Tales of Xillia

Tales of Xillia is a JRPG from the long-running Tales series, and on PlayStation 3 it ranks among its most accessible entries. The world of Rieze Maxia is tightly bound to spiritual beings, and the game offers two playable lead characters, the young medic Jude Mathis and the mysterious Milla Maxwell, with the choice at the start changing the perspective on certain events and who exactly the player accompanies. The story revolves around a weapon that draws on the world's life energy to function, and around the clash between two nations with utterly opposing attitudes toward technology and magic.

Battles play out in real time on an open battlefield; the player directly controls one character, running, blocking, and chaining ordinary strikes with special techniques called artes. A new addition to this entry is the Link system, where two characters pair up, cover each other's backs, extend each other's combos, and unleash devastating finishing attacks together. Character progression runs along the Lilium Orb grid, where the player decides for themselves whether to grow in strength, defense, or access to new techniques. Rounding this out is the series' usual toolkit: cooking, item gathering, side quests, and above all the between-character skits that give the party its charm, and there are plenty of them here.

Technically, the game wasn't among the most dazzling titles on PS3, environments are rather simple and towns less elaborate, but the animated character style holds up well and battle effects are fast and readable. Motoi Sakuraba's music is energetic and works excellently in combat. Reception was positive, especially for the battle system and the dual perspective on the story, with criticism aimed at the sparser environments and less side content than in other entries. The main story can also be finished faster than most Japanese RPGs of the time, but a second playthrough as the other heroine reveals scenes that were completely absent the first time around. Today, Tales of Xillia is a good entry point into the series for players who want an action JRPG without a many-hour-long ramp-up.