Whew. It sure has been a while, hasn’t it? I hope I remember enough from the game to
even start talking about it; I like it, but I really don’t want to do another
playthrough just to review.
In any case, here’s what happened last time on the Rundown:
--Poor communication
starts wars and nearly dooms the planet!
--Nobody can shut up
about fonons and junk I could care less about!
--This is one of the
only times when I care about politics!
--A sensible,
well-organized religion? Not in THIS
JRPG!
All right. Let’s give this thing another go.
(Spoiler alert involving several important details about the story --
which, as you know, is a story all about how my life got flipped-turned
upside-down and I’d like to take a minute just sit right there I’ll tell you
how I became a prince of a town called Bel-Air.
Anyone know where I can get one of those spinning throne things? I could stand to spruce up my room.)
A long time ago, I
remember hearing once on the news that the population had reached six billion
people. At the time, it seemed like an
unfathomable amount…and even though that was when I was significantly younger, that’s
still a mind-boggling number. And it’s a
number that’s only grown since then, as have the problems associated with
them. How do you accommodate
everyone? How do you divide
specialization of skills and abilities easily?
How do you provide even the basic necessities like food, and water, and
shelter? The likely answer is that you
can’t. It’s a somber fact, but a true
one nonetheless; even so, at least it’s a truth learned over the course of
years and years.
Auldrant doesn’t have
that leisure. Thanks to the efforts of
baddies like Van and Mohs, replicas are created en masse -- worse yet, many of
them are left to their devices, and roam the land nigh-aimlessly. It’s a problem that’s not only compounded by
their numbers, and compounded even further by their mere existence causing the
deaths of their originals (and wrecking the landscape), but because the
replicas -- at least those that haven’t received training to be soldiers -- are
as smart as the average newborn. They’re
nothing more than wastes of space that terrify the townsfolk, consume
resources, and disrupt both society and world stability. Everyone tries to come up with a good answer
to the solution, and it’s admirable that the developers would try to tackle
such an idea.
It’s also more than a
little jarring, considering a major answer to the problem: ten thousand
replicas are sacrificed at once to power some world-saving magic. It’s a poignant, if grim, solution and
event. There are likely other replicas
still wandering around, but efforts are made to try and welcome them into
society…and yet, I still can’t help but think back to those ten thousand lives.
…I also just realized
that I should typing REPLICAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAS instead of replicas,
but…well, I think that just this once a little decorum is in order.
This
game is full of “and then you realize” situations.
I’m pretty sure I’ve
mentioned this before, but I think part of the reason Guy is so popular is
because of his fear of women. If ever
there was an endearing character trait, something like that would be it --
seeing him shiver and leap out of the way of the fairer sex is always a
pleasure. Lots of people give him
trouble for it, up to and including a certain haughty princess looking to make
Guy one of his servants when she marries Luke.
Guy freaking out is always good for a laugh or two.
And then you realize
that the reason he freaks out is because his sister and his female servants die
on top of him, forcing him to stay under a pile of dead bodies for who knows
how long. And then, suddenly, it’s not
quite as funny anymore.
That’s probably one of
the biggest reveals in Abyss, but
certainly not the only one. Whether it’s
directly or indirectly told, the game has plenty of reasoning behind most of
the characters’ actions, thoughts, and even quirks. Anise constantly reveals herself to be a
gold-digging tween who’s always trying to find ways to make a quick buck off
the party’s adventures, or otherwise just marry into wealth…and then you
realize that she’s so obsessed with money because she’s the only thing standing
between her parents’ well-being and financial destitution (or worse), and her
mature cynicism is a knee-jerk reaction to her father’s naiveté that landed
them in the doghouse in the first place.
Luke acts as a viewpoint character that allows more knowledgeable
characters to ease both of us into the way the world works…and then you realize
that Luke -- by virtue of just being born seven years ago -- knows absolutely
nothing about his world, never had that knowledge, had to be reintroduced to
the people that would have given birth to him, and was wholly insulated because
he was nothing short of a baby…and in many respects, still is.
But the lifetime
achievement award has to go to Jade. He’s
a jolly joker who regularly engages in threats, torture, and general trolling,
and much of it is played for laughs…and then you realize that the reason why
he’s such a douche is because he has no
comprehension of empathy or human decency.
He’s Jade the Necromancer through and through; the people around him are
little more than experiments and test subjects to be poked and prodded, and
offer nothing of worth to him than data.
He spends a good ninety-five percent of the game with all the answers in
his pocket, but all that confidence and control he exudes masks the fact that
-- whether he was a child that played with life on a whim, or a colonel feared
for his mastery of murder -- he’s a person with deeply-buried self-loathing,
and it’s likely that he lashes out at others because he sees them as worthless
and harmful as he sees himself.
Thankfully Luke and the others show him the potential humanity holds,
but I think my interpretation still holds…depressing as it may be.
How the hell do you get “light of the
sacred flame” from a name like “Luke”?
So apparently in the Abyss world, Luke means “light of the
sacred flame.” How exactly, I have yet
to reason.
Names like Vandesdelca
and Mystearica I can buy having long, alternative meanings -- they’re full of
syllables and such. If Ancient Ispanian
even begins to follow Japanese character conventions (mirroring hiragana or
katakana), then I can buy certain letter or syllable combinations being
stand-ins for different words, especially in light of the fonic hymns that seem
to work on the same short-word principle.
But Luke? Just Luke, and nothing
else? Not even Lukeadukea? Come on…Luke is only one syllable and four
letters! What, does L by itself mean
“light” in Ancient Ispanian? If each
letter in his name corresponds to a symbol, then what does that mean for a name
like Van’s? If the L in itself DOES
stand for a symbol -- and by extension all the other letters in Luke’s name --
how do they differentiate between them easily?
Are the symbols actually like kanji?
Are there just a lot of different characters to use and learn?
I guess if the
developers didn’t feel like explaining everything, I shouldn’t care too much.
Astor
reminds me of Waluigi.
I swear to God I can’t
look at this guy without thinking of Waluigi.
I’ll admit there are
key differences (DAT LAUGH), but still…it’s always Waluigi time whenever Astor
is onscreen.
The
battle system is as fun as it’s always been.
After playing Tales of Graces f, it’s hard for me to
even think about the combat systems in titles prior to it. The muscle memory I have from dodging and
switching styles and comboing with my CC in mind made transitioning from that
to Abyss (and vice-versa)
surprisingly difficult. That said, even
playing a game six years older than the most recent doesn’t automatically make
it inferior. I’d like to think that the Tales series operates on a different
axis than the Final Fantasy series;
while the latter effectively starts over with each new release and builds a
system from virtually scratch (for better or worse), the former -- based on
what I’ve seen -- is content with evolving and refining its combat system to
perfection. On a side note, maybe this is
why Legendia has such a strange
response from fans; rather than continuing that evolutionary line upward, it
was more of a step to the side and existed in its own microcosm.
Postulations aside, Abyss may have been around for a while,
but it still holds up remarkably well.
This was the game that allowed free-running in the middle of battles,
allowing you to move at leisure across a full 3D plane and sneak around enemy
defenses for a pincer strike. Likewise,
this game lets you manually activate Over Limit, rather than the crapshoot
random activation of Symphonia -- and
this time around, it lets you use your Mystic Arte without any obscure
hoop-jumping (at least in the case of a character’s first Mystic Arte). One noticeable change from Symphonia is that you can only go from
your basic attack string to a base arte to an arcane arte, while the older game
let you chain three artes together. It’s
an interesting choice, but one I approve of; the physical attackers could run
out of TP extremely quickly, and you’d be missing large chunks of meter even
after a low-cost combo. You’ll still
have to do meter management in Abyss,
but it’s never a problem -- especially now that your party members can give
themselves items if need be.
The
FOF system promotes (and rewards) team synergy.
Probably the most
notable feature of the battle system is the Field of Fonon system. Here’s how it works: certain moves -- magic,
primarily, but some physical attacks -- leave rings of element-charged energy
on the field for a short time. If enough
same-element magic is cast, eventually that ring grows huge and colorful, and a
character can use it in combination with a specific arte to create an even more
powerful art. So if Jade casts Thunder
Blade, he’ll instantly leave a full-powered wind FOF on the field. Guy can slip into the ring, use his Beast
arte, and rather than use it as normal, he’ll automatically use the souped-up
Thunder Beast instead. It certainly
creates an incentive to put spellcasters in the party; have your melee guys
take to the front lines and give them time to cast, and they’ll reward you with
stronger, uninterruptable special moves.
Of course, your spellcasters can use the FOFs too; one of my favorite
strategies with Jade was to cast Thunder Blade, then use his Thunder Lance to
instantly move a full-powered ring to the back lines. That way I could have him cast a stronger
spell without risk of counterattack, aiming a spell, or otherwise just not
charging up in time.
It’s an interesting
feature, but…well, sometimes it can be a bit too gimmicky. Yes, you can
create FOFs if you cast enough magic, but there are a lot of assumptions that
need to be made. You have to assume that
Jade is going to cast the same-element spell over and over again to get what
you need. You have to assume that Tear
is actually going to use one of her field-invoking spells (which she did about
five times through seventy hours of gameplay).
You have to assume that Luke and Guy won’t finish the fight before a
second spell can even be cast. You have
to assume that the enemies on-screen can’t -- or won’t -- use the FOF before
you. It’s not an awful system by any
means, but it’s not flawless, either…but of course, its presence is always much-appreciated. If nothing else, it shows effort and a push
to be innovative.
Why do enemies have hyper armor for no
reason?
Every damn time I knock
these guys down, they get back up and go into I Don’t Feel Like Flinching
Anymore Mode. I guess it’s a way to
prevent overzealous players from just rushing enemies down and killing them
with zero effort, but it’s still kind of annoying. What’s even more annoying is that damn near
every boss in the game refuses to
stagger from your attacks until you rack up enough hits -- which means that
they’re free to bop you in the face while you’re trying to get them to stop
bopping you in the face. Thankfully I
was playing as bow-brandishing Natalia for most of the game so I specifically
wouldn’t have to deal with that (and I ended up making her a better melee
character than Guy, if only by accident), but still, it’s annoying to watch
Luke or Guy or Anise get knocked around.
This is actually a
consistent problem with the Tales
games, I think -- enemies just keep bopping you and bopping you until you bop
them enough to make them stop bopping you.
Why? I can understand if they had
a little bit of super armor -- I use Hulk in Marvel vs. Capcom 3, so I know how useful/important it is -- or
some fancy tricks to avoid or reverse your attacks, but punishing me for trying
to play the game is not something I hold in high esteem.
Customization
is pretty simple, but deep enough.
I remember shortly
before Final Fantasy 13 came out, I
told my brother that I’d turn white mage Vanille into the party’s dedicated
tank. Why? Mostly for laughs, but I earnestly believed I
could do it. Given how I turned FF8’s Squall into a fighter who could
simultaneously steal from enemies and put them to sleep, and how I discovered
that Wakka made a better Auron than Auron, I figured it was possible.
But with FF13 being FF13, it…didn’t pan out.
Thankfully, Abyss gives you plenty of chances to
build your dream team with all the stats and abilities you could ever ask
for. As soon as you can start shifting
around Capacity Cores -- equipment that changes which stats get higher boosts
when your characters level up -- you can start compensating for weaknesses, or
building their strengths to absurd degrees.
Additionally, loading up some fon slot chambers into your artes gives
them special bonuses -- higher damage, reduced TP cost, greater knockback -- so
you can power up the moves you prioritize.
It’s a simple system that doesn’t require much work, but offers plenty
of benefits the more you play with it and the longer you stick with them. As such, by game’s end my Natalia was THE
damage dealer of the party with a smiliarly-high defense stat. What she lacked in DPS, she made up for it by
being nigh-untouchable, stopping enemies dead in their tracks before they even
got near her (if not outright killing them), and healing herself/casting buffs
at a reduced cost or with enhanced effects.
And the Capacity Cores I used allowed her to gain plenty of useful
abilities -- one that let her instantly cancel her back dash with an attack,
extending her basic attack string from three shots to five, and gaining a power
boost I could activate instantly at the start of a battle.
Needless to say, the
game was very, very easy.
The
game has some really nice locales.
In terms of raw
graphical power, they’re not exactly eye-popping. But you have to admire the scale and level of
intricacy in virtually every area you visit.
Even if areas are united by virtue of being part of certain countries,
each one has a distinct feel and spirit to it.
Just look at Baticul here. It’s
not just a town, it’s a capital city -- and that’s incredibly obvious every
time you visit. It’s a towering metropolis
with its nobles practically sitting in the sky, and makes use of some hefty
machinery just to navigate.
If I had to point to a
failing of the game, it’s that sometimes it tries too hard to be big. It’s all too apparent as you go through
certain areas of the game in search of an NPC, and you start to realize that
there’s a lot of empty space. It’s even pointed out at one point when you
visit a laboratory; one of the scientists says it’s easy to get lost because
all the rooms look the same. And that’s
true -- they all look the same, and they all have jack-all to do with anything,
even the experiments at hand. So why are
they there?
Well, it’s not enough
to cause concern. There is empty space,
but there’s plenty of material to explore and enjoy. However, as a result…
The game has a lot of loading.
It really does. There’s no other way around it.
It takes a while to
load up when you start playing. It takes
a while to load up when you change scenes and enter a new area. It takes a while to load up when you trigger
a cutscene. It takes a while to load up
when you try to save. Yes, somehow saving
your game -- just saving -- ends up
becoming a thirty-second affair. I know
that sounds kind of whiny, but I could save my game in Symphonia as fast as I could press the A button. And I could do pretty much the same thing
when I played the PC version of FF7
back in 1999, which in my experience was notoriously prone to crashing. (On the
plus side, a glitch in the game allowed Cid to learn his Level 2 Limit Break
before he’d even learned his second Level 1; on the minus side, using it
immediately crashed the game.)
There’s too much backtracking.
There is a long-ass
stretch of the game where you don’t get to do anything besides travel across
the globe and talk to people, or otherwise revisit areas you’ve already been
to. To say that it gets annoying would
be like saying getting your leg stuck in a bear trap. Things happen that are important to the plot,
but it’s all just busywork until you can get to the next fight, or the next
dungeon, or the next boss battle.
Especially the boss battles -- the Tales
series is NOTORIOUS for suddenly making you fight random-ass monsters that
can and will drop out of the sky, so why can’t I get one of those to break up
the action?
It’s just you going to
the same areas over and over again. The
towns and such are pretty fantastic, but keep visiting them for menial tasks
and they start to lose their luster. And
the towns you visit extremely frequently, like Daath or Baticul or Yulia City,
suddenly become less of a spectacle and more of an annoyance. How am I supposed to love you if I don’t have
a chance to miss you, immobile establishments of rather high political importance?
It all ties into a big
problem with the game, one that I’ve addressed earlier: the game is too damn
long. The second and third acts should
have been fused together, or even have the third act almost completely
gutted. You have to know when it’s time
to end a story, especially when…
I feel like I have to watch the same
cutscene multiple times…multiple times.
Another problem with
the third act (and to a lesser extent, the game at large) is that for all the
cutscenes, a huge percentage of them are too identical for comfort. In any given cutscene, you can almost
perfectly predict what the characters will say/think/do independently of
whatever’s being revealed in the plot.
Here’s a sampler:
Luke: Uncertainty/remorse
about being a replica, forcing everyone to try and comfort him or call him an
idiot. Alternatively, “Sh-shut up!”
Tear: Reciting
technobabble/the mission objective.
Alternating between scolding and comforting Luke. Tagging scenes with her trademark “But it’s
so cute” for maximum endearment.
Jade: Refusing to tell
anyone that he knows almost exactly what will happen at any given moment. Also, trolling.
Guy: Calling Luke out
for saying something stupid (which becomes increasingly often). Additionally, calling Jade out for his
trolling, even though the scene’s pretty much already over.
Anise: Reminding people
that she’s a gold digger. Being more
mature than Ion, but still tripping over herself to try and look after him
(justifiably so). Being underutilized.
Natalia: ASCH ASCH ASCH
ASCH ASCH
Asch: SURLY SURLY DRECK
SURLY OUTTA MY WAY SURLY REPLICAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
I’m exaggerating, of
course, but only a little bit.
There
are some pretty heady themes at play throughout the story.
This should be obvious,
since I already mentioned the replica/population control theme earlier. But even with that aside, there are plenty of
big ideas to latch onto. The
coming-of-age story is a given, but it’s taken up a few notches by Luke
effectively having to go from a toddler to an adult; maybe the reason for all
his uncertainty and confusion by the world is a way of subtly addressing that,
yes, he is just a seven-year-old. On
that note, you could argue that childhood, adulthood, and even parenthood are
all important parts of the story. Anise
is a child that, for the most part, acts like an adult. Tear struggles to discard her childhood, but
in embracing Luke -- almost in a motherly sense -- she ends up realizing that
those parts of her aren’t something to be devalued just because she’s a
soldier. Jade and Guy both had messed-up
childhoods, but while the latter ended up becoming a mature and well-adjusted
adult (a certain quirk aside), the former ends up resenting every part of his
time on Auldrant, past and present…though incidentally, he becomes a surrogate
father in more ways than one during the journey. Natalia consistently makes adult decisions on
account of being a princess, but there’s a chance that everything she does is
because of a decision she made as a child -- and indeed, is still heavily bound
to the past.
There’s also the more
obvious matter of fate and destiny, and rebelling against it and all that
jazz. I know I took issue with it last
time, but for what it’s worth it’s not a deal-breaker; it’s just a means to
explore ideas and make the story move forward, so in that respect I can’t say
it’s an automatic failure. Besides, it
brings up a lot of questions that aren’t easily answered. If your fate has not only been engraved into
the planet and your future -- and can be accessed with almost no effort on your
part -- what do you do then? Do you
decide to find out everything that’ll happen to you, for good and for ill? Or do you just live your day-to-day life,
unaware of the dangers lurking around the corner? If you get a Score reading that says you’re
going to be eaten by a hippopotamus next week, what do you do then? Do you stay inside next week, hoping to avoid
a deadly encounter? Do you try to fight
that fate, knowing it’s impossible -- knowing that potentially, a big bad
pachyderm might bust into your house and chow down? What do you do with the time you have
left? Do you realize that the Score is
bogus and try and convince others? Or
wait in peace for blissful, water-beast-related death?
…This game is deep.
Those themes would be handled better if not
for Luke’s waffling character arc.
“Here’s a scenario for
you: you’ve just finished going on a bombastic journey across the world with
your motley crew. You’ve gone from being
a noble’s son cooped up in a manor to (after discovering you’re a clone of the
real noble’s son), in no particular order, an ambassador who’s effectively
ended a war, a swordsman that can cleave through mechs, a symbol of hope for
the people, a maintenance technician for the entire planet, a symbol of hope
for the people, an ally of one of the highest authorities in the church, a
symbol of hope for dozens, including politicians as well as townsfolk, a
warrior capable of trumping your teacher (albeit with the typical four-on-one
ganking common in RPGs), and the virtual savior of every living being on the
planet from continental collapse and tumble into a poisonous underworld. If I’d gone through all of that, I’d resign
to a quiet life of mediation and humble instruction, passing on my knowledge
and skill to future heroes -- though of course, I’d spring into action whenever
needed, be it ambassador work or slice-and-dice diplomacy.
Stage 3 Luke has a
different plan. He just develops an
inferiority complex, becomes resentful and ashamed to be alive, and wonders --
frequently -- why he’s alive and what he’s supposed to do.
Seriously, Luke? I mean…fucking seriously?”
Sad to say that, in
spite of this game being built around Luke, sometimes he’s the biggest
problem. He is a nexus of conflict;
while he has issues and flaws that need tending to -- as any good character
should -- his conflicts absorb some of the impact and meaning of all the other
external conflicts. I would bet that if
you got a bunch of gamers who had cleared Abyss
in one room and asked them what stuck out the most, it wouldn’t be the ideas
and themes I mentioned, but just how often Luke led the story off-course. (And I’d bet that they wouldn’t be nearly as
forgiving as I am.) After Van tumbled
into the planet’s core, that should have been the end of Luke’s issues on the
replica front. He should have been a
stronger, more confident, more capable character, and for a time it looked like
he was.
But inexplicably, he has to
rediscover himself and his worth and where he belongs, and it’s just not a
compelling story -- especially when apparently, everything that Luke (i.e. the
player) had accomplished up to that point is now effectively pointless. Did he just forget that he kinda sorta saved the world? And what, you’re going to worry about taking
the home of someone who had no intention of ever returning? If it bothers you that much, Luke, then
leave. Go out and do some work as an
ambassador. Spread awareness about
replicas. Learn more about the world by
going on a pilgrimage -- study up on religion in Daath, or improve PR with your
family’s political rivals in Grand Chokmah.
Don’t lie in bed and moan about a problem that doesn’t need to exist if
you just remember that you saved the
world.
Why is character development for Jade part
of a side quest you can miss and never have access to?
Really, why? What is the purpose of putting scenes that
develop characters outside the bounds of the main story? Can you imagine what it would be like if
novels started doing that? Like if you
wanted to figure out how Elizabeth Bennet evolved over the course of her story,
you’d have to use a decoder ring and special ink?
There’s an animated cutscene that takes
place at one of the most awkward times.
So here’s some setup
for you. You’ve been exploring an
abandoned factory looking for a way out of the city. You’ve just made your way through the dank,
oil-filled interior and fought your way past a giant chemical-covered
beast. You get a cutscene where Natalia
tells Guy to go down first and catch her if she falls (even though he can’t),
Anise starts hugging Luke, Tear calls Luke despicable for…some reason, and Luke
reveals to Jade and everyone else that he has absolutely no understanding of
how sarcasm works. And then you get this
cutscene.
That is a pretty marked
mood swing right there.
What the hell is a second-order
hyperresonance?
Before I go any
further, I have to give props to Eric Jackson (aka Dimanagul) for pointing out
a major oversight -- apparently, I didn’t bother to mention how many times the
phrase “fonic resonance” appeared in the game.
I’m a little ashamed to have made such a big slip-up -- what with me
being the self-proclaimed Knight of Nitpicking -- but then again, that’s what I
have sharp-witted readers for.
That all said, one
thing that DID stick with me was the baffling inclusion of this “second-order
hyperresonance” business in the last half-hour of the game. According to Jade, it’s something that’s been
theorized about (no), can do everything normal hyperresonance can plus
neutralize any fonon (no), lets the gang escape from a trap (no), free Lorelei (NO), and can be
controlled at will by Lu-
Second-order
hyperresonance is bullshit. Bull.
Shit. Where did it come from? How does it work? Why is this the first time it’s ever been
mentioned? What’s the point when we’re
just going to ram swords and hurricanes up and down Van’s ass until
sunset? What does it change? What does it do that was so important, so
weighty that first-order hyperresonance couldn’t do on its own in spite of
being a perfectly capable and much more tolerable plot device? How does Asch’s death make it so that Luke’s
hyperresonance not only becomes stable and more controllable, but more
powerful? Shouldn’t one unstable power +
another unstable power = an even more unstable power? Did the developers realize how much it screws
up Luke’s personal growth and development by making it so that his greatest
weapon is only gained because his better half gave it to him? Why couldn’t Luke just use his regular
hyperresonance -- incomplete but competent as it was -- to save the day,
overcoming his own weaknesses and harnessing his full potential to beat out Van?
I guess what I’m
getting at here is Asch sucks. Oh, and
second-order hyperresonance.
…And Ion. He sucks the most.
The
opening for this game is among my favorites for the whole series.
I’m tempted to watch
this opening every time I turn on the game.
Every time.
…Though I’ve seen Xillia’s opening, and I think that’s
slightly better. Or at least tied.
The
soundtrack is pretty good, as expected.
The Tales series and composer Motoi Sakuraba
go together like hot dogs and ketchup…which is to say, really well. Especially if there’s mustard, too. And a nice, warmed-up bun. Maybe a side of chips, or even some fries…or
some baked beans and potato salad. And
you can’t forget the…
Uh…I feel like this
topic has started getting away from me.
Look, I’d embed a video here, but there are so many applicable
candidates that I’d be posting all day long.
So just go to YouTube and type in “tales of the abyss ost” and start
listening. I’d recommend The Arrow was
Shot and Awkward Justice, for starters.
I
like Tales of the Abyss.
Aaaaaaaaand in what
should be a surprise to nobody, I have to admit that I still like the game.
I’ll be honest. I’ll cry and I’ll moan and I’ll nitpick and I’ll
complain and I’ll whine, but in the end it’s not enough to hamper my fun. Nor should it hamper anyone else’s fun,
should they decide to try the game. Does
it have its faults? Yes, and it has a number
of them. But the good parts are more
than potent enough to compensate, to the point where you could outright ignore
the trouble areas. It’s solid,
rewarding, entertaining, thoughtful, and all-around fun. It won’t be the best game you’ve ever played
(presumably, at least), but it’s still a competent title worthy of the Tales moniker.
As I’ve said, I hold
the series in high esteem -- more so than even Final Fantasy these days.
With one exception, I have yet to play any game with Tales in its title that hasn’t been a
great game, and a great experience. Abyss, in my opinion, is no exception…but
the ingredients that comprise it might be too much to stomach for some. That, I can understand. I understand now more than ever how people can
disapprove of Abyss (and -- get this
-- have a different opinion from me). I understand that Abyss isn’t as great as I thought it was back then; by extension,
plenty of other games I’ve played, Tales
series or otherwise, might fall apart if I put them under the microscope. But you know what? Even if it was just for this one game, I’m
glad I gave it a second look. Now I can
put it to rest, knowing I had a few more hurrahs with it than I would have
before, and knowing that I’m not so easily blinded by nostalgia that I can’t be
a bit objective.
So in a nutshell? Not as good as I thought it was, but still
plenty good enough. If anybody out there
is reading this and wondering if they should pick it up (in spite of my casual
use of spoilers), then I say yes. Get a
cheap PS2 copy. Get it on the 3DS. If you’re out for an adventure, get it. Hopefully, you can handle a little midriff
action.
That’ll do for
now. See you guys around.
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