What do you need to know about Tales of Vesperia?

Tales of Vesperia is making a comeback! As part of the E3 2018 announcements, a definitive edition of the game was announced during Microsoft’s media briefing. This remaster will be the complete version of the game for the Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC. The first trailer shows the formerly PlayStation 3 exclusive characters and offers a glimpse at a crisp world filled with familiar characters. But what do you need to know about this game before its Winter 2018 debut? Let’s review!

What is Tales of Vesperia?

Tales of Vesperia is the only Tales installment that was released on the Xbox 360 and the tenth entry in the series. It was released worldwide, though an expanded PlayStation 3 version released a year after the Xbox 360 iteration and never appeared outside of Japan.

In Tales of Vesperia, players follow a former Imperial Knight named Yuri Lowell. While trying to reclaim his home’s blastia core, a device that generates energy, he runs into a noblewoman named Estelle. During the course of their adventure, in which we learn many secrets about Estelle’s identity, Yuri ends up form a guild with Judith called Brave Vesperia and recruiting more allies.

Naturally, Tales of Vesperia’s world of Terca Lumireis is on the brink of disaster. Blastia use an ephemeral substance known as aer to function. Hundreds of years before the events of the game, members of a race known as Entelexeia absorbed too much aer and turned into a world-devouring monster known as Adephagos. Adephagos has been held back for years by sacrificing Children of the Full Moon, people who can naturally convert aer into energy, but the development and use of a new kind of blastia during the events of the game could release it.

Tales of Vesperia was notable for having a scoring system. The game’s Evolved Flex-Range Linear Motion Battle System allows four party members to fight in a battle at once. The four can be controlled by as many as four local players or as few as one human player and three AIs. People were able to post scares from battles to online leaderboards to show how well they did in fights.

What makes the PlayStation 3 version special?

It is better to think of the PlayStation 3 version of Tales of Vesperia as a director’s cut, rather than a simple port. This release added so much extra content that enhanced and changed the game. For example, one of the “smallest” adjustments was to offer full voice acting, something the Xbox 360 release lacked.

Lots of new content became available the second time around. Repede, a wolf party member, ended up getting a snowboarding minigame. There were two optional dungeons added, new artes for every character, a Nordopolica Coliseum team arena option, more story scenarios and sidequests, extra skits, additional enemies, tons of equipment and new costumes for party members.

Most notable are the new characters. Patty Fleur is an party member in this version of Tales of Vesperia. She is a pirate looking for Aifread’s treasures. That name may sound familiar, as Aifread/Ifreed has appeared in the series since Tales of Phantasia. Flynn Scifo, Yuri’s Imperial Knight friend and rival, becomes a permanent party member in this updated release too. While he appears in the original Xbox 360 version, he does not stick around.

Tales of Vesperia: Definitive Edition is coming to the Switch, PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC in 2018.