REVIEW: Tales of Xillia

The combat system is similar to the one Vesperia had, which was an improved combat system from Abyss, which came to fruition from Symphonia’s combat system. Thankfully, Xillia has a bit more originality to its battle system, adding a whole new dimension to what was becoming stale. The new “Dual Raid Linear Motion Battle System,” or simply “Battle Link System,” as the name implies, lets you link two characters with each other on the field. The partner will support your rear, keeping enemies off your back, blocking enemy attacks at opportune moments and flanking the enemy from their side or behind them. This allows you to commence combos with directional inputs to activate special attacks or “Linked Artes.” You will notice a bar on the far left side of the screen. This is the indicator which you build up to activate Overlimit. Being in the Overlimit state allows you to let loose with a culmination of Linked Artes with any and all characters on the field for a limited time span, or utilize the fabled Mystic Arte at the cost of the entire bar.

By themselves, party members can put up a good fight with their own individual skills. Together, however, their partner skills are invaluable. Jude’s ability swiftly helps a character back up and heals them, Alvin can break through armored enemies’ defenses, Rowen’s unique artes give out elemental immunity buffs, Milla catches and holds smaller, but fast enemies in place, and so on. All the characters are not relegated to the simple JRPG conventions, but are, in fact, the exact opposite to spice things up. Our melee fighters are also healers, Alvin uses a gun with charged enhanced abilities, Milla has summoning magic skills along with her sword and elemental abilities and our two Black and White Mages have supporting skills, along with long range attacks.

As you progress, the mechanics, or, really, the combat system in general, start to pick up when you get a fourth member and beyond, as you have the ability to switch characters on the fly. This allows you to have all the monster weaknesses and counteractions at your disposal at any given time, while leaving the nice flow and satisfaction of the fast-paced combat intact. The constant changing of links with a number of playable characters, only helped by the inclusion of air combat and allowing to control and give specific orders to the AI, makes for a really deep and rewarding battle system.

While the combat system is engaging and worth investing time to fully master, a problem arises with some enemy types and bosses as a whole. Some enemies just have way too much health, and all the bosses, when tackled under leveled, act as health sponges. Most become more of a battle of attrition than skill. Many bosses break the flow, and can grind battles to a halt as they can break out of stunlocks automatically now, making battles go on even further. By the end of the game, it gets really tiresome, and I felt relieved when link abilities started to become over powerful to end the fights as quickly as possible. While it might sound unfair, it evens out since bosses have a knack to spam their Mystic Artes whenever they please and most, if not all of them, are damaging AOE attacks.

Tales of Xillia adopted an approach to leveling similar to the likes of Final Fantasy X’s Sphere Grid and Final Fantasy XIII’s Crystarium system in the form of the Lilium Orb. Instead of traditional stat growth, when a character gets enough EXP, that character is allowed to use that point on a spider web-like grid. The grid is set up with the general stat growths forming threads that branch out from the center. Skills and abilities are learned when the points surrounding them in the web are activated. When going further away from the middle and hitting a specific end to the grid, a red indicator will show up, allowing you to expand the web, gaining access to further stats and skills. When enough of the web is filled, you are allowed to move on to a new clean slate of web with even more to acquire from leveling. At first, you’re given a bountiful amounts of points, but, soon after, points get scarce and you must choose to use them wisely.

Most maps, especially the barren areas meant to be roadways to and from one key area to the next, are incredibly dull. Only one or two are different thanks to the different locales geography-wise, which isn’t saying much; think MMORPGs, but even more uninspired. This is all capped off with a majority of the monsters of the game becoming palette swaps, in areas that are themselves palette swaps. If that wasn’t bad enough, the dungeons aren’t very impressive, either. Most are very enclosed or too narrow with little to no puzzles, or, quite literally, being nothing but a straight line. The only thing that breaks up the monotony are the Discover Points throughout the maps to collect materials that improve the various shop selections, or treasures that hold accessories. There’s no doubt in my mind that they cut corners, only being saved by the aesthetics of the designs, though, unfortunately, these also take a hit with some muddy looking textures.

Character models look extremely good graphically with a nice cel-shaded style. They’re very expressive with emotions, detailed animations and fairly unique character designs. The scope of towns have been given an improvement. They’re bigger, much more detailed and a far cry from the dense small villages of previous games. That said, they also feel dense in another sense, however, with less interactivity, fewer NPCs with whom to interact and even fewer buildings to enter. To make the towns seem more vibrant, they added details like crowd chatter, but they even decided to be lazy about this. You will hear “Muttons! Fresh mutton!” so many times throughout the game since it’s used in every town. It becomes one of the most annoying sounds in the game, right up there with the ‘Chat’ feature, which acts as an toned down verbal alternative to Skits. Characters will randomly blurb out conversations with themselves or their express theirs thoughts out loud, whether they’re hungry or feel left out in combat etc. It’s a nice concept on paper, but horribly executed, with the characters repeating lines at an obnoxious rate. If there was ever a need for a separate volume level for specific options, this is one that could have used it.

The game runs smoothly most of the time, though, when many enemies are onscreen or many attack animations come out all at once, the frame rate likes to dip, and you will see a bit of chugging. Even stranger is when you interact with certain things like puddles, it makes the game just stop for a brief second. There are also pop-up issues — when entering enclosed or busy areas, it takes a few more seconds for all the sprites and models to load up. Other than that, I didn’t notice other issues, even load times were quite impressive, taking very little time to go to each area via quick travel or loading up a Quick Save. The cutscenes, while there aren’t very many of them, are breathtakingly beautiful, especially the game’s opening with Ayumi Hamasaki’s single, Progress, as the accompaniment track. Not to knock Production I.G, but if there had to be a replacement, Ufotable was the best choice Bandai Namco could make.

Motoi Sakuraba returns once again to compose the score for the game, and, to be frank, as a whole, it’s just as mediocre as other Tales of titles. Only a few managed to grab my interest, like the Jazz music that comprises most of the tracks just before the end and after the second half, the last dungeon’s track, and one or two boss music scores. Besides that, most of the score is, in my own opinion, just decent enough to work with the theme or aesthetic of an area. I will give him points for doing three battle themes for both Jude and Milla, which themselves were some of the better battle themes he’s composed for the series.

All in all, Tales of Xillia is a decent entry, but I was certainly left disappointed. As a Tales of title, it was a bit on the short side. This isn’t surprising with the lack of much end-game content, but even going through the story only took me about 30 to 35 hours to complete. With how Titles are only used for Grade, cooking being relegated to a shop and crafting being removed entirely, the game not only feels rushed – it feels hollow compared to other entries. Fewer costumes, now being offered as overpriced DLC, only make it up with the fun use of the vast amount of accessories. With main producer, Hideo Baba admitting that they rushed the game out, the handwriting is on the wall — it’s an unfinished game. I would recommend this to Tales of fans, but fans of RPGs who haven’t gotten into the franchise may want to hold off and try another entry before leaping into this one. Then again, now that the price has dropped from $59.99 to the considerably lower cost of $29.99, it wouldn’t be too bad a starting place for new eager fans or those who want to catch up.