But now i have beat it and i can talk about it... yay.
So Tales of Hearts R is about a knight named Chalcedony who is driven by his desire to protect the empress... though he finds out his emotions are being manipulated by this one girls heart essentially breaking and making everyones emotions extreme.... then with no help from anyone else he saves the day!
.... thats... thats not what happens?
Well damn.
Okay it's actually about Shingu (the game translates his name to Kor [i'll explain how later] but ears win out over eyes every time for me) who has never left town and adventure is pretty much thrown in his lap as he finds out things you hear in fairy tales may be more accurate then anyone ever guessed.
First he Meets Kohaku, a lovely girl who is desperate to get a special type of weapon that only certain people can use. then Hisui, her brother who doesn't like how close Shingu and Kahaku have become in the.... 5 or so minutes they knew each other (the emotional whiplash was a bit sudden)
Eventually they also Meet Gallade (Gall in english but at least thats close), Beryl, Ines, Kunzite and finally Chalcedony.
To describe the plot.... the best way i can do it is say "this is Genderswapped Princess Tutu" and... yeah i'm not wrong. There is a character with a broken Heart and the group go around finding shards and realizing that while some emotions really really suck they are needed to enjoy the good emotions.
There is also this Parallel story about one of this world's moon falling if Sleeping Beauty wakes up.
So here we have the basis for the name scheme.
Everyone in this game has a pun name... japan loves their pun names.
everyone except the main character is named after some kind of stone.
so where does Shingu/Kor fit? why change the name? Shingu sounds fine considering.
Apparently the way Shingu is written is 心具
Now that first kanji is Heart - Kokoro
Because shingu is the only one not based off a rock (though his last name is Meteorite/meteor) i guess they wanted to get the 'pun' across to the took the Kor from Kokoro since a lot of people know that means heart but...... seriously should have just left it shingu... it's okay for us not to get the joke.
This game actually helped me learn something about myself regarding translations.
Had the game been dubbed in english and they called him Kor it wouldn't have bugged me at all.... but considering it's still in japanese i kinda want the translation to be as accurate as possible.
And the translation is good... some lines are changed but nothing that affects the story... more so what manner the characters speak in....
granted there was a scene early one where the onscreen text was "i don't have to talk to you" but what he said was "oh you knew my grandfather" and.... yeah i threw a little fit over that... i understand they changed it so the next line would make sense to an english speaker but still.
but other then some minor changes the translation is good.
The whole game is pretty good. for whatever reason they didn't bother getting the rights to the intro song so we get this terrible generic instrumental bit that doesn't really get you pumped to play.
The combat is neat in the sense that it limits how many special moves you can do in a row.... but considering how long it takes for those to recharge if you don't guard (and guarding feels useless) having your characters also limited by TP seems silly.... i guess i was just spoiled by the lack of TP in some tales of titles.
A great addition to combat is that sometimes enemies make a noise and if you guard at the right time you can counter. it helped me feel like i was actually needing to pay attention to combat instead of just tap the attack button.
Still despite enjoying myself i think this only ranks around the middle of my Tales of chart.
It's good, it's way better then the last tales of game i played.
But there was just something missing.
My fav tales of games have themes that can easily translate to real world issues.
and while this one does have "friends are great" it doesn't have the same "holy shit i need to think about things and maybe give some people hugs" like i got with Phantasia or Graces F
However.... it does have Hiroshi Kamiya in it... (he plays Chalcedony.... he never left my party[and honestly he never should cause his weapon naturally was strong against the final boss... on that note, even though i love him, don't use kunzite]) so that should count for something....
ok so...
1. Phantasia
2. Graces f [specifically lines and lineage]
3. Abyss/Vesperia
4. Hearts R
5. Symphonia 2
6. Xillia
7. Destiny* (my system wouldn't play it properly)
10. Symphonia
15. Xillia 2
So yeah i really enjoyed it, it could have been a little more engaging but considering it's a handheld JRPG it's a good length (i beat it in 30 hours which is longer then Xillia 2 took)
If you don't mind listening to japanese audio then you really should go play.
if that or "power of friendship" plotlines aren't your thing then this may not be the title for you but i still think you should give it a try... even if we get more games brought over like this (japanese audio only) at least we would be getting more awesome games.
Also today marks me owning my Vita for a full year.... that kinda happened by accident.
for a system that i have been told has no games i have beaten 13 games in the 1 year i have owned it... not including the 2 rhythm games cause... well you don't really beat those do you?
I like both the Vita and the 3DS, they are completely different systems with 100% different types of games. I'm happy i own both because this past year has been great.
anyways... i liked this game, i know i ranked it in the middle but i still really liked it. maybe one day we'll get Innocence R like this.... or hell i'd even be okay with Zesteria being brought over this way (really excited for that one, look so pretty) but for now.... at least i won't feel guilty about playing so much project diva *ignored pile of unfinished sketches*
oh one last thing, if your like me and get easily lost (or hated the map in symphonia) then you may be annoyed with the world map here... and you don't get the airship till pretty much endgame.... so that's fun.
but otherwise great game... need more tales of... .maybe some fanart on the way.
I already drew mint.
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