Tales of Vesperia is the first major RPG to be presented in HD, Producer Gouda Tsutomu boasted at last night’s 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Bandai Namco press event. “[We] have final🍰ly realized the ideal RPG that Tales has always tried to be.”

After drooling over that trailer, we heartily agree - Tales of Vesperia is quite possibly the most gorgeous game we’ve ever seen on the Xbox 360, more beautiful even than it♕s distant cousin, Eternal Sonata. If the ideal of the Tales series was to be the supermodel of anime-style imagery, then Vesperia has won the beauty pageant well before the summer 2008 release date.

But what’s underneath the hand-drawn glory and HD character designs? The premier Japanese RPG experience that will convert all Halo fans? A return of the Tales series to its Phantasia roots? Our hands-on experience might have answers...

We started off in a lush countryside setting that somehow looked familiar (*cough*Eternal Sonata*cough*) with four members in our party - the standard emo lead, his pink-haired lady friend, a spunky redheaded chick and a pipe-smoking wolf/dog - plus some plucky, non-playable youth with a huge bag. The guy demoing Vesperia explain𝐆ed we were roughly four or five hours into the game- after the main characters, Yuri and Estelle, have set out on their quest to stop the evil Empire’s bastila-whorring. We waltzed up a forest road to a collection of guards and were rewarded with a wordy, witty cutscene that culminated in us running i꧅nto the forest where all kinds of monsters were waiting to pounce.

The battle system in Vesperia is the same “Evolved Flex-Range Linear Motion Battle System” from Tales of the Abyss; and like Tales of Symphonia, drop-in co-op mode is available during battles for up to four players. What this actually means is you either have a somewhat limited range of visibility during battles when you’re playing solo, or a pulled-back 360-degree view with multiplayer co-op. Combat is real-time (none of that turn-based crap for this JRPG) and the familiar Overlimit fu𒅌nction returns in Vesperia, so you can store up power for a super attack which sta𝓰cks with other players’ Overlimit drives.