Gameplay
Tales of Vesperia is a role-playing video game set in a fantasy world featuring three-dimensional environments and characters. The game's environments are split into two types. On the field map, the main characters navigate reduced-scale environments. A compass and mini-map are displayed, along with towns, other named locations, and enemy icons. Striking an enemy icon triggers a battle, while interacting with a town causes the party to enter it. In battle and towns or similar locations, characters move around environments built on a lifelike scale relative to the human characters. In these areas, the party may interact with non-player characters. Within these environments, items such as crates came be moved by the currently-assigned character. After a certain point in the game, an item called the Sorcerer's Ring is given to the party, enabling them to shoot bolts of energy. These bolts can be used to activate switches, move objects, and attack enemies from a distance. Save points can be found in dungeons and towns. Items such as equipment and weapons are purchased with Gald, the in-game currency. While in environments, players can trigger optional character conversations called Skits. In Skits, characters are represented by head-and-shoulder portraits, and the conversations can range from dramatic to comedic.
Characters have several different stats and gauges: their health, a magic meter stocked by Technical Points, and Learning Points for learning skills. a character's respective agility or luck, and how a character reacts to attacks. Attack types are physical and magical, while defense is limited to physical attacks. Characters gain experience levels through accumulating experience points. Experience Points and Gald is earned through battles, along with recovering a degree of Technical Points and occasionally items dropped by defeated enemies. Skills, attributes that change different stats, can be assigned to each character. The number of skills that can be assigned is calculated by the number of skill points each character has available. Battling with equipment associated with a particular skill enables that character to learn it when they have filled their Learning Points meter. Cooking, creating meals with ingredients found in battle or around explored environments, can also be used by individual characters to restore their Health and Technical Points and grant temporary enhancements. Recipes are learned from a character called the Wonder Chef.
Battle system
Vesperia uses a variation on the series' trademark action-oriented Linear Motion Battle System, which plays out in a similar way to a fighting game. The variation used in Vesperia is called the "Evolved Flex-Range Linear Motion Battle System". Battles take place in an isolated battle arena within the environment, with the battle party being made up of one player-controlled character and three characters controlled by the game's artificial intelligence. The AI commands can be customized from a set of skills, with their assigned tasks affecting their actions and placement on the battlefield. Vesperia also features a local four-player multiplayer option: up to four players can connect to a single Xbox 360 console through both wired and wireless controllers. While no online multiplayer is available, players can use Xbox Live to post their respective scores, including damage chains and consecutive hit numbers, on online leaderboards. The boards can be updated by players while saving the game.
Enemies, encountered in environments as icons, react differently depending on how they are approached and attacked: using the right attack or approaching them unawares grants the party an advantage in battle. If other groups of enemies are close by, they are also drawn into the initiated battle. For both player characters and enemies, battle skills and character performance can be affected by elemental attributes. Status ailments can also be inflicted by both the party and enemies. They are divided into physical ailments and magical ailments, which have a variety of negative effects: physical effects can be effects like slowing or poisoning a character, while magical ailments can cause units to turn on their allies or automatically recover a knocked-out party member. Items used on characters can restore TP or HP, or remove status ailments. Characters learn new skills during battles, along with Titles that affect aspects of characters.
In battle, players can perform multiple actions: walking or running along a fixed axis, freely running around the battlefield, jumping in any direction, guarding against attacks, and pausing the battle to select a different enemy to attack. Characters can launch various attacks, from standard strikes to strikes that can interrupt enemy attacks. The player character's attacks can be chained together to create combo attacks, which create a continual flow of attacks without giving the enemy a chance to attack. Continual strikes activate the change for a Fatal Strike, which kills normal enemies and heavily damages bosses. Landing successive Fatal Strikes grants bonuses at the end of the battle. During battle, landing successive strikes without taking hits fill an Over Limit meter. Once the meter is full, the player character can perform continual attacks and cast Artes without casting time during the Over Limit's duration. During battles, Secret Mission can be triggered by performing unspecified actions. Completing Secret Missions grants a bonus to the battle grade or acquire an item. All characters can use Artes, special physical and magical abilities which can range from standard attacks to healing magic. Learned by leveling up a character, Artes can be both specifically directed and have a general area of effect. Four Artes can be assigned to each character, and each Arte can be assigned to a hot key. Some Artes can be used outside battle to cure characters. In addition to standard Artes, each character can access Mystic Arts, extra-powerful cinematic attacks.
