I can’t think of any non-strategy based roleplaying games that are excellent and don’t have Square or Enix’s stamp on them. Though the “Tales” franchise from Namco is not new and I’ve played several, none of them really stood out as exceptional until now. Tales of Vesperia is the first non-Squenix RPG game to grace my Top 10 RPG list. The game is slow to start, but a rich story eventually unfolds and addictive gameplay mechanics are revealed.

Though you can control any single character in the game, the story primarily involves Yuri, an ex-knight turned vigilante. Yuri hunts down criminals who’ve stolen the magical water blastia that provides clean water for his home town. In his quest, Yuri gets caught up with other people who’ve been affected by blastia crimes, and invariably, they join your party to pursue the master blastia thief.

That all sounds pretty dry, and it is for the first several hours of the game. There are character archetypes that are all too familiar and only a few cliche chuckles to be had until you explore some of the sidequests or get further into the game. For example, your hero Yuri may be a nice guy, but he’s always breaking or flouting laws, and some of the choices he makes definitely cross the line into “bad guy” behavior. Characters have hidden motives, play mind games, and even engage in some socio-political commentary. Like all good stories, the lines between good and evil are sometimes very blurry. Eventually, the story evolves into an epic struggle for control of the world’s blastia artifacts and reverts into more familiar fantasy territory. But the route it takes to get there is far from predictable.

Rating:

Replay Value: Medium

Play Time: 80+ hours

Team: Yuri, Estelle, Rita, Karol

Favorite Costume: Raven’s alter ego…

In real time combat, you control one character only, but you can set the behavior of your other characters down to a very granular level. Using characters’ special skills in combination allows you to learn new skills, accrue power, and take advantage of enemy weaknesses. Each special maneuver is revealed over several hours of gameplay, so initially the game seems like a boring button-mashing adventure. Stay with it until you’ve received fatal strikes, altered artes, burst artes, and mystic artes. For the diligent, there are even ways to chain these special moves together with careful timing.

Characters develop skills by equipping weapons and armor that contain the relevant skills. After time spent in battle, you can learn these skills and equip something new. You also have a set number of points you can use to select the skills you want to use from your pool of previously learned skills. Additionally, each character’s special attacks can be toggled on and off or set to button shortcuts for quick access in battle.

Tales of Vesperia’s gameplay is just complex enough to be engaging, but not so intricate that it’s intimidating. Any game where you spend at least 25% of your time in the game’s menu is a good game in my book. The real downfall with this system is that things are not always explained very well. Though new special abilities come with tutorials, there are many aspects of the game that you’ll only discover through careful inspection of menus or by strategy guides.

There are also several collection games and sidequests enough to keep you busy for dozens of hours. You can earn new costumes for your characters, collect stat-boosting recipes, and learn a bevvy of special skills from these sidequests. Nearly half of the sidequests have no benefit other than giving you more of a character’s backstory or providing an interesting tidbit of information.

If you stay with the great story, the quick combat, the special skills and the endless string of sidequests, Tales of Vesperia will easily consume 80 hours of your life. It may be slow to start, but the experience is rewarding in nearly every aspect of the game.