The problem with the Tales ofis that they tend to be extremely unequal, in addition to dividing fans. If your servant was introduced to the series with Tales of Symphonia (which he therefore considers with great nostalgia as a particularly striking opus), it is not difficult to consider that, two decades later, he has numerous flaws that struggle to elevate it to the JRPG pantheon. And it is certainly not the completely failed attempt at a recent remaster that will change this state of affairs: the games Tales of have, overall, a rather terrible propensity to age poorly. This is mainly due to particularly slow progression in both gameplay and narrative, with some exceptions. Tales of Berseria or Tales of Arise are among the most satisfactory attempts of the series in our opinion, even if they are not free of defects of all kinds either (less deep gameplay for one and a narrative who breaks his face during the last third for the other).
All this to say that, unlike series more established among the general Western public, the Tales of never call for consensus, and debates about the best of what the saga has to offer have raged for decades now. So much so that an episode like Tales of Graces will be considered by some to be the pinnacle of what Bandai Namco can do with its gameplay, while others tend to want to sweep it under the floor due to incredibly compelling storytelling. mediocre, not helped by its generic protagonist as possible. Guess which category we fall into. Tales of Graces features Asbel Lhant, a young boy discovering with his brother Hubert Oswell a young amnesiac girl lost on a hill: Sophie. Following an assassination attempt on Prince Richard, with whom they have just become friends, Asbel is saved at the last minute by Sophie, who seems to die before his eyes. Then, 7 years later, here she reappears. You will have understood: for once, it is not the protagonist who plays the role of the amnesiac. But this unthinkable plot revolution (note the ironic exaggeration) cannot hide the terrible lack of inspiration in the narrative content of the game, which struggles to keep the player interested over the hours. Already in 2009, the casting was generic: imagine in 2025. It's all the more a shame since Yuri from Tales of Vesperia and Luke from Tales of The Abyss had a particularly interesting personality of their own (even if, in the case of Luke, we still want to give him donuts at the start of the game), inevitably pushing us to question the transition from two of the strongest narratives in the series to one of the weakest.
Hubert Orwell et Asbel Kant
This remaster of Tales of Graces will change absolutely nothing in this state of affairs. But it can still be an opportunity to make welcome changes to the gameplay, its strongest part. Thus, this work by Bandai Namco on this remaster is not based on the Wii version of the game released only in Japan, but of course on Tales of Graces fits port a year later on PS3. Already at the time, this new version had the gift of adding expected features such as the possibility of speeding up the gameplay or a narrative epilogue. For this remaster, Bandai Namco includes 80 DLCs offered on the game during the PS3 era, as well as various quality of life additions to erase some of the most notable flaws of the era. It is therefore now possible to take advantage of a quest marker to know exactly where to go to follow the main story, to skip the cutscenes by pressing a simple button, or to delete encounters on the map so as not to be interrupted when you want to quickly move on to the rest of the story.
Overall, let's be clear: these additions are extremely limited in interest, and in no way justify going back to checkout if you already have the game in good memory. But the main purpose of a remaster is to offer a little graphical overhaul, right? From this point of view, the result is quite similar to that proposed for Tales of Symphony : it's average or even bad. Everything is smoothed, enlarged, and does not allow us to forget that originally, it is indeed a Wii game. The textures of the environments during combat or movement on the map are not very pleasant, and the overall smoothing of the graphics offers a serious sensation that is quite repellent to the eye. Rest assured, however: unlike the catastrophic remaster attempt of Tales of Symphonythe technical defects are non-existent here (at least on PC and Steam Deck – it remains to be seen for the Switch version, the main victim of the porting of Symphony).
-So yes, the gameplay of Tales of Graces f is one of the most interesting in the series, with its combo system and chain of increasingly long attacks depending on the player's performance in combat. The game's main advantage over other entries in the series is that it requires more thought about the player's movements and attacks than in the past: mindlessly spamming buttons will inevitably be accompanied by 'a defeat. Defense also plays an important role: good timing must be understood and mastered for interesting combat sessions. This is something we tend to forget: guarding is simply essential in games Tales ofet Graces makes no exception from this point of view. Overall, it is indeed one of the most interesting combat systems in the series, which also benefits from great progression throughout the adventure.
But does this combat system alone justify repeating it for a second time, or even sticking to it for the first time if the episode passed us by at the time? We sincerely doubt it. The poor narration, the mediocre cast of characters, the negligible graphical improvement and the sporadic additions of quality of life features will certainly get the better of the player looking for an interesting opus to devour for several dozen hours. We would rather recommend going back to Berseria or Arisewhile at it. Or restart a run on Abysswhile waiting for it to inevitably go through the remaster box, too. But this Tales of Graces f Remastered is certainly not the direction we want to see in the future, if Bandai Namco is so keen to shower us with reissues of all kinds. As attempts continue, it will unfortunately become more and more difficult to defend the publisher in its approach, which is difficult to consider as anything other than purely mercantile. Adding one or two mods like quest markers, then smoothing out the graphics like an average emulator would do, this will have a hard time justifying a new purchase from the conscientious player.
