Game:

Tales of Zestiria (2015)

Duration: 46:18

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We've finally cornered Heldalf in his castle, and with nowhere left to run, we settle things once and for all. He does have a few tricks up his sleeve, but with the exception of his Mystic Arte, it is nothing we can't handle.

A few things here, I get to mention my thoughts about the game's ending (or lack of one), so I'm not going to talk about it here. For the entire final boss portion, the only part that is truly dangerous would be Heldalf himself as his second form is more of a scripted battle where you have to sacrifice your seraphs to take him down. It is pretty much the fight against him when you can see how far the game has fallen in quality compared to its predecessors. I've mentioned several times before that there are 2 different kinds of bosses in the game, but Heldalf is an attempt to combine those two kinds that just fails miserably. His stats are high enough to draw the battle out needlessly if you don't armatize, and if you do, he can instantly end the fight with his Mystic Arte. If not for the fact that I got Symphonia for free with this game, I'd probably be upset with how everything played out.

As for Zenrus's death, I have to say that it is very similar to Dezel in that we lost a character we've seen about 3 times total, which just doesn't have the same gravity as anything really. He may have been an important character in the grand scheme of things, but due to lore reasons, he is marginalized and his demise is pretty much as ineffective as Dezel. If not for the whole invisible seraph plot point, he probably could have played a bigger role in things, but instead he was reduced to the old man sitting in the corner of the world map that we should pity, because we should. Yeah, that just doesn't work.

Now, there is a post game optional dungeon with the game's cameo battle (don't worry, it screws this up too) as well as DLC that extends the story somewhat. However, I simply have no desire to do either. This is not the worst Tales game I've ever played, but it is probably #3 from the bottom with Graces and Symphonia 2 holding the bottom spots. I can't really see myself replaying it, so this is where everything comes to a crashing halt and I move back onto Indie games for a little while which I do hold in higher regard.

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