Review #253: Tales of Hearts R

 R stands for 'reimagining'. Japan, why you gotta be so presumptuous with your titles?

 While the 'Tales of' series of JRPGs is pretty big in Japan, it's not so the case overseas. As a matter of fact, the Nintendo DS had three installments of the series, which were never localized. As luck would have it, two of these games were remade for the VITA, and one of them even made it here! While I'd love to compare both versions, I didn't play the DS one, but suffice to say, stuff got taken out, stuff got added and stuff got changed, and the general consensus is mixed, so I'll have to do with the game as is, without knowledge of the previous game.

 The story pits you as Kor Meteor, or Shing Meteorite as he is called in the Japanese track, who at the start of the game earns his 'Soma' weapon, and a few seconds later comes across a mysterious girl, typical, Kohaku and her brother. People have these things called 'Spiras', which is a sort of material psyche world of sorts, long story short, Kohaku's Spira gets broken into many pieces, and Kor vows to collect them all. Eventually their journey takes them over to the moon and against a villain who meant well, but through the wrong means, and is confused and.... is a walking cliche of any piece of Japanese media. I'm gonna be blunt, the story is dull, and filled to the brim with cliches, even for a Tales game. You've got your traitor, as per usual, the girls that can't cook and care a bit too much about their figures, as per usual, the hot springs scenes, as per usual, the dumb, never-say-die main character and the power of friendship, who also happens to be the host of some powerful being, as per usual, yadda yadda. There's not a single original or remarkable plot point to talk about, with some things being a bit too familiar to Tales of Graces... I'd say this is the anime-est the series has EVER been, with those all-so familiar Japanese lines you've heard hundreds of time before, like 'I HAVE MY FRIENDS TO HELP ME!' or 'WE HAVE WHAT YOU DON'T, THE POWER OF BONDS!', 'Humans are fools, but they are courageous and strong' and the like, so make of that what you will. Lastly, and worth mentioning, is that the game only has Japanese audio, and the translation is very... liberal. Even if you know nothing about Japanese, you'll notice that two-three word sentences have been extended into longer dialogue quips, so a lot of flavor has been added. Some characters even got their names changed, for whatever reason, like the protagonist. It didn't bother me too much, but I felt the dialogue was a bit too over-the-top and overdone for my taste.

 As with any other JRPG, the game progresses in a very linear fashion. Go into a town, talk with NPCs, accept sidequests, buy consumables or equipment and then venture into the next dungeon. Something that made me extremely happy was the overworld, it's been so long since I played a modern-day JRPG with a proper overworld, and it felt soooo good! On the flip side, it's the first 'Tales of' in a while to use Random Encounters, and while the encounter rate might be a bit on the high side, it's only really bothersome on the latter dungeons, when you are trying to solve puzzles as battles pop all the time. Leveling up in this game is fairly interesting, besides the mandatory increases to your stats, you also earn 'Soma points' which can then be spent on five different 'Soma pools', each pool increases different stats, but each pool can be leveled up, and this is how you earn different Artes(Spells or battle skills), Skills and weapons(Since your Weapon is a 'Soma', you obtain different forms of this Soma). I liked the customization, and the fact that you have to think how you want to develop each character, as there's no going back. There's a bit of a flaw to this mechanic, probably so that you don't overlevel and get the strongest skills and weapons early, the maximum level of each pool is capped by story progression, however, you are never told so, so at some point I assumed I just had to max everything in order to unlock the next tier of levels... wrong, I just had to hit the next plot point.

 Battling is the meats and potatoes of any 'Tales of' game, and I'm happy to report that it plays as well as any modern Tales of game, being particularly similar to Xillia. Basically, when a Random Encounter pops out, you are taken to a circular arena, and while you take control as any one character, the CPU will take over the other three. You can set their AI with rough parameters, but you can pop the menu at any time by pressing triangle and issue them orders directly. As for the character you play as, X is used for basic attacks, while Circle is used for TP(Mana)-consuming Artes. The beauty of the combat system is that it plays in real time, and it's very fast paced, at times reminiscent of a fighting game, due to all the comboing. Unique to this game in particular are the countering and follow up mechanics. Bashing an enemy for a while will make a blue marker appear over them, and using certain attacks on them will 'mark' them. While marked you can press Square to instantly teleport next to them and continue attacking them. As for Countering, after sustaining damage, enemies will turn red and use a souped up attack, pressing Square(Block) at the right time, will parry the attack and counter it with an attack of your own.

 The presentation is unimpressive, character models look decent, if a bit too simple, and some animations look a bit stiff, like running around. For what it's worth, the game maintains a solid framerate throughout, without any slowdown during battles, so that's a plus. As for the music, it fares as well as the rest of the game: It's decent, albeit unremarkable.

 So what's my problem with Tales of Hearts R? It IS a good game, probably among the best I have played on the Vita... but nothing about it makes it stand out from the rest of the 'Tales of' series. The story is dull, filled with cliches, and it even shares ideas with Tales of Graces, such as going to the moon, and that the 'important NPC from the moon' is green haired. As for the characters, they are cliched anime stereotypes to a fault, I think this is the very first 'Tales of' game in which I didn't like any of the characters. As for the World itself, not a single town or dungeon was memorable, it's pretty generic 'Tales of' stuff. The combat while fun, is exactly what I would've expected of a 'Tales of' game. What about the 'two styles' from Tales of Graces? Xillia's linking system? The follow-up mechanic is fun and all, but it does little to make it stand out.
 And that's Tales of Hearts R for you, it's a console JRPG on the palm of your hands, it's fun and functional... but less than impressive as a whole.
 7.5 out of 10.