I've never played. I suppose you really recommend it if you played nearly 300 hours of it.

I'm taking my sweet ass time in Legendia and I'm only at 60 hours. For some reason, I really want to push it to 300+ hours. :P

I was speaking idiomatically.

Originally Posted by yangxu

On another note, since when did Apple Gel become a rare item in Rebirth... it's supposed to be a cheap healing item that can be bought anywhere in the shop, but they made it a rare item with a poor healing effect... -___-ll

? There are Apple Gels available everywhere in Tales of Rebirth. Are you sure you're talking about the right item? Maybe you mean Miracle Gels.

edit: My bad, I was thinking of the red gel icon allocated to Gel items.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

Originally Posted by yangxu

That works, though in Rebirth, I tend to rely on items a lot more often than spells, which decreases the grade rating at the end of each battle, oh well... =/

The Force Cube is a major change to the traditional Tales battle system, I like the idea, too. The fact that you can pull out a skill with an ougi in consecutive manner is very satifying... the only problem with this is the damage decreases as the quadrants in the Force Cube begin to drain, but thanks to the new trilinear system, you can switch positions freely to restore the lost forces while the AIs help you defend for the time being.

Yeah, it's rather confusing since they messed around with the healing items in Rebirth... I don't know if Namco wanted to make the game harder or what, but whatever the reason is, changing something like that is somewhat unnecessary... If I need to heal outside the battle, I usually turn to cookings since many recipes have multiple healing effects.

I didn't use that many items at all in Rebirth, but that's only because I seriously overleveled before every new dungeon/city/boss battle. And I seriously mean a good 5 levels over everytime, so that might explain it (level 70 and everything). Cooking was really helpful toward the end. The toppings system was pretty cool too.

And it's strange, but I absolutely never used Annie in battles. Her healing circles really did nothing for me so I stook to really strong HP Regeneration. At any rate, my party was almost always composed of Veigue, Tytree, Mao and Eugene (swapped in and out with Hilda). Tytree used to start losing mad health at one point, so I just gave him a Black Onyx and he was fine since.

FELIPE NO

I feel bad that this is the Legendia thread and we're only talking about Rebirth (not our fault its great).

At the current moment, I'm in the midst of finishing Chloé's Character Quests and one of my characters died for the first time in the entire game. Field of Effect monsters seem to be popping up everywhere now. I'll try and finish Chloe's quest by Sunday evening.

Originally Posted by yangxu

The only reason I use Annie is because she has a strong hi-ougi with Eugene, useful during boss fights... other than that, she's pretty useless. And dammit, I can't accept the fact that Mao is a boy @#$@%^@#$.... whoever chose his voice actress is a evil evil man.... :biggrin: Tytree's position is practically reserved in my party because he could really keep the enemy busy with his combos.

Would that be Shouha Rekkousen? If so, the one where Eugene goes all haste-mode and stabs the foe 30 times is wicked. It's my favorite along with Mao and Tytree's team up, but it's the one I pulled off the least (like four of five times). And you're damn right Tytree should be reserved because he is awesome. His end battle quotes are hilarious.

Double Post:

Originally Posted by Vkamicht

I never used Mao and Tytree because... I don't know why. I generally like to keep a party of "normal" people and those two didn't fit that description.

So Veigue, Eugene, Annie and Hilda the whole game.

Wow, really? Some of Mao's move like Shadow Cross are awesome (although I think Hilda can pull it off too). Tytree has some seriously low health, but his moves rack up the combo meter like crazy. Worth a shot!

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

Originally Posted by yangxu

What levels are your characters at? If you trained like you did in Rebirth, I'm sure your characters can take on the arena battles easily now (fighter class, at least). The rewards are pretty good, though some battles are REALLY hard...

Everyone save Grune are at level 71. There's a Duct in the South East regions of the Quiet Lands that takes you to a remote island with Gentleman monsters. They're ridiculously weak and easy, so comboing them is very simple. If you can combo properly, they dish out +2 Grade and 2000 EXP minimum every time.

By the way, what's everyone's Max Combo in Legendia? I only managed 253 hits and that's without a Climax Mode. Kinda sucky, I've always done much higher in the other Tales games.

Most amazing jew boots

Originally Posted by Vkamicht

999... it's extremely easy once you know how to do it. Chloe and Senel both have a multi hitting attack, control one and set the other's skill to L2/R2. Tell them to use it, and before it ends, use yours, just keep spamming L2 also so the computer doesn't go off and do something else. If the enemy has enough HP you can get to 999 hits.

Oh, and there's a video of someone doing it on that YouTube place.

Oh, I know the technique, I've just always been too lazy to set everyone to stand away while comboing and try to max out my efforts with a normal party. Swallow Storm and Sword Rain: Omega are the best bets to reach 999. I forget whether the better method is to unequip Senel and Chloe's best weapons or to set the game on hard and use an All-Divide, but either strategy should lengthen the battles.

I reached 1'000+ in Symphonia thanks to Photon and a couple other tricks.

About YouTube: That place is spawning quite a huge list of Tales fan films and performances. It's kind of nice to see so many people uploading stuff there. So far, it's the best alternative to Holystar's RPG Media Files.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Originally Posted by Vkamicht

On the other hand, there have been reports of people uploading movies taken from Holystar's webpage and crediting themselves for it. That's to be expected, I guess...

Yeah...the Rebirth hi-ougi exhibitions are a clear example of someone completely ripping off Holystar. I'm just glad somoene didn't entirely copy and paste his archive to YouTube.

How ya doing, buddy?

Originally Posted by yangxu

Do you mind giving me the link to their official forum? I can't seem to find it on the website... =/

A large coporation like Namco should know what's appreciated by gamers and what's not, not to mention that they treat gamers in two different countries differently. If they want to have good sales, if they want positive comments instead of complaints, then they should at least try to keep things they can keep from the Japanese version. Instead of removing the intro's theme song and recomposing a totally new instrumental track just to make the game feel more "mainstream", they could focus on more voice acting. They could even leave the Japanese voice track on without any English dub and I bet the game will sell as well as it did as the current half-voiced-game. When they have spent so much effort on this game, I don't think there's no reason to go an extra step and finish something that's supposed to be there.

Double Post:


Ahh... I haven't bothered visiting the Quiet Lands ever since the main quest's done. Thanks for the tip Rocca... I remember fighting Gentlemen back in Gnome's cave in Eternia, I couldn't stop to give it a O__o expression when I first saw them...

Regarding Legendia's cut of English voices: I guess it all boils down to time and money. Even though Legendia and Abyss were made by two entirely different teams, that does sound like a lot of work. In the beginning, there was even talk of each character in Legendia having their own special hi-ougi, but the idea was canned once the Japanese launch was near. I think Holystar still has a .rar file of the canned hi-ougi voices.

It doesn't bother me all that much that the voices were omitted after the Main Quest. If anything, I'm glad they stopped it there instead of mid-way in either the Main or Character Quests. Speaking of Japanese tracks, you reminded me one of the reasons why I loved Destiny on the PSX for so much; how they kept all the original japanese voices during battles. That was truly cool, albeit lazy, but I'm 100% sure I would have preferred those voices instead of lame English dubs.

I think it would be nice, granted developers had the disc space, to always include Japanese and English voices. Capcom is notorious for this in its Onimusha series, Shin Onimusha JAP is entirely dubbed and subbed in English or Japanese. It's why I imported it instead of waiting for the American release this Spring. ;D

Hah, the Gentleman do give a "wtf" moment, and even though their attacks are really annoying, they do no damage and are clearly there for pure combo purposes.

Originally Posted by Fuzzy Critter

The Japanese version was still in development when we first started talking about localizing Legendia for the US. The decision of what to cut had to be made early on, so I couldn't play through the entire game and see exactly what they were. My understanding here then, was that the CQ were side quests, just addition content for the people who want to know more about the characters that would be like an unlocked start menu item once you cleared the "real" game.

So the fact that there was a lot of voicework devoted to side quests made that section especially vulnerable.

Well said. Personally, I think it's much smarter to have cut the Character Quest voices than anything, since it's unlikely that as many people who finished Legendia's Main Quest would still continue. At any rate, it doesn't bother me all that much, and if it bothers some, they could always just import the Japanese or Asian version to see full voices (granted you understand Japanese).

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

Originally Posted by Vkamicht

Actually something interesting about this, apparently the producer for the original game said that the extras were cut out of development to make sure the game made it to America on time.

Hah, so any or all cuts would seem to be linked to deadlines. That's not so bad, I guess.

I was speaking idiomatically.

Originally Posted by yangxu

No kidding, I swear leaving the Japanese voices be in the localized ToP would avoid a lot of complaints... "IT ENDS, HYEAAA... INdigNAtion~~!"... -___-lll

That's why I like .hack series even though Bandai decided to release something that could be on two DVDs into 4 separate DVDs... the complete Japanese voiceover is kept there for gamers to choose.

Just thinking of Rutee's "BuuuHhLahdEeee TeeeEaaaAArrrR" makes me all warm inside. Maybe that's one of the pluses of playing imports nowadays. The voices are intact and in their original form, so when you hear characters like in Abyss yell stuff, you know that it was tailormade for the audience, and not just slapped on a figure for translation.

And regarding Legendia progression, I opened up Moses' Character Quest right before seeing Dave Chappelle's Block Party. This is one fine night.

How ya doing, buddy?

Finished the Character Quests and opened up 2nd Play as well as the Grade Shop. Thoughts? Really awesome. The Character Quests were more fun than the actual Main Quest.

The final boss

Spoiler:

Schwartz, who is basically the polar opposite of Grune (they're like twins) was a real pain even at level 85. The fact that Grune and Schwartz both "die" was kind of cool, albeit sad. I also liked Grune a lot better when she had no memory and didn't act like a goddess (since she is). The summons coming to life was also pretty cool.

So yeah, then the Grade Shop opens and you can buy just about everything available in the shop for about 450 Grade. Good thing I stocked 900.

Originally Posted by Terminus

So currently at the Character Quests Intro. Well, how long would this take (and when the "main" quest had voices in cutscenes for the most part, I'm surprised they took it off here. Quite the letdown at least for me.

Probably like, 30 hours? It's not exactly short. Another thing, try to go through each quest slowly. I've found myself getting tired of playing the CQ's after long 10 hour runs. It's not like the Main Quest so you have to take it bit by bit to appreciate it. If that made any sense.

FELIPE NO

Originally Posted by Dopple

I really dislike the orchestral opening for Legendia though. It's BOOORRIIINGG.

I wouldn't say I dislike it, but it does get a little tedious when its on for too long. Too bad they didn't bring over DAI's TAO theme.

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

Originally Posted by Manny Biggz

The game is quite epic in itself. The ending I wouldn't call Epic, but it wraps everything up nicely, and leaves just about no loose ends. Only thing really left out in the open is:

Spoiler:

Who hired the ninja's to kidnap Shirley? Also the whole tense situation about the lower continents wanting to use the Legacy as a weapon for themselves.

Spoiler:

No one did. It was of their own will to give to the highest bidder.

Jam it back in, in the dark.