Tales of Hearts for DS, Tales of the World: RM 2 for PSP, Tales of the Abyss anime

[Firestorm]

Got some screens now of each. And information!

Screens of Tales of Hearts and Tales of the World Radiant Mythology 2:
http://www.watch.impress.co.jp/game/docs/20080707/tol.htm

- This year's theme is "躍導". → 「『テイルズ オブ』シリーズがさらに躍進して、心を躍らせるような体験へとユーザーを導く、という意味がこめられています」 (Will try to translate later.)

- Mothership titles will be on the Wii, if I didn't understand it incorrectly.

- Nakahara Mai (Estelle, Vesperia) has been playing Tales game since she was a high school student.

- 2008 winter, Tales of Heart. Production I.G for anime movie, Shirogumi for full 3D movie. You can either pick to play which movie, or it's gonna be two games, one with anime and the other with the 3D.
- Battle system "Combination Aerial LMBS", if you meet certain condition(s), characters that aren't in the battle can join in too.
- Theme song by DEEN. Title "Towa no Ashita" or "Eien no Asu" or change the words around between those. Not sure without kana.

- Tales of the World: Radiant Mythology will probably be out around March, 2009.
- Will probably be using the same system (as the base, anyways) as the previous title.
- 50 Tales characters in this one.
- New jobs introduced, which includes a class that can dual wield. In-game movie. Powered up hi-ougi.
- Theme song by rock band "BACK-ON". Apparently the 5 members of that band are all Tales fans. What the hell. xD

- Tales of the Abyss anime, October, 2008.
- Currently, the anime's planned upto 26 episodes.
- Fujishima was (still is?) a Gundam fan. He didn't even dream of one day to work with Sunrise on an anime.

- Happy birthday, Fujishima-san~

So basically:
- Tales of Hearts' hideous CG models aren't mandatory and it's 2D. It's most likely made by Team Destiny which would make it a mainline entry in the franchise and amazingly kickass

- Tales of the World Radiant Mythology 2 is more of the same

- Tales of the Abyss anime OVA yay!

- Wii might be getting the next mainline Tales game =( At least see how Vesperia does first Namco =/ It's so purdy

For those wondering, Tales of Destiny Remake was Team Destiny's last game and it has the best 2D battle system in the Tales series. Some would say best battle system in any Tales game, but it was never localized so I never played it >=(

None of this stuff has an English release date. Actually, some of this stuff might never make it over considering Innocence on DS never did and neither did any Team Destiny game since Tales of Eternia on the PSX ;_; At least we know the Abyss anime will at least be fansubbed.

Tales Website Facelift: http://namco-ch.net/taleschannel/index.php
Note: There used to be a PS3 tab that was taken down

Tales of the Abyss Anime: http://www.tv-toa.jp/

 

[Glen]

holy shitass

this is damn awesome, i actually thoroughly enjoyed the gameplay of radiant mythology, and found some scenes to be quite funny in it. im excited for more tales characters this time.

toa ova would be pretty awesome, i dont watch anime but id consider starting because i loved abyss.

and oh god if tales of hearts is ANYTHING like eternia i am going to shit myself and buy 80 copies (and diapers).

 

[Firestorm]

I just beat Eternia a few days ago! Fun game. Have you played Symphonia? I wanted to buy Radiant Mythology but haven't been able to track it down for a reasonable price ($20), there's no way I'm paying $40 for it. There's also a Tales of Eternia anime by the way. I haven't started watching it yet. The Tales of Phantasia and Tales of Symphonia anime both suck but that's more due to them being only 4 episodes long each. If Abyss is 26 episodes long, it should be fairly good.

The only problem with this announcement is we have no idea if they'll translate them. Namco's been only localizing the 3D games which is good for Radiant Mythology 2, but bad for Hearts. At least we get Vesperia and Dawn of the New World =/

 

[Glen]

i never played symphonia due to lack of a gamecube

ive played phantasia in both snes and gba forms, eternia, legendia, abyss, and radiant mythology.

never got to play destiny unfortunately, and i dont see a localization happening with it, but eternia is one of my favourites of all time.

i liked abyss a lot as well, but they really fucked up the hard mode settings, which are why i love tales games/star ocean games. they really screwed up a lot of replayability in abyss, at least for me, by making unknown mode modify monsters' defense stats as well.

the hardest difficulty setting is supposed to be fun since it modifies their health and attack power and shit, so it tests your mastery of the combat system. but in abyss, the hardest difficulty pretty much involves spending a couple hours on the first boss since there is no possible way to gain enough attack power to deal more than 1 damage to it. that really bothered me since it had astounding gameplay, but lack of a balanced hard setting was just stupid.

also i havent watched the eternia anime but i've heard of it

 

[Firestorm]

Go buy a Wii and play Symphonia, Symphonia DotNW (Winter 08), and then whatever it is they have planned for it next year! Or a 360 for Vesperia which looking friggin amazing.

More and more seems to confirm Hearts as a Team Destiny game. The only hope I have right now is that Nintendo Power's hint for next issue was "We'll kick off the next 20 years of Nintendo Power with more big reveals, including a top-secret cover story fit for a king. It's got a lot of heart. Just kidding. It's Mother 3. Please look forward to it."

 

[Sonuis]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NiiY86JGSSk

Tales of Hearts trailer.

Looks like it'll be tougher than other Tales games because you've got a three character limit rather than the traditional four. You can't sit around with just one attacker, a spell caster and a healer. You need two attacks, spell caster, and a healer. Dedicated spell caster & healer mind you.

 

[Firestorm]

I think a bunch of the DS Tales games are like that actually. The game looks amazing.

High Quality Trailer

Staff list with credits courtesy of reriel at NeoGAF:

staff (and previous credits):
----
Mutsumi Inomata character design (Destiny/Eternia/Destiny 2/Rebirth/Tempest/Innocence character design)

Eiji Kikuchi total director (general director on most tales by tales studio)

Naoto Miyadera direction & Lead Game Designer (ToS script editor and level concept designer, ToA script editor)

Aki Sawadaishi art director (Rebirth/Eternia 2D map graphics, Destiny ps2 map field graphics, Destiny 2 2D map director)

Mayumi Sato lead map design (Rebirth/Destiny 2 2D map graphics, Destiny ps2 map field graphics)

Masashi Tagaki lead character design (?)

Takahiro Akiyama lead programmer (ToA system programmer)

Nobuyuki Yasuda battle programmer (?)

Yoshimasa Tanaka battle system designer (Destiny 2 battle program support, Rebirth/Destiny ps2 battle system support, Symphonia programming support)

Naoki Yamamoto scenario writer (?)

Yasushi Shibue CG Movie StoryBoard (Ratatosk cutscene presentation & event direction, Abyss CG movie direction)

Shuji Ikegami sound programmer (Abyss/Rebirth/Destiny ps2/Destiny 2/Ratatosk sound programmer, Symphonia (voice over editor)

Motoi Sakuraba music composer (no neeed to say more)

Hayato Kutaragi assistent producer (?)

Kazuhisa Oomi director (Symphonia direction support, Phantasia gba co-director)

Hideo Baba producer (I think he worked on Rebirth)

So basically, this looks like a high-quality game =D

 

[Doomsday]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NiiY86JGSSk

Tales of Hearts trailer.

Looks like it'll be tougher than other Tales games because you've got a three character limit rather than the traditional four. You can't sit around with just one attacker, a spell caster and a healer. You need two attacks, spell caster, and a healer. Dedicated spell caster & healer mind you.

That looks really good, though I have to wonder about the characters names. Shing Meteoryte? Seriously?