Second Star To The Right

And don't bother about morning.


Things have been going along rather well with Tales of Vesperia.  I've actually gotten to the point where I can actually do some dedicated material farming without tearing my hair out over leaving the plot dangling.


Vesperia is a bit odd; the whole 'sandbox' gets thrown at you fairly quickly, but the sand doesn't really fill in until something like 30 hours in, maybe 20 if you're good and rushing through the storyline.  The game's airship is actually pretty awesome, being a an actual sea vessel hooked up to a big flying magic whale/Esper, with the addition benefit of water landings and takeoffs.  With some minimal sidequesting, you can land just about anywhere that's even remotely flat.  The odd part is that there is a constantly shifting day/night and weather cycle, which affect monster encounters and town/dungeon condition (and encounters in those dungeons).  It sounds fairly standard, but there's lots of RNG shenanigans involved. 


I remember being very irritated in my first run-through, but I believe that my judgment was really clouded at the time, with personal problems leaving me really sour about nearly everything.  I'm actually relishing wandering over certain regions at nighttime and jumping out to slaughter giant killer ladybugs for glowing rocks and other monstrous ridiculousness.  Tales has a glorious tradition of having goofy monsters to beat on, (even sobersides Abyss threw angry tuning forks and knights with trumpet-bazookas at you) and Vesperia proudly carries it on.  I haven't encountered the glorious wackiness of gigantic demon canopy beds or fortress turtles, but there's a much better variety over all.  How about monsters like birds with actual bugle beaks or paper fan wings, bush-tortoise things trample you with fruit, bees with gun stingers (yes Sonic did it first, but these are organic gun bees), and starfish that attack you on land and sound like Teletubbies when you shank 'em?   That's just a sample of the crazy bestiary.  And they all drop worthwhile goodies, including materials to make awesome loot with.


Now why didn't I ever want to play this again?  Well, even in angst The Harvest Never Rests!