Is anyone else NOT excited for Abyss?

[Kiko]

Yeah, Cobalt Chambers are best spent on status-y spells, Guardian, and juggle-inducing moves. ..I honestly hate Glory myself, Resilience as well, though I didn't mind it back in Symphonia, enemies rarely ever get to hit my mages in this game (must be the increased battlefield size). I find Glory to be a bit too cheap, it takes away the risk factor when you're going to attack, as you no longer have to worry about getting hit out of your attack, you're just risking HP..

And that's what bothers me (GO GO offtopic-ish rant!) about Abyss' and Symphonia's Unknown/Mania/Harder Hard Hard Difficulties. Enemies only get increased HP and defense. I can go up to Very Hard, or hell, Mania and find the game a bit enjoyable throughout, but things just get down right boring if all the extra difficulties do are make the fights last longer. I'd rather they get less stagger-able, shorter casting time, smarter AI and get all nuke happy on my ass.. =/

[supersonic1453]

The only thing that bother's me about Glory is that I usually don't realize I'm getting hit by attacks.

If enemies were harder to stagger combined with the hp and defense increase, you'd die so fast it'd be ridiculous.  Imagine, the games just starting, you go to fight the first boar, and it rams you into oblivion because you couldn't stagger it; or imagine trying to fight Nebilim or the Tales cameo team if ther were even harder to stagger.  I think that the enemies do more damage in higher difficulties too.

[Chuc]

Remind you of unstoppable-unstaggerable-raging bosses from Rebirth? They were murder D:

[Leroy]

And that's what bothers me (GO GO offtopic-ish rant!) about Abyss' and Symphonia's Unknown/Mania/Harder Hard Hard Difficulties. Enemies only get increased HP and defense. I can go up to Very Hard, or hell, Mania and find the game a bit enjoyable throughout, but things just get down right boring if all the extra difficulties do are make the fights last longer. I'd rather they get less stagger-able, shorter casting time, smarter AI and get all nuke happy on my ass.. =/

Wow.. so in other words it would just be a playing your paitence? I had a similar issue with the new Ys games (Ark of Napishtim and Oath in Felghana) and their extra hard modes.. though the monsters were given stronger attacks and all.. it boiled down to it just took three or four times more hits to kill everything.. and Ys is basically a hack and slash game so it just wasn't very fun.

[Leroy]

Remind you of unstoppable-unstaggerable-raging bosses from Rebirth? They were murder D:

I haven't played much of Rebirth yet but Destiny 2 had some bosses where the difficulty was that you just couldn't hit them.. even if you power leveled there were a few bosses that you essentially had to kill with spells and chip damage (and in the case of that f***er Barbatos it was all chip damage).

[supersonic1453]

Yeah, Destiny 2 is a bit ridiculous, but I was watching Nore139's videos and he makes the game look easy.

[Cyllya]

And that's what bothers me (GO GO offtopic-ish rant!) about Abyss' and Symphonia's Unknown/Mania/Harder Hard Hard Difficulties. Enemies only get increased HP and defense. I can go up to Very Hard, or hell, Mania and find the game a bit enjoyable throughout, but things just get down right boring if all the extra difficulties do are make the fights last longer. I'd rather they get less stagger-able, shorter casting time, smarter AI and get all nuke happy on my ass.. =/

I don't often compare difficulty modes, but I'm pretty sure what you're wanting is actually already there in at least some cases. Possibly only from Normal to Hard. I specifically remember the boss in the Abandoned Factory has way shorter casting time on Hard than on Normal. And Symphonia bosses only use hi-ougi on harder settings. And they boost all stats, don't they?

But maybe they should do it to a greater extent.

[Leroy]

You know.. to all the people that thought I was grossly exaggerating how much crap there is in Abyss ("You do know you're playing an RPG, right? SHYEAA!").. I took my Gamecube to Best Buy last night to test some TVs I've been considering and I grabbed a game that would play in 480p (F-Zero) and a game that would play in 480i (Tales of Symphonia). Well I boot up Symphonia and my 89 hour save had listed 3800 battles. I did a double-take.. what the..? So when I got home I checked my Abyss save.. 91 hours, 1750 battles.

LAME.

[throughhim413]

I noticed the same thing actually.  My first Symphonia playthrough, I'm pretty sure I was at or near the top of the battle counter (meaning 9999).  However, with the same amount of time put into Abyss (actually Abyss took longer to get there), I was only at about 4000.  And that was with a ton of extra play.  I don't know what this really means mind you.  I don't recall ever finding myself overwhelmed by the number of encounters in Symphonia, nor was I particularly underwhelmed by the number of battles in Abyss.  So I figure to each game its own, seeing as it clearly didn't make a significant difference for me.

Or maybe I've missed your point entirely, which is always possible.

[Leroy]

Well, my point was that there's much more downtime in Abyss, cut-scenes, fetch quests, running back-and-forth between towns, etc. Just a lot of crap that takes you away from the sole reason you should be playing a Tales game: the awesome battle system.

[throughhim413]

Yeah, I agree with that for the most part.  There was certainly a significant amount of downtime over any Tales games I can recall in the past.  Especially during the story itself, though I just chocked it up to 'character development', so it didn't bother me all that much.  Not all of the sidequests were total time drains, unlike with past Tales games, I stopped myself several times in Abyss and had to ask 'Why am I doing this!?'

I didn't really mind the pace of the game overall, but it was certainly different from what I've come to expect.

[Leroy]

The odd thing is I remember coming off of Symphonia being a bit disappointed.. and coming off of Abyss I was quite pleased though certain to point out the painful flaw of the game (the excessive downtime). Normally twice the battles in the same allotement of time would make me quite happy but I guess that game was just doing something else to drain my excitment. I think it might've been that Abyss got really awesome in the end when you were finally free of cut-scene hell and Symphonia just started to drag like a mofo at the end.

[Phren]

I noticed the same thing too. I felt like I had battled a LOT  at a certain point, but I was still under 900. In most Tales games, I get to 1000 before I even realise it. Thankfully, after spending some time with it, I really like the battle system in this one. Symphonia's sorta-3D system was amazingly awkward and just got me surrounded while only really being able to attack one enemy, but I actually enjoy the third dimention here. It's no Eternia, but still fun.

BTW.. where is there a 'Sacred Tree' search item? I've looked forever and never gotten one. Also, what Natalia titles would help to use?

[throughhim413]

The Sacred Tree can be found at Search Point 11, it's a level 4 item.

Curious Princess - 80% Chance to get Level 2 Items
Star of Malkuth - 80% Chance to get Level 3 Items
Labyrinth Princess - 80% Chance to get Level 4 Items
Adventerous Princess - 80% Chance to get Level 5 Items

Actually, I just found this at GameFAQs.  I haven't really looked at it, but if you need some kind of guide, it might not be bad.  Din't Shop Guide

[Phren]

Thanks a lot, that's just what I had needed.

[Majinrengokusatsu]

i wasnt super excited about this game.  Since I cant read Any Japanese (Except for the items) I wanted to buy the game so that I know the story.  Its just such a pain that I have to play through the game twice just so that I can use the new hi ougi's.