## 2025-01-18 Was graciously gifted a copy of this game so I booted it up today. I was just planning on poking around in it for a little bit, but then I ended up playing for three and a half hours straight! Wowee. The original version of **Graces F** came out when I was 17, and I shamefully never gave it a real shot because I was too grown up for it. It turns out, nearly 15 years later, that the Power of Friendship owns, and cheesiness is awesome. I am currently vastly impressed by how *earnest* **Graces F** has been in its opening hours. It has, so far, not shown an ounce of cynicism in its display of friendship, brotherhood, and protecting people you care about. I appreciate this. I don't think the plot will blow me away, but I certainly was playing worse as far as story goes when I was 17! Shame on past me. It's still early, but having gotten past the Childhood Arc and into the time-skip - one of [[My Favorite Gaming Tropes|my favorite gaming tropes]], by the way - I am expecting this to be one of, if not the most mechanically engaging **Tales of** game. It is [[Goopy Goblin Gamer Brain|goopy]] as *hell*. I love the CC system, which I believe originated in the **Destiny** tiles on the PS2. Rather than expending MP, you perform moves by expending CC points, which refill after a brief moment. This allows you to cut loose and focus on cool combos instead of resource management, which makes sense to me for a series as fast-paced and near-fighting game like as **Tales of**. The amount of CC you can use depends on the weapon you're using, and you can fill it up even faster when stunning enemies or perfect dodging attacks. Proper mechanical prowess means that you pretty much never stop attacking, and that's cool as hell. Beyond that, there's a Title system that I simply adore. Titles aren't new to **Tales** games, but in **Graces F** you swap them out and equip them to unlock new abilities and passive bonuses for your party by leveling them up with SP. The better you do in battle, the more SP you earn, leading to a wonderful feedback loop of wanting to grind out fights to get more SP to max out more Titles. You unlock Titles through the main story, but you can also get them from watching skits, performing well in battle, using specific moves frequently, and so on. It encourages you to do and see everything, which is probably what made almost four hours disappear in the blink of an eye for me as I played. Thankfully, this remaster makes doing and seeing everything so much easier than previous **Tales** games with features I hope they keep for any future remasters. There's a marker that always tells you where to go next, making it easy to know how to travel off the beaten path. But more important than that: a *sub-event icon with accompanying timer*. God. Thank you Bamco for my life. The amount of missable shit in early **Tales** games is absolutely abysmal, only rivaled by the ridiculousness of games like **Final Fantasy X-2**. Now whenever an event or side-quest has appeared, it'll just. Tell you! What a concept!!!! I will absolutely be finishing this game, perhaps before January is even finished. **Tales** games are like chicken soup - comforting and predictable, which is exactly what I need sometimes. Plus there's something cozy about playing a JRPG with a snowstorm outside. ## 2025-01-19 I hate Pascal. With that out of the way, I have come to realize that a lot of my favorite games have a mastery of "incremental progress." **Graces F** fits here quite well. Every battle brings me closer to new titles, new moves, new stats and so on. I need immediate satisfaction, sorry. I don't want to wait to get upgrades. Just keep giving them to me and I'll keep playing. 8 hours in and I am not close to being tired of combat in the game because of this (and the combat being a blast, of course). There's a lot of backtracking in this game. I didn't notice it at first, but I've hit a point where enemies aren't giving me good SP anymore and am just kind of running back and forth between the same areas I have been for the past ten hours. Hoping we explore the rest of the world map soon, it's huge and we've not even gone further than the same three towns.