Designer: Bandai Namco Studios
Publisher: Bandai Namco Games
Platform: Playstation Vita
Tales of Hearts R – Review
The Tales franchise has been present for quite a long time, coming for all kinds of consoles and handhelds since the mid 90’s for the Super Nintendo. Overall the games have changed during the years, without losing the feeling they give to fans of the series. The games will never getting boring no matter how many are released, even if they are remade for newer generations of consoles. Tales of Hearts R for the Playstation Vita is one of those Tales games that will allow the player to have tons of fun and memorable moments during all the hours that you will spend on it. So prepare your hearts, make them strong and be sure to never lose the fun you’ll have with the game!
Story
Tales of Hearts R is set in a world called Celland that is being attacked by mysterious creatures that feed on the essence of people’s minds and emotions called Xerom. The essence of a person is called a Spiria and is something that is very important to an individual and so should not be consumed by the Xerom. In order to help combat these monsters, special weapons that are mirrored to the possessors personality called Soma have been created. These weapons allow people to defeat the Xerom and enter the Spiria of people in order to fend off infections. People who have been affected by these infections have an illness called Despir, and should be taken care of as soon as possible. Otherwise, the person will keep on suffering and their minds and Spiria will break in no time.
Kor Meteor, the main protagonist of the game, is the grandson of one of the most well known Some users in the world, Zeks Meteor. After the completing of this training under charge of his grandfather, Kor inherits the Soma from his grandfather and promises to strengthen his own Spiria as to not lose against the Xerom. One day when his grandfather is out of town in order to do an errand in another town, Kor finds a girl the same age as him lying on the beach unconscious. When he tries to wake her up, the girl wakes up and looks at him strangely as if he tried to do something indecent to her. After clearing the misunderstanding, the girl introduces herself as Kohaku Heart and tells Kor that she is on the run from some mysterious sorceress called Incarose.
Kohaku asks Kor if he would happen to known Zeks, and he tells her that he is his grandson. When she learns that, she asks if she could meet him but as he is out of town she asks it Kor instead. She wants to have a Soma of her own, in order to protect herself and her big brother from Incarose. Kor leads her to his mothers grave, giving the Soma that is buried there to Kohaku. As soon as that happens, her big brother Hisui makes is appearance. Sadly this isn’t a happy meeting, because the sorceress Incarose also makes her appearance when she tries to take away Kohaku. When she tries to attack Kor who is standing in her way, Zeks appears and protects Kor with his life. They manage to fend of Incarose, but at the cost of the life of Zeks and the infection on Kohaku’s Spiria.
Kor tried to restore Kohaku’s Spiria by entering it, but fails to fix the problem. Instead her Spiria divides itself in multiple pieces as an emergency protection, spreading all over the world resulting in the loss almost all of Kohaku’s emotion. Blaming Kor for his action, Hisui leaves together with the emotionless Kohaku in order to find the shards all over the world, eventually taking Kor with him in order to let him take responsibility. And thus the adventure of Kor, Hisui and Kohaku starts with them going in search for the missing Spiria shards, meeting up with tons of comrades along the way and eventually learning about the truth of the world that nobody knows about.
Graphics
Like all of the other Tales games that are out there, Tales of Hearts R has implemented anime-styled graphics that look very colorful and pretty. All of the characters that you’ll encounter have unique designs that fit their personality well. The monsters’ designs also have variation in them, never looking to generic or similar to other monsters. The environments looks simple and do their job just fine, never looking too similar to other places you have already been.
At some moments in the game, animated cut scenes are shown. These cut scenes look like they could’ve been right from an anime and look very good, a great addition to the game with its already anime-styled graphics.
Sound
The game consists of tons of tracks that all sound very nice and never falling out of place. Unlike other games in the Tales games that have been brought to the western markets, Tales of Hearts F is fully voiced in Japanese, where all the voice-acting are very well done.
Gameplay
Like almost all of the Tales games, Tales of Hearts is a Japanese RPG that implements a real time combat system that focuses around doing combos in order to defeat you enemies in an action packed adventure game. This is different from the more usual JRPG games that center their gameplay around turn-based combat.
Each of you characters have their own style of gameplay, some being more balanced, while others concentrate their specialties on ranged attacks or magic. Each character has their own regular attacks that you can use multiple times after another. These basic attacks do not use Technical Points (TP), so you can use it as much as you like. Aside from regular attacks, each character also has Artes that they can use. These Artes use TP, so you should use them more sparingly instead of just spamming them. You can only use a set number of Artes one after the other, which is determined on how much Exceed you have. If you have a maximum of 2 Exceed, you can only use 2 consecutive Artes. You can increase your Exceed by leveling up and acquiring an Exceed+ Skill. The more Exceed you have, the more you’ll be able to spam your Artes.
In the Playstation Vita version, you’ll play in a 3D environment instead of a 2D environment like the Nintendo DS version. This means that’ll you be able to move both horizontally and vertically on the map, allowing players to use Free Motion like most of the newer Tales games. This allows players to have more freedom to avoid and focus themselves on a certain enemy. this aspect also makes the game a little harder, as you can now be attacked from all directions at once. This makes the game more challenging, and forces you to just not rush into the enemy without thinking, as you’ll die tons of times if you do so.
The game makes use of a more advanced battle system as opposed to earlier Tales games. This mechanic is called the Aerial Chase Linear Motion Battle System (ACLMBS), and allows the player to active a Chase Link attack that allows a character to chase an enemy while it is thrown into the air in order to keep on using combos. By selecting an ally, players can also perform a Chase Cross attack in which you’ll be able to use a very strong finishing move.
Aside from the ACLMBS, if you pair up certain character with each other, you’ll be able to use special Union Artes that are unique for that pair. These Artes look very fancy and are pretty strong, so you should definitely try do to them as much as you can.
Lastly, after each battle you’ll gain experience that will allow you to level up. When you level up, you get a couple of Soma Build Points (SBP) that you’ll be able to put into certain stats divided in multiple Spir Parameters. Some Parameters give you more endurance, while others focus on attack power or skills.
While these things all look very similar to the other Tales games, they do feel different on some levels and do make the game a lot of fun. The challenge that you’ll get is tough enough to make you keep interested in playing the game.
Conclusion
Overall, this installment in the Tales franchise does not do much different from the other ones. However, the game is definitely one to keep an eye on out, because the game allows you to spend lots of hours on it with fun action packed gameplay together with memorable characters and stories. The graphics are also done good together with the addition of animated cut scenes, while the sound does its job just fine with its fine tracks and well done voice acting.
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