Tales of Vesperia arrived quite a while ago, but I had so many games to play in the latter part of 2008 and into 2009 that I just finally got to it in the last couple of months.  Now I’m sitting here beating myself over the head with a 2×4, wondering why I didn’t get to it sooner.  This game was a system seller for Microsoft in Japan when it was released and it did pretty well here in North America also.  The adventure follows the exploits of Yuri, the main protagonist.  Naturally, since this is a JRPG, you meet various odd characters along the way.  The story starts off as a simple quest to retrieve blastia that was stolen from a poor area of the imperial city.  Blastia are pieces of ancient technology that perform tasks: from managing water flow from a fountain to allowing our heroes to use special abilities to protecting cities from monster attacks.  This quest for a stolen aqua blastia eventually leads to something more, and naturally you eventually get to the point where the fate of the world hangs in the balance.

As far as JRPGs go, Tales of Vesperia does a lot right.  The characters are likable, the story is fun and engaging, and the exploration and battles aren’t boring.  The story even has really dark parts, which you typically don’t expect from this genre.  The visuals are well done and the anime-style movies are a joy to watch; it’s too bad they’re few and far between.  What surprised me is the voice acting – it’s unusually well done.  I’ve played previous Tales games and expected something equally as horrifying.  I’m glad I was wrong.  The battle system is pretty standard if, again, you’re familiar with previous games in the franchise.  It’s action-based and time only stops when you pause the game or open the menu.  A trap that many JRPGs fall into is that of excessive grinding.  Sometimes I don’t mind – I’ve been known to be an experience whore and level my characters up way too much at times – but sometimes you just want to play through a game to see the story, without the need to spend time grinding levels just to take on the next boss.  From start to finish there is really no need to grind; I did it very sparingly, usually just to get a few more skill points to learn a new ability from a weapon.

With all that is done right, it’s hard to find failings in this title, but there are some.  First of all, there are very few side quests, so there’s not a whole lot to do outside the main story.  I guess its good there’s no grinding required, right?  Also, many of the big story segments seem unfinished when it comes to the voice work.  I would expect major story cut scenes to be fully voiced, but some that seem like pretty big plot points aren’t voiced at all.  In others, half the scene voiced and the other half isn’t.  Fortunately, I believe most of these instances will be dealt with when the PS3 version is released, which is encouraging.  I would also have liked to see a larger selection of costumes and other items to customize your party members.  There’s quite a bit of DLC available for the game, but most of it is either what I call “cheater” DLC or is comprised of other items (the aforementioned outfits) that you can acquire in-game if you are thorough enough.  Who would spend hard-earned dollars to buy in-game currency off the Xbox Live Marketplace?  I sure wouldn’t.

All in all, this is a great game and a welcome addition to the growing library of JRPGs on the Xbox 360.  Some might be turned off by the anime style of the game, but I’m glad they retained that visual approach instead of altering it to appeal more to Western audiences.  There are a few faults, one of which I consider pretty major.  It really kills the immersion when you get to major story segments expecting some of the great voice work only to be met with lines of text.  Honestly, I’m not against reading, but c’mon, these are major points in the game’s plot we’re talking about here.  This is an awesome “beginner” title if you’re interested in trying out JRPGs, and it has plenty of content to keep veterans of the genre going for a couple dozen hours, at least.