Tales of Vesperia
Battles
When you think of the Tales of series there is one thing that has always been discussed, the battle system. Fighting on a 2d enviroment at the start has now turned into a full all directions runable fighting system where you can circle around your opponent if you wish. Or let a friend be a bit of a decoy to run up behind your enemy and attack him/her from the back.
The system of acquiring skills have changed from Tales of The Abyss: Here you go by an old FFIXish system. You equip a weapon and it has certain skills on it to enhance your battles. Everything from regaining a set amount of HP to increasing your physical/magical defense/strength to certain randomly started skills that give you more HP/MP at the end of battles and so on.
You have to fight with the equipped weapon to learn the skills. Then they cost points to be equipped. Skills that are from the weapon automatically activate so these do not need to be set. All other skills need to be set and there are in no way possible that you can have all the skills set at the same time. So be prepared to change these all depending on the situation.
Artes
Artes make a comeback, these are special moves that the characters can do that requires MP to activate and can be used in combos. You start of with one arte, the more you use it the stronger it gets. And when you´ve used the arte a set amount of times and are at the right level then you learn the next arte.
There are base artes, altered artes and arcane artes. Base arte is what you start of with, then when you´ve mastered enough of them and use them you learn an arcane arte, which is mainly a combination of two base artes. Somewhat new(I think at least) to the series are the altered artes. By equipping certain skills the artes themselves can be altered. A ordinary arte gets the elemental attribute of fire for example or a attack that is used to knock your opponents around when they are close to you can be turned into a healing spot.
Use these altered artes set amount of time and BOOM, you´ve learned them and can equip them as with any other artes.
Fatal Strike
A holesome new chapter to the Tales of series is that every enemy has 3 values against a certain type of attack, when this value is down to zero and with a little timing you can execute a Fatal Strike. Every attack has it´s own element, use this against the enemy and when a flashing red, blue or green area starts to glow then press the right trigger and BAAM, enemy is dead if you had nice timing. Hitting an enemys weak spot with a FS(Fatal Strike) can give you a boost in ATK/DEF to your party. Along with giving out this bonus it kills the enemies in one shoot. If it is a boss or strong enemy you can´t kill it with the FS obviously, but it will take quite a big chunk out of their HP and if it´s the right FS then the added bonus stats isn´t that bad either.
The flow of battle
With this and that the battles are in real time it gives a certain flow to the battles that cannot be seen in many other games except for the different Tales of games. Battles can be started by touching the enemies on screen. If the enemy touches you from behind they get an advantage that the party will be random. But more often it is the characters that isn´t in your main party that gets selected. To gain an advantage to the enemies you have to shock them with the sorcerer ring first. But here the enemies can be stunned, when they turn blue = no advantage. They can get enraged and rush you = no advantage. When they stand still and have stars spinning around their heads you get an advantage on them since then they are stunned and cannot move in battle. So if you´re quick enough you can kill them all pretty easily.
Secret Missions
New to Tales of Vesperia is that every boss fight has a certain Secret Mission, to defeat a leader bat before it merges with it´s other parts, lighting torches up to destroy a clone of the boss, knocking the boss over on it´s back or taking away a status from a boss are all Secret Missions that gives you Achievements. That´s basically all they are for, to give you GP to your Xbox GP score. And to prove you tried everything or just bested the adversary.
Grading
After the battle you get graded.
Taking a number of hits, enemy combos, using items and being KOed are minus grades. Finishing the battle in 20 sec or less, 10sec or less, using a Mystic Arte, Burst Arte, Fatal Strike, fulfilling certain conditions are plus grades.
This is a good way to see how well you fared in the battle. These grades get added on to each other and after you´ve finished the game you can use your grade to purchase certain stuff from the game to have at the beginning. Not having to re-learn every single artes is one such bonus you can get. So it pays of to do battles nice and clean.
