Now Playing: Tales of Hearts R

Random Encounters?!

 When was the last time a Tales of had Random Encounters?! Phantasia? Nay, Destiny?! Regardless, y'know what the blog was missing? A honest to goodness JRPG, and since I'm done with Shinobido 2(Turns out it's only 4 hours long), why not? The tests are over, so....
Yeah....

 What I liked:
 The combat, feels very Xillia like, I like that.
 The leveling system, it uses a stat-spread system, but it's a bit unique in that each of the five 'pools' raises multiple stats, and 'leveling up' one of these nets you skills or Artes. Very neat.

 What I'm iffy about:
 The translation, now then, I don't profess to know Japanese, but I'm pretty sure Kor is called Shing, and I can tell, thanks to years of watching anime(of which I'm not proud in the slightest) that what characters say don't always match the subtitles. Basically, they added a lot of flavor to the translation, and I'm still not sure if I like that. It feels very over-the-top, and I usually like over-the-top, but on an generic-anime-looking game like this? I dunno...

 What I didn't like:
 The graphics, while they are pretty enough, some of the animations feel a bit... stiff. As a matter of fact, a conversation actually played out like a skit, using 2D cut-outs! I hope that they are the exception and not the rule....


 I could be wrong, but it feels like you average, run-of-the-mill Tales of game, which isn't necessarily bad, but the Vita could really use a heavy hitter.