tales of graces

 

well after 60 hours, i finally completed tales of graces f. what a weird tales game. i really wanted to like it but in the end it turned out to be just a meh sort of game that ends up in the bottom tier of my personal tales of ranking. just a bunch of incoherent ramblings below as usual since this game is so confusing and thus so are my thoughts about it.

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the thing about graces is that the premise is SOOOOO good and so interesting, and honestly like something no other tales game had done? you start the game with everyone as kids and, although i thought it was going to be a less-than-one-hour portion of the game, it can actually take like 3-4 hours to get past the childhood section. but it's kinda cool cus you see how the characters bond with each other and have adventures in their childhood! but like i mentioned, the end of this arc is sooooo weird and abrupt, the 11-year-old protag decides to leave his family and childhood friend and sails to another city on his own to join the knight academy and become strong enough to protect his friends after sophie "dies". hubert his brother is given up for adoption to another family for some UNKNOWN reason, richard and asbel apparently never talk to each other even though they swore to be BFFs and live in the same city now, and cheria is left in the dust. oh ok.

so then fast forward 7 years and asbel has to go back to lhant and...the reunion with cheria and hubert is weird of course because even though asbel ran away to become stronger to protect his friends and family, he never bothers to keep in touch with them whatsoever in those 7 years. so of course cheria and hubert don't welcome him back with open arms because what kind of friend/brother is that lmao. the only one that doesn't seem to mind is richard because well, richard and asbel have more chemistry and moments together than with cheria, the supposed love interest of asbel, but more on that later.

but anyway, what i love about tales games is that even if the story is fucking mid (zestiria), the characters and their dynamic with each other can more than make up for it. unfortunately, even though the graces cast has such a strong foundation (they all met when they were kids and you SEE them have adventures together), once the 7 year skip happens, the chemistry isn't really there, not even in the skits. like, there is more charm and fun dynamics going on with the berseria cast, aka a band of 6 complete strangers, than these people that have known each other all their lives. and unfortunately it doesn't help that asbel is the most uncharismatic, unfunny, piece of blank paper since al/phen (yes i know arise came later but i played that one first). like, he's supposed to be the glue that ties them all together, but even HE acknowledges how terrible of a friend he was to not have ever kept in touch with any of the people he supposedly cares about.

does he make up for it or grow in any way? i mean, i guess sort of??? towards the end when he chooses to absorb lambda and rescue sophie from sacrificing herself. but that and what happens in ch 9 aka the last chapter don't really make up in my mind for almost 8 chapters of just absolute nothing from him. in fact, i think for the first 8 chapters, the story heavily focuses on sophie and her growing conflict with having to fight her best friend richard, and it isn't until chapter 9 that the game is like oh yeah haha actually asbel is the protagonist of the story (though sophie still has her moments). i was actually thinking about it and you do see that everyone has their strengths: sophie is an incredibly powerful humanoid built to fight lambda, cheria's healing artes are unmatched, pascal is a fucking genius engineer, hubert is a highly accomplished and high-ranked member of the strahta military, and uh asbel is.....what again? oh yeah he's the leader of lhant because his dad passed away even though asbel has absolutely no experience leading a country or any military experience but oh well. ugh just his character is so frustrating and boring and i think he might even be worse than al/phen in my eyes.

so yeah i mean, it's funny because i LOVE sophie, cheria, PASCAL (thank GOD her scenes would be a highlight of the game to me i mean minus that weird scene she has where she harasses sophie but we don't talk about that), even hubert who isn't afraid to knock some real sense into asbel, but again the glue that is supposed to hold the gang together is just so weak that i'd be bored to tears any time the story would shift its focus back to asbel. (notice i didn't mention malik because him and his backstory are literally non-existent to me). ch 9 having richard back was actually a plus because i feel like he's what asbel should have been, his interactions with everyone in the gang feel so natural and my favorites are of course the ones he has with sophie. just ugh their dynamic is so cute and wholesome!

and then there is the forced pairing that they do with cheria and asbel. i have to say, i think asbel/cheria is like...the worst hetero tales pairing i've yet witnessed lol. like i think back to marta/emil, luke/tear, or EVEN sionne/alphen and i'm like....what are we doing here. i know asbel is supposed to be all oblivious to cheria's feelings because he's a blank sheet of paper, but it's just beyond frustrating because, like i mentioned, cheria is such an accomplished, kind, indignation-casting-badass yet caring healer who has a goal in her mind, while asbel is running around not really knowing what he wants to do for 8/9ths of the game. the most frustrating part was when cheria says she wants to continue her relief work around the world after the final battle with lambda is over and asbel is like "oh wow, all that charity work is going to make me look so bad" ?????? like i know he's only 18 but my dude. please.

the funniest part has to be ch 9 where the game, although heavily hinted through the first 8 chapters the crush that cheria has on asbel, asbel never once reciprocates that feeling, so now in ch9 they have all this talk about asbel needing to think about marriage and kids and his legacy blah blah blah. and then there's one scene where asbel gets really flustered at seeing cheria for some reason?? we're 50 hours into the game and the game is now trying to tell you, hey asbel actually does have feelings for cheria, but we're only going to show it in this one scene where he blushes and acts really out of character and never having him act like this one. like....omg. i know sometimes being away for a person makes you realize your feelings for another person, and i think the game could have been trying to convey this, but again the writing in this game is so questionable that this one scene just sticks out like a sore thumb.

and then of course there's the proposal. idk if i'm supposed to read asbel in the ace spectrum or something but....what was that. after he adopts sophie and becomes her father, he's like well i'm gonna need someone to also help me take care of sophie, and well cheria you've been there for me this whole time, so uhhhh do you want to come live with me?? like, again, i know he's supposed to be bad with words and totally oblivious, but that was the least romantic scene between the male/female protags in the tales series i've ever witnessed. idk what they were aiming for but again i think the writing butchered another scene that could have been really impactful and have given cheria the respect that she much deserves, but instead she gets asbel giving her a business proposal of having them come live together so they can raise sophie as a family.

the ONE thing i will say though is that i LIKED how asbel phrased it in that, he made cheria wait for 7 years without any word from him, and this time he's like "i know how important the relief work is for you, so now i will be the one to wait for you to return home for when you feel like doing so" AND MY GIRL CHERIA DOES THAT!!! i thought she was going to just blindly say yes to asbel's proposal and stay with him, but again my girl cheria is like WELL, sophie, i know that might make you happy, and it MAY happen, but i've got my own path to follow for now :) QUEEN!!! so props to the writers for how they handled that :D

and last thing i want to say about asbel because i've already ranted too much about him, is that...it's great how him and richard seem to have more chemistry and moments together than cheria and asbel. like, those two scenes in ch 9 where asbel grabs richard by the hand as the latter is falling, and then that ending scene with sophie at the tree where they are holding each other's hands??? COME OOONNNN!!! asbel/richard is much more interesting and developed than asbel/cheria and that should have been the main pairing, but i guess we weren't ready for that yet when this released. oh well, at least later zestiria came along and gave everyone the mlm/wlw representation that we were waiting for.

anyways, just a few more bullet points on what i liked/disliked since this already turned out to be longer than i expected:

• gameplay is so fun and dynamic, but what else is new in a tales game. loved the skill level-up system and i can see how fun it would be to get them all, if i was 20 years younger. the whole dualize thing took me way too long to get the hang of and i don't know why, i later realized berseria does something similar with its equipment system lol so idk.
• i already made a post about this but that scene where asbel is all like " :) you have to give my body back to me after i let you do all the dirty work because remember!!! not giving it back would be a bad thing to do!!! :)" to lambda just made me eyeroll so bad and once again proved how this game suffers so much from its writing. probably the most cringe scene in a tales game i've played.
• i can't stress enough how cool the spell casting looks in this game. seeing cheria cast indignation or divine saber never got old, and pascal's mystic artes animations are also so fun to watch. i need a compilation of all the tales characters casting indignation because i think this might be my favorite one yet...
• this game turned out to be grindier than i expected. i always play tales games in normal first time through, and this is the first time that i had to switch it to easy for the final battle. i had never struggled with normal difficulty before but idk why this game was just so ruthless in the boss battles. the final final boss was just a big whatever, and the fact that you HAVE to use hourglasses because of it's stupid mystic arte is a joke. not sure that's good boss design but whatever. yes the gameplay is fun but unfortunately the game's story was just not that interesting for me to want to grind for hours to stay in the game's world a bit longer. just...so tedious imo.
• add this to the list of tales games with subpar music. why why why haven't we gotten a good tales game with banging music all across since the symphonia era. what are we doing!!!!!
• and i've mentioned it before but my god these dungeon designs are TERRIBLE. does all the budget go to developing the characters and story (and i guess those sick-ass spell animations) because my god it's dire out here. traversing the dungeons is a chore and even more so when the music is just boring as hell.
• i think this is the fourth tales game that i've played where they do the whole thing of "and there is another planet actually!!" but it's just done in such a half-assed way that it's like, just stop. xillia, arise, and graces do such a poor, rushed job of showing what the "other" world is like that i can't believe symphonia, a game from 2004, is still king imo in that department. they always make the second planet look so lifeless, void of any interesting or memorable locations, absolutely nothing remarkable about them, and yet they love to shove in the "and there is another planet actually!" as a plot-twist. sorry but fodra was lame and boring and i didn't care about its queen. NEXT.
• interesting how sophie doesn't become human at the end. at the end of ch8 seeing an animated grown-up sophie gave the impression that that was supposed to be sophie as a human, but turns out it's just sophie in the body of the fodra queen, which...okay. sophie has the body of a grown up now but still has to live on forever. and i mean i love that at the end she came to terms with the fact that she will outlive her friends but that now she has a new purpose where she will protect asbel's dream of a peaceful world.
• i spent so much time ranting about asbel that i didn't talk about how much i love sophie. she was one of the reasons why i wanted to finish the game and she did not disappoint. glad she gets a happy ending with her besties :) (why is lambda's name carved on the tree again?)
• the scene where hubert tries to declare his love to pascal was funny and cute lmao i thought they were going to ruin pascal's character but nope, that was so on point. thank you writers you get a +1 for that.
• forgot to mention, lambda was sort of a lame antagonist. also mentioned it in a previous post but the game trying to turn him into a tragic villain was just not it. everyone involved in experimenting with a mysterious entity in the end gets what they deserve. not sure why they thought i would care about cornell dying to protect lambda when he's the one that chose to play with fire.
• oh, and what in the knight of ratatosk was that with lambda and the fodra queen at the end where they will spend thousands of years unraveling fodra's anger and so they won't wake up for like a thousand years lol. oh namco. WAIT and berseria too with laphi and velvet hello.

so yeah i mean, i think overall graces had a really strong foundation to tell a compelling story but in the end it just fell flat, and the supposed main protagonist was just not helping. i doubt i'll ever get the ache to play this game again, as much as it pains me because sophie/cheria/pascal/hubert deserve better lol. playing this did make me want to play zestiria again because of just how damn fun that whole cast is, and also give vesperia another try because, while my time with graces was like a 5/10 experience at best and idk if i'm sounding too harsh with it, at least it didn't bore me enough that it caused me to drop the game 20 hours in like vesperia. so in the end i think my personal ranking for tales games is now this:

symphonia, berseria, abyss, xillia 1&2, symphonia 2, zestiria, graces, phantasia, arise, vesperia.

not sure what tales game will be next, might be eternia with the remastered version coming soon or i might want to finish vesperia finally, but it's been so long since i've played abyss that i need to replay it since i think i'll enjoy its story and characters more now. we'll see B) anyways thank you graces for the great supporting characters but i'm ready to finally move on now.