Tales of Xillia 2

Written by Matt Mirkovich on 9/25/2014 for PS3  

The fetch quest, ever the bane of role-playing games of the past, has become a staple of massively multiplayer online games. Go kill X of Y because reasons, and maybe you'll get some money or an item out of it. While this works in games like World of Warcraft or Final Fantasy XIV, it doesn't quite pan out as well in a single-player experience. Such is the case with Tales of Xillia 2, the sequel to last year's Tales of Xillia which I found to be slightly above average. While Tales of Xillia 2 does make up for a few faults of the original game, it also crams in one of the worst gating mechanics to the story that I have ever seen, and it's the biggest detriment to what should otherwise be a better experience over its predecessor.

The new hero of this tale is one Ludger Kresnik, a citizen of Elympios. An uneasy state of tension between Elympios and Rieze Maxia persists since the two worlds collided one year ago. The characters of the original game are all here, and even with a few new foes-turned-friends. But it's a little girl named Elle who's driving the story here in the search for her father. Ludger and company get caught up in Elle's search, and she and I quickly got off on the wrong foot. This precocious little eight-year-old serves as some sort of conduit for the mostly mute Ludger, acting as a sort of albatross around his neck, to go along with the crippling debt saddled on him early in the story. As if I didn't need enough reminders about real-life personal debt, now I get to have an unrealistic medical debt in a video game. Making a little bit of social commentary about America there, Bandai Namco?

This huge debt that gets placed on your shoulders serves as a sort of gate between story points, so when there's nothing really going on in the story, your next goal is to pay off your debt, and this happens between each of the game's 16 chapters. This also prevents you from being able to access areas in the game until you're "ready" for them. This debt is pretty insurmountable on your first playthrough, and this means that in order to pay things back, you'll be taking on a lot of side jobs. These side jobs range from simple tasks of kill X number of Y beasts, or collect items in the overworld maps until you've found the requisite number, or deliver a specific item that can be crafted (but only on certain days, because the crafting options rotate daily for whatever reason). There's also Ludger's cat who gets in on the action by tracking down rare items, and depending on what day it is, will affect the loot he brings back. You can improve your odds of finding rare items by tracking down the 100 cats that are hidden throughout Rieze Maxia and Elympios.

There are also side stories for each of the party members, arcing throughout the course of the story. A big aspect of Tales of Xillia 2 is the theme of choice, and friendships. This manifests over the course of the game. Through skits you'll find a lot of choices that improve your affinity between each character, receiving rewards to go along with your new friends. The choices outside of these skits though, never seem to really affect the story, which is a shame because they could have really gone all out in making this a choose-your-own-adventure type of story. Imagine, at one point you're offered to drop the whole debt and settle down, ending the story right there. But no, this Tale is meant to be told, so you'll find that your "choice" doesn't really amount to a whole lot.

This time around, having one character helped the story make a lot more sense. Initially things start out a little confusing, but it comes together pretty well. While it has a few dramatic moments, it feels like a typical Tales game of brevity and world saving with a little bit of comedy and drama when necessary. The overall tone is much darker than the first game, dealing with alternate dimensions and the consequences of destroying people who, for all intents and purposes, are the same as you. But this debt thing is so easy to get hung up on since it's always there, and what's terrible is how insistent the game is that you pay it back. Whenever you cross a threshold where you have enough money to make a payment, your phone will ring, and your "friend" who happens to work at the bank will cheerily take whatever you're willing to spend. Even worse is that eventually the whole debt just gets knocked out, as part of the story, regardless of your progress.

Paying back the debt isn't a totally pointless endeavor though. It helps unlock some items that are useful in combat, which is as good as it has ever been. With a ridiculous acronym for the combat system, the XDR-LMBS (Cross Double Raid Linear Motion Battle System, what?), gets a few revisions, putting a heavy emphasis on exploiting enemy weaknesses and taking advantage of Ludger's ability to Weapon Shift. This Weapon Shift gives him three different weapons he can use: a pair of blades, a pair of pistols, and a heavy hammer. This makes Ludger a pretty versatile fighter and keeps the combat pretty fresh. It's also worth noting that the number of skills this time around seems to have been expanded even further, giving you a ridiculously customizable party.

The leveling system is straightforward stuff, but it's the new Allium Orb system tweaks that make character growth a bit more of a proactive effort. This time around you'll be outfitting characters with Extractors. These each have configurations of the six elements and will teach your character's skill accordingly. Through elemental orbs collected out in the wild and from combat, you'll teach your characters new skills and artes to use in battle. The only tricky part here is balancing it all out, since you'll be hard pressed to find multiples of each extractor. This seemed a bit odd to me. Considering how much stuff like this plays into the story, you'd think it'd be possible to outfit my entire party with the same extractor, but I digress.

The Tales franchise has never been about flashy graphics, but Xillia 2 is an absolutely beautiful game at times with impressive visuals in the town of Fenmont, while it's kind of drab in others, like when you're muddling through the monochromatic Mon Highlands. The game also suffers from a few technical hiccups, with drops in framerate when things get too busy in combat, and terrible pop-in when loading characters. It's very common to run into a town, know exactly where the job postings are, and have to wait a few moments for the character to be loaded in. The world of Rieze Maxia and Elympios are almost the stars of the show, as they provide an amazing backdrop. The Motoi Sakuraba soundtrack also straddles a very strange line for RPG soundtracks, with a lot of jazzy tunes to go along with the standard rock and orchestral stuff that he is known for. It's kind of strange to hear mellow horns while wandering around the world map, but in a way it works.

Did I complain enough about the debt thing? I'm seriously in shock that people thought this would be a good gameplay mechanic. It just hangs over you and brings the story to a grinding halt on multiple occasions. I also think it's worth mentioning that for just two bucks more, you can pay Bandai Namco for an item that will double the rate at which you acquire money. Do not reward them for their lazy gameplay gates that take up more time than the actual story.

Overall I'm really torn on Tales of Xillia 2. It fixed the story problems I had with the original, but the story is gated by quite possibly the worst gaming mechanic I have ever seen, second only to Breath of Fire Dragon Quarter's rogue-like rebirth system—although it's really a matter of flipping a coin, and either response would be correct. The combat is fun, and the character interactions are a joy as always, even if the choice system ultimately does little compared to what the bulletpoint on the back of the box would have you believe. I have a really hard time recommending this game, because it should have been an excellent title. But because of the design of the final product, I would say wait on this one since it really doesn't respect your time. As a full priced game, it doesn't have the content to back up the asking price.