Easily one of our most anticipated titles of 2014, Tales of Xillia 2 has been near the top of our most wanted lists ever since it was first announced. The ronseal-named sequel to last year's Japanese role playing masterpiece, Tales of Xillia may be a direct sequel, with a story that follows on where the last game left off, but it's enough of a stand alone that it's easily possible to follow what's happening, even if you've never played the original.
With similarly stylised cel-shaded graphics, fantastic anime cutscenes, and an annoyingly catchy soundtrack, the game picks up the story roughly a year after the events of Tales of Xillia, this time in the steampunk/industrial world of Elympios, a land not far from Reize Maxia, which we explored in the original game. There's a terrorist threat, known as Exodus, a good versus evil storyline, and fat cat called Rollo. And that sounds like the recipe for a great game to us.
At a recent event, we got to go hands-on with the first few hours of Tales of Xillia 2, and played as much as we could before they dragged us, kicking and screaming away from the console. Sadly, we didn't have room for a debug PS3 in our bag, which is probably the only reason we've managed to find time to sit down and write about what happened instead.
After picking up the controller, we stepped into the (virtual) shoes of new main guy Ludger Kresnik (whose last name will strike fear into folks who've played the first Xillia), finding ourselves in the industrial Trigleph City, on the day our protagonist is to sit an entrance exam for a job at the prestigious Spirius Corporation, a large technology company. His task? To slay five monsters in the underground caverns beneath the city, under the watchful eye of his older brother Julius, who already works for the company as a dual sword wielding badass. Kind of like a samurai version of Bill Gates. Exploring the twisting and turning caverns, its a simple matter of hunting down five of the bright green dodo-like birds, and bumping into them, where the game transitions into the tradition Tales button-mashing (and in this case, bird bashing) real-time battles.
It might look rather hectic, with numbers galore - but its actually rather straight-forward, we promise.
Talking of battles, Tales of Xillia 2 uses a system called (deep breath), the "Double Raid Linear Motion Battle System", or DRLMBS for short. A confusing name for an easy to pick up and play system, at its core, this essentially means you have two sets of moves at your disposal - your regular attacks, with Ludger's dual blades on the X button, and special attacks, known as 'Artes' on Circle. Depending on which direction you're holding the left stick in, you can get different variations of attacks too. Generally speaking, your Artes will do more damage to enemies than your regular attacks, although they cost a portion of your TP (technical points) bar, preventing you from spamming too many of them at once. Simple enough to pick up, and with enough nuances to keep things interesting thousands of battles in, its a system that's stood the test of time. They really need to work on their acronyms though.
But back to the cave, and back to Ludger, who's name is oddly pronounced "Luger). Once we'd made enough radioactive dodos extinct, we headed back to our brother to report back - only to come across a screaming woman, being attacked by a large flaming dog. Faced with a choice of either leaping in to tackle the formidable beast ourselves, or calling Julius over for back up, we decide to play the hero and leap to our damsel's rescue. Much tougher than your average dead-in-five-seconds dodo, the hot dog took a bit of a beating before we finally emerged victorious - only to find our erstwhile maiden holding a blade to our throat by way of thanks, like some sort of angry feminist ashamed that you'd attempted to oppress her by saving her life. Turns out she wasn't so helpless after all, and was intended as a decoy assassin to test your on-the-spot decision making. And so, poor Ludger fails his test. His hopes in tatters, and brother disappointed, he slumps away from the test, and instead takes up the hunt for another job, eventually finding a slightly less exciting career as a chef in a train station.
Some choices have a time limit associated with them - when the circle in the centre counts down to zero, you'll default to one of the options.
But, we can't help wondering how things would have played out had we opted to call in our brother instead. Tales of Xillia 2 may not technically be the first Tales game to add in dialogue choices, but it's perhaps the first one where your choices will have a direct influence on the story and characters. While it's not all that clear how much they alter things at this point, you'll often find yourself, playing as the mostly mute protagonist Ludger, faced with a choice of two potential answers or actions for a given situation, which are mostly polar opposites. Although we doubt the choices will have quite the game-changing gravitas of the likes of Dragon Age and Mass Effect, we're at least expecting the story to be able to flex based on your choices.
At this point, things changed track, and we found ourselves whisked away via an anime style cutscene to a house, on a dark, rainy night. With assassins storming a home, and gunshots filling the air, a father tells his daughter, Elle, to flee; to head to Trigelph City on a train, before meeting him in a place called Canaan. Giving her a golden pocket watch and sending her on her way, he stands and tries to fight the invaders - but his efforts are in vain. Unaware of her dad's potential demise, Elle manages to find her way to the big city, and heads for the station to continue her trip.
The cutscenes come thick and fast, at least when you first start playing. You can find the intro on YouTube, for an example of how cool things get.
You can probably see where this is going. RPG characters seem to have all the luck, and Ludger is no exception - on his first day at his new job at the station cafeteria, things take a turn for the bizarre. After playing the good Samaritan and leading the original Tales of Xillia's protagonist and general lost scientist, Jude Mathis, to the Trigelph station, terrorists strike and things are thrown into disarray. To celebrate the opening of the new Oscore Plant, the CEO of the company is due to arrive on a ceremonial train - but seemingly, terrorist organisation Exodus have other ideas. Spotting a lone girl, Elle, slipping onto the train in the midst of the chaos, good guy Ludger decides to follow, to check she's OK. But no sooner have you got on board than the train suddenly starts up, the doors seal shut, and you discover the terrorists have killed pretty much everyone on board, with you and Elle as the next targets. Wasting no time, Ludger dispatches one of the terrorist agents, before the apparently incredibly lucky Jude, and the Spirius CEO turn up, and reveal that Exodus plan to ram the train into the Oscore building in an attempt to disrupt the peace between the neighbouring worlds of Reize Maxia and Elympios. Leaving Elle with the CEO for safety, Ludger and Jude set off down the train on a mission to halt the train and thwart their plan.
Fighting our way past the Exodus baddies, we were introduced to another facet of the Tales combat system - linking. An evolution of the battle system used in the original Tales of Xillia, you can choose to "link up" with another party member mid battle, which brings with it a number of benefits. For starters, linking means you'll focus your attacks on one enemy, as team mates you've linked with will always attack the same enemy as you - but you'll also gain access to new abilities, such as Jude's Restore skill, which heals you slightly each time you get knocked down, and much more powerful magic in the form of 'Linked Artes'. If you're doing particularly well in battle, you can also go into an 'Overlimit' state, in which your attacks can no longer be blocked, and where you and your partner can link together chains of Linked Artes for serious amounts of damage - particularly handy when faced with a tough boss fight.
Eventually, we reached the front coach of the train - but then, things started to get a little bit crazy. Looking more than a little bit agitated, we find Ludger's brother Julius muttering something about 'doing his job', clutching two pocket watches in his hand - pocket watches that look identical to Elle's. Stepping forward, Ludger touches one of the watches, only to suddenly transform, and seemingly jump back in time, finding himself in the main part of the train, with people around him that weren't there before. These pocket watches, and the theme of time seem to be an integral part of Tales of Xillia 2 - although how they play into the game, we're going to keep schtum for now!
Big bro and his two time pieces.
To cut a long story short, the train Ludger and co were on seemingly crashes, knocking Ludger, Elle and Jude out cold. When they come to, they find themselves in the care of a creepy guy in a dingy bar, saddled with a humongous loan to pay off, to 'cover their medical expenses'. Worse still, in the high-tech world of Elympios, people with debts, criminal records and other such convictions have various travel restrictions placed on them, to prevent them doing a runner. Such restrictions aren't exactly conducive to finding your missing brother, or helping Elle reach Canaan though - and being millions in debt, Ludger needs to earn money, and fast, in order to be able to move around the world - and that means taking all manner of jobs to pay the bills.
As with many a JRPG, jobs can be found at the job board, and are a mixture of the familiar fetch quests (i.e. "Find me these things to build me a new wardrobe"), and missions that ask you to eradicate monsters. As soon as you amass enough Gald (the game's awkwardly spelt currency), the debt collectors will be knocking on your door (or rather, phoning you up) to demand a repayment. Each subsequent repayment lifts the travel restrictions on your party, letting you travel to new locations, which is an interesting way of managing your adventure, preventing you from wondering into areas you're not ready for - but it remains to be seen how harsh the payments system will be. After all, we'll need some spare change to invest in the latest sword, a cool magical ring to prevent burns or to restock our supplies of healing apple gels...
As a bit of a cat lover, the part of Tales of Xillia 2 that most stole our heart is the protagonist's pet fat cat Rollo - a rotund feline who provides some comic relief, with his appropriately timed meows and cuddly personality. But the furry fan service doesn't end there - a Miss Kitty Cat, who lives in Ludger's apartment block, is "feline hopeless" when she discovers the hundred cats she brought with her have gone AWOL. As she "cat live without them", she enlists your help in tracking them down, as the pretty kitties have managed to scatter themselves across the game's world. Collectable cats of sorts, the kitties you manage to round up can then be sent out into the wild to bring back items via a packet of Kitty Krisps from your inventory. Some items can only be found through this Kitty Dispatch method, so its well worth sending your furry friends out to hunt - and if you manage to find all 100, Miss Kitty Cat assures you something good will happen, too.
The star of the show.
It's nice to see that Bandai Namco are getting more reliable with their Tales localisations, with more games than ever making it over to the West. Tales of Xillia 2 hits the PS3 in just under a month's time, on the 22nd August, and is shaping up to be another awesome instalment in the winning Japanese role-playing game series, bringing with it a new story, new characters and more addictive battles, expanding on the tale told in the original Tales of Xillia. With its built in encyclopaedia covering all the crucial aspects of the first game's story, you don't even need to have played the original to get into the game, making this the perfect place to jump in. Now, if you'll excuse us, we'd best get playing - we've only got just under a month to finish off the first game!
