Parent's Guide: Tales of Xillia 2 - Age rating, mature content and difficulty

Tales of Xillia 2 is a Japanese role-playing game in which players take on the role of Ludger Kresnik, a silent protagonist, as he travels into and destroys parallel dimensions, searches for his missing brother, who's believed to have been responsible for a devastating train crash, and tries to pay off a humongous debt. As with all games of this ilk, your time will be split between talking to people, exploring the vast worlds of Elympios and Reize Maxia and battling hundreds upon hundreds of monsters and bad guys.

Battles are real-time free-for-alls, where you and a party of up to three other characters (each controlled either by the computer, or a friend in the same room) take on groups of enemies together. Attacking is a simple matter of mashing either X for regular attacks, or O for special skills - and can be made even easier if necessary by dropping the game's difficulty down to 'Easy' at any time, letting you slice through foes like the proverbial knife through butter. Sussing out the game's levelling up system, where characters grow stronger and learn new moves and abilities, may be a bit more of a problem though, as you need to keep switching between equipped 'extractor' items to make the most of each increase in power. It's pretty confusing, and something that requires a lot of micro-managing from players.

Reading is pretty essential too, as not everything that takes place in Xillia 2 is voiced - jobs, quests and tutorials are all done through text on screen, potentially leaving the less confident readers confused as to where to go next (pressing R2 will bring up a handy on-screen reminder of what you need to do next though, assuming you can read it!). Ludger's loan may also pose a bit of a stumbling block, as you need to keep up with your repayments to carry on opening up new areas to explore and advance the story. You can earn money in game by taking on jobs for people, which usually tracking down an item or dispatching a certain number of monsters for them, but it's a gating system that may be a bit complex for some players. Still, for those who've played a role playing game before, there should be little in the way of stumbling blocks here.

In terms of content, Tales of Xillia 2 is pretty similar to most of the other "Tales of..." games. There's a smattering of innuendos (such as an accidental chest grabbing scene, someone being told they have "really big knockers" and a mention of "one of those naked bonding experiences"), an occasional utterance of bad language (b*stard), and some blood shown around already dead corpses on the floor, or during the game's anime cutscenes. In terms of violence, players attack human-like enemies, giant insects and mythical beasts with swords, guns and magic spells, accompanied by cries of pain and explosions - no blood spurts can be seen in battles though.

Age Ratings

Format Reviewed: Playstation 3