Tales of the Abyss (3DS) Review

Can a Tales game from the Playstation 2 continue the DS’ tradition of kick ass RPG’s?

The DS was a bit of a powerhouse for the Japanese RPG games that many of us had previously never played before, or at least updated some of the classics. So far, the 3DS has not been as lucky although it admittedly took some time for the DS to catch up too. With the release of Tales of the Abyss for the Nintendo 3DS, it’s hopefully a sign of what’s to come for the console from this genre as this first offering is very substantial.

I won’t go too much into the store of Abyss, simply because it’s all been done before particularly in this genre. A sheltered prince is captured by mercenaries who are trying to achieve a certain goal, however eventually said prince realises that he might be the unlikely hero of the story and eventually joins their cause. This is what the story boils down to and it’s really not all that ground breaking nor is it something new or innovative for this genre. The characters themselves are pretty unbearable, but to their credit, the developers and writers eventually have you sympathising with them rather than wishing they would die. While the story of the game may sound familiar due to its cliché nature, it may also bear familiarity because Tales of the Abyss is a 3D remake of the PS2 title of the same name.

Tales of the Abyss is essentially an enhanced port of the PS2 original, with a few technical improvements here and there as well as, of course, 3D effects. Thankfully, it doesn’t look worse than its PS2 version although some areas do look a little bit weird with the reduction in resolution. Thankfully, most of the pre-rendered backdrops still look quite good although the characters do stand out from them quite substantially. While the game does look, for the most part, “competent”, it definitely isn’t really pushing the 3DS’s capabilities too much. One gripe I did have with the game was that there were a few slowdowns here and there on the large open-world map space, but nowhere near as many as the PS2 version (which was plagued with them).

Unfortunately, the 3D effect is very subtle and most of the game pops out rather than specific areas, which creates this rather lazy-looking pop-up book effect. The game wasn’t really made for 3D and unfortunately the conversion was not handled very well either and this does show. One thing that I should complement Tales of the Abyss on is that when the 3D is enabled, the frame rate remains the same, which is a nice touch. The fact that the 3D causes a lot of aliasing, however, creates enough incentive to leave it off.

When not in battle, Tales of the Abyss controls just like you’d expect—you move with the Circle Pad and interact using the face buttons. Throughout the game, players will be faced with “skits” which essentially play a short, off-screen interaction between the characters currently in your party. Most of them are fairly humorous and further develop the characters, though they are unfortunately unvoiced which is a bit hard to get used to, following Tales of Vesperia on the Xbox which had fully voiced skits. Thankfully, if you don’t care for these skits, you can skip them without consequence. Additionally, players can craft all kinds of things through the game’s cooking system, which is a good way to heal the party when other methods might not be so suitable or possible.

Abyss does try to make the player move away from the main path of the game with quite a few optional side quests to complete as well as a few puzzles to lengthen the dungeons and put you off a linear path too. While these are officially “optional”, there is still a level of compulsion to complete these quests simply because they offer much more powerful armour and weapons for your party.

Thankfully, unlike some older traditional RPGs, the battle system in Tales of the Abyss has not aged at all and still feels quite fast paced. Taking place entirely in real time, Abyss’s battle system has attack, block and skill buttons. Pressing them by themselves carries out certain actions, but also pressing them together with a direction on the Circle Pad opens up what is essentially four actions per button. It’s a very simple and intuitive system that works really well, though sometimes we found ourselves mashing buttons more than actually strategising and thinking about how we would attack enemies. It also doesn’t help that the game is very presumptuous—it doesn’t really explain anything to the player and many of you will probably miss a skill or two just because you didn’t think to check for them.

There is still, however, a nice element of strategy in Tales of the Abyss. The Field of Fonons feature allows players in the party to lay down glyphs on the floor, and should you attack while standing on one, your attacks will transformed to specialised versions depending on which glyph you’re standing on. It’s a cool system that really gives a great sense of synergy between your party members, something a lot of JRPGs fail to do. Additionally, equipping special items known as “capacity cores” allows players to level up their characters’ attributes in a certain way—equipping an “action” oriented one will level up action related attributes faster rather than defence, and vice versa. It’s a good system as each core has different attributes and it allows players to craft their main character in similar vein to how they play. Finally, in those moments of need, there is an “over limit” mode which not only increases player performance but also provides access to “mystic artes”—crazy, over-the-top attacks that do devastating damage.

Tales of the Abyss is a very long game, especially for an RPG. While the main game itself will last anywhere between 40 and 50 hours (maybe even more), there’s even more to do that will propel most gamers above the 70-hour mark. While it’s great that there’s so much substantial content here, one has to wonder just how much of it the player will actually want to play through before getting bored. Unfortunately this also seems to be a problem with the main storyline, which takes a bit to actually take off and become interesting and will definitely put some players off. As previously mentioned, there are optional side quests but most of these feel like they should be completed just for the rather rewarding loot gains.

Coming from the rather British-centric localisation of Xenoblade, it was a little bit weird to hear the characters in Tales of the Abyss speak with American accents like I was previously used to. That being said, the voice work is pretty competent and most of the voices suit the characters quite well. It is nice though to see that most of the cutscenes are voiced in the game. The music itself is general RPG fare featuring some nice, relaxing and downbeat pieces for exploration, gloomy and foreboding tunes for dungeons and fast paced eclectic tracks for battles. Nothing amazing but nothing awful either.

Tales of the Abyss is a bit of a mixed bag. It’s a good RPG but it’s not anything ground-breaking; after all, it is hard to be when you’re a remake of an older game. Still, it manages to iron out most of the technical problems that the original had but it doesn’t really add anything either. Still, if you’re looking for a great PS2-era RPG for the 3DS, this is definitely it. And chances are you haven’t played it since this is the first time it’s come out in PAL regions. Again, nothing fantastic but by no means bad either.