Tales of the Abyss #16 — Delicious Bloodshed

January 16th, 2009

 

Apparently they bleed black.

Impressions:

Well, the most disappointing part of the episode (at least to me) is that by this point in the game, you start getting the alternate costumes for everybody. Tear in her maid outfit is far FAR preferable to emo-bangs Tear. They stuck very close to the game for the first time in around a month, even though this part was kind of silly in the game as well. Big dramatic save the world moment… being guarded by one of the five underlings who brings with him development for a tertiary PC who has spent the game as essentially a lockpick. Silly Ion and his swarm of clones. They did add more exposition to Van’s confrontation at the docks, which seemed a little silly given how much of a hurry everybody was in, but eh… it certainly could have been far worse.

The Sync fight here was rather disappointing, especially for his last stand before all the last dungeon silliness. For all his speed and agility, his reaction to Luke’s idiot beserker charges was to stand there and take the hit both times. Maybe if you had… oh… I don’t know… Harrowing Gale’d his ass, this would have been a lot more entertaining to watch. I’m glad that they kept the massacre at Sheridan too, even if they did end up not killing any random townsfolk. Sorry old people, you weren’t important enough to survive, though it does need to be seen whether or not they’ll revive them all when they need scientists next week instead of just one of them.

Oh yeah, and Lorelei yammered on through Tear for some cryptic foreshadowing. At least it wasn’t preceded by the stupidest minigame ever conceived.

Overall, pretty good and enjoyable, though the Sync fight could have and should have been far far better. Hopefully they’ll do a better job with the big showdown against the  God Generals next week, which is probably the nastiest mandatory boss fight in the game.

And as a sidenote, Birdy2’s second episode was as bad as the first and confirmed pretty much every mocking comment I made about them just rehashing the first one’s story as well as the bunch of throwaway villains. I’ve lost pretty much all interest in it at this point.

Preview:

Skipping two Sephiroths to go straight to the showdown with the God Generals.

Posted in Tales of the Abyss | 3 Comments »

3 Shouts From the Peanut Gallery

  • SageSoren says:

    There was a better dialogue to action ratio this time, anyway. I think Sync’s face made me laugh a little more than it should have, though.

    I agree with your minigame comment, by the way. I hated that part. D:

  • justsomeguy says:

    Actually, I found the first Sync+Largo fight (which occurred at low levels) to be harder than the upcoming fight, which was easy when I set Luke and Guy to double-team one God General at a time, while Tear healed and Anise supported.

    That tracing minigame was terrible. One mistake with the stick, and it was back to the beginning. Took me 14 tries.

  • Shiro Long Tail says:

    Speaking of alternate costumes
    I consider Luke’s Berserker outfit to be the best although Tear’s Cool Chick comes close.