Everything New in Tales of Vesperia: Definitive Edition
Changes From Japan-Exclusive PS3 Version
Tales of Vesperia originally released exclusively on the Xbox 360 in 2008. However, what you might not know is that one year later the game was ported over to PS3 in Japan, along with a whole host of new and exclusive content.
Tales games have a history of doing this, releasing on one system and then porting over to a new system with a new “Edition.”
This happened with Tales of Graces on the Wii and PS3, Tales of Hearts on PSP and Vita, and Tales of Symphonia on GameCube and PS2, for example. The changes made with Tales of Vesperia, however, are quite extensive adding on huge swathes of new content.
We’ve combed over old forum posts, product descriptions, wikis, and more, in order to compile a full list of all the changes.
First and foremost among these are the two new party members. Flynn Scifo, who previously featured in the game as a temporary party member, now becomes a permanent, customizable member a way into the story.
At the same time, a brand new character named Patty Fleur joins as a full party member, and she’s a young girl who dreams of being a pirate.
Other massive changes are made too, like full voice acting for the entire game, including skits and sub-scenes. With this, it’s interesting to note that Troy Baker, voice actor for Yuri Lowell, confirmed that he had recorded new English lines for the PS3 version back in 2010.
By the sounds of it, it was just brief scenes that he had recorded, and obviously, the PS3 version never made its way west.
Later on in 2018, after the announcement of the Definitive Edition, Baker commented that he hadn’t been asked to reprise his role as Yuri, and a new video showed that instead, a different actor was playing the character in newly added scenes.
This means that Yuri will, likely, have two different voice actors in the Definitive Edition, and it’s unknown if the actors for all the other characters will be returning as well, although at this points it seems they will.
There are many more changes, of course, so you can see everything implemented in the PS3 version below. By far the bulk of the differences we’ll see from the original Xbox 360 version stem from there.
- Flynn Scifo as a permanent party member
- Brand new party member Patty Fleur
- Full Voice Acting for the Entire Game
- Addition of Characters from the First Strike anime film
- New Cutscenes and story segments, including new Skits
- Additional music tracks
- New minigames, like a racing minigame for Repede
- New bosses including Blade Dancer and Don Whitehorse
- Ability to replay boss battles on Nam Cobanda Island
- Overlimit Levels are raised to 8
- New Artes, Equipment, and Skills for each character
- New Mystic Arts including a Dual Mystic Art for Flynn and Yuri, Indignation for Rita, Crisis Rain for Raven, and more.
- “Artes Ball” Item that allows you to map Artes to L1, having a maximum of 16 Artes during battle, up from 8 in the original game.
- New costumes including the Tales of the Abyss set and the Bandai Namco set, with costumes from Xenosaga, SoulCalibur, and more.
- Ability to skip cutscenes
- New post-game dungeons and Ex-Dungeon
- Every party member can now be used as an avatar, letting you run around the world as Repede or whoever else you want.
- New Team Coliseum
Everything New in Tales of Vesperia: Definitive Edition
What the Definitive Edition Changes
While the bulk of the changes for Tales of Vesperia stem from the PS3 release, the Definitive Edition does add on a few things. For the very first time, players will be able to select between English and Japanese audio, for the entire game.
Of course, the biggest change is the remastered graphics, putting Tales of Vesperia more in line with a modern game than one that released ten years ago. Bandai Namco has already detailed how the game will run on each system as well.
The game will run in 1080p on PS4, Xbox One, and Switch and can be run at up to 4K resolution on PC depending on your specs. In handheld mode, the Switch will run at 720p.
On PS4, Vesperia will maintain a constant 60 fps at all times, however, on Xbox One and Switch the game will run at 30 fps during battle and 60 fps outside of battle. On PC, like normal, the game will have a variable frame rate depending on your rig.
With all of the changes and updates, Tales of Vesperia: Definitive Edition will undoubtedly be the way to play this JRPG classic when it launches on Jan. 11 for PS4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, and PC.
While you’re at it you can take a look at our massive ranking of the entire Tales series, or 6 Tales games we still don’t have in the west.
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