User Reviews (1 - 11 of 25)

Show these reviews first:

Highest Rated
Lowest Rated Newest
Oldest Most Helpful
Least Helpful

Starts OK, gets better, then gets worse

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 1 / 5
Date: June 12, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I don't ask much from a game, but button mashing is one thing that drives me nuts. The game seems to stop for scenes all the time. What is the point in giving me control over the character to take two steps to start a movie, then get control and take three steps to start a movie. That is how this game starts (and many others) and then that is how this game ends. The middle is pretty good but about 30 hours into it I could not wait for it to end and even skipping anything extra it still took another 15 hours to finish. It was not bad enough to just give up but darn close.

This could have been so much better...

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 1 / 6
Date: November 03, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I'll start out here by saying that I couldn't finish this game. Its negative points just dragged it down too far for me to feel inspired to work through them. First off, and I don't know why more people haven't mentioned it, but there is an unacceptable amount of slowdown and ridiculous loading times in this game. On the world map, if you try to rotate the camera, what you get is extreme lag that wouldn't be acceptable this day and age in an online game, let alone a single player title. And then, once you get into a battle, the load times are beyond the pale of acceptability. There's no excuse for such shoddy programming--it makes Suikoden V look absolutely sprightly, and that is a condemnation and a half.

Aside from the technical problems, the battle system is simply garbage. They attempt to introduce a third plane, but if you want to use it, you give up the ability to strike opponents while you maneuver. If they couldn't allow you to attack while maneuvering on the field of battle, there really isn't any point in including the ability to move sideways in the first place. The rest is just button mashing, and sparrows can do you more substantial injury than bigger monsters, simply because you can't hit them or guard against them properly. It's truly a ridiculous setup. And for all intents and purposes, the battles are all 2D, which doesn't jive with the rest of the game design.

Also infuriating are the skits. The text is presented much too small, and it shouldn't be necessary at all, as the Japanese version of the game has these interludes fully voice acted. Guess it just wasn't worth their time in the NA version of the game. Well, you will excuse me if I'm not thrilled to be getting sloppy seconds.

The most frustrating thing (aside from me having bought this game--never again, on a Tales title, I promise you that), is that it could have been an excellent game. I liked the characters, I liked their designs, the whole thing looked decent enough--but it fell flat on its face when it came to game play. One of my more unfortunate purchases, of late. I wouldn't recommend it, at all.

Poor

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 0 / 1
Date: June 16, 2008
Author: Amazon User

This game has poor graphics. The storyline, dialog, and voice acting are all very lame. The music is unremarkable. The gameplay, while fast paced, I found mundane.

This game is a hybrid of sorts between an adventure game with JRPG cliches and a fighting game such as Street Fighter or King of Fighters. The fighting game aspect is really like a poorly made fighting game, though. It features gameplay from both adventure games and fighting games, but excels at neither. Tales of Legendia has this same problem.

An OK game, though mediocre in many aspects

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 7 / 13
Date: January 07, 2007
Author: Amazon User

Having bought "Tales of the Abyss" before my trip to Europe, and then played in earnest after my return, I have to say that while the game has some interesting twists and turns, it's really justa mediocre game.

Let's start with the good. The selling point of the "Tales" series has always been the battle element, and this game is no different. Eliminating the random encounter aspect found in "Legendia" (which was incredibly frustrating, with the high rate of encounter), in "Abyss", you can see your attackers at all times, and avoid battle if desired. Should an enemy hit you from behind, you will be surprised, although it is hardly devastating (basically, you simply start with the other members in your party fighting, but there are few other penalties). Battle itself remains the same . you move your character into position to attack, and can guard attacks or set up combos, etc. I have to disagree with the other reviewers here - I found the "field of fonons" aspect incredibly tiresome (manoeuvering characters into the circles, half of which need to be energized, to get a special attack that does scant more than your regular attack would have done), and hardly worth the effort. However, the "Mystic Arts" were a nice touch, and pretty easy to pull off in general.

Unfortunately, this is where the good ends. That's not necessarily a bad thing - RPG's are chock full of battles, so it's nice that they are an attraction rather than a side event (or more probably, a drag). However, the story is blah (I'm pretty sure this same story has been the base for every "Tales" game I've played, since "ToD 2" for the playstation. The grapics are really bad (surprising, since this is one of the advertised features on the back of the game). I'm not much for disqualifying a game based on graphics, and I don't here, but we're in 2006 - let's get out of 2001. The backgrounds are horrible, there is no depth (that silly "mist" feature, so prevalent in the Dynasty Warriors games, rears its ugly head here), and the character designs are uninspired. The skits are more annoying than ever - it is incredible that the characters move their mouths, yet still no sound comes out. Moreover, you can't simply skip through individual speaking (you can skip an entire skit, but you can't hurry them along, basically), and they take an inordinate amount of time. The gameplay is incredibly linear, and a few sidequests can't change this fact. And all of it drives toward an ending which is ho-hum, at best.

So, there you have it. The battle sequences remain fun, but as always, if an RPG is depending on battles to give it meaning, it has problems...

Good game, mirred by flaws. Isn't that always the case?

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 2 / 2
Date: April 05, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I bought a PS3 as a Christmas present for myself a few months back, and I've been on a mad dash to buy all of the RPGs I missed (I had sold my PS2 way back in 2004 and never bought it back). I picked this up since it appeared to be a good game.

I'll be honest...at first I wasn't happy with what I saw. I found the game dry and bereft of fun factor. So I stopped playing it for a while. Plus there were other games that caught my interest.

I went back and for some reason I stuck it out. I'm glad I did. This is a very well put together game. It's not a legendary great by any means, but it's well deserving of a play through.

The good:

- Graphics are smooth at parts, great anime scenes.
- Character development is top notch. This is probably the best feature of the game. Every character has a very deep story behind them, and as you go through the game you'll be exposed to more and more.
- Story starts out very slow and bland, but as you progress you'll see that there's a very deep story behind the game. This is consistent with Tales games in particular.
- Ultimate weapons can be bought from stores very early in the game. Nice touch.
- Apparently there is New Game +. I haven't gotten that far yet but that's what I've heard.

Now, the bad:
- Not all graphics are great, and on an LCD this has never been more true. Some scenes have jaggies galore.
- The music isn't memorable whatsoever. Unfortunate since everything else in the game is.
- Loading. The game does a small load every time you advance text. It's not bad or anything, just curious since this is well into the PS2's development lifecycle, you would think they would have learned to slipstream or preload properly to avoid this. It's just irritating (to me) to hear my PS3 load every time I advance game text. Minor annoyance.
- Some boss fights are ridiculous. Like one fight I was doing fine, doing major damage, and then all of a sudden the boss released some attack that killed Luke. One hit. And I was OVERleveled with an ultimate weapon.
- Ion, one of the key characters in the game, is not subject to the same great character development as the others. Ion feels like a doll compared to the rest; his voice actor is terrible, the character is boring and it's a shame considering he is such an important character in the game.

Do I recommend it? Yes. But don't go in expecting some legendary experience. You have to be "open to its charm".

The Greatest RPG, But...

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 1 / 10
Date: November 04, 2006
Author: Amazon User

It's the Greatest RPG game!! SO FUN and AWESOME story~

~But I disappointed about No Vocal in OP and No Screen Chat voice.

What's the story on the story?

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 1 / 1
Date: July 07, 2008
Author: Amazon User

After quitting this game in disgust, I later picked up it to become entirely engrossed. What happened?
I started this game off with high hopes, as my first foray into the Tales of series, and found myself dumping the game about a third of the way into it. I'm very sensitive to poor acting, and the voice actors are utterly intolerable in this game. There really is no reason for Saturday morning cartoon-level acting like this. It cheapens the emotion impact of the dialogue and is offensive to players with matured taste in drama and narrative.
As the story progressed, I had no issue with the system or combat engine, it's nothing shockingly new, but I found it solid and enjoyable. The auto feature is fairly nice for money and EXP farming purposes. However, I was extremely disappointed with the main character--he seems intolerable. I also found the written dialogue slightly more than "kiddy fare" and was extremely tempted to buy the import to see if it was any less inane in Japanese than English. I frequently will give a game a break if I find it suffers from shabby translation, but in this case I didn't feel like spending the cash, and set the game aside where it sat on my shelf. I was extremely disappointed after having been so fascinated by the character designs and the game play.

However, I picked it up an honest year later and simply just fell in love. After a while, the character developement speeds along and you end up with a drastically different person on your hands than you started with. The rest of the cast fleshes out equally well and eventually become amusing and endearing. The world may not be as deep or complex as some more infamous RPG titles, but it's a fun ride most of the way through. The dialouge gets a mite less 4th-grade-reading-level, but I would qualify my recommendation by saying it never fully approaches an adult or mature level of sophistication. But for the range it aims at, it's awfully fun. You just have to tough it out for a good half of the way before you realize you've got a little gem on your hands.

Most folks, even RPG nuts, aren't going to want to do that, though.

And for the record, the Japanese spoken dialogue is a little corny, too. I'm playing through in Japanese and enjoying myself immensely. Luke sounds a little too fruity for his own good... go have a listen on YouTube.

A little old but very good!

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 1 / 1
Date: August 08, 2008
Author: Amazon User

I picked up this game for 30 bucks at a Gamestop in the mall. At first I had my doubts but I was surprised. Let's get started.

I'll start by looking at different factors of the game and grading them.

Gameplay: 8/10

The gameplay for Tales of the Abyss is exceptionally fun and pretty easy to learn. You are not stuck with using any characters as long as you have them in your party, with only a couple of story-triggered exceptions.

I was not used to the new battle system but even so, it didn't take long to master. You can control your allies in battle, what they should do, and if you're worried, you can just make them do whatever you want them to, regardless. You can also change the battle formation of your characters. It's easy to assign Strike Artes as Luke for the controls and easy to actually execute them.

Story: 10/10

This story is full of excitement, a little romance, drama and mysteries, not to mention interesting characters. There was not a moment that I can remember being bored while playing this game. A lot is resolved during the game's plot and if not, replaying the game and doing a sidequest might answer any unsolved questions the player might have.

Graphics: 7/10

For a 2005 game, this game is not bad. The graphics are not horrible but they are not formidable with say Tales of Vesperia. The graphics are more realistic than Tales of Symphonia's graphics, which is something that I liked. I often saw blurry blades of grass and textures of trees while playing the game that disappointed me but as I said, this is a game published in the year 2005 and developed even earlier than that. The graphics are decent and allow you to enjoy the game.

Music: 8/10
Well, I love a couple of the epic instrumentals this game has and I love "Karma" by Bump of Chicken and its many versions. Other than that, though, there is nothing too exceptional about Tales of the Abyss's sound track.

Voice Acting: 9/10
The English voiceacting was very well done, in my opinion. I give it a 9/10 because there is always room for improvement but everyone had a remarkably good voice that suited their roles. I found myself searching for voice acted cutscenes on purpose. I usually don't like English voices but even Mieu won me over.

Replay Value: 9/10
There are many sidequests, I have heard, for this game. I have also seen people play this game as many as 5 times. That speaks for itself.

Tales of the Abyss

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: August 12, 2008
Author: Amazon User

"Tales of the Abyss" is another game in the series for the PlayStation 2, made by those who made "Tales of Symphonia".

Because of that, it shares many similarites to that in how it plays. The game is all in 3D, and you're able to move in 3D on the battlefield. This adds a lot to the game, but also makes it a little easier as well, as it's not a difficult task to just go around an enemy. The game also introduces things like FOFs that make fighting a very fun experience to just mix and match you attacks and make combos. There are also various difficulty modes that can be switched to make the game either harder for those that want a challenge.

There's a large amount of voice acting in the game, tons of sidequests, and the story is nice as well with interesting characters. The game lasts about 50 hours overall, and when you consider the sideusts the game could easily reach pretty close to 100 hours. Overall this is my favorite of all the games in the series released in North America.

If you like Tales you'll like this

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: August 19, 2008
Author: Amazon User

With Tales of Legendia being a disappointment to many, this game was a return to form for the Tales of Series. If you liked Tales of Symphonia, everything will be familiar: the art style, music, and gameplay that made many new fans of the series. Interestingly, the games protagonist is the prince of a Kingdom who due to a kidnapping when he was young has been kept inside the palace with only a servant as company. The game really begins when there is a attack on the palace and he and one of the attackers are teleported faraway and are forced to rely on each other to make it back home.

Review Page: 1 2 3 Next 

Actions