Tales of Zestiria Reviews

A good RPG

Never forget that Alisha costs 1300 yen

Good Game

30 fps lock, swines

Just dont waste your time. The other negative reviews are very accurate

hi First and worst Gamemechanics ever , shit ass hell. The rest great story, nice graphic. Worst Game ever , i played many rpgs before, never makes me agree like this. lev 70 endboss , nothing happens , full auto nothing , endboss not beatable , nice upfu..

This game is an insult to the Tales of series. DO NOT waste your money on this garbage.

In my initial review I said that I wasnt going to go into detail why I think this game might be so hated, that its just not worth my time. But I also dont like admitting defeat at the hands of a video game. So I will, without restraint, tear into everything that I found to be unbelievably stupid and absolutely infuriating. Before I even talk about the game itself, lets just assess the situation as a whole. This is a port. That much is blatantly evident to anyone who has ever played a game on PC before. Just looking at the keybindings gives that away. I have no idea who made the decision on these binds but my god, please look at a keyboard once in your life. While some of these keybinds can be changed, some can not. This might just be a minor problem since you can use controllers and its not making it unplayable overall. That said, when my controls are mainly bound to WASD and the mouse, I would rather not have to let got of either one just to go across my keyboard to press Enter to confirm actions. Even though menus show Enter as the button to confirm something, you cannot just press that button on the screen. It only exists as a visual reminder as to what button you actually need to press if you want to do something. Furthermore a lot of menu navigation is mapped to absurd things like Insert, Delete etc. Buttons I have never used in my entire life while playing any game on PC before. When you first load into the game it brings up a screen with the controls. It shows you a blank keyboard, no buttons filled in and then displays your buttons of control around it. If I have never played a game with a keyboard before, this blank keyboard wont help me find the specific buttons on the keyboard whatsoever. If I have played a game with a keyboard before, I do not need to see a blank keyboard as I already know where I find the buttons to control everything. A minor oversight on the port job also shows its face when you bring up the menu during battle. Buttons like R1, L1 and Joysticks can still be seen as control schemes for camera adjustments. The way the game teaches you how battle works during the beginning is quite alright. It gets the basics across. Where it does drop the ball hard though is further tutorials. A lot of combat related tips are found on stone monuments strewn across the landscape and are basically just a page of text. Its all disconnected, might be entirely unrelated or even something you dont remotely understand as it hasnt come up in an actual battle yet. Reading the tutorial is like reading my washing machine manual. Its great to know all the features it has but I'm really just interested in how to wash my clothes right now. Sadly the combat system is also the one thing that entirely brings this game down for me. It is very rigid and doesnt allow for a lot of freedom early on. You are basically looked down into a lane towards a specific enemy that is targeted. If you would like to strafe walk, you need to press an extra button to be able to. In what almost seems like a cruel joke, you can reverse this through an unlockable battle action that you can acquire later on which allows you to just freely walk during a battle. As free as the enemy lock-on system allows you to anyway. You will always be targeting an enemy but can switch targets to the nearest one. This still creates situations where your target runs away from you while other enemies approach you from an angle the camera doesnt capture. The combat camera also has quite a few issues when it comes to battles in more close quarter areas or when you fight enemies close to environment. It doesnt happen very often but at times you wont be able to see whats going on at all as the camera violently tries to move itself into a position that just isnt possible. Trying to reset the camera via its own dedicated button has never really had any satisfying results for me either. While early enemies might not be too big of a deal and its fairly simple overall, it does tend to become a battle about who can stunlock, juggle and outspam the enemy the fastest later on. It turns into a complete mess trying to get anything done when you fight multiple enemies with thousands of HP that simultaneously spam you with their spells. I dont mind a good challenging fight but it all seems to boil down to just hoping that your AI companions dont get hammered before they get the chance to hammer your opponents. Your companion AI does seem to be very basic and a lot of times they do very incomprehensible things or nothing at all when you try to give them basic commands to either Attack, Defend or Focus enemies. I am not going to go into micromanaging your own team with setting strategies and taking control of them to better manage during fights here. The main difficulty of battles ultimately boils down to what difficulty setting you play on. If you play on Simple enemies will react much slower, be lower level, have lower health and wont use special attacks. The more you increase the difficulty the faster they will react, attack more frequently, have higher level and more health. Difficulty levels go from Simple to Normal to Moderate to Hard and later to Intense and Chaos. As an example: If an enemy on Simple is Level 20, they would be Level 60 on Intense. Playing on harder difficulties does give you more benefits like increased experience, money or better item drops. I would not recommend this on a first playthrough however as the game specifically locks down elements like increased experience gain, making leveling up much harder during a first playthrough than a second playthrough. There are ways to work around this to some degree but I wouldnt say its worth the hassle. The item system and its various stats is very in-depth but also feels overly complicated should you want to squeeze out the maximum potential of a specific item or effect. I really couldnt be bothered with this during my first playthrough as it was very overwhelming and the frequent switching of equipment made it even more annoying to try and fit equipment together to achieve specific effects. So, now that the main part of this battle oriented game sounds like a nightmare, is there anything left that you could find enjoyment in? Yes there is but whether or not that is ultimately worth it is for everyone else to decide. In my earlier review I suggested to save yourself the trouble and just watch the anime. I specifically rewatched it alongside playing the game and I feel I made a mistake with that statement. The story, world building and characters really shine in this game. Way better than whatever the anime is trying to convey. The element that makes even the mediocre dungeon design and mostly uninteresting landscape acceptable is the soundtrack. Its a crime that it isnt available as DLC and instead you get overpriced costumes. Just dont bother with those as can you unlock various costumes and attachment alterations in the game. Even though I found those quite immersion breaking myself. So what is my verdict in the end? Unfortunately I cant recommend this game if you are looking for a fun battle experience. If you dont care for that and are more interested in spending more time within the world of Tales of Zestiria and its inhabitants, just focus on that and try to ignore the battle aspect of it. I'm sure you can have an alright time that way.