Tales of the Abyss

Genre: Action-RPG / JRPG

Players: 1

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Review:

Tales of the Abyss is a JRPG with Action-RPG elements originally released on PlayStation 2 in 2006 and ported to Nintendo 3DS in 2012. This entry in Bandai Namco’s beloved Tales franchise follows the story of Luke fon Fabre, a shut-in royal who finds his boring life turned upside-down after a botched attack on his trainer Van by a young woman Tear leads to Luke and Tear being magically transported miles away.

The story and characters have to be one of the worst elements of this game. The writing is stilted and awkward, full of character names and terms the player is introduced to in an extremely inorganic, rapid-fire manner without any sort of context or emotional attachment. Meanwhile, the characters are unlikeable, particularly Luke himself, who comes across as whiny, ignorant, and entitled. Yes, there are ways to pull off the “insufferable princeling” character that can still make them enjoyable, but this ain’t it.

Most of the game’s key cutscenes give the game’s characters voiced lines, but unfortunately, you’ll find that throughout much of the game you have the Tales series’ signature “skit” conversations between party members, which are not only eerily silent, but which don’t let the player progress the text faster once they’ve read it all – they need to wait for the game to decide to move on.

At least in all other respects, the presentation here is wonderful. Nicely-detailed 3D visuals are interspersed with fully-animated anime-style cutscenes, and everything is backed by an excellent soundtrack. While the character animation can be a bit stiff at times, and some textures are a tad blurry, overall this is a wonderful port of the PlayStation 2 game.

As for the combat, Tales of the Abyss once again gives players Action-RPG battles that players transition to when encountering an enemy. These battles give players a growing list of abilities they can use via a Super Smash Bros-esque combat system using a combination of a directional input and a button, with players using R to swap their targeted enemy. It works well enough, and is original enough to make it fairly unique on the Nintendo 3DS, though it does feel a bit limited to only be able to move in relation to the enemy you’re targeting at any given time.

Overall, I like Tales of the Abyss, I just really wish the story and characters weren’t so terrible. This is a solid port of a decent Action-RPG with a good presentation. If you’re a fan of the series, you’ll find this to be an excellent portable take on the series formula, though the lacking story makes this less enjoyable than the Nintendo Switch sequel, Tales of Vesperia.

tl;dr – Tales of the Abyss is a JRPG with Action-RPG gameplay, and it is largely a successful portable version of the original PlayStation 2 game. The presentation here is very good, and the gameplay is solid. Unfortunately, the story is poorly-told and the characters are insufferable. Still, if you can look past those flaws, this is an excellent entry in the genre on Nintendo 3DS.

Grade: B-

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