Review: Tales of Graces f Remastered Preserves Its Best Parts

Around fifteen years after it first appeared on the Nintendo Wii, Tales of Graces f Remastered finally brings the experience of protecting your friends and family onto even more consoles. The updated graphics, combined with the very anime aesthetics and bright watercolor-like palette, help in making the game look stylized, rather than dated. As the first entry in Bandai Namco’s initiative to remaster the Tales series, it’s a roaring success that amplifies the original game’s pros while cutting down on its cons.

Tales of Graces is, for better or for worse, a pretty standard JRPG in terms of its plot. It follows Asbel Lhant, the eldest son of Aston Lhant. His parents expected him to inherit Lhant territory from his father. However, Asbel's dream was to become a knight in the service of Windor's king. During his childhood, he (along with his younger brother, Hubert, and their childhood friend, Cheria) encounter a girl with amnesia. They dub her Sophie, and then learn that monsters had attacked a carriage carrying Prince Richard, who’d been on his way to visit Lhant. The group becomes fast friends. However, a monster they encounter in the underground of Barona’s castle changes the course of their lives forever.

The main arc then follows Asbel after he becomes an adult. While the childhood prologue was the weakest part of the story for a variety of reasons, it's not something you can skip. The friendship pact that Asbel, Richard, and Sophie made at the beginning of the game comes up again and again, especially when Asbel and Sophie are discussing how much Richard changed. As a kid, he was more of an idealist who wanted to do good in the world. But when Asbel and the others meet him again as an adult—even if he went through some pretty traumatizing events—he’s like a completely different person. As they try to figure out what caused Richard’s dramatic personality change, they also uncover a secret about their planet’s past.

Tales of Graces f Remastered has a pretty simple story. It’s not as emotional or memorable as Legendia’s, but I don’t think it’ll stir as much controversy as, say, Xillia’s or Zestiria’s. The narrative plays most of the tropes it introduces straight, which can make later plot twists predictable to players familiar with the genre. That’s fine, though. Not every game is going to be a contender for Best Narrative at the Game Awards. The party dynamic in Graces more than makes up for the weaker story. Because most of the party knows each other from childhood, there’s a very relaxed atmosphere in the group after the initial awkward phase passes. Pascal and Malik, the newcomers, are all chill adults, who either mind their own business or can play along with the wilder quirks from the Lhant group (and Richard).

Tales games tend to employ a pseudo-family dynamic for its parties. I don't want to say "found family," because the characters fall into very stereotypical and gender-specific positions. For example, Asbel is the dad, Cheria is the mom, and Sophie is the kid. Pascal, somehow, fills the role of Sophie's sister, even though she's older than both Asbel and Cheria. I definitely felt my growth as a person when seeing the characters interact with each other, as well as the overall plot revolving around the Lhant family. For reference, I first played Tales of Graces when it first came out on the Wii, and imported f back in 2010 when it was still a Japan-exclusive. That means I was only in my teens when I played it.

When I was younger, I felt really bad for Kerri (Asbel and Hubert’s mom) after seeing the way teenager Hubert talked to her. But now that I’m old enough to have kids Asbel and Hubert’s age at the beginning of the game, my sympathy for her and Aston faded a lot. At most, I can understand why they even had to choose between their children, since they're both the sons of a lord. Most of my general irritation at the pseudo-family dynamic in Tales of Graces f Remastered faded as well, especially after I saw Lineage and Legacies. While Lineage and Legacies was really fun for its endgame dungeon and Accelerate Mode, its plot was even weaker than the childhood prologue. Honestly, the interactions between the party members (in the main story) were so cute. I don’t understand what annoyed me so much when I was a teenager.

As Yusuke Tomizawa, the general producer of the Tales series, said in August 2024, a huge selling point for Tales of Graces f Remastered is the combat. It’s fast-paced, addictive, and stylish. With relatively short casting times for spells, as well as a lot of flashy animations for the melee characters’ A and B artes, the screen can get very busy very fast. So some people who aren’t too familiar with how combat in this game looks might decry it as visual noise. Personally, because I know what’s going on and I’m also used to flashier Tales battles, I don’t notice anything wrong with it.

While you can get away with mindless button mashing, I do suggest taking the time to learn how to use the different techniques and characters. Each character has A and B artes, which can alter how they work in battle or offer different bonuses. Asbel's B artes unsheathe his sword. Using A artes will sheathe his sword again, as well as heal him based on his Physical Defense and how many B artes he used. Knowing little tricks like this can really save you in more difficult battles later in the game. In Asbel's case, I could get away with letting my healers prioritize someone else, because he can stay alive long enough to at least eat an Apple Gel. The more you learn about the Graces battle system, the more fun you'll get out of it.

Oddly enough, I had a far harder time settling on a difficulty level. Because I started the game with both double and quintuple EXP (along with other boosts), it didn’t take long before I became too overpowered for regular encounters. That made the game pretty boring since, again, the combat is Tales of Graces f Remastered's main selling point. But turning the difficulty to the highest setting, especially in the early game when you can only control Asbel, made the game way too hard sometimes. I felt embarrassed at how many attempts I needed to kill that first wolf you fight in the main arc. In my defense, I usually control Sophie. It took some trial and error before stumbling upon the perfect combination. I’d rather get through random battles quickly than have to redo a boss fight over and over again, especially really annoying ones like enemies with a Nova shield.

Speaking of which, one of the mechanics that Bandai Namco announced would be in the remastered version of Tales of Graces f was the grade shop being available right at the beginning of the game. If this is your first time playing, I do not recommend taking bonuses like the 5x EXP one. Like I said in the paragraph above, it makes the combat way too easy. In my opinion, the 2x EXP bonus was more than enough. It makes grinding for the endgame dungeon a lot easier, but doesn’t trivialize combat outside of boss fights.

Another quality of life change in the remastered version of Tales of Graces f was the on-screen map. You can now see where you need to go, as well as any time-limited events you might miss. Other than the improved graphics, this is the biggest reason to play the remastered version and not the previous ones. It is a serious life-changer. If there’s one thing that I think Graces did terribly at, it was dungeon design. All the dungeons look the same no matter where you are in it. And since you can't follow along your mini-map while you're inside a dungeon, it was hard to remember where I was or where I needed to go.

The Wallbridge, in particular, is a nightmare. One of my core memories of Tales of Graces on the Wii was being stuck in that stupid fortress for literal days. Every turn and room looked almost the same. I remember backtracking to see if I had gotten all the treasure chests, and then couldn't find my way back to where I needed to go. The goal icon on the screen in the remastered version not only helped to guide me to my destination, but it also served as an on-screen landmark whenever I wandered off to loot or fight.

Finally, let’s talk about the game’s visuals on modern consoles. It’s impressive! Close-up shots of the characters sometimes highlight the low-poly background. Seeing it makes it obvious that Bandai Namco didn’t develop this from the ground-up in the 2020s. However, the character models all look smooth. I booted up my PS3 Tales of Graces f to compare, and I never noticed how grainy PS3 games were. It says a lot about the quality of the game’s models and overall design that the remastered visuals hold up, even fifteen years after its initial release. At times, backgrounds and characters in the distance looked foggy in a weird way. But Tales of Graces’s watercolor-like aesthetics helped a lot in making it look natural rather than odd with the rest of the game.

I read some reviews from when Tales of Graces and Tales of Graces f first came out, and saw a few criticisms that came up again and again. One of them was load time. I'm happy to report that while the game needed to load up a new map or transport me to the battlefield, it never felt slow or annoying. On the PC, at the very least, load times were minimal. Another common criticism was the graphics. Even when f came out in 2010, it looked pretty dated for a PS3 game, apparently. When playing the remastered version, Tales of Graces f felt like a lot of the visual choices Bandai Namco made were purposeful. It looked like a stylistic choice, especially since we're now in an era where realism or "fancy" graphics is no longer the main pursuit of studios.

Between Tales of Graces f Remastered's challenging endgame dungeon and collectibles, completionists can easily sink over a hundred hours into this game. Its palatable story and fast-paced combat also make it a good introduction to the series if you’ve never played Tales before. The thing about that, though, is that there are a lot of references to previous Tales games in this one—even titles that never appeared in the west. Another detriment is that the Graces combat system makes older games in the franchise feel horribly sluggish in comparison. Nonetheless, Tales of Graces f Remastered is a promising way for Bandai Namco to start its year, as well as a potential Tales renaissance. 

Tales of Graces f Remastered will come out on the PS4, PS5, Xbox Series X, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, and Windows PC on January 17, 2025. PC version reviewed.

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