I killed the final boss and finished the game about 15 minutes ago and I’m still waiting for the usual feeling of relief to hit me. I don’t think it’s coming this time. Tales of the Tempest couldn’t even do the final battle right, that’s how useless a game it is.

Not like the battle itself was bad or anything, it was tough in its own way and I died twice (let me skip the talking scenes, dammit!) before realizing that letting Arria waste her MP on Tempest wasn’t such a bright idea. Now that I think of it, if I had taken control of her and spammed Nurse endlessly, the final battle would have been even easier. Luckily the (nameless) final boss had a pitiful amount of HP, so he went down pretty quickly and…stayed down? Huh? I was waiting with bated breath for his real transformation where he would show me his true power gained over 100 years of manipulating humans but nope. He lay there while my party gloated, “Nyaah nyaah, we beat you ‘cuz we have friends and you don’t!” Then he winked out of existence, presumably from sheer embarrassment, and that was that. Pitiful.

In some ways, playing Tales of the Tempest was a real education. I got to experience once again how the inclusion or omission of a few basic things can be enough to ruin a gaming experience. For example Tempest‘s story was weak all around, but it would have been almost passable if it didn’t contain so many cliched and predictable elements. Oh hey Caius, Lucius looks exactly like you! Wouldn’t it be funny if you two were twins separated at birth? And if the pope was your dad, wouldn’t that be funny too? Wait, WTF? That’s what really happened?! Excuse me, this calls for a song. Ahem *clears throat* A-one, a-two, a one-two-three-four:

BBBUUUULLLLSHIIIIITTTT
BBBUUUULLLLSHIIIIITTTT
BBBUUUULLLLSHIIIIITTTT
BBBUUUULLLLSHIIIIITTTT
(repeat till end of game)

I’m not even going to touch the whole speciesism thing or the whole Arria “I was a spy, but now I’m not, so you guys have to instantly forgive me for everything, because you were too stupid to notice I was suspicious from the start” twist (BBBUUUULLLLSHIIIIITTTT). And the pope and Rommy, “I’m not really evil, I was just possessed by spots. Yes, spots” thing (BBBUUUULLLLSHIIIIITTTT) doesn’t even deserve a mention. What a weak cast of characters. The only ones who get any character development are Rubia and Arria and in both cases it goes like, “I am a wishy-washy insult to all females. Oh wait, no I’m not.” *yaaawn* I wager by this time next month I’ll have forgotten all their names and faces.

I finished the game at around 15 hours, since my last save says 14:47h. I’m not kidding when I estimate at least 8 of those hours were spent walking or fighting. In fact, that’s probably an underestimation. Here the basic things that were missing were: a) A way to walk or run faster, or b) A means of land or air transport, or, c) A way to warp back to places you’ve already been to. All these things were missing, so most of Tales of the Tempest consists of slow, random-battle-filled crawls from one place to another. Apart from artificially inflating the game time, this also prevented me from doing most of the sidequests because most towns and cities were too far out of my way. That the few I did do had crap rewards didn’t exactly help either.

The menu was hard to figure out, which is weird because menus are the most basic of basics. The letters were frequently tiny and hard to see, and the interface was just messed up. For one thing, instead of having all your equipment options obvious at a glance, first you have to press Equipment, which gives you the Equipment/Title options, then you can go to Weapons/Armor/Accessories. Was there really no way they make all those options display at once? It’s just so unwieldy.

So, crap story, crap characters, crap world map, crap movement, crap menus, crap game. Was there anything good about it? The battle system was okay, I guess. Tales series fans must find it pathetically easy, though. I’m not exaggerating when I say I’m bad at action RPGs, and even I made it all the way to the final boss without dying even once (which he quickly corrected). And I did it just by mashing A, B and the directional buttons. I almost never blocked, and I certainly never figured out how to use 奥義s and 必殺技s. So it’s all right for newbies, but probably a slap in the face for any veteran Tales player. Unless they’re all that easy, in which case, bring them on!

On top of that, being able to customize your weapon was helpful for fighting certain enemies, and it was nice of them to add a cooking option. One that I almost never used because I never needed to, but it’s the thought that counts. And it was nice of them to keep it short. When a game sucks this much, keeping it short is like a mercy-killing, ending things quickly instead of prolonging the suffering unnecessarily. Thanks to this solitary act of kindness, I am now free to explore other games, which I will proceed to do with gusto. Adieu, Tales of the Tempest.