Tales of 2010 - August - Legendia

[omegabyte]

Five months into our Tales of 2010 marathon, and we come upon what many consider to be the black sheep of the Tales family: Tales of Legendia.

Legendia follows Senel Coolidge and his newfound allies as they search for his kidnapped sister, Shirley, aboard an island-sized ancient ship. Shirley has some sort of connection to this mysterious ship, the Legacy, and many believe her to be a descendant of the Merines, the being capable of controlling it.

As Tales games go, Legendia is notable for being one of the few games to diverge significantly from the series norm, for better or for worse. The game's development was spearheaded by a collaboration between members of Namco's Tales Studio as well as members of their Soul Calibur team, which lead to a combat system that controls similar to a fighting game. It is also the only game in the series not scored by Motoi Sakuraba; instead, Go Shiina took up the reins and produced what is widely considered to be the best soundtrack in the series.

Although I refuse to say that the game is bad (because it's not), it does have more than its share of niggling issues, which I'm certain we'll all be sharing as we play through this game over the course of the month. Have fun, guys!

[TheAnimeMan]

I'm skipping Legendia month, I'm sorry but spending 80 to complete the whole game with cheat codes tells me that its just to much. Although I will say it was one of the more interesting games in the series

[omegabyte]

I've started up on this. Say what you will about the mechanics of the game, but damn the characters are funny

Just getting Norma on my team now. Her bid to join the party is absolutely golden - "Join my team and let's be friends, dammit!"

Edit: I'm just starting chapter 3 now, and I'm having a good time. The little issues aren't as big a problem as I remember, but it also probably helps that I have the strategy guide. The lack of a mini-map in dungeons is a real pain in the ***.

[Zerker]

My memory of the game is that the dungeons were beyond bland, and then the game makes you play them twice. I don't have any particular desire to subject myself to that again, characters or not.

[Zelgodes]

Oho, I'll get to this within the week. For now I've got a couple other games I want to play, plus I was on vacation since Wednesday so I started playing Tales of the World again since I was bored. I'll still participate when we get around to that month but I might be in a random position by then.

[Nyx]

I adore Legendia and am probably one of the only weirdos who enjoys it. It's goofy, but it has a lot of personality. I wish I could participate this month but I've got a lot of other games on my plate, and also my copy is in the state of New York at the moment. I hope more people join in for this one though.

[TheAnimeMan]

I love the personality and characters I don't particular like the length I mean I CHEATED and took 80 hours I'd hate to see what not cheating would done. And this is one of the few times where I didn't fall asleep every few hours playing

[omegabyte]

I love the personality and characters I don't particular like the length I mean I CHEATED and took 80 hours I'd hate to see what not cheating would done. And this is one of the few times where I didn't fall asleep every few hours playing

Well, really it all depends on how far you go. The main questline is only about 40-50 hours long. It's the character quests that add on the additional 40 hours. Since the credits roll after the main quest, I'd say just beating that much constitutes finishing the game, especially since at that point you've visited all the dungeons there are to visit.

Anyways, I'm flying through this game and having a blast. It's definitely not the best game in the series, but I absolutely love the story and setting, and oh god, the music. It just hooks you. Right now I'm just nearing the end of chapter 4.

[Quin]

Was Legendia the one that butchered Indignation (The spell)? I can never remember.

[StormofSwords]

Wow, I love this game. Imaginative characters, impressively designed maps and fast(If not particularly diverse)battles. The music will reach out and grab you, and small diversions like cooking and character skits are as cool as ever, even if there aren't as many skits as would have been nice.

There are problems...Random battles were a big mistake, likely implemented due to lack of time and budget, and the lack of voice acting for the second half of the game, as well as the repetitive nature of the dungeons can be annoying. My advice is to pick up another game for a while before taking on the second half of the game to avoid getting bored halfway through.

(Also, as a random note, I'm pretty sure this is the only Tales game that lets you go head-to-head with the Wonder Chef. Just saying.

[Zelgodes]

I really feel like popping this in my PS2 right now, so chances are I'll be able to post an update by tonight. I've gotta say, even though I've finally begun to take full advantage of cooking in these recent Tales playthroughs, I still love the system that Tales of Legendia introduced. Instead of allowing you to cook once after every battle at any time, the ability to cook up food in advance with typically higher restoration values than in previous games has worked for me.

I was never a big fan of necessitating enemy drops for learning Eres though. I think that's only the system for whatever non-Iron Eres are called, but I do recall having to backtrack once or twice to find some less common drops.

[StormofSwords]

I think it was only Spell Eres that required it, but it was a bit of a pain if you happened to miss the items or sell them. Fortunately, there's always Gamefaqs.

[sirsniffy]

Tales of Legendia is the Phantasy Star III of the Tales series.

[Zelgodes]

How terribly enlightening.

[omegabyte]

I'm nearly done the main quest. Chapter 7 now. I still love this game. It may have its flaws, but the characters, story, setting, and of course the music all more than make up for them.

Also, I'm not sure if you all remember, but there is an interesting story behind why there isn't voice acting during the character quests. During the localization process, they were trying to decide where to make cuts for budget reasons. When they were looking at all the things that they could cut, "Character Quests" was one of the subsections they could choose from. Assuming that these were side quests, they figured it was a good choice. It wasn't until after they had almost finished with the localization that they realized their blunder. It's probably one of the more amusing localization mistakes I've heard of.

[Zelgodes]

Well I managed to put a fair amount of time into the game and finished after the battle with Moses. I have quite a lot of fond memories about this game, the music being one of them. It's a completely different feeling than any other Tales game, which isn't surprising considering how similar the Sakuraba tracks can feel between Symphonia, Abyss, and Vesperia. I've always enjoyed the fact that Tales of Legendia has a protagonist with a fighting style not dependent on swords. I remember trying to control Chloe after a while the first time I played the game, but it was so similar to older fighting styles that I never got used to using her. Throws are a nice addition to the battle system, which reminds me of how nice it was to see Senel's fighting style added to Tales of the World in the Fighter class.

That was only about 3 hours of playtime, extended slightly since I backtracked to Falling Waters to get the statuettes needed for Will's Stone Blast spell. I was surprised that that system would come back to bite me so soon, plus I ended up turning it off since everything in the next dungeon seemed to be resistant to earth attacks anyway. That might turn out to be a pain.

[omegabyte]

So I just wrapped up the main quest. About to start into the character quests.

Still having a blast

[Zelgodes]

I've put aside some time for this over the last few days and I've just now gotten to Chapter 3 after clearing the Waterways. I'm getting pretty annoyed with character behaviors, what with Chloe changing her targets so often and typically running away from enemies attacking the casting party members. I really wish I had some more options for AI behavior in this game, but I've got Moses in my party now so hopefully I'll have some more flexibility in battles.

That Waterways music was pretty awesome, which is a good thing considering how long the dungeon was. I wish there were some more opportunities to play the boss battle music too, because it's probably the best regular boss theme in the series.

[Zelgodes]

I made quite a bit more progress over the last couple days. I got past the battleground sequence last night and am about to make an assault on the bridge. I'm honestly getting very annoyed with the battles since the party AI is rather stupid. Chloe keeps leaving enemies alive and running off to fight something that I'm already taking care of and never seems to keep the pressure up against spellcasting enemies. Senel gets some very nice Eres once you get to around level 20 and learn a good base tech in Swallow Dance. Once you can start throwing medium weight enemies there's a lot more damage potential there as well.

The music has been great this whole time, and the enemy army's theme that plays during the assault sequence in Chapter 4 is just great. I'm really looking forward to getting into the meat of the story soon, especially the rather creepy section right before the end of the main quest.

By the way does the synthesis shop only open once you get into the character quest section? That's what I thought at first, but I did get a synthesis specific item and thought it might actually open towards the end of the main game. It's still not open yet so I wouldn't be surprised to find out that I won't get to it for a while.

[omegabyte]

I made quite a bit more progress over the last couple days. I got past the battleground sequence last night and am about to make an assault on the bridge. I'm honestly getting very annoyed with the battles since the party AI is rather stupid. Chloe keeps leaving enemies alive and running off to fight something that I'm already taking care of and never seems to keep the pressure up against spellcasting enemies. Senel gets some very nice Eres once you get to around level 20 and learn a good base tech in Swallow Dance. Once you can start throwing medium weight enemies there's a lot more damage potential there as well.

The music has been great this whole time, and the enemy army's theme that plays during the assault sequence in Chapter 4 is just great. I'm really looking forward to getting into the meat of the story soon, especially the rather creepy section right before the end of the main quest.

By the way does the synthesis shop only open once you get into the character quest section? That's what I thought at first, but I did get a synthesis specific item and thought it might actually open towards the end of the main game. It's still not open yet so I wouldn't be surprised to find out that I won't get to it for a while.

Yeah, it doesn't open up til the character quests. Myself, I'm on the third dungeon of Norma's character quest, the Crystal Forest. Gotta say, loving them. Will's was fantastic and Norma's is impressive as well. Most Tales characters don't get this kind of full-blown attention. I quite like it.