Tales of Graces f Remastered - Main Art

Tales of Graces f Remastered Review – Third Time’s the Charm

Not for you if:

  • You’re not a fan of melodrama
  • You don’t like excessive grinding
  • You’re put off by the anime aesthetics
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The Tales series is one of Bandai Namco’s longest-running JRPG series. And yet in recent years, it hasn’t received major new titles despite the series’ popularity. Tales of Arise, the series’ latest entry, received a DLC called Beyond the Dawn in late 2023—and that was it. 

With the series’ 30th anniversary arriving, fans were hoping for exciting announcements. Instead of looking to the future, Bandai Namco instead decided to look to the past. With many of the Tales games exclusive to older consoles, the publisher decided to start making them available on modern hardware. 

Tales of Graces f Remastered is their second remaster project, following the less-than-ideal port of Tales of Symphonia. Tales of Graces f Remastered is also the third time Tales of Graces is being released, with the original launching on the Nintendo Wii all the way back in 2009, with another remastered version coming to the PS3 in 2012. 

Tales of Graces garnered a cult following since its original launch but now that it’s available on modern systems, how does it stack up against other Tales games and popular JRPGs releasing today?

TL;DR

Tales of Graces f Remastered is a classic Wii JRPG given a new breath of life. It features modernized controls and combat systems, new quality-of-life features, and smooth 4K 60FPS visuals. The fans of the Tales series couldn’t have asked for a better port.

Story – A Tale of War and Friendship

The story of Tales of Graces f Remastered starts small before introducing you to its bigger world. You play as Asbel, the son of a local lord who spends most of his time playing around the woods with his younger brother. 

One day, they discover a mysterious girl with amnesia and decide to bring her back home with them. As they make it their mission to discover who she is, political intrigue starts to make their lives more complicated. We flash forward 7 years into the future, with old friends now enemies on different sides of a war, wondering how or why everything went wrong. 

On its face, this is a fun and lighthearted adventure. However, it tackles some serious topics in a very low-key manner because of that. Themes of war, sibling rivalry, abandonment, duty, and others are very nicely tied together and serve as central plot elements. But since this is a Tales game, these themes don’t overstay their welcome and the game never gets too dark or broody.

Gameplay – Fun But Repetitive

While Tales of Arise shook up the Tales formula, Tales of Graces f Remastered is an old-school Tales game. This means you’ll control a party of four and travel the world from one city or dungeon to the next while fighting various monsters. There are no random encounters here—you’ll always see your enemies and decide whether you want to fight them. 

Likewise, you can choose which party members you’ll take to battle but the game will often swap characters in and out of your party based on the story. Each character comes with unique skills, equipment, titles, and other details. There is almost no wrong way to play Tales of Graces f Remastered. Any character works well in any situation, especially on the Normal difficulty.

It’s all about picking your favourites and enjoying the story. When it comes to battles, you’ll enter circular arenas where your party needs to defeat the group of enemies before being rewarded XP and items and moving on to the next. It’s a classic Tales formula that most fans prefer over Tales of Arise’s action combat approach.

Unfortunately, it’s also a bit repetitive. Since this was originally a Wii game, it will often ask you to revisit areas you’ve already completed before. Certain story details will change but for the most part, you’ll go back and forth between locations multiple times. This can turn an otherwise fun experience into a slog so it all depends on your personal JRPG preferences.

A Unique Wii-Based Combat System

Since Tales of Graces f Remastered was originally built for the Nintendo Wii, its gameplay DNA also made it into this version. Specifically, the game doesn’t feature the typical ‘normal attack’ action you see in many other JRPGs. Instead, every attack you do is based on a specific skill, not a generic action. 

Furthermore, each attack is also triggered with a combination of pressing the attack button and moving the left stick in a certain direction. While it takes some time to get used to, Tales of Graces f Remastered is a very unique game to play once you’ve grown accustomed to its combat. It allows you to customize your playstyle and chain different attacks, unlike most games which let you trigger individual commands or actions.

Grinding for New Skills with Titles

Another thing that sets this game apart from other Tales games and most JRPGs is the way you gain skills. You don’t unlock skills by levelling up or gathering them from the world or other monsters. Instead, you develop your characters through titles, the Tales series signature staple. 

As you progress through the story or complete certain hidden objectives, each character will gain various titles. Tales of Graces f Remastered then lets you choose which title your characters currently have as active. When you engage in battle, you earn points toward the equipped title, levelling it up and unlocking various bonuses, upgrades, and brand-new skills. 

While it may seem strange at first, the system is very streamlined and allows you to automatically swap between titles once you’ve levelled them up. And with the original game being notoriously grindy because of these titles, Tales of Graces f Remastered lets you double the amount of XP you get from each battle, mitigating the need to spend hours killing random monsters just to unlock new skills.

Visuals – Charming & Colorful Presentation

It takes one look at Tales of Graces f Remastered for someone to conclude that yes—this is a Tales game through and through. The series has featured a distinct art style and gameplay loop ever since Tales of Symphonia, with anime aesthetics, vibrant visuals, and charming character designs. For the most part, each game in the series also features a brand-new world to explore, filled with cities, villages, and various biomes for you to travel through. 

This is a classic Tales game and it pulls you into its world within minutes of booting the game up. Exploring its world map, dungeons, and various cities is a joy because of how atmospheric and colourful every location is. And while character movements are very limited in cutscenes, the same cannot be said for the game’s many animated sequences which look like they’d fit right into an anime adaptation. 

One small nitpick can be made about the repetitiveness of certain locations and monsters. This is an unfortunate side-effect of Tales of Graces f Remastered originally being a Wii game with limited storage space and visual fidelity to work with. However, it’s a minor nitpick at best.

Smooth & Stable from Start to Finish

Tales of Graces f Remastered has been completely rebuilt with the Unity engine. This allowed the team to make the game run smoothly on all platforms and avoid the issues most studios now face with Unreal Engine 5 development. And for a Wii game from 2009, the Unity engine is more than appropriate in terms of recreating the original game’s visuals. Tales of Graces f Remastered runs at stable 60FPS and at 4K on the PlayStation 5 where we reviewed the game. 

We also encountered no bugs or crashes throughout our testing. Compared to Tales of Symphonia which launched in a very poor state, this is a step in the right direction. If the team can recreate the same technical magic with other Tales remasters, such as the highly-anticipated Tales of the Abyss, the series fans have a lot of exciting things to look forward to.

Audio – Leaning into the Anime Tropes

Tales of Graces f Remastered is a story-heavy game and you’ll listen to a lot of character dialogue. While the voice acting is great throughout, it does lean into its anime roots. Characters can often go over the top with their line delivery. 

This isn’t Shin Megami Tensei V in terms of tone, it’s your favourite childhood anime series turned into a video game. This means you might need to get used to certain characters and how crazy they are whenever they interact with others—or just swap them out of your party. Apart from that, all of the story dialogue is voiced, while minor interactions with NPCs aren’t. 

You’ll read a few speech bubbles on your journey through Tales of Graces f Remastered but it’s nothing out of the ordinary. The game also lets you swap between English and Japanese voice acting. In terms of music, it’s nothing worth writing home about. You’ll hear various instrumental and upbeat tracks made specifically for different regions, cities, and dungeons. 

However, the game doesn’t stand out in terms of its soundtrack and it’s here just to add some flavor to the experience. Sound mixing is pretty bad on default settings, so you should customize your sound options so you can hear your party members speak during cutscenes due to music being too loud for its good.

Conclusion – Should you Play Tales of Graces f Remastered?

Tales of Graces f Remastered is a game every JRPG fan should pick up. While it may be simplistic compared to something like Metaphor ReFantazio, perhaps that’s exactly what the genre needs right now. Games don’t have to get more complex or longer as time goes by. Sometimes all you need is a straightforward story of friends coming together and doing their best to save the world. 

Tales of Graces f Remastered will scratch that JRPG itch and leave you wanting for more. And with Bandai Namco teasing even more Tales remasters coming our way, it’s a great time to jump back into the series. Tales of Graces f Remastered is now available on Xbox and PlayStation consoles, the Nintendo Switch, as well as PC.

Huge thanks to Bandai Namco EU for sponsoring our review!

Rastislav Filip

Posts published: 68

Professional copywriter, full-time nerd, and a loving husband. Loves playing JRPGs and story-driven games, binging TV shows, and reading sci-fi/fantasy books. Probably writes content in his sleep.