Ranking Tales games. I just finished Berseria and I was sorting out my thoughts about where it falls in the scale of Good Tales to Bad Tales. Anyway just my subjective opinions.
1. Vesperia/Abyss - Vesperia is where my heart lies based on the cast and the ideas in the plot, but Abyss is critically better in terms of character development, plot, writing, worldbuilding.... so much.
2. Symphonia - This whole game is one big nostalgia train and I love it a lot and can’t really talk objectively about it.
3. Xillia - the first act was a little slow, the ending was rushed, and the villain could have used more oomph, but I loved the cast, the battle system, the lilium orbs, the shop levelling... I just liked it a lot.
4. Berseria - Solid plot and one of the best villains since Mithos and Van. Most of the things I didn’t like about it are things it inherited from Zestiria. Not a fan of the battle system and the characters - other than Eleanor and Laphicet - didn’t really do anything for me. The game is just... good. Not great, not bad, just good.
5. Graces - I’m not entirely certain because I watched this on Youtube rather than play so I can’t judge it on mechanics. It’s a solid plot and cast, fun, not too deep or exceptional, but I get the feeling they weren’t really trying to be. Good for what it is.
6. Xillia 2 - I’ve written a lot of posts about everything in this game that makes me salty but the biggest thing is that it deeply fucked up the characters. The party was too large and they didn’t handle it well at all. I liked the plot though. It raised some interesting questions and told a story I haven’t seen before. It kind of missed the mark on fully developing some of those questions, but it tried.
7. Dawn of the New World - Really disappointing as a sequel. Haven’t played it since I was 17 so I can’t go too in depth but the taming monster thing instead of having a complete party, the lack of a world map, and personally disliking the main characters (with no regular party to round them out) just made this one unpleasant for me.
8. Zestiria - Oh, Zesty, as if I haven’t written enough about this game.... I don’t like the cast (other than Alisha and bits and moments of Edna and Zaveid), I don’t like the world building, I don’t like the battle mechanics, I don’t like the morality, I don’t like the equipment system, I don’t like the plot, I don’t like primary antagonist, I don’t like the use of dragons.... what do I like in this game? Uh........ the OP is really good. I played it with Lynx and quite often I put player 2 on AI and just watched her play while sitting on tumblr because I found that more entertaining than actually paying attention to the game or participating in the fights. So that’s why I ranked this one my least favourite: not only was it not good, it was also just boring and I found finishing it to be a slog. Oh, and also the fandom irritates me.