Great value for your money, and full of anime vibe
I've had the pleasure of playing this title for over 90 hours before finishing it for the first time.
The story arcs are so long, that they practically last 3 regular games.
The storytelling is very engaging and easily the best I've experienced on the PS2. Though it has some less interesting moments, it still amazed, and completely sucked me in.
There are some tear-jerker moments which I really appreciate in the stories I follow.
The characters are a colorful bunch and you can sympathize with their hardships.
The sound department is astounding, with great voice acting performed by a lot of people known from anime(at least that's where I know them from).
Adding to that is the music accompanying the player through the game and completing the drama.
It is sad when it needs to assist in setting a gloomy mood, or simply happy when something funny happens. You can get goosebumps from the battle music, when fighting with a boss, and it pumps you full of energy for the encounter.
The Anime-ish intro is superb and the title song "Karma" is so good that it made me listen to it every time I turned the game on. Other animated cut-scenes, though not encountered often, are a treat as well.
The graphics remind me of anime too, and help in easing the eye(this is PS2 you know) by using textures straight from a cartoon. The unique architecture of different locations makes you appreciate the artists' work. Creating a whole world that, where every city, town or dungeon feels right in its place, and although different-they are consistent, that is and amazing job done in my book. I'd also like to mention the DoF effect that is used in some situations, personally I think that it should have been used throughout the game to minimize the aliasing a bit- it's that good at it.
Battle system is capable of being interesting and is quite advanced if you want it to be.
Abundance of Artes to use, the ability to order your teammates to use certain ones or prevent them from utilizing some at all, Field of Fonons that enhance you basic Artes, FreeRun ability and quite a lot of other interesting elements, make this a very good action-battle system. That said, even though it may be complicated, you can also button-mash your way through most of the fights.
I've had a hard time finding a good rpg with a real-time action style of fighting(Rogue Galaxy, Dark Cloud and a few others are not enough) and this series provides me with just the right mix of great story that you get sucked in and that you don't want to come to and end, and a battle system that is more than just "giving commands and looking at the results".
Finally if you want to get every penny of your cash from a game, then the Tales series are a great way of doing that.
70 hours in Legendia and over 90 in Abyss, for just the first playthroughs speak for themselves.
