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We learn as much about the characters as we need to without a stupid subplot or rivalry that ruins my suspense of disbelief. Other Tales games get over ambitious or try shoehorning in characters and subplots that aren't really important or don't make sense for whole hosts of reasons, but Zestiria keeps it nice and simple. The focus of the story made that a point I could mostly overlook though. In retrospect her role in the story makes sense but at the time I didn't understand. I haven't seen many others say that, but I don't get the character. It's something we learn along the way and the conflict between their goals becomes more obvious as we go along. The Shepherd should not entangle himself in political matters, and Alisha's goals are political. How? Alisha's departure is foreshadowed pretty clearly and while the execution of it should have been better she doesn't fit in the party. It has infamously awful pacing, half the cast are unlikable jackasses, and it suffers from Tales-brand stupidity most of the way. I really like the scenario and ideas behind it but the execution is so lacking. I'd definitely rank it above Abyss which. By that I mean characters don't act in dumb or inconsistent ways all that often, which is often the grease for the wheels in these games.
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There's a major flub around a third of the way and there's some elements I don't like but the experience is remarkably coherent and smooth for a Tales game. The only thing I like about the eleth gauge is that you can see when the opponent can mystic arte, which is pretty nice. Vesperia's manual, shared overlimit bar is the best. The only thing I can think of that I don't like is that enemies sometimes pop out of combos for no good reason and that the eleth gauge system is dumb - I don't like being at the mercy of the bar.
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The artes system is cool, most of the characters are fun to play and easy to pick up, the skills and titles system are addictive to work towards. Japan's pretty close to my feeling on battle systems though (minus again the exclusion of Zestiria which should definitely be in there, above Xillia, equal(?) to Vesperia).
TALES OF ZESTIRIA SOREY SC CONSUMPTION SERIES
Zestiria has allot of problems but despite them I think this is the overall strongest title in the series in a long time. If the Japanese fans are still spurning the game because of the Alisha deal, I really hope Bamco doesn't back away from the things which work in this game. I've played all the games on those lists except Xillia 2 and Legendia, and I peg Zestiria above a few of them pretty cleanly. I really like allot of what Zestiria does.