REVIEW: Tales of Vesperia: Definitive Edition

Now I’d like to finally talk about the elephant in the room, Tales of Vesperia’s localization. This is the biggest flaw of them all. The people in charge of localizing the game did an extremely cheap and sloppy job. First of all, we know they didn’t even ask for Yuri’s original voice actor, Troy Baker, to come back. On top of that, they didn’t re-record the whole game. Grant George actually does a fantastic imitation of Baker’s Yuri. There are a few times here and there where the inflection or general tone sound a smidge off. But once I got really into playing, I didn’t notice as often where the voice changed. Regardless, the fact that they didn’t re-record the complete game, like I’ve seen other companies do, is a horrible decision. There are people who notice it and for some it is game ruining.

Sadly that wasn’t the only localization issue I came across. I noticed that the sound levels were off at various points in the game with random skits and all of the cinematic scenes being significantly quieter. And at one point, a scene was mashed up with content from both Western versions of the game. Somehow this wasn’t caught and fixed before launch. Estelle makes a comment saying something to the tune of “I left a message for Patty at the inn,” and Yuri says something like, “I said he’ll be fine.” Both the text and the voice actor mix this up. It’s possible the text was messed up first and then the new voice actor stated what was written. Or, half of this scene still contains the old voice actor’s work and it’s spliced in with Estelle’s new line. In the 360 version, Patty doesn’t exist and Estelle is asking about Karol. But in this definitive edition, Patty does exist and Yuri’s text and line weren’t altered accordingly for Patty’s presence. He responds as if she doesn’t exist. Ultimately, it feels like Bandai Namco wanted to make a quick buck without putting much work in. You’ll notice various typos throughout the game as well, including in Patty’s status page where her last name isn’t spaced out from her first name. And I even caught a horrendous sound glitch twice, close to the beginning of the game. When I would be in a shop buying equipment, I’d afterwards switch to the equip option in that same shop and hear a loud and distracting Tales Of beeping sound effect. It just seems like the localization was extremely rushed.

While I did find a lot wrong with this re-release of Tales of Vesperia, there are nonetheless plenty of reasons to love the game as well. To start, I absolutely adore Patty. I don’t know if the writers had already planned before the initial definitive release to eventually add what they did, but I think they for the most part seamlessly slipped a lot of it in. Patty didn’t feel out of place to me and she even has her own unique battle style, unlike Flynn who more resembles Yuri. Secondly, all of the characters in general give the story lots of life, it’s one of the better Tales casts out there and that’s a big part of what makes one Tales game better than another. And finally, I simply love JRPGs. I had been waiting to play Vesperia again for a long time as I’ve stated earlier. So I enjoyed experiencing it in full, with all of the content added that was missing before from its Xbox 360 release.

All in all, I had a lot of fun playing Tales of Vesperia. So far I’ve spent over 75 hours on it and I can say that this definitive edition was highly worth pre-ordering. I’d recommend the game to most JRPG fans because, despite being a 10 year old game, I do believe it holds up well today and graphically, it isn’t half bad either. Although, because of the half-assed localization, the lack of story depth at times and the clunkier gameplay, I can’t give this game as high of a rating as I would like to. If you can look past the issues I’ve mentioned, or if it one day gets some kind of localization fix patched in, then go for it. If not, this might be a game you’re either better off passing up, or buying on sale (for reference, the MSRP at launch was $49.99).