Before I start, I must preface this by saying that I have a wavering interest in RPGs and that I don't have a whole lot of experience with the genre. As a result, I'll probably come off as uninformed and groundlessly overcritical. Again, keep in mind that this is written from the perspective of an occasional, less than casual, RPG novice.

Storytelling
The demo opens with your party arriving at the edge of town. There's a missing barrier and a dragon was terrorizing the villagers or something like that. At this point, the story has barely enough details for me to fully care, but it's early on so I don't disregard it entirely.

As for the way the story is told, I do have more reasonable qualms. Here's the thing: The dialogue is simultaneously spoken out loud and scrawled in text through pop-up comic book word balloons. And when each line finishes, you have to press "A" to prompt the next one. The problem is, when the characters reach the end of their current line of dialogue, they completely stop talking until you press the button.

Now I've played RPGs before where you press a button to advance the story text, but never text and spoken word together. This may not sound like a big deal for some, but to me the combination of audio and text that stopped at every line proved to be very disorienting and quite disruptive to the flow of conversation. Maybe it's something I'm supposed to adapt to or it can be adjusted in the options. It probably wouldn't even be an issue if they had stuck strictly to text with no audio that you manually progressed, or in-game cutscenes with full voice acting that played automatically.

To add to the hassle of trying to maintain a steady and natural conversation flow, due to either overanticipation for each line to end, or deep involvement and preoccupation with the narrative, every now and again you either press the button too soon thus cutting off character dialogue mid-sentence, or press it too late and are left there hanging with an ill-fitting awkward silence.

It's equivalent to reading a novel with one sentence per page. You want to be immersed in the story, but when you're forced to pay attention to moving it along, it takes you out of the experience.

I don't know, maybe that's just me and it might not be as unpleasant as I'm describing (try it for yourself to see if I'm being fair or off base). And it's kind of a minor gripe for now, but I try to imagine the whole game like that and it feels like it could be a nuisance, and at worst undermine the whole narrative.



Audio and Visuals
The voice acting is slightly cartoony but not excessesively annoying, and it fits the accessibly charming art style. Very reminiscent of Eternal Sonata (which I only played the demo of as well but do plan on getting eventually). The music was appropriate for the most part, but at a couple of moments where something unexpected occurs, the track switches to a reworked version of that song from the circus. You know the one. It seemed worth mentioning because of how oddly out of place it was.

The gist of the demo begins after your group is chased in to the woods by some guards. The first thing I notice was the movements of what looked like an enemy in the distance, so in a small fit of panic I quickly jab some buttons to look for menus and whatnot. The party customization screen pops up so I pause for about 10 to 20 minutes to take it all in.

It was overwhelming to say the least. I mean, the basics were easy enough to spot: items list, HP, TP (which I assume is MP). But there was a whole mess of other crap that went over my head. I tried to absorb as much as I could, but the lack of a manual combined with general impatience forced me to move on.

I wasn't quite ready to engage in some battles though, so I take some time to take in the surroundings. I stroll around and see how the character interacts with it it's immediate environment, and much like Eternal Sonata, parts of the area are bounded by invisible walls, which is a small pet peeve of mine. I spent plenty of time in both games basically rubbing up against everything to see where it takes me. Just like in real life without the strange looks and restraining orders.



Along the way, I pass by some suspicious looking flowers that prompt a mini cutscene (without vocals this time thank Bale). Basically, one of the characters gets too close to those shady bunch of plants, which someone points out to be poisonous. Then the best part of the demo happens. That party member turns out to be a cruel heartless malicious little bitch. She saves herself just in time and avoids harm, but for no good reason she shoves the youngest of the group right into the toxic flowers. On purpose! It brought a smile to my face and a stiffy in my pants. It was funny and didn't really make much sense, but she's my favorite RPG character of all time forever and ever amen.

Gameplay
After that, I stopped dicking around and charged head long into battle. So I walk into one of the creatures, the fight starts, I push some random buttons, and just like that it's over. I had no idea what I did. I remember that I kicked some ass with the wolf, only to find out later that I wasn't controlling him at all. I was the guy who didn't level up.

I pressed on and encountered more and more enemies, eventually going through the whole forest and making it to the "final" boss. I say "final" because it's as far as I got. I barely made a dent in him and gave up after two tries.



Overall, the fighting mechanics have left a bad impression on me. Out of everything from the demo, it was the least appealing aspect because I never felt like I was in complete control, and worst of all, it made me regress back to button mashing. Eventually, I (somewhat) learned to use the artes and overlimits, but that didn't do much to help the sloppy feel to the combat system. And I can't even begin to explain how screwed up the targeting is. The fights occur in a three-dimensional plane, but you can't really roam as freely as you'd like. I know I've ventured into the foregound and background a few times, but I seemed to have been mostly limited to the horizontal. I really didn't understand what went on for a majority of the scuffles.

Maybe this is more of a put down on just the demo, because as I've read it does a poor job of representing the entire game. The trial version seems to have been made with Tales fans in mind, which is a shame because that's a horrible way of drawing in newcomers like me. Obviously the developers prefer more people playing the game, so it doesn't make much sense to exclude those out of the loop.

Bottom Line
As it stands, between the choppy storytelling and shabby fighting system, I've lost some of what little fascination I had for the game, and has been downgraded to "buy after several price drops during a slow gaming month" status.

Interest level before demo: 5/10
Interest level after demo: 3/10

Demo download size: 278 MB
Platform: Xbox 360
Retail release date: August 26, 2008 (out now!)