Current mood:
Current music:	The Sound of Animals Fighting "Act III: Modulate Back To The Tonic"

Brave Vesperia
I'm about 20 hours into Tales of Vesperia right now. It's unique in that it's the only Tales game I have played for longer than a couple of hours. This one has a really punchy start, so it pulled me in considerably quicker than the other five or six Tales games I've attempted. I'm still pretty nauseous whenever I heard Estellise talk, but the other characters' voices are reasonably tolerable. The battles are awesome, no horrible puzzles like Legendia, and actually, a pretty serious story for a Tales game. None of the usual racism/outcast bullshit, so far at least.

The achievements are a little monstrous though: beat the game in 15 hrs for 15pts; beat one of the bosses at level 15 or less (I just beat him a couple of hours ago at level 35 or so). Plus some insane completionist achievements which will probably be worse than the Blue Dragon and Lost Odyssey ones when all's said and done -- it's not enough to meet the different monsters; you have to use an item to analyze them! At least in this game you can carry over your collections to subsequent plays through, courtesy of Tales' typical grade shop at the end of the game.

Lots of fun, though. A nice up-tempo summer game.