Tales in the West
For awhile the appearance of Tales games in the West was few and far between so it failed to get the recognition it deserved. In fact there were many games that developers just decided not to release to the states at all creating gaps spanning as much as two or three years between the western release of tales games.
For those who don’t know the Tales series is a well known RGP series which centers around a small party of characters. The combat isn’t turn based like most RPG’s, but rather an actual full scale combat scenario. What makes the combat so unique is you can play single player or multi player and each character has a unique set of moves. Then you have the incredible character development that goes into each game; the tales series creates characters that you can’t help but grow attached to because the game is long enough to add detail after detail to where you almost know the entire life history of each character. Then finally the story has just as many details as the characters so many twists and turns the stories are engaging, constantly changing, and full of surprises. Overall the tales games are games made for the detail oriented gamers.
Now that the developers are realizing that the tales games are generating big profits in the west you can expect more tales games coming to the states. Tales product Manager Dennis Lee had this to say on the topic.
“Working with our community and fans has helped the audience to grow, and we’re delighted to see it taking off so well in the west. Right now the team’s very focused on getting us caught up to Japan with the new releases, and they’re looking at different platforms to get these games out to the fans. There were a couple of… experiments, you know, with games like Tales of Phantasia, which we released on iOS. That received some mixed results. In general, though, we’re looking at all of the ways in which we can bring the Tales of series to the fans.”
As a fan of the tales series this is good news for me. I recommend the series to anyone who enjoys great stories, great characters, and RGP’s in general.
Jacob Carpenter is the writer for TSCN.TV and also a blogger under the name JSnakeC on IGN
