Board 8 > I was having a good time playing Tales of Vesperia...

(+) Yeah! (+)

Never played a Tales Of but it's on Game Pass, I'd heard good things and was in the mood for a light JRPG so I thought I'd give it a go. It's pretty standard so far but I've been enjoying myself.

...Until this cheap-ass dog boss comes along and annihilates me about 5 hours in. This thing is absurd. It hits so hard. I get what the game was trying to do here I think, forcing me to quickly get to grips with battle mechanics that I had been able to ignore before now- making use of the 3D space, shifting battle tactics, micromanaging my team's actions etc. But I think it had an adverse effect as I suddenly became very aware of the limitations of the game's AI, and how weird the 3D movement feels. I was hanging around the weird plants to try and coax the dog over to stun it but it just kept mauling Estelle. One time I realised Rita was sat off the other edge of the field not casting anything. Another time Estelle was continuously running into a plant. I got the 'great!' thing to come up during one attempt but every other time I stunned and whacked the dog with fire it just refused to fall over.

I had to grind for some time and max out on items, and even then I barely scraped through this fight. I was hoping for a nice breezy JRPG, but maybe I misjudged what kind of a game this is! Am I just underleveled here? (I scraped through at Lv14 after grinding) Do I need to simply git gud? Or is this the Tales Of experience...

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That boss is infamous for its difficulty. You shouldn't have any problem like that for the rest of the game.
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Yeah that boss is easily the hardest one compared to the level you're naturally at when you reach it
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look up the weakness of the boss and then go to the AI's menu to disable all attacks that don't hit that weakness and then set your party to go all out attack

playing on normal mode you should beat most normal bosses this way

alternatively if you feel you can do more damage as Rita then just set her as your playable character and spam the moves while your AI distract the boss

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Team Rocket Elite posted...

That boss is infamous for its difficulty. You shouldn't have any problem like that for the rest of the game.

pyresword posted...

Yeah that boss is easily the hardest one compared to the level you're naturally at when you reach it

Ah that's a relief, thanks! I was debating turning the difficulty down >_>
Why didn't they scale it down a few levels for the Definitive Edition or something.

GranzonEx posted...

look up the weakness of the boss and then go to the AI's menu to disable all attacks that don't hit that weakness and then set your party to go all out attack

playing on normal mode you should beat most normal bosses this way

alternatively if you feel you can do more damage as Rita then just set her as your playable character and spam the moves while your AI distract the boss

Thanks a lot for this advice! I thought 'I can't keep telling GameFAQs whenever I'm playing through a game, I'll just go through this one by myself' and then... well you see what happened. I didn't know you could tailor the AI's attacks to only hit weaknesses, and I forgot about switching the leader, I've been on Yuri for 95% of the time. I will make sure to mix it up.

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Playing as Yuri the entire time is also okay if you want to do that.
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Yeah, fun fact, that was the boss that was in the game's demo, and the party was at a higher level for that than where they would be without serious grinding in the actual game... But the developers forgot to scale him down for the full release. Whoops.

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Take this from the guy who wrote the Vesperia board sticky: That boss is complained about a lot.
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Update: Dahngrest's music kicks ass

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andylt posted...

Update: Dahngrest's music kicks ass

Walking into dahngrest for the first time and hearing that track is definitely a major highlight of the game

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andylt posted...

Update: Dahngrest's music kicks ass

Best town in the series and a top-tier JRPG town overall.

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andylt posted...

Update: Dahngrest's music kicks ass

spoiler: it's the only good song

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Dahnhrest's theme is depressing because, yeah it's great, but how good it is really just makes how mid most of the OST is stand out even more.

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I only remember some battle tracks myself yeah.

Also playing as Yuri is fun, but after a certain point one character just becomes impossible to put aside
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**** Gattuso man. **** Gattuso.
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Hey now, Vesperia still has the final dungeon theme and final boss theme; those are both pretty solid. And Fury Sparks!

After that it does get pretty dire, though.

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Eh for me it's just the Dahngrest theme and Fury Sparks. I legit don't remember any other music from Vesperia. The OST is such a startling downgrade from Abyss (which... Vesperia already was in every other way).
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Abyss didn't have a good OST

Vesperia's was worse though lmao

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KamikazePotato posted...

Abyss didn't have a good OST

Man, we really could not possibly disagree on Abyss as a game any harder.

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to be fair im pretty sure saying abyss had a bad OST is one of the weirdest takes ive seen on the game in awhile

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Yeah sometimes you just gotta look at a take and realize they're just not gonna budge about ANYTHING in it being good.

Which I can't judge! I'm like that with XV.

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Abyss has an okay soundtrack, but I wouldn't rate it as one of the game's strong suits. It has a handful of songs I really like, and the rest I just don't care that much about.

Symphonia is where it's at.

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I don't remember a single track from Abyss that isn't a Karma variant, and that's with playing it more recently than Vesperia. imo the OSTs are more like:

Vesperia >> Symphonia > Abyss

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Abyss has plenty of bangers.

Hell, every single song in the last run of the game is a banger.

Finsh the Promiiiiiiiise

I don't remember single Symphonia track outside of Beat the Angel.

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Saying Abyss has a great OST is a hotter take than saying the reverse. There's basically no game in the entire series that is generally regarded to have an above-average OST. And considering that Abyss is currently sitting in the bottom half of the story topic ratings (even after Fire Emblem Fates filled out the entire bottom rung), it doesn't look like my take on its story was that hot either!

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When just a few people give a bunch of absurdly low reviews out of spite that tends to happen!

Same thing happened to Danganronpa V3. Couple bad apples spoil the bunch.


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KamikazePotato posted...

Saying Abyss has a great OST is a hotter take than saying the reverse. There's basically no game in the entire series that is generally regarded to have an above-average OST.

You legitimately don't know what you're talking about. Abyss aside, even most people who hate Legendia and Zestiria think their OSTs are great.

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UshiromiyaEva posted...

I don't remember single Symphonia track outside of Beat the Angel.

Fatalize is awesome. I quite enjoy Final Destination, too, even if it's not actually that memorable composition-wise.

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Symphonia has some banger battle themes and great character themes. A few really good town/dungeon themes, too.

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I think Abyss has a pretty good OST. Maybe a 6.5/10 or a 7/10. At the very least, Id say most of the battle music in Abyss is great.

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I can't say I've paid too much attention to the music in this game. Nothing has stood out as bad to me like in something like Dragon Quest XI, but aside from Dahngrest nothing too great either! I'll pay closer attention going forward.

Also another thing I'm not enjoying: the solo battles with Yuri. IDK if I'm just bad at the battling but it really doesn't seem designed for 1vX>1 fights like that, I always end up having to run around spamming Azure Strike whenever I get a chance. The battle with those guards to introduce Burst Arts took me like 3 or 4 attempts and there's no save or shop available in that area >_>

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The problem that plagues Tales OSTs is Sakuraba has a lot of same-y battle themes from game to game, his lesser regarded tracks I see comments all the time on youtube going "Yep, classic Sakuraba." I don't know how to explain it but I think it's a lot of the same instruments. Quite a few of Vesperia's fall into this category. But I think you'd be hard pressed to find a tales game without several great themes between battle/dungeon/town themes, even Vesperia. As mentioned, Fury sparks is great. The final dungeon themes are great, I think the boss theme is good and unique, etc. I think there's hits and misses in each game.
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KamikazePotato posted...

Saying Abyss has a great OST is a hotter take than saying the reverse. There's basically no game in the entire series that is generally regarded to have an above-average OST.

I agree with this. A lot of Tales fans will of course argue otherwise, but music is middling the entire series. Each game has one or two tracks that are really good, but the rest is generic. Which is fine and part of what makes Tales, Tales.

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Further update: Patty is tremendous fun to play as.

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I am more generous and would say each game has about 5 to six good tracks... mostly the battle music.
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Symphonia has an incredible OST and people saying otherwise have shit taste in music.

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Had trouble with this recently, recall using all my MP items and spamming Yuri's fire move you get early just as often as possible. He probably killed me like, 5 times though.

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Accel_R8 posted...

Had trouble with this recently, recall using all my MP items and spamming Yuri's fire move you get early just as often as possible. He probably killed me like, 5 times though.

Yep, I used up all my items too. IDK what they were thinking with this, especially with the choice not to fix it in the remaster. FWIW after this there hasn't been anything nearly as bad except the fights where you have to solo as Yuri, those are bad for me.

And back to the music conversation, I think Yormgen's track is pretty nice. Peaceful, ethereal and calm, yet with something slightly melancholy and off to it. Very fitting.

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