How do I come to terms with the fact that the older games in the series that I (still) love just don't hold up as well...

no the other way around

I'm not kidding anything. It's enjoyable and involved enough to be a standard I want to see improved and experimented on and only Symphonia feels lacking by how much it hates jumping and that you're stuck in side scrolling despite being in 3D.

...

It's always been dogshit

Colette will always be cute and fuckable.

Also my condolences to all those who played the English dub.

Colette is pure, innocent, and chaste and for cuddles and eskimo kisses only.

Marta is a dirty little trollop, however, and needs a good dicking from everyone in town.

I've been wanting to get into Tales games lately. The only one I've ever tried though was on the SNES like a decade ago, which I'm not sure even counts.

Why? Was she an actual fucking human being with an actual personality?

You're definitely a faggot.

How about you stop giving a shit what other people think? You do realize that most people have different opinions than you, right? Like my informed opinion that you're a faggot because you opened the thread with an anime picture, of a big eye fairy nonetheless…

This is not about what other people think, it is about what other people have done with things I love.

I love Marta but wouldn't she break in half?

If that's the case, then they were probably never good in the first place. Also you can just acknowledge that newer Tales games come incomplete and then get a "Super" version later. Like Xillia 2 (since it was supposed to be a part of 1 but was rushed) or Graces F and Vesperia PS3 which added a whole slew of content and upgrades to the combat system.

I would recommend Tales of Phantasia PSX or Tales of Eternia. If you want something more modern then there's Tales of Vesperia (get the PS3 fan translation version), Tales of Hearts R (prepare for a shit translation and crazy aerial combat) and Tales of Graces F (absurdly good combat system and probably one of the best Tales to play with others).

And how were the old games bad?

Around the mid 90s we barely even had any action RPGs that had you manage more than 1 character. The combat is what separated them from all the other RPGs at its time. They brought in a combat system where you can change the strategy of your whole team on the fly and give them orders on how to act on their own. Adding in fighting game mechanics like command inputs or combos. Later games come with parries, OTGs off of hard knockdown attacks, and hidden supers. Skit were another great idea to get more character development and interaction from characters without having it always tied to a cutscene. All of which are optional and some triggered by how you play like eating too many gels or cooking too many sandwhiches. They had all of that and puzzles, good soundtracks, and interesting worlds to travel like most RPGs at their time.

The main reason why modern Tales is so mediocre now compared to before is now the combat and character skits is all they have going for them. They need to let Sakuraba compose however he pleases or hire someone else again for the music. Sakuraba can make some interesting soundtracks but telling him "It needs to sound like a Tales game" really limits his ability. Hiring one of the composers of Ace Combat to do a Tales soundtracks was one of the best ideas they had. Besides that, the worlds are pretty generic and boring for the most part. It's just european rural towns and castles most of the time. The plots are usually garbage because they try too hard to be anime (not that the plot of early Tales games are great but some aren't bad like Graces F). The only thing left is combat and characters which really varies for the most part. They're not doing a great job building on Vesperia's or Graces-F combat systems but I think they're getting there. I think changing the face buttons to A-artes was a step in the right direction for more fluid combat. Because in most Tales games, you barely even use normal attacks half way into the game. Also getting rid of TP was a good idea IMO. It just limits you going all out and can only really be managed by items instead of something more interesting like stealing it from your enemy with good offense.

The battle system has always been mediocre. Look at Summon Night Swordcraft Story for the proper way to make a 2D action RPG.

The companies that own the IP can do whatever the fuck they want with it. If you don't like it you don't buy it and go and play something else. Stop being a selfish little shit, because besides what mommy told you growing up, the world does not revolve around you.

Everything is done to make money. If a company decides that radically changing a series will give it more money, they will do that. If they think that pandering to a specific audience will get them more money, they will do that. Why do you think DLC is so prominent in games now? Because they found another way to milk money out of people. Look at TF2 that shit is a cash cow for Valve, do you know how many millions of dollars they made off of that shit so you could have some stupid skin? It has always been the same and it the underlying principle will remain the same. Everything, whatever you like, will be changed to fit some demographic so that they company can make as much money as possible.

The never explained why the older games were bad. But I'll try out Summon Night Swordcraft. What makes it so good?

Have you played Tales of Graces F, Destiny Remake, Hearts R, or Rebirth? They all have some good battle systems with something unique for every one of them. I believe Graces F has the best meter usage out of most of the games in the series. Where good dodges, hitting weaknesses, and high combos reward you greatly and allow you to chain combos even longer. Berseria made the mistake of having cubes spawn from dodging instead of gaining meter right off the bat. In Berseria, you're locked to 5 actions before your attacks start bouncing off the enemy. Having low SG (the game's CC or meter essentially) make you fight like a cripple and just slowed down the gameplay. Meanwhile in Graces F you have a minimum CC and and a max. You start at the minimum but your min is higher than Berseria's maximum for 90% of the game with the max CC being 30 (or maybe I'm thinking of Destiny Remake when it comes to max).

A few things that I really like about these combat systems is that healing items heal by percentage instead of the awful potion system in Final Fantasy games that don't make much sense. Next is the strategy system where you can tell AI how to act. You can influence how they use items, what artes to use, how aggressive they are (based of HP), what distance do you want them to stay in proximity to the enemies, where they start the battle at, who they attack (lowest HP foe, casting foe, who you are attacking etc), and if they use their supers. Last is how many of these games revolve around multiplayer. Besides Xillia 1/2 and Zesteria, you can play well with 3 other people just fine. The most I got to play is with 2 others though.

...

Tales of games were okay stories with neat skill based gameplay that is easy to learn and a little bit harder to master. Not shabby at all. Abyss and Xillia were decent entries with self contained stories. Then came Zestiria. The downs syndrome of video games. A single player game that's designed to be as grindy as a korean MMO that gives you no real reward for the grinding except the possibility to grind even more. The story was also the most ramshackled garbage I've ever had the displeasure of sitting through.

Then I got even more buttmad when I found out that the producer of Zestiria, Hideo baba basically butchered the game by shoehorning in some OC donut steel mary sue yippie kay jay fucktard character called Rose because he desperately wanted to fuck the voice actor of that character. Rose had no place in the game and fucked the morality system in the game to pieces like some futa horsedick ravaging a virgins pussy in some sick doujin you probably read somewhere.

Zesteria singlehandedly retroactively fucked Berseria too, which was actually pretty decent.

Xillia and Zesteria also had the problem of neutering multiplayer by making fusion/linking a mechanic that sacrifices others to give yourself more mechanics. This mechanic also ruins solo runs.

As expected. Porn is the gateway to such other degeneracies like miscegenation.

I'm taking this bait

Here's your (you)
Now go to a gym and eat red meat.

Did you get them mixed up?

Legendia is best Tales

The only thing good about Xillia 2 was the combo system, which is personally my favorite of all the Tales games so far. Ludger's weapon-switching is fun, the way you add a new element to the combo to extend it meant you had to think a bit more about the order of your attacks to maximize damage, and they even fixed the AI when Linking so that they don't do as many retarded things as before. Needing to do the triple guard charge to start every good combo against bosses without weaknesses was not fun, though.

Story-wise, Xillia 2 was fanfiction that no one asked for. Xillia's wasn't amazing, but compared to Xillia 2 it was pretty good.

HAHAHAHA that first picture reminds me of when I had to take a test to work for a Japanese hentai company as a translator. Holy shit hahahahahaha

Thanks for the recommendation.

I feel the same. Why can't it just be the MC and the love interest getting lovey dovey together?

It's not cuck if it has nothing to do with their lover assuming they are even in mentioned or shown.

Definitely the best soundtrack. I think Eternia and Destiny DC or Destiny 2 come close.

I'll warn you now that Graces F is mediocre/shit in many departments. Especially the story. Any potential the story shows at the start you can dismiss. However it has a ton of content and is really fun to play. I put more than a hundred hours into it.

Bump

if somebody could recolor this to be non-negro I'd probably give it an honest chance

I prefer the PSP version of Phantasia, that one removed the pause that occurs in gameplay during summons and spells.

You guys ever visit that Tales Wiki? The mods there are really autistic about Arte names. I remember there being a shitstorm that they wanted to change Light Spear to Tornado Drive because Xillia changed it despite it being Light Spear for most of the series.

I've always liked the Tales series, but one thing I didn't like was the character designs. Whoever does it seems to hate actual armor and love goofy bullshit.

Enemies in Symphonia like the Duelist or the Papal Knights had really nicely designed suits of armor, but take a look at whatever the fuck it is Lloyd wears.
>buttons everywhere except the one place on his pants they should be
And don't even get me started on Luke from Tales of The Abyss. Fucking shameful.

They did a great job of designing NPCs and enemies, but in most Tales games it looks like when it comes to designing the main party they get their clothes exclusively from the clown store.
Has any main party Tales character besides Cress from Phantasia ever wore normal armor as their primary outfit?

Stahn from Destiny, Veigue from rebirth (kind of, he wears a breastplate), and Flynn from Vesperia (PS3 version makes him a party member),

>Goes on to rag about one of the best character designs in the entire franchise.

Kill yourself, or at least use one of the genuinely terrible designs as example.