Tales of Graces f Remastered review: The kids are alright

Bandai Namco’s Tales series is a pretty big deal now, especially after the visibility and success Tales of Arise garnered in 2021. It was a bumpy road to that point, especially before Bandai Namco got more trigger happy with localizations during the PS4’s run. Tales, despite having tons of fans for classics like Tales of Symphonia or Tales of Vesperia, struggled with consistent releases leaving many games unlocalized. Tales of Graces was one such game for the Nintendo Wii, not making it to North America until it was re-released for the PlayStation 3 as Tales of Graces f.

A remaster of a Wiimaster

Tales of Graces f Remastered is an attempt to get that game more of a fair shot, especially as the audience for older RPGs has grown healthier in recent years and Tales is sitting at an all-time high. It’s an odd one for sure, as it’s easy to tell at a glance this was originally a Wii game. There’s also a distinct battle system that doesn’t cleanly map to others in the series, and could be hit or miss especially for more recent fans. That said, this is a sound update with no clear issues out of the box, and while the story has a rough start it does a good job taking obvious tropes and twisting them a little, giving them some extra flavor without outright trying to subvert them.

The story opens with a group of childhood friends getting into mischief while troubling political unrest is quietly brewing in the background. Asbel is the son of a local noble, and is getting sick and tired of his dad’s constant nagging and barking orders. Asbel and his Brother Hubert meet Sophie, a strange girl with apparent amnesia and bizarre fighting abilities, and Richard, prince of the Windor kingdom. Something really bad happens while the group is defying the adults, and after a jump to seven years later, the relationships between these characters are strained, twisted, and tested as they’re forced to face the world’s problems as young adults. This is definitely a “power of friendship” kind of tale, but one that shows how that power can be tested to its limits by the pressures and conflicts the “real world” brings.

Growing up kinda sucks, yeah

Tales games are often known as being kind of tropey, but find ways to maneuver around the tropes in interesting ways while drawing players in with fun character dynamics. There’s also usually an absurd third act plot twist, involving ancient technology, aliens, or some other cosmic force that makes things awkward for everyone. That’s more or less the case here as well, with story developments you can see coming a mile away lining the narrative. But the neat thing about Graces is how many of these predictable-looking plot beats are resolved way faster than you’d expect, and are used to build to the wacky stuff in a way that feels properly foreshadowed. A rare win for the Tales Twist, almost a trope of its own at this point.

The main cast of characters being mostly childhood friends is a big help for the dynamic, even when new characters enter the group. One thing Tales games excel at is interaction between the group, from “skits” that you can stumble across on the field to post-battle banter, which relies a lot more on humor than you often see in games like this. In that way Graces adds a lot of life and personality to its world and people, despite the fact we’re looking at a glossed-up Wii game with all the weird camera angles, simple visuals, and limited animations that deliver the story otherwise. The anime cutscenes are on point though, another place Tales games historically deliver.

Stop and go station

Where I’m less high on Graces is in its combat systems. Tales games behave like old school, turn-based RPGs in that you touch an enemy out on the field and go into a battle scene, but they aren’t turn-based at all. These are frantic, real-time action games that borrow logic from fighting games as much as they do from the likes of Dragon Quest. You often have combo potential with juggling and other technical gimmicks that work together, and Graces is no different. In fact, Graces is arguably more technical than many of its siblings, for better and for worse.

Graces’ big combat idea is giving each character two sets of abilities, or Artes. Usually in these games you’ll have your “normal” attacks, then your Artes that act as magic or special abilities governed by some MP equivalent or another. Here, everything is Artes, and moving between A and B Artes means a shift in logic for each character, almost like a “stance” in a fighting game. It adds a lot to strategic thinking and planning when it comes to pressing buttons for sure, but since everything is Artes, that means everything has a cost. And that cost deeply impacts the flow of a fight.

You have a “CC” meter, which gives you points to spend on Artes and things like guarding and dodging. Landing hits can raise your maximum CC to a point, while doing things like backing off, moving, or guarding restores your CC. In theory you’re being more careful and specific about what you’re doing in a given moment, choosing your attacks then finding the right time to back off and recharge before going on the attack again. Meanwhile both sides (you and your enemy) have a meter than when full, activates a burst effect that grants unlimited CC for a limited time.

In practice the stop/start cadence this setup brings on is kind of annoying and doesn’t play nice with the way your attacks can feel depending on your character and who or what you’re fighting. Often it feels like your enemies can just do whatever they want, and you often have to waste precious time fumbling with your CC meter instead of just working on your combos and managing your MP like you would in most other games. Considering with many enemies and especially bosses you have to deal with guard breaking, CC management also makes creating openings and sustaining them an awkward mess. This isn’t a particularly difficult game but I found myself tuning the difficulty down just to have more opportunities to play with my skills while making the red light/green light thing slightly less obtrusive.

Tales of Graces is an entry in the series I’ve heard about the least over the years, partially due to its absence on the Wii when it was new, and the PS3’s relative struggle to get eyeballs in front of RPGs. So having Tales of Graces f Remastered out, with all the DLC included, modern visual updates and other neat, little quality of life touches, is a nice way to comfortably explore the past. If you’re someone who has only come to the Tales table recently through recent entries like Zestiria, Bersaria, or Arise, this is a comfortable way to visit what the series looked like in a previous era. It isn’t an all-time entry like Symphonia, but it isn’t an easier skip like Tales of Hearts either. And if the somewhat clumsy combat system clicks on top of the endearing characters and fun story, you’ve got a lowkey banger on your hands.

Tales of Graces f Remastered is available on January 17, 2025 for the PC, Nintendo Switch, Xbox One and Series X|S, and PlayStation 4 and 5. A PC code was provided by the publisher for review.

Lucas White

Contributing Editor

Lucas plays a lot of videogames. Sometimes he enjoys one. His favorites include Dragon Quest, SaGa, and Mystery Dungeon. He's far too rattled with ADHD to care about world-building lore but will get lost for days in essays about themes and characters. Holds a journalism degree, which makes conversations about Oxford Commas awkward to say the least. Not a trophy hunter but platinumed Sifu out of sheer spite and got 100 percent in Rondo of Blood because it rules. You can find him on Twitter @HokutoNoLucas being curmudgeonly about Square Enix discourse and occasionally saying positive things about Konami.