#written posts

Hi there, thanks for reaching out. If you're looking to get into Tales there's a few big pillars of the series generally considered to be pretty good not just for newcomers but thought of as being high bars for the series as a whole. The upcoming Tales of Eternia remaster is sure to be a great place to start, but if you're looking to get into the series ahead of that then we've got you covered.

First off there's Symphonia that first released on the Gamecube. It's pretty old at this point but generally holds up really well despite its age. Scott Menville does a fantastic job as the lead character. The game also has a PC port available on Steam, but last we played it (circa 2019) it was unfortunately host to several mind boggling, keyboard mashing level typos. There's also the matter of the halved frame rate in comparison to the original Gamecube version. The frame rate issue, at the least, also holds true for the Playstation 4 port.

Tales of the Abyss is the next usual go-to, which is best played on the PS2. The story is a bit more complex than Symphonia's, though some of the events are a bit contrived and don't feel especially natural. The game's cast of characters are generally more fleshed out and interesting than Symphonia's and they're voiced by a pretty fantastic selection of actors common from the time that do a predictably great job with the source material.

Tales of Vesperia is the last Tales game to stick really closely to most of the formula and style the series had come to be known for to that point. It's a pretty robust game with a great level of polish and a PC port you don't have to worry about being broken or full of typos. The cast is likeable enough, and generally the whole experience is top notch. In its release window I remember feeling as though it and Eternal Sonata were proof positive that traditional JRPGs still had tons of life left in them as a mainstream genre.

Tales of Berseria is a clear tribute to the late Kentaro Miura's Berserk manga and makes some changes to the gameplay formula. Given the material it's drawing inspiration from the game is quite a bit darker than Tales usually gets. The cast can be hit or miss and the gameplay changes ruffled a lot of feathers among longtime fans, but we found a lot of those complaints to be overblown.

All of these games are perfectly fine places to start, and most people looking to get into the series typically pick one of these as their first title. They're good games made even better if you've got someone to play alongside you due to the series including co-op multiplayer in the vast majority of the games.

All that being said, our personal top recommendation for someone just starting out is Tales of Vesperia. Particularly the Definitive Edition release which adds a good bit of content to the game.

Last week we experimented with shifting our post time 12 hours forward, largely brought on by major construction on and around our house that's been going on for a few months.

It's necessitated some changes to our workflow, and shifting our schedule around has definitely helped us balance other aspects of our lives, get more sleep and also stay very productive. We'll be keeping this schedule for the foreseeable future and let you know if that changes in the future.

Of course you can still expect various bonus posts at random times throughout the day as ever if and when they happen.

Hi there, thanks for reaching out. We love when people enjoy stuff we've made enough that they want to use them as avatars or headers. It's very high praise. Definitely completely okay in our book, and you can feel free to do that without having to ask us.

The only context we're not happy with our stuff being used in is aggregators on other sites reposting it for money and clout, especially if they're not transforming it at all or even so much as using it to prompt discussion.

If you want to use our stuff as avatars or headers that's great. If you have some kind of transformational use of them we approve. If you want to use any of what we make in messages (Discord or tweet replies for example) then we're happy to have contributed to the way you communicate. We only have a problem with people who turn what we do into a product, whether they're seeking money or clout.

Starting this Wednesday (May 20th) we'll be experimenting with shifting our post schedule forward 12 hours, from 4 AM PDT to 4 PM PDT. We'll be trying this out for a week to see how things feel, and get back to you on the 27th with a more final decision on where our post time will settle.

We know this is a sudden change so as a small bonus we'll be dropping a double dose of posts this Wednesday coinciding with the change, at both the old and new times.

If anybody has any thoughts or preferences we'd love to hear them, as reaching you all more consistently and conveniently is the goal.

Listed in no particular order, here are our five favorites each. As per usual, my list is on top with Larsa's below. With so many good choices it was definitely hard to narrow it down to just five each, certainly lists that could change depending on the day. Images courtesy of Wikimon.

Thanks for your question.

JRPG is a bit of a loose term, but we think these are some fine recommendations for lesser-played games one would generally think of as being within the scope of a JRPG. It's certainly a genre much more diverse than one might expect given how centralizing the popularity of certain pillars of it are.

Afraid you have us confused for another blog with regards to Shin Megami Tensei 3 however. We've yet to actually post anything from it, though Larsa has plans to do so in the future.