Started playing Tales of Graces f (PS3) last night and I'm loving it!
I'm so damn jealous; you'll be experiencing the game for the first time. I'm anxious to see your impressions of it!
Pretty great so far.
I just finished the childhood chapter last night and now things are getting really interesting. I love the CC system. It's so much better than a traditional SP/PP system where you have to worry about your AI controlled party members using all of theirs before you reach the area's boss. That was one of the few things I didn't really like in older
Tales games, though the strategy commands did do a pretty good job of helping manage that and you could always have a friend or two play with you and control a party member. CC is so much more satisfying. You can give it your all in every battle, which is waaaay more fun than having to run away from encounters because you want enough energy to fight the boss with. It makes level grinding much more pleasant too, because every encounter is a lot of fun. The A-artes and B-artes are cool too.
Dualizing isn't really anything new to me. Pretty much every RPG these days seems to have some kind of crafting system, but it's handled well here. Tempering your equipment by using it is pretty cool, I like that.
The way titles work with a leveling system in
Graces f is pretty cool too, I like that a lot. Having all those empty spaces in the titles menu really makes me want to collect them all, instead of just mostly ignoring them like I usually do.
I don't even mind that English audio is the only option. They seem to have done a pretty good job with the voicing. The only character's voice I'm not really fond of is, unfortunately, 18 year old Asbel's voice. For some reason all I can think of is that he almost kinda sounds like Jonah Hill if he was sad all the time.
Last, but not least, the game looks awesome. It's hard to believe that this is a remake from 2010 (in Japan) of a Wii game that came out in 2009. Also, the game's opening song is amazing. <3 I've listened to it every time I've started the game up so far. I can't get enough of it.