Tales of Graces f Remastered Review

thesixthaxis.com:

There’s a really specific sort of nostalgia that hits me like a truck whenever the Tales series is mentioned. I grew up hovering around this series of JRPGs, but never playing them. Other series like Kingdom Hearts and Final Fantasy caught my attention, but I would still spot Tales in the periphery. The series seemingly spawning a new mainline entry almost every year, combined with me hardly following news of the franchise, led to this sort of awe I would experience whenever I continuously discovered more and more Tales games that I had no idea even existed. As I’ve gotten older and started digging deeper into games and series I never gave a shot earlier in life, I’m finally getting around to playing a lot of these Tales games that only existed as ideas and myths to me. Tales of Graces f was one such myth – a Wii game I barely knew existed, which became a PS3 game I downloaded but never touched, and finally, it arrives in my life for the third time as a massively remastered and polished multi-platform re-release. And with this kind of care and quality, I’m hoping every entry in the series can eventually re-materialize in my life this way.

Narrative and character arcs are a huge focus of Tales of Graces f – although things seem deceptively lighthearted and simple in the opening hours of the game. You play as 11-year-old Asbel Lhant, spending lackadaisical days in his Lhant, which him and his younger brother Hubert are heirs to the throne of. Neither are concerned with that inheritance, though, because they’re far busier figuring out what to do when they encounter a girl with purple hair and amnesia in the middle of a flowery meadow outside of town. Asbel does his best to take care of her and help her remember who she is, with help from his sickly friend Cheria. As drama and disaster strike the trio, though, the game flings us seven years into the future where they’re caught in the middle of a disastrous clash between three powerful kingdoms.

Of the many quality-of-life