i want to date Kisara

NOTE: Before you just see this as a positive review rating and skip the review, I urge you to read this review as games can't be tagged as positive with an '*'. Skip close to the very end to see what the '*' would be about (if you don't wish to read about the positive)

So the graphics are gorgeous. This comes down to really REALLY well placed and talented shaders. The different realms you travel to are generally different "biomes" and each biome has its gfx that really portray a realistic feeling of those environments. The snow realm is dark and cold feeling. The overall deep and dark blues of the moonlight lighting and the texturing of the cliffs, the snow on the cliffs, and the snow on the trees combined with the eternal night in that realm REALLY make you, as the player, almost feel the invigorating yet cold crisp chill in the game's air as if to remind you of what it feels like stepping outside your house at night time during the holiday season to get in the car and check out Christmas lights. It's not a bitter frigid cold feeling like so many games overdo and make an environment completely un-relatable; it's JUST right enough to make the experiential-feeling relational to the player. Which is a REALLY neat effect (graphically sure, but more experientially so).

There's another area where the realm is a lush and beautiful nature realm with the overall color tones in greens, purples, and bright blues are a welcome change to the cold snowy area but nonetheless remarkable on its own without the contrasted-comparison against the snow realm. The cliff faces are textured using almost like a relief type of effect providing shader. This makes the undulations and the many hard-edge faces of any cliff faces not only look more pronounced but in doing so makes them appear (and thus feel) also sharper, and harder in terms of material-surface. There's an ever so slight and constant kind of white'ish fog / mist that wafts around in the screen that really seems to actually make the lush green biome really pop! It has water mists, and even rainbows in some areas. All of these effects working together really make the biome come alive visually. When the sun starts to go down and you camp under a tree, it really really makes you wish you were there and when you awaken and see a bright blue sky, it's hard to not feel like you want to stay there in the game forever. The realms capital city is equally as detailed, if not much more so. The city wasn't just some detailed buildings plopped down in a way that looked ok and then called good. The city not only looks and feels alive (with NPCs running with crates in their arms going from point A to point B), but the city has a TON of little extra visual details that make the city look as if it were how a city would actually look in real life just by way of people living in it and town events going on throughout the year. In this game's case, for example, the city has like ribbon banners that act as sort of a canopy to many parts of it that add to the overall beauty and care you'd expect a city (the people managing it) to have of itself. In areas where there's waterfalls, the water doesn't just roll over the edge and fall down, it also has some orthagonal-projection (perpendicular) out from the plane it's traveling -- this is more akin to how water would behave in real life if massive gallons of water were just falling.

People ding the game on it's dialogue, I actually don't see see it. I enjoyed the dialogue and as your party grows, micro-relations start to form, and you begin to see how the characters of the party interact with other members of the party instead of just interacting with you as the player. This is evident in the mini-story scenes, and even in the in-battle and post-battle dialogues. It's a fun little thing that allows for some minor character development to flesh out the characters and make them feel as though there's more to them individually and thus more real.

Now the '*'... It's unfortunate, but the heavy '*' to this game is the financial greed. I don't know if it were the developers that decided to do this or the publisher pushed for it. There is a huge real-world money financial greed aspect to this game. So the game is approx. $40 (US dollars). In my opinion, this is about right for a game this quality. However buying the game isn't where the financial investment ends. The first financial incentive is obviously an option one, there's DLC for various costumes / outfits for the characters (you can wield and wear the equipment you want but have them look a different way with "outfits" -- which some are unlocked without real-world money). This ordinarily wouldn't be that much of a red flag except there's TONS of DLC costumes which belies the developers (or publishers -- whomever is responsible) intentions that they're they only put those out there as little fun one-off things. Just the sheer number of them is what belies it, not that they exist, but that there's so many of them. This isn't in and of itself the problem. It, in my opinion, furthers my argument about the second financial incentive of the game. Normally, in a JRPG, you can "grind" enemies and not just level higher, but actually GAIN money in the long run so that you can buy better equipment, etc. However, you don't get gald (the money in this game's world) as part of a battle's reward. You get the traditional exp, and sp (skill points used to spend to unlock "artes"). But you also get material drops. These are items that can be used to craft weapons, craft accessories, or enhance accessories. Where the problem comes in, is the game is so very incredibly balanced that just to restock your healing items from any battle, you wind up selling nearly all of the item drops you received from those battles. Meaning you're ALWAYS just breaking-even. Many times, you're often at a HUGE deficit because of boss battles and the item drops aren't nearly enough to cover the restocking cost for your inventory. This may not seem like it was deliberate, until you come to find out, there is DLC for sale (for real-world money) that provides you in-game gald! I'm sorry, is this game free-to-play? I must've been confused. Probably because I had already shelled out $40 bucks for it. Why are you recognizing the difficulty in making gald in this game by SELLING dlc for that? So it's being openly acknowledged that the game is either overly difficult to get ahead (and refused to re-balance anything), or they did that deliberately. It's kind've scummy and that's the '*' (or giant dark black-eye the game has). Fortunately, with Cheat Engine, I haven't needed to buy any of the gald DLC (even running the game on Linux and using Proton), that's also why I would only recommend this game on a PC platform since you wouldn't be able to use Cheat Engine on a console. It's a shame. They have an incredibly solid JRPG that they gave a black-eye simply because of, what I perceive at least to be, greed.

You could expect this from an indie company, but since it's Bandai Namco, the laziness is really evident in everything.

Let’s start with the story. It begins, as always, more or less like any Tales of game—there are some bad guys, and they’re using your energy for... blah blah blah. Nothing particularly new, but that’s not the main issue.

The tension builds up and... you’re sent off to who knows where to get a dress for your main character. Later on, the dialogues continue in the same fashion, as if they were written by an insecure teenager. Sometimes it’s downright ridiculous. It’s like an indie studio that couldn’t afford a decent writer.

As for the combat—it’s interesting at first, but after five hours of gameplay, the variety of monsters boils down to 3-4 types. Eventually, new ones appear, but they’re just palette-swapped versions of the originals. Typical indie issue—seems like they ran out of creativity.

Every 2-4 minutes, the main characters, who are supposedly saving the world, start spouting nonsense like, "Oh, you're hungry? Why didn’t you tell us?"

TL;DR: It’s really sad to see the series going downhill, becoming something for insecure kids. You’d be better off replaying Tales of Symphonia. Sadly, there’s nothing here but the graphics.