Tales of Vesperia: Definitive Edition
Celebrate the 10th anniversary of Tales of Vesperia and the return of this fan-favorite with the Definitive Edition! A power struggle begins in a civilization dependent on an ancient technology, the blastia, and the Empire that controls it. The fates of two friends traveling separate paths intertwine in an epic adventure that threatens the existence of all. Dive into the Definitive version of this game with updated full HD graphics, brand-new music tracks, exciting mini-games, bosses, and a collection of unreleased costume DLC! Two more playable characters join the fray! • Patty Fleur, a cheerful and tough young pirate girl in search of treasure, adventure… and her forgotten memories. • Flynn Scifo, Yuri’s best friend and an Imperial Knight, now joins the rest on their journey!
Steam User 48
Played 266 hours fully on the Steam Deck
Pros:
- Amazing art style that doesn't get old
- Excellent character development
- Beautiful music
- Fantastic and lots of fun game play
- Enjoyable battle system
Cons:
- Story can be sometimes confusing
- Several achievements are hard to get
- You need multiple playthroughs to get all the skits
- Some mini games are annoying
- Some secret missions are insanely annoying
Along with Tales of Symphonia, Vesperia is my favourite too. These two games come at the top of the Tales games that I have played so far. Thanks to Steam Deck for making this happen in a convenient way. I have already started Tales of Hearts R on my PS Vita but I can already tell it is not close to Vesperia.
Steam User 30
Blah Blah Blah TIDAL WAVE
Steam User 17
One of the last games out there where character outfits and weapons aren't just re-skinned garbage in different colors. Even better, you don't have to pay for new outfits and unlockables via DLC. You get them the old fashioned way, by playing the game and trying to grind for specifics.
Great RPG.
Great combat system.
Good enough story. Nothing earth shattering, but not boring either.
Characters are some of the best in the series too.
Steam User 24
By many fans of the Tales series, Tales of Vesperia is considered to be one of the best entries. I've found the game to be a solid one but the story and pacing left a lot to be desired. By the ~45-50 hour mark, I just wanted to be done with the game and move on to something else.
The combat system takes way too long to get good, as you need lots of late-game skills to gain the ability to chain different artes. Also, the ability to do a backstep is somehow a skill and not a default feature. The same goes for the number of regular attacks you can make - additional ones are locked behind skills. It would be a much better and simpler system if you got more hits by reaching certain levels or equipping different titles. Overall, I've found the skill system to be too bloated for its own good. Considering all this, the gameplay would be much more fun while doing a New Game+ run, when you can select to keep your skills from the previous one.
The visuals are very good though and aged well. From the technical standpoint, the game runs virtually flawlessly aside from one annoying bug when it ignores input from the "A" button on the controller. The fix is really simple - just bring up the task manager by pressing Ctrl+Alt+Del and then go back into the game.
Overall: a solid game and worth getting on sale. Among the Tales games released in the 2000s, it's my second favorite after Tales of the Abyss.
Steam User 12
TLDR: Although a bit dated now, Tales of Vesperia is game worth playing if you are willing to give an older game a shot. The characters and story were amazing, and the game boasts a wealth of things to do. Just make sure to save as often as possible, because sometimes there is a bug that breaks the interact button.
I never played the any Tales games before buying them off of steam, but now that this is my fourth Tales game that I have played on steam (after Symphonia, Zestiria, and Berseria), I can confidently say that I enjoyed the story and characters of Vesperia the most. I will also mention that I fully played Vesperia on Steam Deck, so I have no knowledge of how it plays on PC directly.
I will start off with the characters/story, which I thought were well done. The game follows Yuri as he goes through an adventure... which in typical fantasy RPG fashion goes from just starting off small to saving the world in the end. Although not a particularly new trope, the story remaining captivating and kept me interested throughout. I absolutely loved Yuri's character, and he brought forth a more unusually unique personality. Yuri, similar to Velvet from Berseria, is not your generic run of the mill "only do good" MC and is willing to be the bad guy sometimes. He is definitely not naive like many MCs, and his witty personality added to the overall character. As Yuri continues his adventure, you slowly add more and more people to the party. All of these party characters get ample development, and over time they really start to grow on you. The dynamics between the party members sometimes was very enjoyable as well, making me feel like I was with them during this adventure. Additionally, the voice acting was excellent (I played in JP), and I especially enjoyed Yuri and Rita's VAs. I actually think the JP VA in Vesperia is better than other 3 Tales games I've played on Steam.
Combat wise, it is very similar to Symphonia where you move in a set combat field. You end up fighting with a combo of "physical" weapon attacks and "magical" mystic artes attacks. There are a wealth of enemies and bosses that you can fight, and there are a lot of different weapons/artes you can put together to get maximum combo output. Although it was fun, I did think that combat started to grow old after 20+ hours into the game. We can chalk it up to the game being on the older side, but I would have liked a bit more variety in combat styles/freedom that we see in later entries in the Tales games.
Vesperia also boasts a reasonably large map, tons of skits, and lots of side quests. If you just play through the story, you are guaranteed tens of hours of content to play through. Unlike Symphonia, I thought that the dungeons were a bit better designed and did not feel nearly as grindy sometimes. The power balancing in different regions was also a lot better scaled.
Now onto some of my gripes. I will start first by mentioning that there is a disgusting bug that appears sometimes that breaks the A button. Basically you can't interact with anything if that bug appears, which means you can often get stuck in the middle of a dungeon. You cannot save in a dungeon unless you get to a save point, so it is very possible to suddenly lose a ton of progress if the bug appears. I have no idea what triggers it, and the only way to get rid of it is to restart the game. This absolutely annoyed the f**k out of me, and I lost probably 3-5 hours of combined progress over the multiple times it appeared. Bugs aside, in a similar fashion to Symphonia, map and dungeon movement was annoying. I chalk this up to being an older game as well, but there was no free camera in dungeons... making moving around and the perspective sometimes annoying. Although I got used to it, I much prefer the way later Tales games are designed. Additionally, it often felt like there was too much moving around between regions (with monsters spawning quite frequently), especially earlier on before you get a "faster" travel means. Basically sometimes the game felt artificially slow. Lastly, the quest tracking is basically a synopsis section instead of an actual questlog. Although this didn't really cause any major troubles for me, sometimes I found myself a bit lost on what to do next or where to go next since it wasn't very apparent.
Overall, I'd highly recommend Vesperia if you can get over a few of the flaws. This is definitely one my favorite installments in the Tales series. Although the base price of the game is $50, you can find the game on sale for $10 on steam during big sales.
Steam User 16
My favourite Tales game so far (I played Vesperia, Berseria and Arise).
pros:
- Amazing characters, especially Yuri
- Excellent soundtrack
- Beautiful visuals although a bit blurry even on my 4k 160hz screen
- Great story and writing as usual.
- Engaging plot
- Lots of unique enemy types
- Tons of side content
- Exploration is well rewarded
mixed:
- The combat at times is pretty damn solid and at times a bit crap, sometimes you get stunlocked, take unavoidable damage or have to wait for a knocked down enemy to get up, that aside it kept me entertained for 70+ hours.
- Patty just felt like a DLC character, not bad though It always gave me the feeling like she wasn't connected to the rest of the world.
- The ending felt a bit lackluster, after completing the game it didn't give me the feeling of completion if that makes sense.
the bad:
- The overworld is meant to make the world feel more connected though for me it made it seem even smaller than it really is, navigating the overworld on foot just isn't all that fun also, there just isn't much to do there other than entering areas and defeating enemies.
I didn't expect to like Vesperia this much before trying it, if you can overlook some dated stuff because this is originally a 2009 game you're in for a great experience.
Steam User 12
I think this is my favorite tales game. The game play is fine, just your standard action JRPG kind of business. And the large story is fine, but also pretty standard. But what makes me like the game is the cast of characters you can use to make up your party is just so charming and the interactions between them are very well written and entertaining. There are often little interactive vignettes of the characters as talking heads in boxes, which might seem kind of basic, but they put a lot of care into them. The mini-stories each of the character has and their journeys are where this game really shines and I care for these characters in a way that is missing from many RPGs.