Tales of Graces

[Wildcat]

Namco Bandai has confirmed that one of their latest "main" titles of the long-running Tales franchise is coming to the Wii later this year. This time, instead of trying to capitalize on pre-existing Tales lore (like the last Wii title in the series did with Symphonia), this will be an original game in the franchise, focusing on a new character, Asbel Lhant (great to see the quirky names still intact!), and his quest of inner strength finding (woot.) in the world of Efinea.

The game will run with the cel-shaded look the series has been using since Symphonia's debut (and, more than likely, the same engine as Symphonia: KoR), but there is a change up to the combat - Asbel and his yet-to-be-announced cast can switch between two different fighting styles on the fly, and it will be different for each one. The Nintendo Life article I'm sourcing states that exploration will be "streamlined, with the player moving directly between dungeons, fields and towns rather than using the overworld system used previously." That sounds an awful lot like ToS:KoR, which continues to bother me. But we'll see if I'm misreading this.

The game is set for a Q4 2009 launch in Japan, and I'm hopeful it'll be a good title. The exploration part worries me though, as I loved that aspect in Tales of Symphonia. I at least hope they follow the characterazation Vesperia followed with less reliance on RPG cliches and a more dynamic plot.

[Savage Adam]

Last I checked it was called "Tales of Gracia".

But I got that from Wikipedia, so... *shrugs*

[Nester the Lark]

And here are some screenshots, some off-screen screenshots, and the official Japanese site.

[Wildcat]

Thank ye, Nester. ^_^ These look pretty nice:



And the music on the webpage is very nice. ^_^

[Wildcat]

The lead character art has been revealed. Here's Asbel, and here's Sophie. Kind of goofy, but eh, they do have its charms. Some more screens can be seen here.

[Wildcat]

A little late, but here's two trailers for Graces that popped up at TGS. The initial art didn't do much for me, but watching the trailers improved that aspect for me. I couldn't hear it (no audio here at work), but the graphics look solid enough (at least up to Tales of Symphonia's level), and the characters have fairly distinct personalities here. I can only hope that Namco Bandai's putting in some serious work on this one.

[Deleted]

Jun 27, 2009 12:53:27 GMT -5 Wildcat said:

The lead character art has been revealed. Here's Asbel, and here's Sophie. Kind of goofy, but eh, they do have its charms. Some more screens can be seen here.

Oh man, I love Sophie's gauntlets. They're fucking badass.

After watching the trailer, it's great to see that they've addressed one of my graphical pet peeves and given the characters actual mouths instead of sprites pasted on their faces. They still fail at making fingers, though...>_> Also, Assbell's design contains the appropriate level of homosexuality that's been present in every Tales main protagonist since Tales of Legendia, so it looks like we're running par for the course there. I just wish there were more, you know, women in the cast, rather than girls. >_>

It looks solid and aesthetically pleasing, and I enjoy the character designs, but after the disaster that was Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World and my at-most lukewarm reception of the rest of the Tales games since the original Symphonia, I'm going to hold off on buying this until a used copy shows up at Gamestop. Then I can return it if it turns out to be crap and not lose like half of my money on it. XD

[Savage Adam]

Oct 11, 2009 16:34:47 GMT -5 @sgtmajorkururu said:

I just wish there were more, you know, women in the cast, rather than girls. >_>

Because Japanese media likes to acknowledge that grown women exist right?

[Deleted]

Oct 11, 2009 17:11:54 GMT -5 Savage Adam said:

Oct 11, 2009 16:34:47 GMT -5 @sgtmajorkururu said:

I just wish there were more, you know, women in the cast, rather than girls. >_>

Because Japanese media likes to acknowledge that grown women exist right?

Of course!

[Hiker of Games]

So yeah, character design is horrible. I think these characters must get dressed in the dark...

I'm apathetic about the game overall. ToS2 was rather meh and I got bored of Tales of Vesperia after ten hours with no evidence of plot.

[Wildcat]

Well, the mood here for the game seems a bit sour, but I'm going to report this anyway.

Official Nintendo Magazine has included Tales of Graces in their Summer Games feature. Namco Bandai has not said a word about localization outside of Japan though, so we'll just have to see if this is true or not.

[Deleted]

Well, that's a shame. I still want to at least give it a shot. =( Hopefully this is just because it's so early in the game's life cycle.

[Wildcat]

I think it's out in Japan, actually. But I'd like to see it come over here, and I hope that OMN has some backing to their claim we don't know about.

[Wildcat]

So far, no localization. Namco's got some sort of Tales announcement lined up for this summer, so I hope that it's a NA/European release for this. I kind of doubt it, though.

[Deleted]

It'd be pretty ballin' if Graces came stateside, because I do like how it looks. Alas.