"From Heart to Heart"

Tales of Hearts is the eleventh game of the Tales series to come out. It is the second game of the series to be released for the Nintendo DS. Unfortunately, the game never was localized. So, the game never made it to western shores. Despite that though, I imported the game and played through it. It was enjoyable, but a little disappointing compared to how much some people hyped the game up. Why? Read on to find out. Also, before the review begins...Allow me to say I have almost no understanding of Japanese. So, I will not be able to review the storyline. I just want to get that clear before I begin writing this review.

Graphics:8/10:Compared to Tales of Innocence, Hearts takes a different approach with it's graphics. Instead of being pure 3D, Tales of Hearts has 2D sprites for the characters, but the environments are 3D. Similar to PS1 games such Breath of Fire III or Tales of Destiny II(Tales of Eternia). It was a little bit of a odd choice due to the graphics in Innocence being quite nice, but the graphics in Hearts are still quite good. For starters, the character designs are pretty good. Although, I would say compared to the design of other characters in the other games of the series the character designs in Tales of Hearts pale in comparison. Aside from the character designs though, the area designs are pretty good. Furthermore, the dungeon designs are really nice too. Battle wise, the graphics could have been a little better. However, the attack animations and such are still decent. Last, the anime movie cutscenes which play at certain points of the game. They are quite beautiful and really well done. That's about it for the graphics though. Overall, a 8/10 for the graphics. The graphics are decent, but I've seen this style of graphics pulled off better in other games. With graphics out of the way, it's onto the gameplay.

Gameplay:8/10:As far as Tales games go, Tales of Hearts is fairly typical for the most part. You generally go from town to dungeon. Doing whatever you need to in town then heading off to the next dungeon. There, making your way through the dungeon and generally fighting a boss at the end. However, the game differs in some ways as far as basic progression goes. For one, there is no longer a traditional World Map. Instead, Hearts uses a zone system. Where you simply follow linear paths to another area. Personally, I thought this was a unnecessary feature that didn't really add anything. Since, it's really irritating later on in the game when you have to go through so much trouble running down familiar linear corridors to get back to an area you were previously at. Not just that, but some of the zones tend to be extremely bland in terms of design. Worst of all, it takes around at least 70% through the game to unlock a traditional world map. Which helps greatly since it makes traveling a lot faster. Despite that though, the world map feature takes way too long to unlock. So, for a good majority of the game you are stuck traveling through the zones which is irritating. Ultimately though, the zones system is disappointing and I did not like it as much compared to the traditional Tales of world maps. Aside from the new world map system, there is also innovations in other areas of the game. Such as the way equipment works in Tales of Hearts.

Basically, there is no equipment really throughout the entire game. You start out with weapons and from there, you use certain items to upgrade them into more powerful forms. Generally, most of the time you have three different weapons to choose from in terms of choices. Each boosting certain stats while lowering other stats. So, each one of the three choices has it's own pros/cons. In terms of other equipment. There's none. Basically no armor or accessories. Which to me is kind of lame. I dunno. Call me old school, but I miss going and finding weapons and armor in chests and buying them from stores etc. Back to exploration though, Tales of Hearts is also different then Innocence in that aspect too aside from just the world map changes.

Dungeons once again have puzzles. Unlike Tales of Innocence, the dungeons have better dungeon design and are generally packed with puzzles. The puzzles are generally fairly challenging and take a decent amount of thinking to figure out. However, they aren't too bad for the most part. As with most Tales of games, the trademark Sorcerer's Ring returns and is used to solve puzzles in all kinds of different ways. So people who were disappointed that Innocence's dungeons lacked puzzles, may be pleasantly surprised that puzzles return in the dungeons of Tales of Innocence. With non battle gameplay out of the way, it's onto the combat of Tales of Hearts.

In terms of encounters, Tales of Hearts is like most recent Tales of games where you simply run into enemies on the field to initiate combat. Once you come into contact with a enemy, the battle is on. You go through a transition from the field to a battlefield where combat is conducted. First off, you'll notice that the battle system is way different compared to most Tales of games. For one, there's no longer TP. Instead, you have what's called the Emotional Gauge. Abbreviated EG for short. Basically, every time you do an action...It requires EG points. So, you have to carefully plan your actions out. Furthermore though, the EG feature allows you to pull off some crazy combos and abilities in battle. Once you do use most of your EG points up though, you must sit idly by in battle to regain them. So, as mentioned, you really gotta plan your usage of EG points carefully. Despite that though, you shouldn't be too worried. Since, Tales of Hearts is an incredibly easy game. Probably by far one of the easiest games of the Tales of series.

Pretty much the only thing that really gave me any trouble was the final boss and the optional dungeon/optional bosses. The final boss was pretty tough, but aside from that, the main game was ridiculously easy. Most of the time I won literally 95% of battles in the game just spamming skills mindlessly without even bothering to really use any fancy combos or anything like that. On Normal difficulty too. I didn't set the difficulty to easy or anything either. Speaking of more disappointing aspects, there's also the Soma Link dungeons. Which is another new feature.

Soma Links are basically links you can do throughout the game with certain people that take you into their heart. There, you go through a spirmaze. Which is a dungeon essentially. However, unlike other dungeons in the game, these dungeons have time limits. Which sucks. Since, it forces you to rush through the dungeon and makes you pretty much miss out on getting items. This is definitely not awesome and it pretty much sucks. You shouldn't have to be worried about rushing through a dungeon due to a time limit. It's not enjoyable at all. Personally, I just did not like the spirmazes. They were probably the part of the game that I dreaded the most. Overall though, there's not too much else to say about Tales of Hearts's gameplay. I personally didn't like most of the new features in the game. Such as the battle system, the way equipment was pretty much removed, and the incredibly aggravating spirmaze dungeons. Despite that though, the gameplay is still pretty good. The game is a lot of fun to play through and has Sidequests. In addition, there's also New Game +. So, there's definitely some replay value in Tales of Hearts. In conclusion, I give the gameplay a 8/10. With gameplay talked about, it's time to talk about the Music.

Music:8/10:Tales of Hearts has a incredibly mixed soundtrack. In terms of town and dungeon songs, the dungeon songs are really good for the most part. However, there's only a handful of really good town songs throughout the game. The rest are just painfully average and unnoticeable. Meanwhile, the battle themes are an incredible letdown. All of the regular battle themes except the optional dungeon normal battle theme are incredibly disappointing and not really that good. Especially the first normal battle theme. Just an incredibly boring song that doesn't get you excited for battle at all. As far as the boss themes go, they are incredibly good. Especially, the major storyline boss themes. In particular, the final boss song of Tales of Hearts is by far the greatest final boss song of the series. The song could most likely easily make my top five favorite final boss songs of all time list. Also, I don't know what it is, but a lot of the game music in general sounds like music you would hear in a Game Boy Advance game. Which shows that something has to be backwards. Since, a DS game shouldn't have music that sounds like that. Aside from that, the game also is fully voice acted. I can't really rate the voice acting since I don't know Japanese, but it 's probably good. All-together though, the music scores an 8/10. Poor regular battle themes and average town themes. Meanwhile, great dungeon songs and terrific boss themes. This is one of the weaker Tales of soundtracks though. So, how is Tales of Hearts overall?

Overall:8/10:Tales of Hearts is a great, but not amazing game. Despite that, it pales in comparison to the other great games of the Tales of series. As far as where this game would rank, Tales of Hearts is probably my second least favorite Tales of game. With Tales of Legendia being the weakest game of the series to me. This is primarily due to Hearts adding a lot of lame features that were unnecessary and made the game worse compared to it's predecessors. Fortunately, the game is still a lot of fun and it lasts a pretty long time. With the main storyline taking me around 40 hours to complete even with me skipping through all the dialogue and using a guide extremely heavily. Despite that though, the game just wasn't as fun compared to other games of the series. As for the other aspects, the graphics in the game are pretty good too and the music is an extremely mixed bag. With that being said, I give Tales of Hearts an 8/10. Maybe I was just a little let down by having high standards due to how good I heard Hearts was, but I just didn't think it was as good as I thought it was going to be. Still, the game gets an 8/10 and is personally my second least favorite game of the series. Despite that, I definitely do see myself replaying it and it's still quite a good game that's definitely worth your time.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 08/17/11, Updated 08/19/11

Game Release: Tales of Hearts (Anime Movie Edition) (JP, 12/18/08)