Tales of Graces f Remastered Review – The Power of Friendship, Enhanced and Improved

Despite having attained more success in recent years in the West following a long period of time when new entries in the series took years to hit North America and Europe or never did, Bandai Namco has been pretty conservative regarding remasters of older entries in the Tales series. Following the release of Tales of Vesperia: Definitive Edition, the Japanese publisher only teased that older games would be hitting modern gaming platforms and PC in the future, only recently revealing a full-blown initiative that will see the constant release of remasters. The first remaster spearheading this initiative is Tales of Graces f Remastered, a very solid remaster that leaves the original experience almost intact, enhancing it with welcome quality-of-life improvements.

In terms of game content, Tales of Graces f Remastered doesn't feature anything new, and the game's main story and the Lineage & Legacies epilogue that was added with the PlayStation 3 port of the original Wii release have been left untouched. As such, players will once again get to experience Asbel's fateful encounter with the mysterious girl he later names Sophie, the childhood promise he makes with her and the prince of the kingdom of Windor Richard, the tragedy that made him abandon his duty as the future lord of Lhant to become a knight, and the journey he makes across the world and beyond to protect all he holds dear.

Unfortunately, the story is possibly the worst feature of Tales of Graces f and, having been left unchanged, of the remaster as well. It isn't bad by any means, but everything that is set up in the first few hours of the game, including the personal conflict between some of the characters and the larger political conflict between different nations, is eventually resolved with some of the usual JRPGs' tropes, including the power of friendship. It is a shame, as some of the events in the first few hours of the game held some potential, but the execution leaves something to be desired.

Thankfully, the average story is salvaged by an incredibly strong cast, which includes the aforementioned main character Asbel, Sophie, and Richard, Asbel's estranged brother Hubert, who was forced out of Lhant to prevent a succession crisis, childhood friend Cheria, the knight captain Malik and the cheerful Amarcian technician Pascal. While not all of them have the same degree of involvement or development in the main plot, although every one of them gets a development arc of sorts, they are all rather charming, as are their interactions, mostly in the Groovy Chat skits, a returning staple in the series. These interactions become even better in the short Lineage and Legacies epilogue, also thanks to a bigger involvement of Richard in the party dynamics that lead to some hilarious exchanges.

If Tales of Graces f Remastered delivers a predictable tale, it does not fail to provide an extremely fun gameplay, possibly one of the best in the entire series. For a long time before getting unified and later becoming part of Bandai Namco as a whole, the Tales development studio was divided into two different teams - colloquially known as Team Destiny and Team Symphonia - which handled the development of the 2D and 3D entries in the series respectively. Tales of Graces is the only 3D game developed by the 2D-focused team and it shows, as the game is, in my opinion, the only 3D entry in the series that emulates the series' original gameplay the best. While the removal of a proper world map in favor of an interconnected world impacts the sense of scale considerably, as the roads connecting towns and dungeons are extremely linear and don't offer much in terms of content outside of treasure chests, optional Discoveries that provide some information on the world and visible enemy symbols, the linearity somewhat favors the experience nowadays, making for a more compact game that doesn't waste much time with traveling through an empty open-world map. Location design is just as straightforward and doesn't hold that many surprises, although dungeon design is decisively better than other more recent entries in the series, as it features some simple puzzles, some of them easier to complete in the remaster as color recognition is no longer required to solve them.

The star of Tales of Graces f Remastered gameplay is undoubtedly its combat system, the Style Shift Linear Motion Battle System, which served as the basis for the combat system used in later entries in the series such as Tales of Zestiria and Tales of Berseria. While enemies are fought on a 3D battlefield, it is only possible to move on the same axis as the targeted enemy unless using the Free Run mechanic, which is not particularly effective due to its slow speed and cost in terms of combat resources. This, however, doesn't mean that there are no defensive options besides the classic guard, and it is possible to backstep and sidestep to avoid enemy attacks. If done with the right timing, the character will also recover some Chain Capacity, a self-restoring resource that is used to perform Artes. CC, which comes in two different values, Min and Max which indicate how much CC is available at the start of battle, and the maximum possible value, is tied to the critical hit mechanics. Unlike in the vast majority of JRPGs, critical hits are not percentage-based, but happen when a gauge has been filled in combat, and every time a critical hit is performed, there's not only the high chance of stunning an enemy, which is very beneficial to keep the offense going, as hitting a stunned enemy with a base 1 CC attack restores a huge amount of CC, but also increases by one point the minimum value. All these mechanics are tightly woven, and mastering them makes combat feel extremely rewarding.

Even if one were to play Tales of Graces f Remastered at a low difficulty without engaging with the mechanics outlined above, the game would be extremely fun to play. While, visually, enemy design is nothing to write home about, their combat design is excellent, especially for bosses, and dodging their attacks by using the evasion mechanics properly is very satisfying. Character combat design is just as great, as every playable character essentially has two fighting styles that can be seamlessly combined, for the most part. Asbel, for example, can fight with his sword sheathed with his A Style Artes and fully drawn with his B Style, for example; Hubert uses his double-sided blade with his A Style Artes, which become twin guns with his B Style Artes; spellcasters like Malik, Cheria, Pascal, and Richard can combine the physical Artes of their A Style and the spells of their B Style to reduce casting times. With the fast execution of the vast majority of A Style Artes and the fact that it is possible to quickly sidestep after their quick animations have ended, Tales of Graces f Remastered feels snappy and fun at all skill levels.

In terms of character customization, Tales of Graces f Remastered features some rather unique mechanics that leverage one of the series staples, Titles. Each title in the game, which is obtained by either story progression, leveling up, using Artes a set amount of time, or accomplishing a variety of feats such as traveling a certain distance or spending a certain amount of Gald, comes with five different skills between stats improvements, passive skills, Artes, and Mystic Artes, the powerful cinematic attacks that can be unleashed during this game's version of the traditional Overlimits mechanics, Eleth Rise. While the system is simple and doesn't offer a lot in terms of pure customization and character building, it makes players engage more with the game's combat mechanics, rewarding them as they take advantage of them over the course of the adventure. Providing players more customization options is the Dualize system that allows players to fuse together two items, which can be used to enhance gear and produce Gems sporting a variety of special effects, including CC values boosts, but this is a system that not too many will fully take advantage of, as it is a little obscure and not properly explained in-game.

While Tales of Graces f Remastered doesn't introduce any major change to the original, the quality of life improvements make it a great release for both newcomers and returning players. Besides making color-based puzzles clearable even without color recognition, the remaster features a slew of other new features, including being able to access the Grade Shop on the first playthrough, the ability to switch on and off some of the features it offers at will, such as the experience and SP multipliers, Destination Icons for main and time-sensitive sub-quests, the latter especially welcome as it is easy to miss side-quests in the original, dash and enemy toggle which can speed up progression a lot, an auto-save function, the ability to retry even normal battles upon defeat, and the ability to skip to the next line of dialogue during Groovy Chats.

Tales of Graces f Remastered also features enhanced visuals, although the improvements are relegated to a mere resolution bump, as the vast majority of visual elements, like character models, lighting, and textures, don't seem to have received a major overhaul. Still, this isn't a major issue, as the game's colorful visual style has aged incredibly well, and some of the low-resolution textures don't look out of place even at 4K resolution. Besides resolution options, the PC version also offers some graphics settings to tweak at three framerate caps - 30, 60, and 120 FPS. Being an undemanding title, Tales of Graces f Remastered ran extremely well on my system (i7-13700F, RTX 4080, 32 GB RAM) at 4K resolution and locked 120 FPS, and I expected less powerful system configurations to run the game just as well at resolutions higher than 1080p.

2 of 9

At the end of the day, Tales of Graces f Remastered doesn't add much to the original experience, but the choice improvements it introduces make for a slightly more enjoyable game. While the story isn't all that exciting, the charming cast and the excellent gameplay make the remaster one that is worth getting for both series fans and those who may have never experienced Asbel's adventure before.

PC version tested. Review code provided by the publisher.

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9.0

WCCFTECH RATING

Tales of Graces f Remastered

Tales of Graces f Remastered does a great job improving the original's excellent gameplay with quality-of-life improvements and new options, such as the Grade Shop being available from the get-go, providing an experience that is fun right from the start for returning players. While the main story may not be particularly engaging, the charming cast and the outstanding combat system make the remaster a worthwhile purchase for newcomers who never had the chance to experience the PlayStation 3 original.

Pros

• Charming characters
• Excellent gameplay with plenty of interwoven mechanics
• Solid Quality-of-life improvements that enhance the experience more than expected

Cons

• Average main story
• Some mechanics are not properly explained in-game

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