Tales of the Abyss Ventures to Third Dimension

[Macstorm]

Who needs the third dimension? Apparently Luke and Tear do. They will be showing up on Nintendo's new handheld.

Story

[Confessor Rahl]

Thats.... really random!

[Quin]

Might this mean Europe finally gets Tales of the Abyss?

[Strawberry Eggs]

Wow indeed!

Unfortunately, with Namco-Bandai track record of releasing both DS Tales game and remakes/ports of Tales games outside of Japan, I'll likely never play this in English on the 3DS. :P Here's hoping those rumors about the system being region-locked aren't true. . .

[SiliconNooB]

Wouldn't Tales of Symphonia have made more sense? That seems to be the one that everyone loves.

[Wheels]

Wow indeed!

Unfortunately, with Namco-Bandai track record of releasing both DS Tales game and remakes/ports of Tales games outside of Japan, I'll likely never play this in English on the 3DS. :P Here's hoping those rumors about the system being region-locked aren't true. . .

Well you can't really just call it a track record, you have to look at each game individually. Symphonia Nintendo was probably involved with, and that probably prevented the PS2 version from coming here. Perhaps the same is true for Vesperia, or maybe it just didn't sell. The DS games chances probably weren't helped by an over-saturated RPG market on DS, but Abyss could be the big early RPG on the system before any others come out, and then could help it's chances of coming here.

[Nightfox]

Wouldn't Tales of Symphonia have made more sense? That seems to be the one that everyone loves.

For what it's worth, I like Abyss far more, and on several other RPG and/or fan sites the vote could go either way. It's probably the game I've replayed the most since FF4 and still love it.

Symphonia did sell far better though, but that had other factors in its favor.

I've also seen the quote about how Abyss sold terribly in the U.S. and that's (possibly) one reason they are anxious about localizing other games, but to be fair it did release with anticipation for FF12 two weeks later at a fever pitch and on a system with several RPGs already. Tales of Legendia was still pretty fresh too when Abyss came out, only 8 months old, and we've seen how divisive that game was and may have turned off some buyers to the next game, or even "Tales" burnout.

[Zelgodes]

Omigod need!

Would be soooooo cool to play my favorite game on the go.

[sirsniffy]

If Namco Bandai can add more stuff, I may get it. Like some extra characters to play as or extra scenarios. I already played the heck out of the PS2 version.

[omegabyte]

Wouldn't Tales of Symphonia have made more sense? That seems to be the one that everyone loves.

I was thinking the same thing, myself. It was a much better game in almost every respect, and the visuals hold up much better - though, I wonder how good cel-shading would look in 3D? The whole point of cel-shading is to produce a 2D appearance. Kinda contradictory. That might be why they chose Abyss - it wasn't cel-shaded.

[Miyosaka]

I'm all for this. The original suffered from truly game-breaking load times. If they can remake this to almost look and sound as good as the original and eliminate the load times, it'll be a great game.

[Clix]

...Actually... Since it'll be on a cartridge, load times may vanish.

[Wheels]

I was thinking the same thing, myself. It was a much better game in almost every respect

Quiet you! :P

[Strawberry Eggs]

Well you can't really just call it a track record, you have to look at each game individually. Symphonia Nintendo was probably involved with, and that probably prevented the PS2 version from coming here. Perhaps the same is true for Vesperia, or maybe it just didn't sell. The DS games chances probably weren't helped by an over-saturated RPG market on DS, but Abyss could be the big early RPG on the system before any others come out, and then could help it's chances of coming here.

Well, they do have the game already translated and dubbed, so there's no need to redo that. There's hope yet for this game.

[Wheels]

I'm all for this. The original suffered from truly game-breaking load times. If they can remake this to almost look and sound as good as the original and eliminate the load times, it'll be a great game.

It didn't have load times any worse than your average PS2 game, I'm guess your point of comparison is Symphonia?

[Wheels]

Well, they do have the game already translated and dubbed, so there's no need to redo that. There's hope yet for this game.

I agree! Namco will be wanted some games on the system over here, and I'm sure it will be RPG starved at launch. Unlike the DS Tales games I think the climate is right for it. We shall see though!

[HJ+]

Why anyone would want to play Tales of Symphonia after playing a newer Tales game is beyond me. Yes, ToS was nice when it was released, especially considering it was on the GC, which desperately needed some RPG love. Take off your rose-tinted glasses, however, and ToS is hardly impressive. The first half of the story a shameless, dumbed-down FFX ripoff, and the second half is a cluster**** of poorly done twists, and the character development is just terrible and predictable throughout. I'm not saying TotA was much better, but it certainly was a little better. It was actually funny at times, and the dialogue, while nothing exceptional most of the time, wasn't exactly an ominous light that threatened to engulf me, either. And more importantly, TotA's gameplay is essentially just a significantly improved version of ToS'. That leaves only the music, which is obviously subjective, but even if you prefer ToS in this area, it's hardly better than TotA by a wide margin. So, really, where does the ToS-love stem from? I don't get it. My guess would be most of it comes from people who, during the last generation of consoles, only owned a GC and by virtue of that simply weren't aware that if you looked beyond the GC's meager RPG library, you would find a wealth of RPGs that completely dwarf ToS in most aspects. I guess that's also why it's still held in such high regards today even though TotA, which was equally loved by fans at the time, is now receiving a fair amount of critique on most forums.

That being said, I don't really care about this game either. I played both ToS and TotA twice, I enjoyed both, they were fine, now can we move on? It would be an insult if they localize this but pass up the newer titles like ToVPS3 and Tales of Graces F. And knowing Namco, that's probably what they'll do.

[Confessor Rahl]

Actually, TOS is an excellent game, without rose tinted glasses. I pulled it out a few months ago for the Tales marathon (silently, and only logged around seven hours) and loved it. Say I didn't, punk!

[Zelgodes]

I think what they noticed here is that Symphonia is outdated even by the standards set by Tales of the Abyss. Whatever you want to say is fun about the Tales games, most of your time will be spent in battles and finding ways to augment your battle strength, with the rest of your time filled in by story. Now I'm just going to skip over any judgments regarding the plots of either game, but when it comes to the battle system Tales of the Abyss takes the cake and then holds it over Symphonia's head while it jumps for a sweet taste of frosting. I'd much rather be rolling with the streamlined and significantly more fun battle system from Abyss than ignoring Lloyd's and Colette's every word in between battles where you can't even free-run.

[Wheels]

Maybe they want to do a full on Symphonia remake at some point and are just using this direct port as a quick cash-in?