Tales of Zestiria (PC) (2015)

Overview: Japanese RPG and fifteenth game in the main Tales series.

20170818:
Today I played a Tales of Zestiria for a couple of hours. I chose it because it was the most expensive game (as determined by SteamDB.info) which I had yet to play. In fact, it was third on the list (sorted by price in descending order) after RPG Maker VX Ace ($69.99, doesn't count as a game) and SEGA Mega Drive & Genesis Classics ($61.99, I've played it for 1.9 hours).

Sorey and Mikleo

Setup: English audio, normal difficulty. Keyboard. I eventually turned off the caption.

Steam Game Time: 2.2 hours

Thoughts:
Pro:
+ Some of the cutscenes are drawn in beautiful 2D animation

Alisha

Neutral:
~ English dub isn't bad
~ A lot of menu options; I guess games aren't simple like they used to be
~ Has an anime art style

Minor Con:
- Representing a group of enemies by one enemy on the map is strange. Why not just represent a group of enemies as a group of enemies?

Sorey and Mikleo confront a Hellion

Con:
- The pace of the game is annoyingly slow. I'm not sure if it picks up after approx. 2 hours, but it lost my attention.
- On that note, too much space between points of interest

Summary:
I gave the game a little over two hours of my time and by the end of the two hours the story and gameplay were starting to get interesting. Unfortunately, two hours is a lot of time for a game to become interesting and while I might return to the game at a later date, I'm not interested in playing more any time soon.

With that being said, I haven't played very many Japanese role-playing games and my unfamiliarity with the general game mechanics required me to put more time into learning how to play the game as opposed to simply enjoying the game itself.

In the end, I'm unable to give a personal recommendation for the game. It's certainly nowhere near as good as Final Fantasy VII (PS) (1997) and, from what I can recall, it's not as good as Tales of Symphonia (GCN) (2003).

Tales of Zestiria (PC) (2015)