Namco Bandai's Tales of Vesperia is an excellent role-playing game and one of the Xbox 360's best. Its fully realized, beautiful and imaginative world will suck you in immediately. The game takes full advantage of cel-shading, delivering results that look better than previous offerings like Eternal Sonata. The characters are meticulously rendered, and the backdrops of towns, caverns, forests, castles and countless other locations are breathtaking. Everything has a hand-painted visage, with animation (especially during combat) that is smooth and lightning fast, and frame rate issues are nonexistent. You should never find yourself disappointed with the game's visual presentation.

Tales of Vesperia is a wonderful fusion of beautiful visuals and addictive, real time combat.

Surprisingly, the voice acting is well above average. While the translation isn't perfect, and the delivery by the English voice actors (no Japanese option is available) isn't always spot-on, the characters typically seem genuinely and appropriately emotional for the given situation, not to mention that they are incredibly funny. The game's narrative is told through a combination of lengthy and mandatory cut scenes as well as simpler and optional skits. The skits may not have the same production value, as they are little more than talking heads, but the developers have managed to add a ton of personality to these conversations. The sarcasm, group rivalries and character naiveties really come through and engage you in the somewhat predictable yet thoughtful plot.

In addition, the game features a deep, real-time combat system. Tales of Vesperia merely takes what has worked so well before and makes minor improvements. The most notable is the battle co-op option. Up to three other people can hop in and out of the game, controlling other allies in battle. Because the battles are real-time, they are always frantic and fun, and involving friends in a game that would otherwise be a solo affair is a wonderful addition.

The combat is both accessible and deep, which should cater to any player's tastes and abilities. You can set the battle difficulty in the options menu if you desire more or less challenge, and your play style can also vary. If you want to button mash, you can do that and be mostly successful, so long as you at least learn how to utilize artes, the game's special attack and defense abilities. If you desire more strategy, there are multiple ways to achieve this, ranging from switching from a 2-D to a 3-D free roaming stance, defining how your computer controlled party members fight, mastering the combo system and synthesizing or cooking effective items to enhance your abilities. Be it short battles against a handful of monsters or taking on some of the massive boss battles, the combat is always engaging and fun. Furthermore, because encounters are not random (you choose to enter combat, both in the dungeons and the over world map), you can grind as much or as little as you want.

Tales of Vesperia is both a lighthearted adventure as well as an impressive and beautiful Japanese RPG that is easy to get into but hard to leave. There are countless of hours of play in the main story, side missions should you desire to go off the beaten path and plenty of extra dialog for those who wish to be more involved. Our only main complaint is that there isn't more. Sometimes, we would see areas off to the side that looked ripe for exploration, but were blocked by either invisible walls or carefully placed barriers. This would have been much more annoying had the game not been so much fun, but as it stands, Tales of Vesperia is an amazing RPG that belongs in your Xbox 360

Our Final ScoreExcellent

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