Joeker's Top 5 Tales of Games

Ahaha, I was supposed to do this on the first of this month, woops.

After a not-so-eventful year last year here at JoekerStraightFlush, I decided it was time to step things up a notch; but it appeared with all the video games I've been playing lately I've been a bit too distracted. Well, whatever.

To Kick off the new year, I'm starting it off with my favorite Video Game series, the 'Tales of' series. I haven't been able to play a whole lot of Tales of games so far, but here I'll be counting down my Top 5 favorites. (Please note! I haven't played all of these games through to completion.)

5. Tales of The Abyss

 To be more specific, the 3DS port of it, seeing as we never got the PS2 version in PAL regions. Tales of the Abyss is a good game, but it never really stood out to me as much as it might have if I had played it when it was first released, the characters were fun but some of them were a little dull -coughNataliacough- and some were just plain unlikeable -coughAnisecough-. I do think the game's story was interesting, albeit a little too reliant on made up terminology. The battle system is one of the best parts about this game, although even that can be a little irky to get the most use out of it. It's a good game, and I'm really enjoying it. Just not as much as I have other Tales of games.

4. Tales of the World: Radiant Mythology 3

 The Radiant Mythology series is a prime example of a series that learns from it's mistakes and improves on it in the next installment; and RM3 so far is the epitome of that. It improves on all of the issues of the first two while adding even more. The battle system has improved from the last two, making everything seem a lot more smooth and less awkward, you don't have to grind every character in the game and the character roster is pretty damn big too. The story is subpar, as you'd expect a crossover game to be, but it's not horrible and boring like SOME crossovers -coughanytoeicrossoverevercough-. This game is a lot of fun and has a plethora of characters and classes you can use, it's really just an enjoyable experience. 

3. Tales of Symphonia 

  

In my opinion, Tales of Symphonia is a masterpiece in every regard. The story telling, gameplay, characters and graphics are all top notch, especially for it's time. However, that doesn't mean it doesn't have it's faults. However as the first step into the 3D realm, it gave the Tales of series the push it needed to survive the 3D gaming area, and is also what put the Tales of series on the map in the western world. There's really not much to say about it; it's just a great game.

2. Tales of Phantasia

Specifically the Playstation port. Phantasia was the first game in the Tales of franchise, and I don't know how the Super famicom version was (I do however, know the horrors of the GBA version..) But the Playstation version was a very good game. The gameplay felt natural on the Playstation controller, the story for it's time was rather dark and the characters were all quirky, loveable and were easy to identify with. The battle system was one of the best parts about it of course, and in my opinion helped to put (If not one of the sole reasons) realtime JRPG's on the map.

1. Tales of Vesperia

There are people who say 360 version of Vesperia is incomplete; and while to some degree I do agree with that, I still think it is an amazing game on it's own. Each one of the characters in this game are extremely loveable, the story jerked a couple tears out of me, the battle system was wonderful and the graphics just look beautiful. There's not a whole lot to say about this game. It's my favorite Tales of game and I think it's really an amazing game.

Honorable mentions go to Tales of Graces f and Tales of The World Narikiri Dungeon 3.

I'm hoping to make this year a little more active here at JoekerStraightFlush, but at this point I honestly can't promise anything. All I can do is say look forward to the next post, which you can keep up with by liking our facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/JoekerStraightFlush

That's all for now yo.