It’s hard to believe that the Tales series is celebrating its thirtieth year. Originally starting withTales of Phantasiaback in 1995, the beloved JRPG franchise has come a long way from its SNES days. It has been telling deep and impactful fantasy stories ever since, with the latest,Tales of Arise, revamping the entire formula for the better. With that said, while we’ve seen a large shift from the series, sometimes it’s best to go back to see what made the series great in the first place.
This is whereTales of Graces fcomes into play. Originally released on the Nintendo Wii over fifteen years ago, Bandai Namco would go on to re-release this classic on the PlayStation 3 with huge improvements. After over a decade of stewing, we would finally get a remaster of the beautifully-crafted RPG with significant quality-of-life improvements we didn’t think we needed. Is this the remaster we were hoping for or is this another example of something that’s best left to be remembered fondly in our memories?
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Cast of Characters that Overshadow the Protagonist
The story ofTales of Graces fis told through the lens of Asbel Lhant, a somewhat entitled protagonist who goes through a good chunk of his story regretting his rash childish decisions early on. After meeting a young and mysterious girl, Asbel somehow befriends the prince of the realm and gets into mischief, as children usually do.
Asbel is probably one of the worst protagonists the series has seen, rivaling that of Tales of Hearts’ Kor Meteor. He is one of the most gullible and self-righteous protagonists we’ve ever seen, being insufferable for a good chunk of the first half of the story. He does somewhat come into his own much later on, but having to stick with his frustratingly idealistic personality for most of the campaign just made us want to turn off his dialogue.
Fortunately, the same can’t be said about his companions, as most of them have their own unique quirks. Sophie does fall under the standard anime trope of a character with amnesia, but her story is far more interesting than anyone else’s. Cheria is a pure-hearted love interest who really shouldn’t be. Malik is a hardened battle veteran who kind of goes with the flow more than anyone. Hubert has far more depth than his brother and has actual motivations and reasoning behind his cold exterior. And, of course, Pascal is the wildcard. It’s a comically compelling ensemble that will have players far more invested in the story than the protagonist himself.
Holding Its Own After 15 Years
When it was released back in 2009 (or 2012 in the west),Tales of Graces fhad arguably the best combat system in a Tales game. Even to this day, it retains some of the best values that the Tales Studio used moving forward. It’s fast-paced and more reliant on skill and precision than simply button-mashing your way to victory.
Not having to worry about mana/TP was a breath of fresh air that the series more or less moved forward with, focusing more on gaining access to more CC points to be able to use higher valued skills. It’s all about combining normal attacks and Artes that cost CC points. CC is the number of actions you’re able to use while comboing an enemy before you need to take a breather.
There’s a greater focus on timing and dodging, as well, as it rewards the player with additional CC by doing so and obviously avoiding unnecessary damage. There’s still a block button, but there’s very little feedback when attacks will break your guard, making combat far more offensive than defensive in most situations. It strongly encourages you to rush into battle and burst down the enemy, instead of sitting back and waiting for them to attack.
Even after fifteen years,Tales of Graces fcombat system remains one of the best in the series. While it doesn’t quite hold a candle to the more recent Tales of Arise, which just iterated and improved upon everything the series has learned over the last decade, even in 2025,Tales of Graces ffeels and plays so smoothly.
Even after fifteen years,Tales of Graces fcombat system remains one of the best in the series.
New Player Experience
Bandai Namco could have very well just slapped together the old PS3 game and thrown it into the current generation, but they have made numerous adjustments and updates to make it a more modern experience. The remaster comes with a bevy of quality-of-life improvements. For example, there are now indicators for not only where to go, but timed events in the area.
There’s now an auto-save feature which comes massively handy for some of the more difficult encounters in-between save points. You run faster in the world now, have the ability to retry battles when failing them, enemy encounters can be turned off if you just want to go from point A to point B, there are more audio options, and there’s the inclusion of both English and Japanese voice acting for those with a preference.
On top of these fantastic features, the remaster comes packed with all the downloadable content released in the past. This mostly encompasses the huge array of costumes and accessories that can be equipped to the characters, but there’s other feature such as different BGMs, cards for the card mini-game, bonus skits and item packs to help you early in the journey.
The best feature, though, is without doubt the Grade Store being available right at the start of the story. This is a staple of the Tales series that allows you to make adjustments to various aspects of the game, from triple the amount of EXP you earn to double damage everyone does. Usually the amount of grade you earned by the end of the game is secretly tallied up, but now you have max Grade at the start. Some of the options are probably less advised to use as it will make the experience far easier in the long run, but it does give you warnings about which of the options you are able to toggle on and off in the menus after the fact.
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Touching Up the Presentation
Tales of Graces fhas always had an appealing visual style. It wasn’t particularly unique, as it’s a solid staple of the series to adopt a more anime-inspired style, but the attention to detail is striking. It both somehow maintains a simplistic design, yet a surprising amount of detail in each scene. The only downside, which has been carried over into the remaster, is the stark difference in quality between character models and the environment.
It has been something that I’ve complained about many times in the past, but while the visuals in Tales games do overall look appealing due to its highly-stylized art, it’s apparent that most of the attention went into the characters and not the environments. The character models stand out immensely in comparison to the rather plain and lower resolution environments. That’s not to say the backgrounds look bad, but they aren’t up to the standard of the character models. With that said, because this is a remaster, characters and some of the environments have been touched up to look cleaner, only slightly improving the divide in visual parity.
As for the audio department, as you can expect, the music, composed by Motoi Sakuraba, best known for his work on virtually every single Tales game and the Dark Souls franchise, is one of the best components to the experience. There’s a huge array of musical scores, but with that said, the voice acting leaves much to be desired. While most of the cast is brought out by their English voice acting, some of the characters, such as Richard, sound stiff and come off as simply reading a script.
Closing Comments:
Tales of Graces fwas one of the best Tales games to be released over a decade ago, and while the formula has been improved upon since then, Bandai Namco somehow has been able to make it stand out in 2025. The combat inTales of Graces fremains a masterclass experience, having some of the most engaging and compelling encounters of the franchise. That’s on top of a mostly enjoyable cast of characters and significant improvements in quality-of-life. It’s not all sunshine and rainbows, as while the remaster itself does a lot to improve upon various elements, there’s still nagging issues that are carried over from the original. For starters, Asbel Lhant remains one of the least likable protagonists in any Tales game due to his gullibility and self-righteousness. There remains a strong lack of visual parity between the character models and the environment, and some of the voice acting remains stiff as a board. Regardless,Tales of Graces f Remasteredbrings one of the best Tales games to the modern day in the best way possible, sacrificing none of its core values and only adding to the charm.
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