"Tales of Innocence for the DS is great."

Tales of Series has always been one of my favorite series. I first became a fan upon playing Tales of Symphonia for the Gamecube. As soon as I played Symphonia, I was immediately hooked. I beat the game and became interested in the series. Recently, I had been in a Tales of mood and was thinking of a new game in the series to try. It turned out there couldn't have been a better time. Not long ago, a English translation was made for Tales of Innocence. Allowing people to now play through the game in English instead of Japanese. So, I played through Innocence and was glad I decided to. It was a really good game and it proves that Tales of can be done on a handheld. That's about it for the intro...So, let's get on with the review.

Graphics:8.5/10:Tales of Innocence pushes the DS's graphical capabilities to it's limits. Everything is wonderfully rendered in 3D. Animations look great and the game just has a truly impressive feel to the Graphics. Aside from just the technology itself, the character designs of the game are quite good. Your almost bound to find at least one character who's design you love. However, the Graphics does have it's flaws. Mainly the dungeon designs. Many of the dungeons in the game have extremely repetitive designs.

You'll just be mainly running through identical corridor after identical corridor. Which gets repetitive and boring quite quickly. Not to mention too, most of the dungeons just have such a monotone feel to them. Maybe you won't notice it at first, but it'll get to you eventually. Despite it's flaws though, the Graphics are still great. So, I'm going to score the Graphics as a 8.5/10. With the least important aspect out of the way, let's get onto the most important. Gameplay.

Gameplay9/10:If you've played any other Tales of games you won't be surprised with the Gameplay in Tales of Innocence. Tales of Innocence plays similar to the more recent entries of the series in terms of how the mechanics work. To begin with, Tales of Innocence is a Action-RPG. The game follows the typical progression structure of an RPG. Having you go from town to dungeon repeatedly. You do your usual business in town. Stocking up on equipment and items then resting at the Inn to restore HP/TP. Once that's done, head off to the next dungeon and complete it. One less traditional aspect of Tales of Innocence's Gameplay is battles are encountered by coming into contact with enemies. More of a modern encounter system. A traditional aspect of JRPG's(Japanese Role Playing Game) Innocence has is the fact that there's a World Map. So, when you exit a location you'll have to travel to the next location on the World Map. However, despite how traditional the game may seem at first...Tales of Innocence does have more features that differentiate it from the average Role Playing Game.

Some people may be familiar with the Star Ocean series. The battle system of the Tales series is quite similar to the Star Ocean series. You get into a battle and the battle plays out in real time. For Tales of Innocence the battle system can be most similarly compared to Tales of Vesperia's battle system. Tales of Innocence uses the "Dimension Stride Linear Motion Battle System" (DS-LMBS) While you are on a 3D battlefield during battle...You're mainly fighting on a 2D dimensional plane. Restricting your movement to just that dimension. You can run left or right on the plane or do other things. In addition to just moving, you can attack or guard in battle. Attacking to deal damage to enemies and guarding to block against enemy attacks. Reducing damage you receive from attacks significantly. Additionally, you can also use Arte's which are abilities that do various effects in battle. The feature of the battle system that makes this game so similar to Vesperia's is the Free Run feature. As mentioned, you are restricted for the most part to a 2D plain of movement in battle. With Free Run though, you can hold down the L button and run freely upon the battlefield in any direction. Allowing you to evade attacks, maneuver to a different position or possibly sneak up behind enemies for a easy attack opportunity. There is of course more features to the battle system as well.

To make battles more strategic, there is also a combo system. You can repeatedly attack a enemy and then combo after a series of attacks into a Arte.. If you hit an enemy enough times, the enemy will stagger and you'll be able to get a few easy hits in. The key to winning battles is to keep enemies staggered as much as possible by doing the largest hit combos you can. Since, if a enemy is staggered they cannot do anything. Allowing you to rack up a lot of damage easily and be able to cast spells. It's even more vital to keep enemies staggered since casting spells requires you to not get hit once while casting a spell. If a party member gets hit even ONCE while casting a spell...Then they have to start casting the spell over again. So, this only adds more strategy to battles. Since, you need to keep enemies away from your spell casters while focusing on killing them. Fortunately, you're not alone when it comes to winning battles. You get an additional two party members who are controlled by the A.I. to assist you in battle.

Your two A.I. controlled party members can be set to perform specific tasks in battle. If you do not wish to assign a specific A.I. pattern for your party members to follow...You can set them to the Custom Strategy option. Which makes that party member do whatever they want. However, assigning the right A.I. tactics is a key aspect to winning battles. Most likely, you will not beat the game if you leave your other two party members on Custom. Either way, aside from the main quest Tales of Innocence has little in the way of Sidequests.

One of the main Sidequests of Tales of Innocence is a feature called the Guild system. Where you go into a Guild found in every town of the game and accept quests. You complete the quest and gain a reward. Pretty simple. There's more to it, but it's not of much importance. Aside from the Guild though, there's really only one other Sidequest...Being the optional dungeon of the game. Just one. Consisting of a 100 floors, the hardest enemies in the game, best equipment and of course...The optional boss awaiting at the end! That's really it as far as Sidequests go though...Which is kind of lame. Ah well though, it's still some Sidequests. So, I won't deduct points. While I've said a lot of positive things...There are flaws to the Gameplay.

Perhaps, the most annoying flaw of the Gameplay are the difficulty spikes. The first one comes around halfway through the game. It's a minor one and isn't that big of a problem. However, once you reach the third to last dungeon...Good luck. Randomly, the game just decides to take a massive difficulty leap. The game goes from pretty easy to really hard. At the end, some enemies can do at least 30% of your strongest party member's HP with a single combo or so. Not just that, but they also gain a lot more HP and take longer to kill. Requiring at least 3-4 20 hit combos or so to take one enemy down. In the worst case scenario...A party member may be ganged up on by enemies and at the end of the game that can literally mean curtains in just a matter of seconds. While the difficulty spike at the end was annoying it wasn't too bad. However, it did force me to change my character's battle styles to Guardian(Defensive Style) in order to endure the massive damage enemies inflicted at the end. Styles is a mechanic I will now get into.

One of the new features Tales of Innocence introduces is the Styles mechanic. You could say in a sense...These are like Job Classes of Tales of Innocence. By choosing a Style certain stats are boosted/decreased and certain skills can be learned from Styles by leveling up. Every character can be any style. As a character's Style level increases certain stats will boost pertaining to that Style. This is a nice welcomed feature as it adds a lot more customization to the game. By allowing you to somewhat control a character's stat growths and additional skills they may learn. Furthermore, as far as customization goes...

You can also combine weapons with materials to get certain effects. For example, if you combine a Fire Shard with a sword...The end result may be that the Sword gains a fire element. Allowing you to deal fire elemental damage with that weapon equipped. As with the Styles feature, this is also a welcomed feature. Definitely adds more customization to the game. Lots of fun to mess around with combining weapons/materials. However, back to the flaws of Tales of Innocence's Gameplay...

A rather annoying thing is how low the amount of Gald you get in this game is. Battles award pathetically low Gald. Not just that, but the way you get Gald from battles is aggravating. When you defeat a enemy, coins randomly drop across the battlefield. You have a temporary amount of time to grab the coins(Gald) before they disappear. Don't grab them and you basically don't get the Gald. Fortunately, when a battle ends your given a few seconds to freely roam the battlefield and grab them. However, this is just a pointless feature. It slows battles down a lot and doesn't really add anything honestly. Fortunately, it seems the developers learned from this mistake in future titles. On a more positive note though, Guild Quests do give a somewhat decent amount of Gald as completion rewards. So, you do have a good way to go about getting Gald through easy Sidequests. Last, but not least for the flaws. I want to address the backtracking.

Every single time you finish a dungeon guess what? You have to walk ALL THE WAY OUT! That's right. Enemies are still there. Meaning you'll still get into encounters on the way back too. Fortunately, the last few dungeons you don't have to do this. Man is it annoying as ever having to backtrack through the dungeons in the game regardless though. Overall, that's all I have to say regarding the Gameplay. I give it a 9/10. Extremely fun game. Lasts around 20 hours through for the main quest. Pretty good amount of customization. However, the difficulty spikes can really make the last stretch of the game lame. So, with Gameplay out of the way I'm covering Storyline now.

Storyline9.6/10:You assume the role of a boy named Luca. He's living a pretty ordinary life until an encounter one day. Where he's forced to embark onto a quest to discover his past life and who he really is. As he tries to discover his past life he meets allies upon the way with similar goals in mind who join him in his journey. The world they live in is at war among two major factions who are battling for various reasons. However, the world is the way it is because of certain events that occurred in the past. As with most Tales of games, the plot itself is pretty generic, but fortunately the characters really carry the game.

All of them are extremely well developed and interesting. Tales of Innocence provides plenty of backstory and cutscenes consisting of excellent dialogue. One of the aspects that best fleshes out the characters are the Skits. Skits are cutscenes mainly consisting of portraits of the characters talking amongst each other. In Innocence, there's an abundance of them and they are all entertaining to watch. In addition, there's a lot of plot twists to each of the characters as well. You will most definitely be surprised what you find out about some of the characters in the game. As great as the Storyline is though...It does have some minor flaws.

For one, the Friendship Points. In every Tales game there are points you obtain by reacting favorably to other party members when presented with the decision to do so in cutscenes. These points help gain certain events with party members whom you get the most relationship points with. Usually, you get a few more scenes and a maybe a different party member or two depending on the circumstances. However...In Innocence, little is gained. Just three skits and a minor difference in the ending. It was rather disappointing. Furthermore, you have little control over Friendship Points since you gain them in battle by assisting other party members. Which means, you have to use the party members you want to build the most friendship points with constantly in battle. Aside from that, the final antagonist is rather disappointing.

The final antagonist is your typical run of the mill:Wants to destroy world for no reason antagonist. Well, there is a reason that is explained and makes sense, but in the end it's still lame and generic. Fortunately, the antagonist does get a healthy amount of backstory and explanation. So, the final antagonist isn't too lame, but could have honestly been better. There's not much else for me to review regarding the Storyline...Due to that, I will now conclude my review of the Storyline by giving it a score of 9.8/10. Last, but not least the Music.

Music:9/10:For Innocence, a different composer was used. Composer Kaz Nakamura was assigned to do the Soundtrack for Tales of Innocence. Personally, I thought he did an excellent job. The game has a quite eclectic soundtrack. While it's not as powerful as other Tales of soundtracks it's still great. The soundtrack still has some really exceptional songs that will stand the test of time. Regardless, it's still lackluster compared to other entries of the series. As for the Voice Acting of the game...It was great. Ultimately, I'm giving the Music a 9/10. Eclectic style and a few really good songs. Not to mention, excellent voice acting. So, how is Tales of Innocence overall?

Overall:9/10:Tales of Innocence is a excellent game. It shows that Tales of can be accomplished on a handheld console. This game truly is one of the best titles on the DS and is a definite must buy. If you can, you should definitely get it. Don't hesitate to. Almost all aspects of the game are incredible. Overall, Tales of Innocence gets a 9 out of 10.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 08/04/10, Updated 08/05/10

Game Release: Tales of Innocence (JP, 12/06/07)