Tales of Graces.

I like Graces a lot so far, because they added new skills, and not just copy-paste off of Phantasia/Eternia/Destiny 1. >_>! That and I always wanted to use a twin-blade/edged sword (not to be confused with dual-wielding 1h-swords, since Lloyd was just 'lol').

Cheria is fu'cking HNNNNNNNNNNNNGGGGGGGGGGGG
Cannot wait to play this. Hopefully, the battle system isn't horribly slow and crappy like Knights of Ratatosk, or a spamfest like Hearts.

[YOUTUBE]upKkh_ezHuA[/YOUTUBE]

Your eyes will die!!!!

Btw, surprise at the end of the video. That thing is HUGE!

[YOUTUBE]FzRYw7qngSo[/YOUTUBE]

2 New videos surfaced.

Plot things :
[YOUTUBE]T1M-dasxSpg[/YOUTUBE]

Gameplay
[YOUTUBE]FULsLr1Z8JQ[/YOUTUBE]

Interesting little bit at the end 0.o

Bumpan because I finally got to play the game and I don't feel like making a new thread.

Sophie is broken. When you get her, he's level 7 and you're like level 2. She can pretty much OKHO every monster in the area, and makes fast work of the bosses.

I hate Hubert. AGH. He's a platypus crybaby. Not to mention his twig does more damage than my sword... I really hope he grows up after the time skip, though I won't be playing with him in my party anyways.

Cheria is FFFFNHHHHNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG. Not only is she a cute red-head, she's a classic tsundere, and she has some sort of medical condition that prevents her from exerting herself (Pre-time skip mind you, not far enough to tell if it goes away or anything BUT THERE WAS ONE LINE (Gist of it from what I remember)):
Asbel: When we grow up, I want to leave this town. You wanna come with me then?
Cheria: Y-Yeah, sure. That'd be fun!
<Asbel leaves room>
Cheria: ... Will I really be able to get that old?


Dodging is really fun in this game. It's smooth. Everything is really smooth. Unlike ToS:KoR

I cannot wait until I get my harem party goin'.

Best boss battle in the game.

[youtube]T5TtROFbhUY[/youtube]

herd dis gaem suxed

Last thing i heard about this game that dissapointed me was that it was ridden but deadly glitches and bugs, and it sucked somehow...

And i was happy about getting a new tales for my new wii...

Last thing i heard about this game that dissapointed me was that it was ridden but deadly glitches and bugs, and it sucked somehow...

And i was happy about getting a new tales for my new wii...

I'm 33 hours in and the only glitch I've run into is a sound glitch. Other than that, from what I hear, the only real game-breaking glitches occur in the second playthrough because of the Grade Shop or something.

Otherwise, it's a really fun game. The battle system is awesome.

I'm 33 hours in and the only glitch I've run into is a sound glitch. Other than that, from what I hear, the only real game-breaking glitches occur in the second playthrough because of the Grade Shop or something.

Otherwise, it's a really fun game. The battle system is awesome.

Yeah something about getting/carrying over the collector's book with grade, you get a glitch where you can't keep advancing through the story... that a agame killer glitch IMO if you aren't aware of it...

I ran into a glitch a bit back. It's near the end of the game, where there's an "invisible" wall. It's noticeably wavy, as if it were made of water, etc. You're supposed to walk into it, and then "aaarghh, my head hurts" screen goes white. It was supposed to load a cut scene, but it crashed my Wii and just stayed white so I had to force my Wii off. I only lost about 10 minutes of data, and five of that was fighting an easy miniboss thank God. It worked the second try.

Otherwise, I think I had one more glitch once where everyone in my party kept DODGEing. AUGH it was so annoying because that's all they would do, and dodging uses CC...

Anyways, so far, my opinion is that it's a great Tales game. I don't think the story is as good as Symphonia. I really liked the story in that, minus the corniness. And then there's the typical Tales "sympathise with the bad guy" theme. Airship could have been better. You don't get to fly it. You just select the location off a list from the world map.
The skill system is really awesome. In total, you get 9~12 "A" skills, 3 for each link. CC1 -> CC2 -> CC3 -> CC4. CC1 is your basic first swing that you can directionalise. CC2~CC4 are all skills that take CC (Chain Combo points) to use and deal more damage and are really flashy and awesome. There's Neutral, Up/Down, Left, and Right. Yeah, instead of Forwards/Backwards being linked together in the skill menu, it's Up/Down on the Wii Mote, and Left and Right are their own directions.
The Title System is really confusing. You get a crap load of them (100+). Each title has 5 levels. You gain SP from battles to master the skills they provide; and by skills, it ranges from "A" skills, to "B" skills, to passive stat bonuses, and other stuff that I can't possibly read. What's particularly interesting is that you learn your skills from these titles. Get X number of SP (hundreds to thousands, usually in the hundreds until the last level) to learn the skill. If you don't already have the skill, next to it in the description will say "New Skill" or whatever. If you do already have the skill, it will tell you the bonus the title provides for "relearning" the skill. i.e. Damage +5%, Accuracy +15%, Cast Time etc. Bonuses from Titles are kept as passive when you learn them. Mastering a title doubles the special effect the title gives or something like that, but that bonus is only in effect when the title is worn, so it's stupid. Don't master titles unless you need it for another title is what I'm getting from this game.

So far, my favourite characters in terms of personally playing as are Asbel > Hubert > Pascal > Sophie > Cheria > Malek.
As far as personality Cheria > Pascal > Sophie > Asbel > Hubert > Malek.
I just don't like Malek. He has some really stupid flashy "A" attacks that are slow to finish, and otherwise his strength is in his massive spell arsenal. Ice Spine, and the other Ice skills are pretty grande though.
Cheria is still great, I think. She has area of effect Healing magic, and Light Magic. (Divine Saber is awesome, and Flash Tear is just one of my favourite spells ever.) Her "A" Skills aren't much to talk about since they start up a bit slow but there's some nifty stuff in there.
Sophie is pretty cool. I'm sure she's by far the fastest character. She can dodge like no body's business. She also has Single Target Healing spells, so she's important if you want someone healed fast. She has a few "B" Skill attacks, but I only use two since I find the other ones not very useful.
Pascal is interesting. Her spells almost always require her to be point-blank. They're area of effect, but the spell is either centered on or directly in front of her. Her "A" Skills are pretty awesome though, blasting everything away with ridiculous range. Coliseum with her is major fun, but she can be a bit slow.
Hubert is a pimp. GUNS. SCARLET is awesome. His "A" skills are pretty damn flashy and strong, and GUNS. DAMN SON. Also, for some reason he knows Healing Wind and Antidote or some other weak recovery spell. Turn them off if you have other healers, he just wastes time casting it slowly to heal very little.
Asbel is also a pimp. That is all.

It's a fairly balanced game, and I think any party would work except ones without Cheria and Sophie; i.e. lolHubert casting his lolHealing Wind to lolheal everyone.
In terms of difficulty... Anything with extreme range will rape you a while. Specifically, Archers. Late in the game there's these monsters that cast a Super Defense skill on themselves. They glow red, take 1 damage from everything, and don't flinch. You need to use a Light(ning) based spell on them to break it, luckily Asbel learns those. Otherwise, they do like 500+ damage a hit, cast lots of magic, and I only had 2000 HP around that point.

How much Japanese do you know? How long have you been learning it? And since I'm asking, how did you learn it?

I only know what I've picked up through anime, and since they feature common themes, stuff is easy enough to pick up. I think the game is fairly straight forward though. The real things that I didn't understand were when they spoke about military things and some small amount of politics and "science". I can't read anything except hiragana and katakana. I know a few kanji, but I wouldn't know how to read it aloud, just the meanings.
Aston, Asbel's father, spoke in a really more formal tone, so it was very complicated. Malik is a bit more military in his speech I suppose.
I'm not too sure how to quantify how much I know, though. I just think that this game was fairly simple. Every story-important event in the game is voiced. I would say I could understand 95% of the speech there, and what I couldn't were unimportant details. Skits were all voiced as well. I could understand a bit less in those because there were more complicated things talked about, but I could get most of them.
It took me a little while to understand what a Valkineas(sp?) Cryas was though, other than knowing it's that big glowing rock right there, among a few other original, katakana-written concepts, like Anmalchians.
While outside of town, the mini-map displays a blinking light as to which direction to go, and the "C" button makes a small pop-up in the bottom left corner that displays your objective. It makes the game significantly easier, though "C" won't help if you can't read anything at all. Usually, it says something like Go to <Town Name>, Travel further into the dungeon, Find <Character>, Go to <Compass Direction> of <Town Name>. I've only gotten lost twice. The first time, the objective was to "Find Richard" or something near the beginning of the game, and I had no clues given elsewhere other than knowing it was in Baronia Capital. The second time was in a town in Fendel where I had to find a Cryas shard or something related to that for some kids; the conversation wasn't clear enough for me, but I believe it said monsters dropped it.
Rastoria has one confusing ass puzzle though that takes a while to get through, whether you understand it or not.

Titles had some things in them though that were confusing. Some added weird special effects that I didn't fully understand because of the kanji. I also couldn't read most of Pascal's spells at the beginning because, despite being in katakana, I didn't really understand how to pronounce them properly.
For example ランパートサイン [ranpa~to sain], a defense buff, which I still don't know how to read. [??? Sign]
You can set characters to auto-learn titles (they switch automatically to a new title when they reach a certain level) so you won't have to worry about it.


Having beaten the game a few days ago, I think it was a good game. The final battle wasn't too tough though. What made it worse, was I hadn't realised that I acquired newer, significantly stronger equipment on my way down the final dungeon for this fight, only finding out after I loaded my save from beating the boss. Despite this, the bonus dungeon proves too difficult for me still. The story overall was good though. Pretty Talesy I guess. The ending is... interesting. Here's some spoilers:

 Spoiler

CheriaxAsbel <3 to the best of everyone's guesses. Not explicitly stated, but Asbel's son is playing with a

 Spoiler

grown-up Sophie, who is a

 Spoiler

humanoid robot designed to destroy Lamda, which implies she can't age, YET SHE DOES

, and he's wearing a small butterfly pin like Cheria's, and he has her Brown Eyes.

Wow, just from watching anime? I'm not quite at that point yet. Still teaching myself the kana, too. One last question: did you have to import or mod your Wii to play that? I don't know if there's any region-related problems with imports on the Wii.

Wow, just from watching anime? I'm not quite at that point yet. Still teaching myself the kana, too. One last question: did you have to import or mod your Wii to play that? I don't know if there's any region-related problems with imports on the Wii.

I soft-modded my Wii to play a burned version. I have a hard-modded Wii I'm going to test out when I acquire it. Only reason I'm unsure if that one will play is because the version may be outdated. Otherwise, the Wii and the game is Region Locked, so you can't play European or Japanese games on it unless your Wii is European or Japanese, respectively, or has a mod to do so. The game does contain DLC, but there are codes (GameShark or something) that can unlock them in-game since all the data is on the disc, as well as DLC check-skipping which is necessary to use that specific save file. From what I know, the DLC contains a few Costume Titles, and possibly some accessories.
Last thing I'd like to note is make sure you have a larger TV size if you plan on trying to read. Playing on a smaller screen makes some kanji completely unreadable due to the resolution, regardless of whether you can understand it or not, really. Makes even attempting to translate impossible.

Likely that I won't play it until I spend half a year or more expanding on my Japanese (I don't know much at all, really) and acquiring a Wii that can play it, but thanks for the help. Game looks awesome.

Soft-modding a Wii should be an easily viable option. All that's required is an SD card, some downloads, and a few minutes. There's a way to back up your Wii's files to prevent it from bricking too.
I could definitely help guide someone through the game too if necessary (though I obviously couldn't dedicate my entire time to doing so).

http://tog.gkwiki.com/

There's also this website that contains a lot of info that could be easily google-translated and such to assist you.

Then another problem I have is that my computer can't read SD cards. I'm not sure how many computers can by default, but is there some kind of USB hookup that can do it? And then there's my crappy DVD burner. I don't trust it to burn anything properly. Will an official version of the game play on a softmodded Wii or do you have to use a burned version?

I've softmodded my Wii for the homebrew channel (for Brawl+) before, but recently my Wii updated itself and told me to delete any 3rd party stuff or it might be bricked. Not having any backup on hand, I obediently followed its directions. And now the guy whose computer and SD card I used to softmod my Wii is 3000 miles further away than he used to be.

Then another problem I have is that my computer can't read SD cards. I'm not sure how many computers can by default, but is there some kind of USB hookup that can do it? And then there's my crappy DVD burner. I don't trust it to burn anything properly. Will an official version of the game play on a softmodded Wii or do you have to use a burned version?

I've softmodded my Wii for the homebrew channel (for Brawl+) before, but recently my Wii updated itself and told me to delete any 3rd party stuff or it might be bricked. Not having any backup on hand, I obediently followed its directions. And now the guy whose computer and SD card I used to softmod my Wii is 3000 miles further away than he used to be.

[COLOR="Teal"]I actually own a sd/usb thing. Those aren't too expensive to find.
[/COLOR]