“Cheating bitch...”

Fun fact. That “Chess Wizard” is clearly an Apple ][ running the chess game Sargon II. You can tell from the keyboard, plus I recognize the graphics from Sargon II (I had both back in the 1980s).

The first thing I thought when reading this. The star belongs to you.

Fourth game is also on PS4.

Except Cold Steel 3 ends up in a cliffhanger, to pave the way to Cold Steel 4. trails of Zero and Trails of Blue are also getting more and more important after Cold Steel 2. 

I love ranking Tales games! But generally, I maintain that:
Symphonia for best story.
Vesperia for best battle system.
Abyss for best characters/character development.

But the Avengers do tests on him. They assume he’s being mind controlled, but found nothing, since the mind was doing what it wanted. So they kicked him out of The Avengers.

Frankly the story would have worked better if Peter had died in Ends of the Earth, the arc prior to SSM, and it was public knowledge that Spider-Man supposedly sacrificed himself to stop Doc Ock.

Ill take a look at this, but the only tales game ive played was Tales of Destiny. Which was a really weird story with talking swords and stuff, but I liked it.

Nice to see someone appreciating Abyss. It is also my favorite, if only because I was impressed they took such a thoroughly unlikable protagonist and actually gave him a good growth arc with characters around him challenging his shitty attitude and behavior in the first half of the game (him fucking up so much for…

I put Tales of Graces at the top, just because I loved the story so much. The “start as kids, then see them years later” was so different from the other games. The rest i’m not sure where I’d rank. Symphonia was the first I played so i’ll always love that one. The last two Zestira and Berseria were great...I really do…

What about Tales of Hearts on the Vita?

Ya so much was bad and making only half the party controllable. Tales is about FREEDOM dont wall off half the party and make the other half play the exact same.  Honestly, Tales should just stay away from transformations only Berseria’s worked and that was because it was a berserker option, it had drawbacks.

I agree with all of this, especially Zestiria. Not because of its story, but because of it’s stupid RNG equipment skill system. Actually no, this in itself wouldn’t be so bad, but the combination system of random equipment skills - like, since when did JRPGs became roguelikes?

It was so obviously a rush job to capitilize on the success of Xillia it hurt. Also I agree with only one exception (I liked Muse’s story in Xillia 2) it added almost nothing to the characters. Also a silent choose your own story protagonist was kind of dumb. Tales is a playable anime, I dont want to put my feet in a…

Graces F had a superb combat system. One of the best in the genre.

Those are all fairly modern, in the grand scheme of things. No love for the older games? Tales of Phantasia or Tales of Destiny?

I would say Xillia is my favorite out of the most recent games (past 10 years). 

I’m glad to see Vesperia on your list. I love it, but people seem to hate it online 

My first Tales game years and years and yeeeears ago, Tales of Legendia, left a bad taste. The voice acting (there was no Japanese dialogue track) and story were all so shockingly bad I couldn’t believe it - I was laughing during one of the game’s most tragic points (partly because one of the main characters is named…

Abyss best story but dragged down by not best systems. Vesperia best all around but not the best in any one area. Symphonia... it shows its age. Xillia I love, its sequel is shit. Graces F has the best combat bar none (I will fight you on this one) but the worst story and cast, except for the REALLY bad Tales of games…