Time for a Crazy Jamison Thought: JRPGs are making a comeback.
Now, hear me out. This year, we’ve seen Fire Emblem: Awakening, Ni No Kuni, Shin Megami Tensei IV, SMT: Soul Hackers, Etrain Odyssey IV, Pandora’s Tower, and we’ll be topping it off with HD editions ofKingdom Hearts and Final Fantasy X. Add that to the announcements of Final Fantasy XV, Kingdom Hearts III, Fire Emblem X SMT, Monolith’s “X”, a fair amount of Persona 5 buzz, and I’m starting to look pretty darn sane aren't I? And, of course, there's the very game I call into question today: Tales of Xillia.
Xillia is the story of a group of skilled individuals who — by convenient happenstance — find themselves fighting between two nations vying for a super weapon known as the Lance of Kresnik. Yes, it’s your typical overwrought JRPG plotline, but the nice thing is, the story focuses on the characters rather than the ridiculous plot. Mostly.
Speaking of characters, Xillia — unlike its predecessors — hits the player with a difficult choice right from the outset. While most JRPGs are tightly controlled stories following a single protagonist and their allies, Xillia essentially has two protagonists. What this means is you'll have to choose between Jude Mathis and Milla Maxwell. Jude is young med-student with a reserved, yet kind-hearted nature. Milla is, on the other other, a bit different. While her design might be too aesthetically traditional in all the wrong ways, her character is rather charming. An abrasive, inhuman, and yet passionately unselfish, Milla is perfectly juxtaposed to Jude's story arc.
To boot, the cast that makes up the rest of the party is chalk full of colorful personalities. Roughly half a dozen characters will join the two protagonists, and they make up a lovable bunch of main characters. In fact, I had almost no qualms with any of them for the majority of the experience. Back again are the "skits." Skits are inter-group conversations, ranging from the mission at hand to more levity-filled moments. Just like in previous Tales games, these optional conversations flesh out the characters with some well-written dialogue.
While the main cast is certainly filled with varied personalities, and is most often entertaining to watch / hear, the majority of the supporting cast fall pretty flat. So flat that, within the first hour or so, there's a good chance you'll be turned off from the whole experience. A combination of generic JRPG personalities, bad voice-acting, a poorly written script, and tacky character design can be almost too painful to endure.
Somewhere around the midway point of the second act, things begin to go downhill for the party as well. One particular twist is so over-foreshadowed, that if you aren't cursing everything that is good because of a certain someone's not-so-sudden but inevitable betrayal, you might be the most clueless being on Earth. Even worse, there are several strangely-contrived portions. Characters will do things just because. One person in particular sacrifices himself for his comrades, despite it being abundantly clear that they could have escaped without this Bruce Willis in Armageddon moment. Occurrences like that are just so head-scratchingly dumb, and make taking the more dramatic moments seriously a tiresome endeavor.
Many of the faults may be similar to what gamers have come to expect from the genre, but I find it puzzling as to why we accept them. These tropes were never all that enjoyable, and while I revel in the overly grandiose style of narrative some JRPGs employ, I have to question Xillia's. There almost seems to be some self-awareness by the devs as to how nonsensical the story really is, so they run with it. Sadly, they sprint on past the endzone, through the locker room, and out onto a freeway to be splattered by an eighteen-wheeler.
On the bright side, the writers were able to cook up a few interesting twists to the story, particularly regarding one of my favorite characters — the talking stuffed animal — Teepo. Even the aforementioned traitor has a few tricks up their sleeve. Though, when you create 30+ hours of content, you're bound to do a few things right.
Combat in the Tales series has always been a nice contrast to the rest of the JRPG genre. There are large open fields and dark dungeons, but encounters are not random. Most notably, combat is in real-time. Xilliakeeps up this trend, while also adding a few welcomed additions. One of the best additions is absolutelythe linking system. Players are now capable of pairing up characters during a fight for more reliable teamwork. Friendly AI will flank the enemy, watch your back, and even combine "artes" for a devastating magical attack. The shortfall of this, is that the AI doesn't always work as well as it should, especially when a character isn't paired up with the player. On several occasions, I witnessed the demise of my party mostly thanks to teammates standing around or not properly supporting each other with healing artes and potions.
Another welcomed addition is the new leveling system, which is reminiscent of Final Fantasy X. Rather than having no choice in what skills you work towards first, the new system allows players to progress each character in the direction they so choose. Come time for combat, it makes formulating a strategy mucheasier. Though each character has their preset ‘class’, being able to tweak them to varying degrees makes finding suitable battle formations and party setups quite pleasurable. Often times, you're doing so on the fly, in the midst of a chaotic battle, and the the result is a heart-pumping rush of adrenaline. Battles lean more to the cake-walk side because of this, but there are several boss fights sure to give you some trouble.
Much to my dismay, the world design left me dissatisfied. Many of the paths and highroads generally look the same, and don’t give you much room for exploration. They're more like misshaped arenas, used for leveling up between boss fights. Most egregious are the seaports. The Tales series has always boasted a beautiful artistic temperament, but this lazy design only serves to undermine all the hard work put into the aesthetic design.
