Tales of the Abyss

Abyss is the first game I've played in the rather long Tales Of (Insert Name of Game here) series, kindly lent to me by a friend.



It's an RPG, and you can tell straight away what's the story going to be like. For the initiated, the basic formula goes like this:

• Normal guy gets thrown into the midst of a huge conspiracy.
• Normal guy- now the protagonist- sets off to save the world with a motley crew of characters.
• Protagonist makes some mistakes, and attempts to find redemption.
• Gets the girl, and saves the world.

I've pretty much outlined the basic plot of Abyss here, and from the face of it, it's nothing remarkable. Truly, the story isn't that good. And the characters are, way way, too RPGish.



Alas, I'm a little too harsh here. It has its moments, and it kept me entertained. At least, the battle system did. It's not the usual turn-based, hands off RPG fights here, it's a system with combos and various moves that require you to tap your buttons. A lot.

Graphics wise, it's nothing too remarkable, bordering on cel-shading (but it's not). Quite colourful, but often rather blocky. The cut-scenes tend to be very choppy as well; sometimes you have no idea what's going on.



Storywise...well, you know, it follows formula. Mostly, it's about the antagonists trying to free the world from the "Score", something that tells everything that will happen from the beginning to the end of the world. Their reason? Because they want free will.



Okay, despite the two-bit philosophizing, it still managed to keep me interested. It might be terribly unoriginal and not-too-great a game, but it was fun enough. At least, fun enough for me to want to complete it.



Oh yeah, the average time in completing this game runs to about 60 hours. Loooong. Me, I just skipped one or two boring sidequests and clocked in at 45 hours. Still quite long, since I finished FFX in around 30 hours.



Yay, another RPG completed. Heh.