{"id":7316,"date":"2012-03-07T19:33:54","date_gmt":"2012-03-08T01:33:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gamesanityblog.com\/?p=7316"},"modified":"2012-03-07T19:33:54","modified_gmt":"2012-03-08T01:33:54","slug":"carys-favorite-tales-characters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/2012\/03\/07\/carys-favorite-tales-characters\/","title":{"rendered":"Cary’s Favorite Tales Characters!"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>In honor of next week\u2019s release of Namco\u2019s new game in their flagship RPG series: Tales of Graces F, here\u2019s a blog about my favorite Tales characters!<\/p>\n

Tales of Legendia, my favorite game in the series<\/strong><\/p>\n

When you ask most Tales fans what they\u2019re favorite game in the series is, they might say Symphonia, or Vesperia. But I bet NOBODY says Legendia is their favorite. Except me. Heck, one time when I said that was my favorite to a Namco employee, he just looked at me like I had three heads. Legendia was a PS2 game but it was headed by a different team than all the other Tales games. And it showed. Legendia almost had a \u2018rebellious\u2019 tone to it because the new team wanted to make it clear that this was different from a regular Tales game.<\/p>\n

Legendia certainly had flaws. So many that sometimes even I wonder why it\u2019s my favorite. Battles are 2-D like the older Tales games, but they\u2019re only single player. Which is a big blemish because most other Tales games you could have other players join in as other characters in the fights. And that was a lot of fun and one of my most favorite aspects of other Tales games. Legendia was also pretty linear and should\u2019ve ended about halfway through the game.<\/p>\n

So why do I like Legendia so much then? Well, I do like the differences it brought to the table. Even though the game was linear, the storyline never meandered and got too complicated. You didn\u2019t have to have a story refresher course if you continued playing after a couple of months. In fact, Legendia almost had a Super Nintendo \u2018feel\u2019 due to its simplicity. The graphics had a beautiful watercolor look to them. But my favorite part was the music. Normally one composer does the music to Tales games (can\u2019t remember the name, but I\u2019m sure someone here will correct me). This composer isn\u2019t bad, but the songs that come from this musician are all forgettable. Much like the name. But in Legendia, the composer was different. His name is Go Shiina, and he\u2019s my favorite video game music composer ever. He did the music for other games like Mr. Driller, Klonoa 2, and Tekken 6 as well. His music has a neat jazzy style, and helped separate Legendia from the rest of the pack.<\/p>\n

And of course, Legendia had a large group of my favorite characters. Tales games feature their main characters pretty prominently, so here\u2019s a list of my favorite ones in various Tales titles!<\/p>\n

Grune<\/strong><\/p>\n

She\u2019s one of the magic users in Legendia. Her ditzy silly exterior cracked me up. Plus, she wore green clothes and had green hair. Perfect for the upcoming St. Patrick\u2019s Day! Heck, even her name means \u201cGreen\u201d in German. And my favorite color is green, too. Even though she used magic, her weapon of choice was weird, too. Just a big clay pot that she\u2019d bonk enemies over the head with! What a hoot!<\/p>\n

Go Shiina<\/strong><\/p>\n

He\u2019s not playable, but one of the traditions of Tales games is that the music composer is in the game somewhere. Usually it\u2019s that other composer, but for Legendia, Go Shiina was in it! In order to unlock more songs for him to play in the game, you had to bring him food using the famous Tales cooking system. I read in an interview somewheres that the real life Go Shiina loves food, so that makes sense in the game, too. Needless to say that saving the world took a back seat in Legendia so I could give Go Shiina more food! I wish I could meet the real Go Shiina someday, but I doubt I will, what with him being in Japan and all. So if any of you ever get to meet him, tell him I said \u2018hi.\u2019<\/p>\n

Otters<\/strong><\/p>\n

Another non-playable bunch of characters, these are the Moogles of the Legendia world. They\u2019re a group of talking helpful otters who have their own village and everything. They even have their own little adorable song they sing: \u201cOrs, Ors Ors Ors, Ors\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

Norma<\/strong><\/p>\n

She was a funny treasure hunter in Legendia, and would sometimes let her greed get carried away. She and Grune made for some great comedy. Normally I would rather skip the \u2018skits\u2019 that Tales games have, but not in Legendia when Norma and Grune were talking!<\/p>\n

Moses<\/strong><\/p>\n

He was another thief type character in Legendia, but he was more of a bandit and was louder and more boisterous. And also funny. He had a crush on Grune (can\u2019t blame him), and he fought with a cool blue wolf.<\/p>\n

Repede<\/strong><\/p>\n

OK now we\u2019re getting to characters in Vesperia. Speaking of blue wolves, Repede was a dog owned by the main character. But he was playable! When I would have friends over and we\u2019d all play Vesperia together, we\u2019d all fight over who would get to control the dog in battles!<\/p>\n

Rita<\/strong><\/p>\n

Not really one of my favorite characters, but she was kind of a group favorite. Usually someone in my group of friends would pick her to play as. Which was good since she was a magic user. She wore goggles, so we always called her Goggolor. In fact, I had to look up her real name on the Internet because I got so used to calling her by that other name.<\/p>\n

Judith<\/strong><\/p>\n

No real reason why I liked her. My friends called her the fan service character. But she was fun to play as, so if I didn\u2019t get to be the dog, I\u2019d try to be her.<\/p>\n

Anise<\/strong><\/p>\n

The one and only Tales of the Abyss character on my list. The reason why I liked this little girl character is that in battle, she would ride on the back of a giant teddy bear who would fight for her! But that\u2019s not all. You could equip this bear with various outfits that made references to other classic Namco titles. You could have Presea\u2019s pink pigtails, a Valkyrie helmet, even the green head of the Prince from Katamari Damacy! I actually won a contest from Namco and got a plush toy of this weird bear. It came with an extra head that had Presea\u2019s pigtails on it. I wanted the Katamari head, though. I actually won another Tales contest and got some Symphonia trading cards, too! Tales of the Abyss just came out on the 3DS, but I probably won\u2019t get it since it\u2019s just a single player game instead of multiplayer like it was on the PS2.<\/p>\n

Genis<\/strong><\/p>\n

And finally, some Tales of Symphonia characters. I bet a lot of people would say Symphonia is their favorite since it was one of the only good GameCube RPGs. Only one I liked better was Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door. Anyway, even though Genis was a bratty kid, he was very smart and ended up being pretty likable. He used a cup and ball toy as a weapon, but he was mostly a magic user. I loved some of the things he said when casting spells, like \u201cPancake Time!\u201d His older sister Raine was pretty cool, too.<\/p>\n

Sheena<\/strong><\/p>\n

She was a ninja with purple hair. So she\u2019s automatically cool because of that.<\/p>\n

Presea<\/strong><\/p>\n

And finally, Presea was a little girl with pink pigtails. But she was unusually strong and fought with a big axe. In fact, when I would play Symphonia with Jeff, he usually picked her because she was a tank! Another cool thing about Presea was one of her alternate outfits. Different unlockable outfits are one of the traditions of Tales games, and one of Presea\u2019s made her look like Klonoa, the main character from one of my favorite Namco games! That\u2019s another neat thing about Tales games is they usually have a lot of classic Namco references in them. Jeff and his friends even made Presea in Soul Calibur V!<\/p>\n

The End<\/strong><\/p>\n

And that\u2019s all my favorite characters. I wonder if there are any that I\u2019ll like in Tales of Graces F. Show me if you think there will be. In the comments section, let me know YOUR favorite Tales games and characters! And if you don\u2019t play Tales games, you can list your other favorite RPG characters, too! I would tell you mine, but I think it would be more fun for you to guess. So guess who my number one favorite Tales game character is (should be pretty easy), and my favorite Final Fantasy character, too (might not be who you would immediately think).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In honor of next week\u2019s release of Namco\u2019s new game in their flagship RPG series: Tales of Graces F, here\u2019s a blog about my favorite Tales characters! Tales of Legendia, my favorite game in the series When you ask most Tales fans what they\u2019re favorite game in the series is, they might say Symphonia, or […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7316","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-miscellaneous"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7316","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7316"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7316\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7316"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7316"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7316"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}