Wrecked a Hippie Van

HaHA!  The spambots are still not keeping me down!

Tales of the Abyss is now on my kill list.  It's been a wild ride, I can tell you.  I've decided to give some of my post-victory thoughts on things.

The Good

Abyss actually has some of the best battle mechanics I've seen, even considering I've played a fair few games that are a console generation or two ahead now.  We get the usual big six elements, plus lots of special moves to keep things interesting.  The monsters are fair bit more varied than I've usually seen, with a standout concept being golems powered by music.  The critters do get repetitive after a while, but that's par for the course for an RPG anyway.

The characters are actually fairly interestingwith a standout being Jade Curtiss, the resident king of snark and the closest thing Japan has come to Raistlin McAwesomesauce yet.  eh burninates monsters and doesn't afraid of anything!  The rest have your usual mix of cliches, but with some interesting takes on them.  The white mage chick is also a tough-fronted soldier, the best friend swore an oath to kill the main character out of revenge (and is secret buddies with the Big Bad Evil Guy), the kid is a foulmouthed gold-digger, the team critter is a punching bag, the fun goes on.  The baddies are fairly interesting, too.  And it was amazing how much mileage you got from the bad guy asking "Luke, join me!" for once.  I'm not kidding.

The Bad

Unfortunately, Team Evil's characterizations are somewhat gimped near the end, with several of the God-Generals (the main minions) really dying pointlessly.  The game does acknowledge the inherent futility for some, but a couple really come across as just plain dumb deaths.  Dist, the resident mad kook, really just dies like a bitch for no reason at all.  You wreck his latest mech, he decides to hit a self-destruct switch and whine at Jade, boom.  Everybody else at least can be said to die for Van's cause and beliefs, but he just plain sissies out, when he could have just bailed and come back to plague us again later.  URGH!

There really isn't much else to complain about, except for a glitch or two (found one that can freeze the game in the final battle today), which I've come to expect from PS2-era Namco.  Nobody's perfect.  There is a minor problem, which for a loot-aholic like me is fairly bad, though...

The Shiny

...The drop and crafting mechanics.  I've already covered the weird ordering system in a previous post, but the drops are really plain annoying.  Maybe half of the enemies in the game drop any items at all, and less drop trade goods.  An infuriating frosting on the crap cake is that this game a very serviceable stealing mechanic, which is even more gimped at something close to a third or less of enemies having stealables. Fortunately, there are only two steal-exclusive items in the game, both of which are from bosses and have 1-in-2 success rates.  Even more fortunately, this game come with 'search points' which are easy to farm, and with a few sidequests, can yield what you need to get all sorts of goodies.

The goodies themselves, hoo boy.  An experienced player will find all sorts of shinies, especially with some focus farming and a bit of luck.  I've found mentions of exploiting a glitch to get a late-game weapon, but why bother with bugs when you can nab even better stuff just a little bit later with some patience.  You get your usual collection of weapons and armor, with helmets relegated to accessory status (one accessory per character, by the way), some of which can be quite interesting.  Worth particular mention are the Fonic Catalysts, which seem like restyled variations on Soul Calibur and Soul Edge (the dark aligned ones have this creepy breathing animation), and the end-game Fonic gear, that presumably also run of the power of magic music.  The Fonic sword is actually a sound-powered lightsaber!  Another honorable mention is Ultimatus, a sword presumably related to the Fonic gear that is possessed by a kickass amalgam of Nightmare/Inferno from Soul Calibur and Final Fantasy's Gilgamesh.  Put these suckers in a crossover against Elder Scrolls draugr for maximum metal!

Well, the campaign has drawn to a close, and it's almost time to chase the brightest star in the sky...