The Tales of Saga celebrates 20 years and Bandai Namco wanted to celebrate in style with a special delivery: Tales of Zestiria. Special because it is committed to some new weight and because you notice that it offers something that is not a delivery within the saga. The title came out a few months ago in Japan and finally arrives in our territory with a clear continuation line at the base but with enough changes to be attractive both to fans of the saga in particular and to those who like the JRPG genre. general. This is the story of Sorey, a boy who has to rescue the world in which he lives.
The protagonist of this new adventure is called Sorey, an inhabitant of the city of Elysia who is curiously full of seraphim, a kind of spirits invisible to humans but not to the protagonist, who is able to communicate with them. During the first hours of the game we
will see where the plot moves: Sorey will discover after meeting a mysterious girl who has the goal of becoming the Pastor, a hero who must bring peace to the kingdom in which they live. The enemies are represented by the infernal ones, who are expanding throughout the world at a higher speed.
One of the obvious problems in the game is that the plot does not have many surprises. Without wanting to enter into spoilers, the truth is that both the characters and the adventure that they star do not leave the line marked at any time. The team we make up is full of recognizable stereotypes from the first moment and any plot turn is expected until we have some background in games of this genre. Only the presence of a changing protagonist and that evolves from the first hours to the end (without great surprises in its transformation, but something with interest) stands out among a template that has good moments, but does not have a character profile that Mark forever once the adventure is over.
Action and freedom
One of the most interesting novelties of the game has to do with a combat system that is modulating and improving as we advance in history. The title uses a modification of the Linear Motion Battle System that allows to enjoy dynamic confrontations in real time while we are giving orders to our character, we indicate what we want our comrades to do and we control that everyone is working in unison. The classic melee attacks, various combinations of actions and the magics of all life are joined by the House brand in the saga and the new Mystics, which make impressive attacks ideal for the toughest enemies.
In the combat we emphasize the freedom of movement of our character, something that is also related to the freedom in general that has been wanted to endow the game as we will see later on. Of course, it is true that sometimes the chaos takes over the screen and it is difficult to follow certain battles with large crowds with special effects everywhere. Tales of Zestiria, in any case, wins whole by this agile system of fight that offers multiple variants and possibilities according to the elections and the way we have to face battles and use our characters: The seraphim are associated with concrete elements, these can be merge with humans to get new features and, ultimately, there are many options beyond the fight itself that make it the most attractive game.
The freedom of movement in combat is also related to the new plane in which the fighting is fought: wherever we hit an enemy is where we fight with him, without moving to a new area as it happened with other installments of the series and with many Other JRPG. This makes transitions more pleasant and coherent in a world that also grows in possibilities: Our progress throughout the game will be through open-world scenarios.
The feeling of freedom to explore and move where we please is appreciated, in addition to providing more hours of play for the number of paths to travel through the universe of the game, but the fact is that we also have the doubt about whether this
What has been implemented really changes the way of understanding the Tales of previous or simply is something more aesthetic that presents situations
and enemies in a different way. Surely the answer goes to horse of both positions, and is that the gameplay and development change but we are not facing a revolution either, something that is mainly due to the feeling of emptiness offered by the large number of locations that we will visit.
