Last week I managed to spend some time with the English version of Tales of Xillia 2 for a preview before its release at the end of August. While the game has been out for almost 2 years in Japan, it is only just seeing localization now, and after spending a few hours behind a controller, I can see why fans have been so desperate to play it.
The game follows on from the story set out in Tales of Xillia, though you don’t need to have played it to understand the story here; while there appears to be some cross-over where the previous characters show up from time to time, you are a different protagonist following a different story. You are Ludger Kresnik, and other than being pretty scrappy with a pair of swords, you appear to be pretty useless.
The battle mechanics are fairly standard
The game starts with a simple task; you are taking your exam to work at a corporation which needs people who duel-weild swords, and thus your task is to kill 5 groups of monsters. It seems like a pretty standard JRPG setting, and the tutorial is much of the same - you quickly learn that mashing the Attack Button will get you through most fights unscathed, and pressing the Arte Button will allow you to do some more fancy moves which will end your fights quicker. Battling is pretty much what you would expect, fitting in with the standard JRPG style, though this button mashing will honestly only do you for the first hour or so; towards the end of Chapter 1 you will be getting tutorial messages every fight which explain more and more about the various mechanics and how they can be used to your advantage. Elemental attributes and Linking with your party members add new depth to the battle system, and helps to make Tales of Xillia 2 a much more fun game to play.
Choices, choices…
Tales of Xillia 2 isn’t all just battles though; after your 5 monsters you see a woman attacked by a giant fire-dog-demon-thing. You are presented with a choice: do you jump in and save her yourself, or do you send the examiner, your brother Julian, in to save her instead? The choice I picked made me fail the exam; there is a lot of emphasis on choice in Tales of Xillia 2, though whether both courses of action lead to your inevitable fail is unknown at this point.
Either way, a short anime clip where you see a man put his daughter on a boat and chop bullets out of the sky and an anime music video later, and Ludger is now a chef at a restaurant at the local train station. It seems you live with your exceptionally fat cat, Rollo, and your brother Julian. You leave for work after seeing Julian fiddling with a pocket watch, and bump into a very lost, rather useless-looking scientist, Dr Jude Mathis, outside your house. You agree to escort him to the station to see a ceremonial train which is somehow important to the war between Rieze Maxia and your own nation of Elympios. The game is pretty fast-moving with a lot of jargon being thrown your way, but no more so than your average JRPG. There is also the obligatory encyclopedia in the pause menu if you struggle to keep up.
At this point you are privy to some of the more interesting parts of the story through hitting the select button. A short animated conversation plays out, reminiscent of the Codec conversations from the Metal Gear franchise, but more animated and better done; your faces appear in boxes on the screen which move as you speak. If you say something that your partner thinks is odd, they will casually slide away from you. If it’s a three-way conversation and two of them gang up on you, their boxes will get together and gang up on you. This makes for a much more natural conversation than the Codec calls ever managed.
This is also the point where you discover that your protagonist isn’t exactly a silent protagonist. Ludger prefers grunting to talking, sure, though he will occasionally reply with simple words like “yeah” - the reason for this stylistic choice is unclear, though we will let you know in an upcoming Developer Q&A Session.
Fighting and trains go hand in hand
Arriving at the station, I bumped into a delightful little brat named Elle Mel Marta who seemed to have adopted Rollo the cat. I saw her briefly in the anime section where her father sent her on her way, telling her to meet him at the mystical land of Canaan. Elle uses you as a decoy, getting you into trouble with security in order to board the train, and runs off leaving you high and dry. Fortunately, you don’t have time to get into a lot of trouble because roller-blading terrorists attack, and you board the train after her.
The terrorists start killing everyone on the train, and in a beautifully-choreographed fight scene with a terrorist, Elle throws you her father’s swords which you keep as your own. A short while later you discover that Dr Mathis is actually a fighter too, and that the train is now set to crash into a very important building at the end of the line. You team up with Dr Mathis to kick some terrorist ass, fighting your way towards the head of the train where you inadvertently swap to an alternate timeline, and redo the mission in what appears to be an alternate dimension. There’s an explosion and you almost die, landing you in 20 million gald (your fictional currency) of medical expenses and debt.
But I waaaaaaant it…
This is where an interesting mechanic gets introduced. Your debt means that you are placed under travel restrictions, and cannot return home; you are forced to get a job to pay back your medical expenses, and are told that you can pay back this debt as you like - either when you feel you have enough money to give some back, or when your wallet hits a certain threshold your money will be automatically deducted. It’s unknown at this point how much of an impact and time-sink this part-time job mechanic will have on the gameplay, though that will be interesting to see as the game progresses.
Tales of Xillia 2 is certainly an engaging game to play. The graphics are decent, though the occasional fuzzly outlines on the characters remind you that this is a game originally released back in 2012. The anime sections are gorgeous and brilliantly executed, and the music is both upbeat and catchy. The soundtrack seems like the kind of thing you can leave running in the background just to keep you in a good mood.
I went into the preview event expecting another generic JRPG, but came away from it all feeling pleasantly surprised. I’m looking forward to the western release, and, if the heavens align, will have more a more in-depth review of Tales of Xillia 2 coming over the next few weeks - so make sure to check back then.
Nic Bunce
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