Tales of Xillia General [In Stores Now]

I'm probably going to rush trough a Jude playthrough first, and then take my sweet time doing everything on my Milla playthrough. The battle themes on Milla's side are so much better, and since I tend to play as the main character during the story (except for Lineages and Legacies in Graces, that was all the Richard goodness) I'm saving the best for last, because magic knight characters in Tales are awesome.

I think there's three or four exclusive side quests for each main character. Otherwise, the overall story is identical, only the perspective you see it from is different. The final dungeon is not as extensive as Graces, though the boss is harder than Solomus, especially since the level cap is 100.

Anyway, out of curiosity, is there a way to turn off the faces on the top left during battle? It seems kind of intrusive and annoying.

I don't think you can.

I've heard Xillia 2 is better, but I preordered this because Tales games are usually good. Then again, I liked Legendia, so this could probably be terrible and I would still like it.

Xillia 2 is a lot better, especially if you know what they've changed from Xillia 1. The only things I found worse were the shops, and the treasure chests. I don't think I would have liked it nearly as much if I hadn't played 1 and known what the story and background is for the characters and setting. Would have been confusing as pineapple, despite the initial interviews saying it could be a standalone game.

Aw Boo i was hoping to do a Leia run or something without considerable difficulty.

Part of the problem is every character in Graces was so fast because of the CC system. Alvin is particularly slow because of his Charge, and his sword is gigantic. He otherwise has a high amount of variety in attacks, especially since Charge alters his artes. Elize and Rowen use magic primarily, though Elize has some good physical artes. Rowen not so much in my opinion. Spell casting is different from Graces. You can't cut the cast time down with attacks, but that exists in Xillia 2. Elize and Rowen can be strong (broken) if you play them but it's boring spamming spells in my opinion. Leia is pretty fast, and I played her a lot, but I always found she had difficulty maintaining certain combos because she lacked a reliable air to ground arte with too many ground to air artes. She's amazing in Xillia 2 though.

Wait, really? Even with vesperia's broken OL spams? Ludger is still more OP by far? Just how op is he to be OP by far? 0.o

 Spoiler

Even if you don't abuse certain game mechanics, Ludger is the most flexible main character. He can do anything and everything short of casting a spell. If you do abuse them it's just downright dirty.

Part of why Vesperia's OL was broken was you could spam spells, like infinite Tidal Wave, and you could ignore the Base Arte -> Master Arte -> Altered Arte -> Arcane Arte order, or whereever Altered fell under. There is no such order in Xillia 1 or 2, so you can continually attack until you run out of AC, which is around 10 or 11 at high levels I think. Doing combos can restore AC. At 9999 uses, there's a 50% chance to not use AC. So eventually, you could infinite combo something if they don't suddenly super armor. IMO the broken spell spams in Xillia 1 and 2 are better than Rita's OL Tidal Wave too.

Corpse Shell Mode is stupid strong. You can use it to break enemy Overlimits, and it does a lot of damage. You can infinite combo single enemies with it (technically it's not infinite because Corpse Shell runs out, but the combo itself can't be broken out of unless there's other enemies there to stop you).

Ludger's Link Artes with every character provide a ridiculous amount of flexibility. With his maxed Azure Edge, he can charge a Link Gauge bar in one or two hits, and Azure Edge is faaaaaaaast.
His own artes themselves have an insane amount of flexibility as well. His Twin Blades are stupid fast, with 舞斑雪 (Maihadare) being able to dodge a lot of attacks by cutting through an enemy to go behind them while doing damage and interrupting (think Assaulter). 重裂破 (Juureppa) can break guards really easily and does a ton of damage. 朧鼬 (Oboroitachi), his Arcane Arte chases down enemies and charms easily, while dodging because it teleports him.
For his Hammer artes, in particular ファンガ・プレセ (Fange Pressé) can guard break and knock down almost anything that isn't strong to Light. Get to a boss you can't quite handle? Spam this and they're on their back the whole time as you pineapple them. That doesn't work? His arcane arte ファンドル・グランデ (Fundle Grande) ranges most of the map in front of him and can petrify.
And his Twin Guns round him out with more range, making him able to attack from a huge distance away, particularly トライスパロー (Tri Sparrow) which seeks enemies and guard breaks, and エイミングヒート (Aiming Heat) which can range anything from anywhere.
He can also deal every damage type, which is important because of the "Weak Hits" type system inherited from Graces, where if you hit a monster's weak point, you can use a different element to increase the damage multiplier. The only other character that can do this is Alvin, IIRC. Everyone else is missing one damage type or element.