The Tales series goes back years and includes 12 main games, well, 11 at the minute but there’s one on the way for the Wii this year as well – it’s sort of like the Final Fantasy you never hear about. Each game is set on a new world, or at least has a different story and characters than the previous releases. Of course then there are all the offshoots, which are so numerous it makes us wonder how we’ve never really played any of them before.

The simple reason for that is there hasn’t been a Tales game released in the UK since Tales Of Symphonia came out on the GameCube back in 2004. There has been the occasional PSP and DS jaunt, but these are usually offshoot titles and generally they aren’t very good.

Oh, and so you know, Tales Of Vesperia was released about a year ago in Japan, which might explain a few things about the graphics, which are, to put a good spin on it, clean. Obviously it’s a style thing and the whole game looks like an anime, but not one with a big budget as it’s more like one of the awful series you’d see in the late Nineties where everyone stands around talking even though a monster from parts unknown is ripping the world to shreds. Anyway, it does look like it could do with some more shading or something to make it look a bit better.

There’s a moment in Eternal Sonata when you arrived at the most incredible-looking castle and it’s one of the most beautiful things we’ve seen in gaming, it’s richly detailed, the colours are magnificent and the sense of scale is impressive. Right now we’re looking at a screen of Vesperia side by side with one from Eternal Sonata and the difference is shocking. So, like we said, it must just be a style thing.

While the graphics don’t make your eyes pop or sparkle or anything like that, there’s a hell of a lot that Tales Of Vesperia gets right. Probably the most important are the characters, and mainly your character, Yuri – he’s not annoying. Which is a triumph in itself, especially as the last few main characters in the RPGs we’ve been reviewing have been really annoying. That guy in Star Ocean, that guy in Last Remnant, that guy in Infinite Undiscovery and everybody in Blue Dragon have all annoyed us to no end by either being too exuberant, enthusiastic or unbelievably wet. But this Yuri guy he seems pretty cool, witty, confident and a real breath of fresh air in the otherwise namby-pamby world of JRPGs.

As the story goes, Yuri was once in the Imperial Knights, but he left because he didn’t like the way the Empire treated the lower classes, so he sets out to protect those who can’t defend themselves, and before you know it he’s off on an adventure after being captured and then breaking out of prison. You’re let in on the main plot line for quite some time, and your first few hours are spent getting distracted by other events and characters while Yuri tries to catch a thief who stole the magic stone that controls a fountain in the slums. Sorry, there are plot threads all over the place. Far too many to delve into here, but suffice to say that Yuri meets up with various characters who all have their own little stories that need sorting out.

… continued