Tales of Innocence — The Latest Tales Gets Hacked into US Existence
Tales of Innocence is a game I wasn’t even supposed to play. Hell, I wasn’t sure it even existed. Sure, I have been a big fan of the Tales series of JRPGs ever since Tales of Phantasia, but Bandai Namco seems to be very choosy about which ones make it here to the states. Tales of Innocence came out for the Nintendo DS a while back, but only recently did an independent translation group take a dump of the ROM and painstakingly go through every single bit of text to convert it into a rather professional looking English translation. If you have a method to play NDS ROM dumps this is definitely one game you want to check out.
Tales of Innocence follows the story of Luca, perhaps the most whiney JRPG protagonist in existence. Luca is a young rich kid with extremely low self esteem who thinks that he is a bother and that everyone hates him. Then it is revealed that he is the reincarnation of the dark god Asura and he has magical powers and superb fighting ability. Unfortunately, reincarnated gods like him are feared by everyone in this world, so this really doesn’t do much other than validate his fears and team him up with a much more personable reincarnated god called Iria.
The story that follows is basically a trip around the world to figure out why the gods are being reincarnated as human beings. There is a war subplot going on, and there is a prevalent conspiracy against the gods of old, but honestly these plots end up getting cut short, and the game falls back on the same old “defeat and evil overlord to save the world” JRPG shtick. It’s honestly not the best story out there, but the interpersonal relationships of each of your individual characters are actually kind of interesting, and the little side events, not the main plotline, keep you enthralled throughout the game.
The game plays out in basic Tales style. Battles are done in real time, and you have to link normal and special attacks together to maximize your damage and combo counts. You control Luca (or whatever other character you like) while the computer controls the rest of your party. Unlike other Tales games, however, you can actually design your own AI for your party members. Start with a basic AI, and then start filling a custom command list that takes precedence over it and you’ll find there is quite a lot of variety here.
For example, I put my main healer on “go all out” so normally she would be blowing all of her TP (basically MP) on attack spells. However, I also customized her with six other commands, those commands being Steal, Ressurect, Heal HP, Heal Status Ailments, Use TP restoring items, and Target the same enemy I am targeting. This means, she will, in every battle, first try to steal from every enemy. Once she has done that, she will look to see if anyone needs HP healing. After that she will heal status ailments, and if anyone is low on TP, she will use items to restore it. Finally she devotes all of her power to attacking the same enemy I am. This is MORE than complicated enough to make one hell of an A.I. controlled partner, but even so, I can still choose to control her manually for split seconds of time, if I need her to use a specific skill. You can purchase more specific A.I. building commands using Grade, which is another type of currency you get by doing well in battles.
As far as leveling goes, you earn experience to increase your characters’ stats, learn new battle arts by using them in battle repeatedly, and you also have something call “styles”. Styles can be equipped from their own menu, and they alter your characters’ stats when equipped. Equip an aggressive style and you’ll get a bonus to attack. Eqiup a defensive style and get a bonus in defense. It’s pretty basic, but the cool perk about the style system is that styles can level up. When you level up a style, you earn passive skills, and these skills can do anything from increase your characters’ base combos, to making them immune to status effects to increasing the amount of experience they earn and more.
There is also a weapon forging system, but it’s not the most in-depth system out there. Basically you take a weapon and choose to forge one or two items into it. The result is a randomly generated assortment of up to three passive abilities that closely mirror the abilities you can get from styles. It’s useful, but it’s a lot of trial and error, and even more quitting out and reforging to get just the ability spread you want.
There is also a friendship system which is kind of interesting. Depending on how you act in battle and what dialogue choices you choose, the friendship between different characters can go up or down. Depending on how high your friendship totals are, you can see special hidden scenes, unlockable side stories called “skits” and even different endings. In addition, characters with higher friendship will look out for each other in battle. It’s a fun system that makes subsequent playthroughs, especially with the game’s new game plus feature, more enjoyable than they would be otherwise.
Outside of that, it’s a basic JRPG experience that is perfect for a portable gaming console. Save points are plentiful, the battles aren’t that hard (you can adjust the difficulty if you like), and it’s very active so it’s easy to put down without really losing your place. Overall, I just liked it because it was another game in the Tales series and we don’t really get many of those. We are still waiting on an American release of Tales of Graces. Fortunately the same translation team that worked on Tales of Innocence is doing the same for Tales of Graces. Once again, the fans continue to deliver on experiences that big game developers simply won’t touch. Hacking is the best thing ever.
(25 votes, average: 2.80 out of 4)
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