Tales of Vesperia: Definitive Edition

My Playtime: 250.4h (100% achievement, finished the game twice)
My First Playthrough: 155.55h (most side content has been finished)
Grindy Achievement(s): Yes (~1 achievement).
Optional Achievement(s): Yes (~50 achievements).
Difficult Achievement(s): No.
Intro
Tales of Vesperia: Definitive Edition is a JRPG with a lot of playable characters and flexible combat, allowing you to do combos from numerous skills. It also has a lot of side content that can take most of your playtime to finish.
Pros:
- 3+1 difficulty that can be changed anytime you want
- Flexible combat that caters to various playstyles
- Customizable AI partner
- A lot of optional content to finish
Cons:
- Combat starts slow
- Story can feel bland at times
- It might not be obvious where to go next
- End game contents are boring and dragging out
Specs
Intel Core i5-9300H 2.40GHz, 8GB RAM, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650
Should you buy this game?
Yes.
If you like JRPG and play games for the character interactions, buy this game. Those who enjoy a game from its combat can also have fun with it, although they need to wait until everything is available for them to use.
In-Depth Review
Visuals
Surprisingly, the visuals haven't aged after all these years. I liked how they used cell shading to make the characters anime-styled. The use of the blurry effect also makes the scene look shinier and gives depth to the surroundings. However, the movies tend to look low-budget in comparison. Characters look as if they're drawn in a different style from the other movies, and they just lack some impact in the important scenes. Well, the movies convey the situation better than the cutscenes that used 3D models, but I wished they gave them better quality.
Story
I was interested in the story at first. I like how they make the story not straightforward; the gang keeps on finding new objectives to go based on the recent events, and I liked how the characters have their own agenda by joining the party. I particularly liked how it uses these events as a foreshadowing for future events, which will suddenly click once the revelation happens. However, the excitement was gone once you got to the third act - the story becomes bland and straightforward, with hardly anything to expect.
That being said, I have grown to the characters by that point. I was wondering why I was still invested in the game after the story dropped in quality, but then I realized that I still wanted to play with these characters. The main character is a cool, edgy guy who is different from the commonly-used protagonists, and the other characters who also have different, unique personalities go through character development from time to time. They change slowly, but at the end of the adventure, they have grown.
The Game
Gameplay
The game tends to be vague when telling where to go next. Unless you really pay attention and understand what the dialogue says, you might have to guess your next destination. It might be easy if the next location was the only nearby location that you haven't visited yet, but you unlocked sea and air travel early in the game and it's not often that you need to go from one continent to another to advance the story. Moreover, the game usually didn't explicitly tell where you have to go next.
The next is the lack of auto-save. You can only save in the designated save point if you enter an area, and this can be a problem. First of all, the game crashed on me a few times, and I lost some progress because of it. Second, you can't just leave the game when you are in a dungeon. Some dungeons in Tales of Vesperia: Definitive Edition, especially the end-game ones, can have a long time between its save points, and I was forced to leave the game AFK for a few hours because I had to go soon and I couldn't save.
It's almost impossible to see everything that the game has to offer without using a guide. The game has a lot of missables, with some events that will only trigger once you see the previous event. Moreover, these additional scenes explain some additional lore or depth to a certain character that you won't find if you just play the main story.
Combat
I liked the skill system. You have a skill where you can increase your stat or get a new ability. In other games, you need to get it from level up, but this game gives it by using weapons. As you use the weapon, you'll get some EXP on that weapon's skill, which will allow you to use the skill without equipping the weapon once you cap the EXP. This encourages you to collect as much equipment as possible and switch them whenever you have finished learning a skill.
The second "skill" is called Arte, which basically means active skill. Some Artes can be learned on level up, some require you to use other Artes for a few times, while others can only be obtained if you do certain events. I like how varied the Artes are; each character was designed to be played differently, and by combining Arte with skills, you can make some characters do something that wasn't possible without it. The combos are just endless - you can combo an Arte to other Artes, or even use a skill that can make you hit harder. Finding different sets of Artes for your combo is one of the joys of the game, although you also can spam the same Arte several times like me.
However, these features don't come until later. You start with one character who always stopped after using a melee combo and hardly got any TP to spam Arte. Moreover, the game wasn't designed to do 1 vs many at that point, especially since the camera makes it hard to move your character up or down. The default camera setting only allows you to go left and right, which makes you closer or farther to the enemy based on your position. You need to press an additional button to move up and down, which can take some time to get used to. That being said, it's also easy to get knocked down and stunned to death with 1 character.
The other thing that I want to note is the AI. I never played other games with customizable AI like this. You can basically ask them to do anything and they'll comply most of the time. However, some characters are not good when played by AI, and magic attackers sometimes won't attack properly when you ask them to attack with physical Artes.
Length and Difficulty
I finished the game in 155.55h with most optional contents finished. Steam tracks my playtime as 250.4h after I finished getting all achievements, although I admit that my internet disconnected from time to time and doesn't record the playtime - it might take a bit longer to 100% the game than my actual time.
The difficulty varies based on what you choose. You can choose between 3 difficulty options at first, with another one unlocked after you finish the game. The change can be done anytime you want, allowing you to lower the difficulty if you are having trouble with your current playthrough. I mostly played with the normal difficulty in my first playthrough, and although one boss in the beginning gave me trouble, it was still manageable for me. For those who want some challenge, you also can beat most of the bosses while doing some secret mission, which varies based on the boss you fought.
Conclusion
Despite the issues in the beginning, it's still worth it to check the game out. There are a lot of optional things to do and the character interactions are golden. Moreover, the combat was unique and the story wasn't that bad even if you include the boring last act. I can recommend it to anyone who is interested more in a game's story and/or like combat with different variations.

Tales of Vesperia is one of the peak Tales of flagship titles, but it can't be denied that its age shows.
I consider it one of the stronger entries storywise, with its semi-environmentalist message and well-developed main and side characters. That said, anyone who has played the newer Tales of games before trying this one will have to get used to a significantly less fluid combat system and a much clunkier game overall.
I'd recommend this game to everyone who is already a fan of the series. As for everyone else, consider how much clunk you are willing to put up with for the sake of a good story, because you will need to bear with it for about 70 hours at least.

While not the kind of game to blow your mind or single-handedly turn you into a JRPG fan, Vesperia is a quality experience that aged pretty well, and it probably deserves to be consistently mentioned among the best entries in this long-running series.
The story doesn’t do anything groundbreaking, but for the first 2 out of 3 acts it’s a solid, well-paced, eventful adventure that manages to avoid many of the genre’s overused tropes. All parties act consistently and without needless drama, while the twists, despite being largely predictable, add some spice to the narrative. There’s also an unnecessary 3rd act with a very non-antagonistic antagonist and a number of painful speeches about friendship, but thankfully, it doesn’t last long enough to ruin the overall impression.
Better yet is the main cast: a highly likable group with complementary temperaments and great chemistry throughout. The most pleasant surprise to me was how chill and reasonable these people tend to act. It’s like the writers took your typical character archetypes but forgot to include the annoying parts, leading to some refreshingly tempered personalities.
There’s one particular moment where Estelle, a classic goody-two-shoes main girl, confronts the MC Yuri about his rather unorthodox actions, which I was sure was about to be turned into a round of high-pitched interpersonal drama, only to watch them work out their differences in seconds like calm adults.
Another great example would be the relationship between Yuri and Flynn, which practically begs for some typical tragic "childhood friends turned mortal enemies" development… except that no, the gigachads manage to carry their friendship through thick and thin, and the way they deeply respect each other despite rarely agreeing on ideology is downright inspiring.
The combat seems to be at a sweet spot in the series where it’s not too restrictive to hinder basic fun but also not overly accommodating to allow button mashing. Unlike many modern JRPG titles, it smartly withholds the best parts until much later, like eventually tripling the number of base attacks for Yuri’s combos, leading to a very satisfying sense of progression (at the price of a tad underwhelming start, perhaps, but still).
No two skills are exactly the same, and most will leave you in a slightly different location in relation to your target, so positioning has to be carefully considered at all times. Nothing will prevent you from making a useless combo where you just awkwardly attack thin air, but nothing will stop you from roflstomping overleveled enemies with an abusable chain either.
There’s a LOT of depth and room for experimentation here, so much that you could probably spend another 100-200 hours beyond 100% and still come up with new interesting ways to fight. Trying to learn every single playable character can be hit-and-miss, but there are some really unusual gems here, like the unruly but rewarding air-juggler Judith or that awesome RNG madness called Patty.
The visuals are a pleasure to look at: lush colors, smooth bloom filter and simple but effective environments. It’s interesting to compare Vesperia to something like Falcom’s newer games, which are full of the most randomly outlandish outfits, because this dev team clearly had both the talent and budget to do professional, consistent character design even as they followed the same bold anime style.
Getting all achievements is quite a laundry list, but it’s a well-balanced laundry list, with no single thing being too tiresome and all of them combined into a decently varied process. I usually run away in horror from progress-bar-filling activities of such magnitude, but checking these boxes felt manageable and, at times, actually more interesting than the main story.
The rumors of Vesperia being the king of missables also appear to be exaggerated (they might have made the windows more lenient for the Definitive Edition?): I had no problem getting about 90-95% of everything just by regularly checking nearby previous locations, while the remaining 5-10% can be conveniently combined with the series’ staple NG+ run anyway.
The exceptional Berseria is still in a league of its own, but if you already covered that and want more Tales experience, then Vesperia is a worthy next pick to play or maybe even fully complete.
P.S. There are some noteworthy bonus audio drama materials for Vesperia, like a two-part Raven’s backstory or a companion piece to the anime prequel film where Yuri and Flynn take their knight exam. The best one, though, is a short comedy sketch called "Chronicles of the Drifting Fiertia" (p1, p2). You should listen to it after beating the game; it’s hilarious and just makes you appreciate the cast’s pure charm all over again.

Definitely a fun game, but it has some major weak spots, and I really don't understand why so many people claim this is the best in the series. Most characters were really good, combat pretty fun, ending was unsatisfying. (7/10)

I LOVE THIS GAME. This is was my first Tale series game I've played and fell in love on the Xbox360. it has some noticeable issues but the goods was so good that it stopped mattering to me

Pretty good overall although it feels grindy. The plot and the way everything is presented is weird. So it feels long and somewhat tedious.
Runs great on Steam Deck.

The port itself is good, though I recommend getting Kaldein's Vesperia fix to remove the stupid blurry filter.

The game itself is really good gameplaywise and its characters can have good moments.

However, the storytelling has alot of huge problems and despite the good moments I mentioned earlier, I don't care all that much about them.

Takumi Miyajima, the writer of Symphonia and Abyss did not return, and man does it show.

It's still worth it if you're a Tales fan though, just don't buy into the hype, it's not the best game in the series, not really.