Tales of Vesperia: Definitive Edition

Awesome story and action packed with lovable characters. Combat system becomes deeper as you progress through the game.

Biased because I'm a huge Tales fan but this is a very solid entry. I thought the new voice actors did quite well at blending in. If you listen closely you can tell the difference, but if you're just listened casually you probably wouldn't notice, especially with judy. But yeah as a game its great, classic tales game, just as you would expect it. I think I would put Berseria and Graces f, perhaps Phantasia on psx above it, but its still very good.

If I had to think of a complaint... idk, the towns seem really small. Even the capital city only has like two streets you can walk down. Would have been nice to explore them a bit more.

But everything else that makes Tales games good is still here, the battles, the characters, the skits. And the graphics have aged surprisingly well.

Would recommend to action JRPG fans.

The ultimate "meh" game you could ever play. Everything about it is mediocre at best and there are so many flaws that I don't even know where to start.¨
1) combat system is clunky, boring and lacks any sense of flow
2) characters are formulaic, boring and annoying most of the time. They have zero chemistry, agency or even personality
3) story is uninspired mashup of tropes, mostly centered around fetch or kill quests
4) dungeons are the least enjoyable part of the game. Layout is bad, rooms are empty with monsters wandering around.
5) world is just vast empty space between couple of locations that you're going to visit anyway so there is no sense in exploring as the game drags you along through all of them.
The most annoying part are the omnipresent "deus ex machina moments" over which you have zero control and you just have to suffer through them. 10 years after Final Fantsy 7 this game feels worse in every aspeect there is. Zero immersion, just a slog, drag and a big waste of time. Stay away.

pretty boring
gameplay kind of meh
some boring and annoying character.
5/10

I'm playing this game on a easier difficulty to just enjoy the story

I'm almost at the end of the game and I can say just like the other tales game I played which was Arise this also has one of those "lets draw out the ending quite a bit and save the world" trope but that's okay after many years of jrpgs i'm kinda use to this.

As for the story itself i'ts pretty good. Lots of character develupment and other cool stuff. Although I don't really like Karol or Patty as much as their english VA's hurt my head i'd reccomend to play this with JP langauge instead.

Overall with the anime style cutscenes from time to time and other cool things i'd give this game a good 7/10

fun and silly game , in my top 3 for tales of games !

i am not much into comments or reviewing games but Tales of Vesperia really got into me. love the story especially the funny antics the whole party does or during skits. the artes and skills really are really nice, the way its learned via levels, side events and thru skills in altered artes. the mix between animated and 3D cut scenes is a nice combination. i would really recommend this game!

I've played this game at least 4 times

Preference/could be good or bad
Free Run
Accessing post game (never bothered personally)

Good
Most bosses
Tutorials
Yuri Lowell
Judith (at least her personality)

Bad
Game feels a little slow/load times
Combat feels very slow early game
Most characters feel boring/not fun

The Ugly (the worst parts)
Karol
Learning additional arts system like upgrading azure fang (very strict/precise requirements)

DLC additions
Patty is a very interesting character, Flynn feels okay but a little slow; He's a mage melee hybrid. The other DLC contents mostly just make the game easy to beat at least until mid or late game. It isn't DLC but if you want the game to be easier you can always switch to easy mode, it prevents you from losing grade and makes enemies weaker. However, it also prevents you from gaining grade so only use it on bosses you don't want to fight on harder difficulties.

Great Tales game. Now I understand why Yuri is the most popular Tales MC.

Great game for JRPG enjoyers.

I dislike many things about this game, I could write a high effort essay but I won't, I will instead list off bullet points of things I liked and disliked.

Liked: The cel-shaded art style from the previous two mainline games returns in HD and looks gorgeous
- The music is pretty good
- The combat is pretty good
- There's an obscene amount of things to do for better or worse
- In-game JRPG casino

Disliked:
- the pacing is irredeemably bad and the story is all over the place in the worst possible way. Story wise there isn't even anything tying it to the other games until the final act and it feels like an obligation
- Aside from a few excellent character moments near the middle of the game everything else is so paint by numbers with the characters that it bores you to tears
- Side quests are needlessly complicated, documented poorly and mostly missable, hope you play with an FAQ open!
- A majority of the sidequests give you completely pointless rewards and are mostly wastes of time in the worst possible way
- The map goes mostly unused until the final 10 hours/the final act where suddenly all the side stuff opens for real and you have it dumped on you en masse
- The main plot is regularly regarded as being "grounded" and not too entirely based in fantasy which shows the people that say that probably haven't actually played it themselves or are talking out of their behinds. The political/guild maneuvering COULD be interesting but it mostly isn't, the intrigue just isn't there. It's all abandoned anyway towards the latter half of the game for stereotypical JRPG plot which would be perfectly acceptable if it didn't pretend to be something else for most of the runtime.
-Rita is annoying and someone should smack her

The End

Unfortunately, this game just doesn't quite do it for me. The characters aren't all that compelling, and the plot just kind of slogs along slowly. There's a huge amount of content, but a lot of it feels like filler. There are so many characters who are just kind of mundane time-wasters. The core plot is actually pretty neat and a bit of a unique twist on a standard JRPG formula, but so many of the characters just don't really add a lot of value to it. The gameplay loop is weirdly formulaic for most of the game - you go to a location, find out about a local problem, go do the local dungeon, return to the location, go travel to the new location. There's never two dungeons in a row, or any kind of "go do multiple things at once" situation. There's nothing really mixing up that formula as you progress through the game even though you get new forms of transportation and an old school big world map which allows you to revisit old locations. The old locations don't really get updated, except when they receive stealth updates as the plot goes on, so if you don't want to miss out on skits and new advancements you have to laboriously check all of them (when most of them haven't changed). The combat is also less than satisfying, because so many of your team's attacks knock enemies down, during which time you can't really combo on the enemies.

It's like the pieces are mostly there but they're just not assembled in a satisfying way to make a finished product. The game needed just a little more polish and I guess that came later in the series' lifespan as they iterated on this version of the combat system.

I also experienced some issues with controller recognition, and more than once had to exit the game and re-open it to get it to recognize my controller again for whatever reason. Also note that my Steam playtime is inflated due to steam continuing to count time while I'm alt-tabbed out with the game paused and chatting in discord or whatever. Real playtime around 50 hours. Completionists would spend more time than that as there is a great deal of extra content including a lot of postgame, but you'd have to be a real diehard for the game to want to do it all.

Patty best waifu

Hard to believe there was a time when Bandai made good games like this for a few years.

Scratches the itch for old school...........

Still the best Tales of game.

The sound does not work in Remote Play.

Love it. Characters are Super!

its so fucking peak

Imagine a co-operative fighting game with your friends where you slowly unlock your full kit, but you also have a great cast of characters and full story along with it.

I leave a review just to inform people who might consider to purchase and playing with joystick, there is a bug in game that leave your selection cursor (im not aware of the technicality) in your item menu randomly moving out of control. It's a small annoyance especially if you were browsing thru huge of items selection and trying to read item desc. Im not aware of any fixes and from what i read, there are slim to no chance dev team gonna fix it. So yea, it's not your joystick having a drift or something.
Game was fun tho, i enjoy it back in 360 and i enjoy it now.

This was quite a poor port. The game worked up until Deidon Hold (quite early on) and then most of the times the game doesn't seem to recognize or register X/A (PS/XBOX) buttons. However there is a fix by simply going to the Button Config > Change controller (ex: Controller1 to Keyboard&Mouse) but do not apply, just simply hover > press Alt+Ctrl+Del and click cancel > and your game should be fixed and choose any controller setup and apply. Hopefully there will be no other issues and this fix works for you.

Now then, Tales of Vesperia is the GOATed of all tales series *imo*.

The cast is amazing.
Our Main Protag, Yuri Lowell, is not your everyday Shounen MC like Goku from DBZ. He is definitely more of a Dark Knight, an Avenger, the Punisher.
Flynn Scifo is the bipolar counterpart of our MC. Mister Hardworker and Mister Perfect. He is all about Law and Order, stability. Doing things properly and in accordance, the right way.
While both have the same goals, the way they go about resolving issues and matters differ greatly.
Lastly, Estelle. Our guillable, naive, goody tissues heroine. She makes the perfect candidate to journey with our hero Yuri. She balances him out as if she were the Sun and Yuri the Moon.
The story is heavily centered around the trio (non-romantically).
The rest of the main cast are supporting cast, with a couple of them story important.

Moving on, I would like to talk about the combat but before getting straight into it I would like to do some comparisons with other Tales games.

-Tales of Symphonia is the predecessor of ToV and quite dated since it didn't have the FreeMove function holding down L2/LeftTrigger that ToV has.
-ToV introduces more mechanics over ToS such as FatalStrikes and OverLimit (an Install mechanic if you play fighting games).
-ToV universally tries to modernize all characters to have their own Burste and Mystic Arte which is nice even though certain characters are preferred to overlimit over others.

-Tales of Xillia, a newer release, appeals to the audience with it's high speed and fluid combat. The modernize thing about this game is that it gives every character an opportunity to shine and be amazing. The issue with this is that i've seen NG+ Unknown difficulty and there has been mention that the hardest difficulty only makes the bosses turn into punching bags. The movement speed of every character is insanely fast. ToX progresses nicely but as you start to understand your artes and boss fights, it starts to feel more like a No Gravity infinite combo kind of a game than strategical. With every character being so amazing to work around, there isn't much university for melee other than 1 being melee/healer, 1 being melee/spell, another melee/physrange etc...

-In ToV, frontliners tend to move faster than the backliners. Backliners also didn't have the greatest combos or melee Artes. It is extremely important that players make their backliners attentive and target > fend off the enemies that target your backline. This creates individuality and why that character was good at that "role" like a "RolePlayingGame".
-ToV Normal difficulty provides a great experience to players to enjoy with enough difficulty. In NG+ Unknown difficulty provides insane challenge. From my experience with Boss fights, it made me and my fellow gamers man up asap. We started applying better punishment and timing combos, team coordination and teamplay. As Yuri, I would never be able to rush in to hit a Boss targeting me but have to Kite them for as long as I could in wait of Rita's spells. My mage, Rita, gives me better opportunities to strike. When bosses would target them I would have to forcefully skirmish them in hopes of stagger and fending them off my backlline. When everyone seems to be low on HP or TP, we would have to scatter and play defensively as we try to recover the situation. There was so much communication between us and thinking involved. All of the above mentioned with my Carry Over Artes/Skills/Equipments but no LV carry over. The feelings of facing an overpowering foe. The amount of excitement, adrenaline rushing through us. The crazy comebacks, The feelings of accomplishment when Victory was achieved. This game feels good.

Don't get me wrong, my review is a comparison as to explain why *imo* ToV is the GOAT tales game. All mentioned tales games in my review are still great (not good, GREAT). I'm very sorry for anyone who started their 1st Tales game that launched after ToV, since this game will definitely give you dated vibes....

Highly Recommend if you are looking any or most of what I mentioned!

one of the best classic Tales series besides abyss..
Story is nice, battle sistem is simple but tricky

have many secret quest along the game, and have many hard boss.

Final boss is easy, but if you unlock secret form(3rd phase) the final boss became very very hard.
i just downgrade my difficulty to easy and grinding some lvl, still the boss is hard.
but eventualy after many tries i can beat it.

Recommended Tales Series !

- Great story.
- Great variety of characters (Yuri Lowell being my ALL TIME FAVORITE "Tales of" protagonist).
- Great soundtrack (both town AND battle themes).
- Great visuals.
- Great combat system (arguably THE BEST combat system in all "Tales of" games).

I have some gripes with the story in the last few chapters (as well as the terrible post-game extra dungeon), but overall this is one of THE BEST Tales of games I ever played. Highly recommend it!

Final Rating: 9/10.

Summary Ratings:

Combat is great once you get access to more stuff, Music is peak as always, Cast is really good and i really enjoyed the skits in this one
Story is good and had a satisfying conclusion 8.5/10

was great in 2007, Is great in 2025. Load times are much improved with modern hardware.

It's a meh

5/10

It'd be a 4/10 without Judith's custom outfits :P

good game

Classic game but FUCK MY LIFE I HATE THAT LITTLE FUCKING KIDS VOICE! WHY! Just play with japanese voices I guess.

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Arguably the best game in the entire Tales series. Most elements of the game have been done better in other entries, but this one is probably the best overall package. The characters, gameplay, world, story, combat, skits, graphics, music, voice acting, and sidequests are all 8/10 or higher... or at least they were in the original XBOX version.

For 10 years we sorry western nerds had to sit and watch as the Japanese got a ton of extra content in the PS3 version of the game that never got translated. Flynn as a party member, Patty the all new member, multiple Mystic Artes per character, a ton of new story content, and so much more? Wow it sucks to be a weeaboo... But then we finally got it here in Definitive Edition! Horay! And it's... um...

Troy Baker had to go and become a superstar since the original version, so NamcoBandai didn't even try to bring him back to voice Yuri's new lines. The guy they got to replace him is... jarring. Not bad, but... eh... Patty sucks. There's no way around it. Her lines are goofy as shit, and her VA sounds like she's never acted before in her life. I could keep going, but the general theme is that a lot of the new content isn't nearly as good as we'd dreamed of it being, but it's not all bad.

The stuff they added to the gameplay is especially great. This was already probably the deepest combat system in the series, and holy blastia, Batman, they somehow made it even better. Of course, you can still just turn the difficulty down and mash a few buttons to win, but that's like playing Devil May Cry and not trying for combos or high grades. The fun isn't in winning, it's in winning with style. And weird changes in the MC's voice aside, it is an overall positive to have literally everything voiced now, including the little sidequest text.

And I can't stress enough just how solid the original game is underneath it all. These are great characters. This is really great music. This is one of the best worlds the series has ever made, up there with Tales of Phantasia/Symphonia and Tales of the Abyss. If you've only played the recent entries in the series (or God forbid, if you've only played that piece of fermented aardvark feces, Tales of Arise), I strongly urge you to pick up this game.

The Tales games were never the same after Vesperia. After this one they steadily discarded elements of the formula that had been staples since all the way back in Tales of Phantasia. And that's a shame, because I'd argue this entry, the final one to truly feel like a successor to Phantasia, Symphonia, Eternia, and the Abyss, took all of the best elements from each of those great predecessors, and combined them into this game, this legendary game, this peak of the Tales of Series, which has yet to be matched by any of the games since, and not from lack of trying (except from Arise, which is the JRPG embodiment of lack of trying).

I 100% recommend this game to anyone who loves the classic Tales of games, especially given the price the game goes for these days. If you're new to the game or the series, be aware that it takes a while for for the combat mechanics to open up and that the game can be played through multiple times.

One of the best JRPGs of all time.

Nais

Great.

Best in the series. I have completed it 4 times, and it's still a treat every time.

I have to get back to this game if I have some time.

this game is a freaking classic

Why Estelle have one shot combo ? Alexei is heal like crazy for some reason, so he is unbeatable until you grind a lot. The combat in this game is very bad.

really fun

...Hoo. Boy. This really is a whole-ass game.
Just finished my third and "last" playthrough of this game, plus a FOURTH rushed one for the speedrun achievement.
First thing I'll say: There's a lot of game here. Lots of stuff to do. If my playtime didn't make it obvious.


Anyway, Tales of Vesperia is one of many games in the Tales series. Most of which aren't on Steam, which makes this one of the few actually widely available to play on modern systems. Shame, honestly.

These Tales games generally share some basic traits in common; they're action RPGs following a classic RPG formula (worldmap, random encounters, levelling from defeating enemies, equipment systems, swappable party of 4). Semi-standard anime artstyle too.


First things first:
I ADORE the gameplay of this series.
The action-focused combat is always the highlight. And that's no different at all here.
This game is weirdly, uh... slow in introducing mechanics to you. I guess so you're not overwhelmed?
Which is kind of a point against it, because it takes a while to get going and until you get there it feels kind of heavy and clunky to control. It still is a little bit, by the end, it is a 2008 game after all, but you get a RIDICULOUS amount of tools to counteract that.

To summarize:
Battles take place in a circular 3D arena once you run into an enemy encounter on the worldmap or in dungeons. You control one character from a party of 4 at a time (you can swap mid-fight), and you're always locked onto an enemy (you can change your target but can't "un-lock").

This perma-lock is because the game sets you on a 2.5D axis towards your target, and you control your character that way. Move left and right towards them, jump with Up.
(you have a "free run" button if you need to reposition outside the axis)
You have regular attacks and special/"arte" attacks, and you can control them with directional inputs as you hit the button.

Think Smash Bros.-type controls, but less about the platforming (you ain't gonna be doing much jumping here) and more about comboing.
Each of your directional basic attacks has different properties (sweeping down attacks, up attacks that lift enemies and hit higher up, etc.), and you can freely assign artes to the different directions based on whatever you prefer. You also use the right stick directions as a second set, again, think Smash Bros.


Not all the party members are built the same (some are straight up a better experience to play as), but they DO all offer a completely unique playstyle. From the super fast protagonist that combos like crazy, to the heavier paladin who can use magic on the side, to the healer who can for some reason also do melee combat with a sword and shield, to the mage who can combo.
I repeat, you can do stupid combos as even the mage character. They don't make you just sit back and cast spells. You can chain magic and get like a 300-hit combo.

Stuff gets crazy. Again, it's slow to introduce its mechanics, which if you've played other Tales entries before is gonna piss you off because it takes a while to let you unlock basic things that you expected to have from the start, but once it gets going? It gets going BIG time.

Also there's co-op, up to 4 players for all the party members you have out at once. Wish more RPGs did this.



Graphics are super good, too. They've moved away from this direction in more recent entries, but older 3D Tales games had this flat, cel-shaded artstyle for the characters, combined with a hand-painted watercolor style for the world around them.
And it looks SUPER good. Aged extremely well. Especially compared to more "realistic"-styled games of its time. Hell, even compared to other games in the series that try to go for the part-anime-part-realism look and just kinda look super generic as a result.
Only complaint is character animations being kinda stiff (again, old game).


The music is, uh, fine?
I don't think any Tales game has straight up bad music, but they're not generally that memorable. You have very bog-standard orchestra overworld music, more funky stuff for dungeons, and weirdly super good battle themes. This seems to be a pattern for this series.
But outside of a few highlight tracks (again, usually the battle themes), you're not gonna go out of your way to listen to Tales music outside of the games. It works perfectly well while in the game, mind you, I just wouldn't say it's amazing.



Really, the biggest mixed bag here (and for every Tales game, really) is probably the story.
...It's not good.
Tales stories are not good.
Sometimes they have cool themes and ideas along the way, like the clashing of different ideals of justice between Yuri and Flynn, how corrupt systems affect it, and how it can drive otherwise super close childhood friends apart in this game, or systematic racism by design that goes both ways in worlds with different social contexts in Symphonia, or an ancient civilization who was sealed away SHOOTING OUT CHUNKS OF THE PLANET WITH A BIGASS LASER to then use those chunks to build a new layer of crust over the planet and bury the current civilization under it in Destiny. Genuinely, super cool and fun ideas.
My problem with these games is that, no matter how sick their ideas are, they consistently, without fail, devolve into kill God with the power of friendship anime slop by the end, and you magically fix everything and they unceremoniously drop every single subplot they had going and then it ends.
This is almost a constant throughout the series.

Which is... weird.
It's weird because from what I'm saying you would think "oh dang these writers must suck then" but...
...I love the character writing in these games.
Genuinely.
I am a picky motherfucker when it comes to game stories, and will pick them apart and point out every plothole and piece of bad writing, even moreso in anime-ass games like these.
But these casts of party members? The interaction? The chemistry between everyone?
I have no idea how the hell they do it, but every single time they NAIL it. Even when their stories are at their worst (Tales of Graces).

You are going to fall in love with at least SOME of the party members, even if not all of them are always "bangers".
These games have this "skit" mechanic, right? Which consists of unlockable side conversations, completely optional, that open up either during the story, when visiting certain places, or via a plethora of completely esoteric side conditions or specific scenarios.
Visiting a new town? That's a skit, the party's gonna comment on it.
Something heavy happened in the story? That's a skit, they're gonna say their thoughts.
You hit level 100? Skit!
Defeated an enemy encounter in like 2 seconds because you're overlevelled? They're gonna point it out.
Haven't cooked food for a while? That's a skit, the party's gonna complain that they're hungry.

There is SO MUCH DETAIL to these. It's INSANE.
And all of them have super fun interactions between the party, that not only help solidify their individual personalities, but give you organic interaction between all of them, to make them feel more alive, and help you care about them.

Think, say... Idunno, the Support mechanic from the Fire Emblem games.
Except instead of being a total of three interactions between two characters at a time, made out of obligation, where they show off their one personality trait before eventually banging each other, it's like 500 different conversations between anywhere from 2 party members to THE WHOLE CAST AT ONCE.
Commenting on various things in their different ways, or simply having dumb fun conversations about random stuff.
It's genuinely super good and I am shocked that more RPGs don't do this.

Very good game, bad plot aside. Recommended.

Honestly, I could do without Sophie. I think cutting her for the Xbox release was the right decision.

This game is very well written and keeps the traditional 'Tales of' staples- free roam in battle, individual styles in combat, limited healers, Wonder Chefs, skits, and the battles that make you go 'and how the hell do I recover from that?!'. The weapons holding skills is something that came into being and makes it worth while exploring the synthesis system to make sure you get all the skills to help you through the game. The only thing they didn't explain, unless I glossed over it because I was streaming it, was the symbol system within the skill setup and how to get which symbol to help power up your characters during Overlimits. The story is in-depth and relatable to facing a large daunting challenge, it makes you think about the real world and the sometimes scary overlaps of how things go both in the game and in reality. I strongly suggest getting this, especially if you started off with original Tales of Destiny or the one that came out for the SNES/Super Familycom.

Enjoyed this game so much, I hunted down all the gigantos.
I played the old Phantasia, Symphonia, Zestiria, Berseria, and this is definitely the best out of the bunch,
truly worthy of its reputation.

The story is as usual kinda convoluted, but the characters more than made up for the story.
The bond of the group is the strongest I have seen in the Tales games i have played.

The battle system is just nice, not so hard, not overly complex as later games like Zestiria and Berseria.
Music is kinda lacking compared to other JRPGs.
Some boss fights have surprising difficulty spike, but you can easily lower the difficulty.

Overall, this game is a must play if you like JRPGs.

One of my favorite Tales of series

After completing Act 2, I have no desire to continue the game. It's not a bad game, but I don't want to force myself to finish it when I'm not enjoying it.

The visuals hold up even today, the pacing of the story is good (for most of the time) and I like the characters.

The Story is alright, but the biggest problem is the combat. Yes some people really like it, for it's deep mechanics. But in my opinion is needless complex and very clunky, with some of the worst hit-boxes I ever seen in a game.

It's start to get better as you unlock more arts and skills, but it never becomes good. The game never explains it's mechanics well, like how to cancel the animations of arts or how to connect them. Some items, essential for unlocking the ability to change characters during fights are locked behind crafting and never explained either.

Not even mentioning the amount of combat encounters, there way too many of them, even using holy bottles.

This may be the preferred "tales of" of a lot of people, but I would play Tales of Zestiria any day over this.

Personally I would recommend either Berseria or Arise if you are new to the series.

Great fun to play in co-op, solid story and over-all likable characters, definitely worth a playthrough (or two).

=D

Tales of Vesperia is an entry made by the main developers team of the "Tales" of series.
Definitive edition brings to the West audience the extra content that were added to the PS3 version of the game.
The gameplay is an improvement on the style of Tales of the Abyss.

The graphic style is very charming. I would say that the cell shaded look still hold up today.
Characters are decently written but not the best in the series, although they are very charming and their appearance is on point. I really liked the design.

There are a few shortcomings.
The main protagonist english dub is made by 2 different authors, probably due to licensing... I don't really know.
So, it can be jarring since the voice are definitvely different.
Nevertheless, I would say that the new voice actor doesn't sound bad and I really think he did his best to match the style of the old one.

There is a lot of end-game content with many reference to previous Tales games.
The only thing that plague the game is that it's one of those where you mostly have to use a guide to unlock said content or cutscenes;
If i remember correctly some can be totally missed and not unlockable later in the game... which for a 60~ plus hour game can be pretty though.
However, I still found charming that some contents are found only by few people that search or are lucky to stumble upon.
The extra / side content offers diverse things to talk to friends and check if someone missed something.

For the price, I think it's a very good game for any Anime JRPG lover.