I’d call myself a Tales series enjoyer, but not really a hardcore fan. I’ve been trying to get into these games since I was a teenager, but only a handful have really stuck with me. There are two in particular I have a particularly strong nostalgic attachment to: Tales of the Abyss and Tales of Graces f. I was over the moon when the latter got announced for a remaster, because I had fond memories of playing this as a teenager over summer break on my dad’s PlayStation 3. After playing this remaster, I’m happy to say my enthusiasm for the Tales series is at an all-time high.
Tales of Grace f has a rather curious history that western fans might not be aware of. The original version was released exclusively in Japan for the Wii, a year after Tales of Vesperia came out for the Xbox 360. It would then receive an expanded PS3 port with more voice acting, gameplay improvements, and an entirely new epilogue campaign. This is the version we got, and is the version this remaster is based on.
The story is a bit of an interesting aspect to discuss when it comes to Tales of Grace f, but, overall, I quite like it. The Tales of series is well known for being predominantly character-focused, and this game is no exception. Having said that, I think I’ve found the Tales of cast specifically for me during this revisit. I absolutely adore each and every one of these characters, from their interpersonal dynamics to their banter. Like any story that knows how to fully utilize its main cast, the events of the story often feel like ways to push them into situations that test their ideals.
From the beginning chapter when Asbel and his friends are children experiencing the most important week of their lives, to the rest of the game where they’re traumatized young adults trying to navigate life. You really get a feel for why these characters act the way they do just by seeing how their innocence is basically stolen thanks to the decisions of specific adults in their lives. Seeing Asbel lose everything in his life twice in the opening hours and be used as a political tool by the only person left bothering to call him a friend is deeply compelling drama. While the entire game isn’t so dour, there are a lot of great character moments all over this game to chew on for those who really grow to love this cast.
So yes, I’m a pretty big fan of the story. If that was the only thing I really enjoyed though, I probably wouldn’t be yelling from the rooftops that this is one of the best games I’ve played. There are a lot of fun mechanics like mixing items in battle, crafting, upgrading gear, cooking, taking on quests in towns, and character building to make this a jam-packed RPG experience. The real highlight of the game, the aspect that brings everything together wonderfully, is the battle system. This is the piece of the puzzle I’ve been missing for years. This is the Tales battle system that fixed any of my issues with most Tales games I’ve played in my life. I just didn’t know it would take finally playing a game from Team Destiny (who worked on some key 2D Tales game) to do it.
In the Team Symphonia games, for example, you have a regular attack button and an Arte button. Regular attacks will go out in simple combos, with Artes being used by consuming a TP bar for each character. They will often chain into one another, and normal attacks can slowly restore your bar. I think this works as an RPG with action combat, I see the appeal. I personally always reach a point while playing those games where I stop having fun thanks to the stop-and-go nature. Tales of Grace f is nothing like this.
Tales of Grace f uses something called the Chain Capacity (CC) system. As long as you have CC points, you can perform an action. These are broken up into A-Artes, B-Artes, and various battle actions like dodges or free run. As long as you have CC points, you can combo any of these into each other with ease. Sounds the same, right? The big difference is that your CC cooldown is really short, with you being able to restore your points back up in a matter of seconds. This encourages aggressive and fast play, where you’re always jumping into the action and fighting. I can’t get enough of this battle system, and it’s the first game that I felt encouraged to move off of the Semi-Auto play style to instead play entirely on Manual.
Actions flow into one another in a snappy and responsive way. It feels fantastic, fast, and engaging in ways unlike any other game I’ve ever played from this series. Even during the brief moments when you’re waiting for your CC to restore feel tense, since you start to optimize your time to get as much CC back as possible. Certain actions in battle can restore CC, so planning out your next move to block or perfect dodge before diving back into the action is something that happens often. In addition to all of this, you can immediately switch to any member of your active party with just a click of a d-pad button. Every single character has a unique gimmick, and I’m glad I feel encouraged to poke around and experiment because the game lets me switch so freely. This is a game made to be an action game first and foremost, with fun feeling like the core design ethos that informs everything.
Titles also offer a wonderful spice to character-building that keeps battles feeling like constant steps forward. Every character has roughly 150 or so titles, and they unlock often. Equipping them will give them a unique passive and a series of abilities (this can be new Artes, or another passive) for every rank, and they rank up by gaining SP in battle. The better you do in battle, the more SP you get. Once you hit a rank, your character keeps that ability forever. Building more on that idea of always having fun, you don’t have to juggle all your various abilities. Your characters will just continue to get better, and because of that they design the game to really test your might.
New in the remaster are three new optional quality-of-life additions: A sprint button, turning encounters off, and objective markers. I never used togglable encounters (the battle system is just too much fun), but I got decent usage out of the other features. The sprint is pretty great, being fast enough to notice but not enough to feel out of place with the pace of the original. The objective markers are quite useful as well, telling players where they need to go for the main story as well as highlighting time-sensitive missable events on the screen when they pop up. My only complaint is that I wish that these two types of objectives could be toggled separately so I could turn off the markers for the main but keep the ones for missable events.
Also new for Tales of Graces f Remastered is the inclusion of Dual Audio, and unlike Tales of Vesperia Definitive Edition, you can make the switch in the options screen at any time. Tales of Graces was always blessed with basically fully voiced cutscenes and skits back in its original ‘f’ release, so there are no worries about characters changing their voice lines randomly. The new (previously DLC) comedy skits included in the menu to watch are now dubbed in English, with only Cheria’s voice actor being unable to come back. The dub in general is fantastic, with the only downside being that the English voice acting sounds about as compressed as it did in the original PS3 version.
The only other change I recognized was unlocking the Grade Shop from the beginning, which was previously a New Game + feature. This menu allows you to spend points to unlock a large amount of various buffs for your playthrough, like double XP or more CC. They now let you access all of these immediately, which is great for returning players who just want access to a completely broken battle system from the get-go. I’d recommend newcomers ignore this menu entirely, but do whatever makes you happy.
I truly wish I could keep this enthusiastic gushing going for several more paragraphs, but there are some issues specific to the Nintendo Switch release that bring this version down. On both the Wii and PS3 releases of the game, field exploration was set to a target of 30 frames-per-second (fps) and battles had a target of 60 fps. On PS3 it managed to hit this 60 fps often with only rare performance dips. Every other version of this new remaster allows for 60 fps (with PC allowing for up to 120) in both field and battles, except the Switch version which has a 30 fps lock across the board. Given that the Wii original was able to target 60 fps, it makes this version of the game on stronger hardware look a bit strange.
It seems that in trying to hit native resolution in both docked and undocked play, they likely weren’t able to hit a consistent 60 fps in battles. It’s a shame because the game looks quite good on the Nintendo Switch OLED Model screen, but I’m not sure if it was entirely worth the frame rate cut. It certainly doesn’t make this version of the game unplayable, but as someone who also got to play the PC version, it feels a lot more sluggish here. The speed of the locked 60 fps, Tales of Graces’ battle system is one of the reasons I fell for this game so hard, and I can’t help but feel like that magic is lost when playing at 30 fps. At least for the sake of future-proofing, I think they should have just unlocked the frame rate in battles. I can only hope a patch is made for the game to unlock the frame rate when the Nintendo Switch 2 launches. Alternatively, the game looks and runs perfectly on a Steam Deck. Just make sure to set your internal and external resolution to a 16:9 resolution like 1280×720, or the default 16:10 aspect ratio will crop the sides of the image.
Despite my misgivings with this particular port, I adored my time revisiting Tales of Graces f. I’d need to see if a Tales of the Abyss port is in our cards to fully decide, but at the moment I think this is the Tales game for me. I’ve caught the bug again, and I really want to comb through this series’ back catalogue. This is probably the best Tales remaster we’ve gotten so far, even if there are parts I wish could have been improved further. As the first title in this Remaster project, however, this is a promising start. If you’re interested in playing this and really want to dive into the battle system, you should probably play it on any other platform. If you’re here for fun vibes, the Nintendo Switch version will do you fine enough.
Version Tested: Nintendo Switch
Review copy provided by Bandai Namco Entertainment
