I'm not usually one to want to complete any game 100% as it gets tedious and whatnot, but Tales of Legendia's 100% completion was rather easy and simple compared to others (say, FFX or more recently WA5). I'll get a bit more into that...
Story - 3/5
The whole two parter thing was rather strange. The first half of the game (first ending) about the Merines and Orerines had potential but I felt that it fell a bit short, which is perhaps why they decided to make a continuation. From the way I see it though, they could've easily merged the two stories together, or even just not specify the section's as "Main Story" and "Character Quests". Instead they made you go through two rather weak stories that are separate and yet not. It always felt like there was "more" to the story (another hidden layer) but, alas, there was none. The look into each individual character was nice, but again, it would've been more effective if it was weaved into the main story as well. Character development would've of been so staggered and strange.
Considering the game revolves around a giant ship of land, I sometimes wondered about how life was on the mainland. Though, I suppose it's rather unimportant if it had no eres, Ferines, monsters = no story.
Characters - 4/5
The characters were overall quite amusing. Senel and Norma (maybe Jay and the Orosoren) are probably my favourites. Shirley was the most annoying. Chloe just had extremely bad AI or something, which made me end up disliking her a lot even though I used her in my main active party. Grune's story was so dead obvious and predictable, it became a boring, even. On a random last note for this part, Senel and Stella's the only pairing I see fit (yeah, screw Shirley and Chloe).
Gameplay - 4/5
I don't have any particular complaints about this game in this category. The linear battle stage was easy to get used to but it got rather cheap when it came to cornering monsters to one of the sides and then follow to beat the crap out of them. The fact that the main character is a fist melee as opposed to the usual swordsman, the new throwing aspect was rather fun. I give this game props for making the last boss not super easy to beat like most other games tend to end up to be like, even after the additional level ups before endgame.
Puzzles were easy as cake. Wished there were more.
This game made you go through the same dungeons TWICE. It would've been so much better if they just put in a bit more effort to make new dungeons for us to crawl instead. Luckily the dungeons were all quite short and rather linear.
Bread, bread, bread. You get to bake bread in this game. The bread basket limit was annoying. I needed to complete the bread collection so I dedicated at least a few hours to baking and eating bread. The 30 bread limit drove me insane.
There's this particular load time that gets on my nerves however. When you're loading in the rest of your playable characters into your active party, it takes it extra long to load. When you do any swaps with your active party, that extra load time kicks in. Minor, so no big deal.
Graphics - 3/5
I wonder what made these guys choose to make all the graphics in this game so kiddy and cartoony. Monsters that were even a bit frightening were the non-cutsy giant dragon guys like Fafnir and Tiamat, but they took up half the screen and you'd be punching at their legs all day.
The landscape graphics and colours gave off that kiddy feel too. Dungeons were blue and red... all sorts of strange colours you wouldn't expect in a dungeon.
Is this where I can also mention that character animations expressing emotion (during cutscenes) were so exaggerated? Nods were headbangs and exclamations were arm flails. Just watching them agreeing to something with constant nods made me feel nauseous myself.
Sound - 5/5
Gawd I love this game's soundtrack to DEATH. Go Shiina-sensei, you seriously need to make more RPG music. Someone needs to give him more of this awesome work and less, eh, what is it, Mr. Driller! :B I've been listening to the OST since I finished it and a few tracks are already giving me goosebumps. Though it seems like they decided to shorten the number of CDs for this game's OST. For one, I noticed a quite a few merged tracks and some other missing ones (e.g. the male vocal only version of the chanting track). But that's complaining about the OST, not the game's sound.
I'm a bit disappointed at the variety of battle tracks. I would've wanted a few additional tracks for specific named bosses vs mini boss vs big boss track. Though I'm probably just over comparing it to WA5.
I almost forgot to comment about the voices. They were pretty decently done. They were the most annoying during battles (almost unbearable). No one would shut up. But hey, that's a Tales game for you. The skits were pretty funny though, but they were quite short.
Overall - 4/5
The story was corny and meh. The characters were fun. The game wasn't bad, though I can't say it was really good either. I'm probably just being biased with me loving the music and all, which cancels out all the negatives this game has. Overall, it was pretty easy (k fine Walter was an ass) and so was the 100% completion as well (surprisingly), as there was nothing frighteningly difficult like Ragu (WA) or Ultima (FF). People just need to look past the cartoony graphics and mediocre story *cough* and just appreciate the music dammit! :b
Oh and we know how much we love game-specific vocabulary:
Eres, Nerifes, Merines, Orerines, Telmes, Teriques, Ferines, Terises, Zeriques, Delques, Fennes, Relares, Xelhes, Welzes, MelFes, FelQuesDes
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