Official Website

Platform: PlayStation 2

Genre: RPG

Number of Players: 1 - 4
Peripherals: Multi-tap Adaptor

Namco Bandia's own press release calling Tales of the Abyss a "must buy RPG" is a pretty bold statement. I'm a big fan of many of the games that come from the company, and an even bigger fan of role-playing games in general, but with the king of RPG's around the corner with yet another sequel, Final Fantasy XII, a claim like this is a huge one, and one that I had to get a first hand experience of.

The first thing about Tales of the Abyss that pulled me into the game was the story. Normally, you’ll find a typical coming of age story featuring a character that has been forced into a battle that they want no part of. While TotA does have that similar theme, the main character isn’t quite you’re model hero. Luke Fon Fabre has been forced to stay within his family’s manor much of his life, but his world is about to be turned upside down. During his regular sword training, a mysterious woman shows up and tries to kill his instructor and the two are suddenly transported to another continent.

That’s just the beginning of Luke’s troubles. Along with his new companion, Tear, the pair soon discovers that there is a potential war brewing Along with more new friends, Jade, Ion, Anise, and even Luke’s friend at the manor, Guy (who has come looking for him) they make their way back to Luke’s home. He merely wants to get back to the life he’s always known, but he soon finds there is another destiny awaiting him, friends who may very well be enemies, and an even more sinister fate that he is a part of.

Luke doesn’t start out as your usual hero simply because he’s a spoiled brat. Think of what might happen if you stuck someone like Paris Hilton into an RPG, though Luke isn’t a complete idiot and I doubt that there’s going to be a video released filmed through a night vision lens. He’s haughty, he’s arrogant, he knows little about the world outside what he has experienced, and much of that is simply a well-to-do background. If screaming and throwing tantrums get him his way, that’s fine. Slowly though, we find that Luke is starting to get beyond how we originally seem him and become much more down to Earth, perhaps even sympathetic in some ways.

The game shares commonalities with just about every role-playing game that is or even has been created at this point. As usual, you will have the ability to equip different weapons and armor to the characters in your party; you have healing and status relieving items that can be used, various modes of transportation, and plenty of plot twists and turns. Any RPG fan expects to find these things, but it the differences always lie in the gameplay, and you will find portions of Tales of the Abyss that have a unique approach as well as bring in some familiar play mechanics seen in RPG’s of the past.

Tales of the Abyss plays in some ways like another popular, though hard to find, role-playing games; Star Ocean: The Second Story. In combat, you will have up to four characters on the screen, but these aren’t necessarily turn-based battles. You can attack with your weapon by using X and linking them into combos. Square allows you to defend attacks and the O button is for your Artes skills. Artes are similar to magic, though they differ depending on the character and how they fight. In Luke’s case, much of his Arte skill is geared towards fighting while someone like Tear or Natalia use healing and attack magic that don’t rely on weapons. In battle, following your standard attacks with an arte will increase damage, and you can assign the arte skills to different shortcuts on the D-pad.

Each arte can later be improved in a few different ways. Each of your characters abilities also has an AD Skills portion. Later in the game, you will begin receiving and finding what are known as Fon Slot Chambers. Linking these into your skills will increase their potential, and the menu will show what the overall effect will be. The right stone added into an ability might make cure spells more potent, it could reduce the amount of points used, or it may reduce the casting time. There are a number of different possibilities, and as both your characters and their skills advance, so does the amount of usable slots. There are also Capacity Cores that will improve your overall abilities. You can see the bonuses given and these Cores can be interchanged with other characters and removed at any time. One last interesting addition are titles. As the story unfolds, you will earn titles for your characters, but you will need to go into the status menu to change these once they are received. This will grant new abilities as you play, so keep track and making sure you are using the most current one is imperative.

This isn’t just about hack’n slash however, and there are some more intricacies that you can work with. Sometimes during battle you will see circles appear known as fonons. These add a particular effect into your attack while using an arte, so even the fiercest enemies can drop quickly when these options are properly utilized. The game later brings into play the Overlimit ability. Once this meter has filled, pressing R2 sends you into Overlimit mode and here, your attacks do more damage while those of your enemies are reduced. You won’t be knocked back either, and you also can unleash destructive Mystic Artes, some of the most powerful attacks.

There are some other Star Ocean like qualities that are found in Tales of the Abyss. While the majority of the story does have voice acting, there are times, many actually, where you’ll see a sentence and a prompt to push the select button. By doing this you’ll get a “skit” that further details some of the things going on in the game. At times these are very humors, and there is a good deal of humor going on in the game as it is. You also have the means to use your cooking skills. This is one case where talking to everyone is essential, and from various NPC’s, you’ll learn different recipes that you can use. Of course, you’ll need to make sure you have ingredients on hand to make them, but these can be used to heal your party members and as your skills improve, so will the effects.

For the battles, you can make changes to how your other characters perform. Perhaps you want them to rush in to fight, or maybe you’d like them to stay in the back and cast spells. It’s all up to you, and the game will allow you to make changes during battle. The encounters aren’t necessarily random. You will see creatures moving around and appearing on the screen, giving you the choice to fight them or avoid contact, but there’s an interesting feature to this aspect. If you’re running away and a monster happens to attack from behind, you will see the transition to battle with a red hue. This randomly brings in party members, so the four you currently have selected may not be the same ones useable in this battle. Tales of the Abyss also has a multiplayer option, so you can play two players or if you own a multi-tap, you can play with up to four players. This gives everyone a chance to control characters and battle, and there are times when human thinking is much better than what the computer AI can come up with.

There are a few other nice touches. Luke keeps a journal (it’s just in case he loses his memory again) so you can do a quick re-cap of what has already gone on in the story, or if you’ve stepped away for too long, you can find out just what it was that you’re supposed to be doing next. The map feature is very good and is broken down in such a way that you can see major points of interest, towns and other non-dungeon locations, the dungeons themselves, and even other points as Tales does feature areas that can be searched that aren’t necessarily actual locations so much as points.

Tales of the Abyss uses anime as its visual style, but it doesn’t necessarily have the cel-shaded look that a game like Dark Cloud 2 does and definitely doesn’t attempt to go for a more realistic look like Final Fantasy X. There are plenty of different camera angles used during in-game cutscenes, and even some actual anime used periodically. The magic is flashy and eye catching, something that is very important with any RPG, there is enough interchanging between gameplay, adventuring, and story that the look of the game never gets stale. You’re always someplace new and often, not there for too great a length of time, Just enough to take in the sights before moving on.

My biggest fear with Tales of the Abyss is that it will go overlooked, especially with Square-Enix releasing Final Fantasy XII relatively soon. While this may not be a name that many gamers know, it’s not a game that should be passed up. Most importantly, Tales of the Abyss gets away from spending three of four hours of time on story and thrusts you right into the game, a definite bonus in my opinion as there have been too many RPG’s that want to waste players times with what is essentially a movie with very little gameplay. This is one abyss that RPG fans should have no complaints about falling into, and no matter which big name RPG you might be looking forward to, this is definitely one to add onto your list.

 -mike-