Tales of Zestiria Impressions

            I admit that I haven’t been really keeping up with info from Tales of Zestiria recently, but what I HAVE seen interests me.
UPDATE: Battles REALLY ARE seamless! There won't be any transitions between battles, and the terrain also affects the battle. Now I'm even more hyped for the game.
            The thing that caught my eye first was the fact that the battle backgrounds seem to be much more detailed, and actually shows distant scenery. While this has been something that’s been in the series in past titles like Xillia, Zestiria upped the scaled on this to the point where I initially thought battles took place on the overworld with no battle transitions (similar to Final Fantasy XII and Xenoblade). The battle system also seems to be based off of Tales of Graces’ battle system with some new features. I don’t know much beyond the fact that you can fuse with certain party members to gain a boost in strength, but the concept seems interesting.

            As far as I know, Tales of Zestiria’s setting is pure fantasy compared the more modern settings of Xillia or Xillia 2. The overworld seems to be MUCH larger, so I hope Namco’s fixed some of the issues Xillia’s overworld has. Character-wise… I think the cast doesn’t really stand out to me. Sorey, the protagonist, seems to be the most generic. I can only hope that the cast are fully fleshed out and well written in the final product.

            Other than that… I really don’t know much about Tales of Zestiria, but I look forward to its release next year nonetheless. I’ve heard in an interview with the Tales staff that they’re going to attempt to keep the localization periods shorter, and that Zestiria will be out for both Japan and the West within next year. The wait’s going to be long, but I have quite a lot of games to keep me occupied until then. I hope Namco can produce a quality title, as always.