A lot of people have been doing "Best of the Decade" lists across the web and Pixlbit, and I've wanted to do my own. But I have a lot on my mind these days, so it's hard to wrap my brain around ten years of games. What I've decided to do instead is to blog about the few games I managed to finish in the past ten years. It was a great decade for games, but I was seriously unproductive with them; I mostly dabbled in games the past ten years, and saw very few to completion.
I dream of rectifying this in the future, but my attention span is so small these days, and like I said, I have a lot on my mind. But I have put a stop to endlessly buying games and starting new ones lately... mostly I've been focusing on Dragon Quest 11. When I think of starting something else or buying a new game, I hesitate because I want to play DQ.
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Tales of Graces f was released in Japan in 2010 and the West in 2011. Praised in some ways, it was also criticized for playing it too safe - it kind of straddles the line between older games like Tales of the Abyss and Tales of Vesperia and Tales games as we know them now. But, I enjoyed it, and surprisingly finished it, though not the postgame stuff that was included in the "f" (which stands for future) release.
If you've played a Tales game, it's mostly like the rest, with a complex, sprawling story and tight Action RPG combat with humor and drama comingling. One of the most lackluster aspects of it though (and common to most criticism) is its lame soundtrack, for a series that mostly has good music. I remember I played it with the sound turned off and unrelated music playing on my stereo.
It's a good game, not great, and mostly forgettable. Of all the great games released in the past decade, I spent forty hours to complete something not really worth it. What drove me to finish it though was that I was reviewing it for a game site run by a friend (the names of the site and the friend I can no longer remember).
But I do have some nice memories of the game and the characters. As far as Tales games though, one can do much better.
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