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GAME: Tales of Xillia

Everything is fungible, which is not how a Tales game should be. Tales games have personality. Though it may not be a personality you particularly enjoy (it is, most likely, a personality that exasperates you), most Tales games have some sort of verve.

Still, this whole review reads less like something that belongs on a commercial website and more like a blog post. It seems (to me) that the author was trying so hard to be clever and snarky that he forgot everything else. That works for people like Zac in the season previews, but not so much here. The whole thing just feels so amateurish, in my opinion.

What does this even mean? I am familiar with the word "fungible" but even so I can not say for certain that I know what the reviewer means by it. The second sentence quoted above does not elucidate the first, the one containing the "fungible". Which elements of this game are being said to be "swappable" (ie:fungible) by the author?

I'm not sure as to why the reviewer launches into how the games in this series have "personality", mentions that that "personality" is likely irksome, and then tangents over to "verve". Is he implying that this game lacks "verve"? He's saying that this game has "personality" (by definition) and that "verve" is separate from "personality" (again, by definition) and since the two are separate constructs why are they in a sentence together as though they were related? Clearly they are not as the reviewer states that "Tales of" games have had "personality" without "verve" before.

Yeah, I really liked what they did with him. They "Okay, yeah, we've done this to death and everyone expects it, so let's run with it" and it worked pretty well. Would be nice to see them find a way to do that with 1 or 2 other staples of the Tales stories now.

Lady Multi wrote:

Alvin is essentially Kratos (ToS)

The others work but this one doesn't work as well. Alvin's more similar to Raven from Vesperia. I get in one way Alvin is like Kratos but Kratos is too serious compared to Alvin's more mix of goofiness and seriousness so Raven seems like a better fit.

You can't just decide that some optional events matter and count towards the game time and others don't, especially since the player has no way of knowing this when playing through normally for the first time.

Just to add to that wall of text. One of Vesperia's trophies is for speed play of 15 hours (in the slightly longer PS3 version).. that means that Vesperia's story is...15 hours long rushed. I'd say apx. 25-30 hours not rushed. So Xillia isn't any shorter. If any Tales series game is short it's Legendia, you have to force yourself to go slow in that game. Then again, time spent is how focused you are in the game... My ToV game is clocked at over 150 hours and I've never completed the speed-run. Legendia I've never beaten because its so agonizingly simple to me.

That, and I'm at apx 70 hours in Xillia and not finished with Milla's side yet. I fought the Golden Knight twice in post-game and practically cleared everything but level 99 trophies and rare monsters trophies....

But when reviewers make claims about game lengths, they're talking about normal, first time playthroughs. Obviously, people's playthroughs will differ. This review isn't the first time I've seen someone claim it's a 30 hour game, but I sure would have taken a lot longer than that even if I hadn't done a few things that added 3-5 hours to my time.

The Vesperia speed-run is generally done with x10 experience, carrying over the best equipment, and constant Holy Bottle usage so that you almost never fight a non-boss battle. And people would be skipping through all of the cutscenes as fast as possible. So you can't use that as a judgement of the game's "story length".

But when reviewers make claims about game lengths, they're talking about normal, first time playthroughs. Obviously, people's playthroughs will differ. This review isn't the first time I've seen someone claim it's a 30 hour game, but I sure would have taken a lot longer than that even if I hadn't done a few things that added 3-5 hours to my time.

By the way, for anyone interested, the Idolm@ster costumes are now available on the PSN store in the U.S. Also some cameo costumes (outfits from previous characters in the series), apparently.

The shortest tales game I remember playing is Innocence.

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Too bad Tales of Destiny 2 and Tales of rebirth never got localized, they are really great games, specially Destiny 2.
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15 hours speed play on ToV, maybe, skipping ALL cutescenes, quite doable. Maybe Xillia can take the same +/- on easiest difficulty and skipping everything (cutescenes and skits).

... however, this setup and forcing me play basically the game 2 times for extra story and subevents is by no means a virtue, on the contrary, totally annoying, I hope to never see this gimmick implemented ever again....

Tales of Destiny 2 is awesome; it stinks we never got either editions localized... It is the game that I bought my Japanese PS2 to play and I don't regret it in the slightest. Even having to read a translation on paper of what they are saying, it's a great game. The ending kinda ticked me off a bit though... spoiler[magical time reset button and all...All you did was -nothing- congratz. xD]