Game Review: Tales of Hearts

Finally!!! I have completed Tales of Hearts!!! I cannot remember when I started playing this game, but the total time I took to complete is around 50 hours!!! The longest RPG I have ever played. However, the language is in Japanese, I only understand the bits and pieces of the story... I only followed the main story, while putting the sidequests aside since I cannot understand their requirements and thus cannot really complete them.

The story is terribly long. The last 2 games I played that took me more than 30 hours are Final Fantasy IV (NDS) and Golden Sun Series (GBA). Because I cannot really understand the story of Tales of Hearts, I will prefer Golden Sun's story. However, since Golden Sun is produced for GBA, therefore it cannot support a lot of graphics and better background musics (BGM). Tales of Hearts is really good, as there are voiceovers in most of the cutscenes, and I like hearing them, like watching anime! There are also short animated cutscenes, but only 7 of them with less than 1 minutes per video... But still is better than nothing! There are also numerous skit videos that you can watch throughout the gameplay. The video is actually small dialogue between the characters, to let you know more about them, and most importantly there are voiceovers too! It is like another part of anime! The team that produced this game has also took much effort for the voiceovers: In cutscenes, in battles and in skit videos. I'm truly really amazed. After you completed the game, a new option is unlocked called the Museum. It has all the BGM, videos, skit videos, voices used in the cutscenes and in battles! I think you need at least a day to hear them all! Haha.

The bad thing about the game is that you cannot skip the cutscenes. Like if your game hangs halfway and have not been actively saving it when you see a save point, you have to restart from when you last saved, and you will have to re-watch the whole scene again...

There is still a lot of things I have not done in the game. I know each character has their own one-hit-K.O-ability, but I have no idea how to unlock it... The sidequests too, if you can successfully complete them, you can have access to the unknown and inaccessible areas which are not needed in the main storyline.

I have enjoyed this game very much, way much better than Final Fantasy. That's what I think, but I have heard that the last 2 NDS Tales Mothership Titles for NDS have not been really nice. Tales of Hearts is a huge breakthrough. Haha.

Rating: 9/10!!!